Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 833: Chapter 792 “Are you telling me this is a closed beta?”

Walls have ears.

The secret of Daxia’s victory in the Second [Peak War], effortlessly defeating all opponents, was eventually discovered by overseas players.

This was inevitable. When Cloud Dream built a bridge allowing Daxia users to freely access the overseas Internet, it naturally opened a window for overseas users to access the Daxia Internet.

It didn’t take long for overseas players to discover the leak on the Vortex Forum about the reason for the [Peak War] victory.

This left them astounded.

They had never imagined gathering 600 top players, creating a specific MOD map to train their collaboration.

...

This would be much more complex than it seems from the outside!

Many players from different countries knew the answer, but they could only sigh in exasperation, because they couldn’t replicate it.

This required mod development technical abilities, organising training capabilities, a strong sense of honour and unity in the war zone… and so on.

Turner, who had been in the French War Zone, didn’t directly give up, but tried to rally the French players.

But despite his best efforts, he couldn’t organize it. In the end, less than 200 people responded.

That was just a verbal agreement. By the time the actual training began, it was hard to say how many would turn up.

Not to mention, they needed to somehow create a [Peak War Map MOD]. Turner himself didn’t know how to develop one and would have to pay someone to do it…

But the outrageous part was, the French player saw him as a cash cow, demanding an exorbitant price!

According to his knowledge, the Daxia map MOD was voluntarily developed by tech-savvy players who offered it free of charge.

The players involved in making the mod were not even eligible to participate in the [Peak War], yet they devoted a significant amount of time to creating this mod and contributed it free of charge.

This completely deterred Turner from trying again.

“I’m a fucking American, not a Frenchman!”

“If you don’t care about it yourself, why am I wasting my effort?”

“Screw this!”

Turner took immediate action, he booked a direct flight to Xiajing that same day, deftly packed his baggage, and without any hesitation, left Paris on the flight the next day.

He hadn’t intended to live stream, but as soon as he landed, he discovered:

Pokémon was about to start its closed beta and countless players were howling online because they couldn’t get tickets.

So, he had to live stream!

After streaming briefly for twenty minutes and receiving a wave of envy from his fans, Turner turned off the live stream and headed to the hotel.

His assistant had booked the hotel, but he had to find it himself because he impulsively decided to leave while his assistant was still in Paris dealing with the closeout of his rental house.

Besides… the assistant had also decided to quit.

Going from America to Paris with him, the assistant could accept, but moving to Daxia and completely changing his cultural environment was too much for him.

After all, he was not a fervent game player, unlike Turner, whose future career was tightly bound with Cloud Dream and Virtual Reality.

So after settling in, Turner needed to find a new assistant, preferably one who could teach him Chinese.

Although he was a loyal fan of “shoot ’em up games” with most of his gaming time spent on Battlefield, as a top streamer, he couldn’t ignore the traffic brought by new games from Cloud Dream one by one. He had to experience each of them.

Not to mention, many games would have magical cross-over events.

Now, a large number of Battlefield players are looking forward to the release of Chang’an, hoping that new cold weapon “skins” will be promoted in Battlefield.

This was especially the case for Turner.

He could never forget the feeling when he saw the [Inscription Bullet] and [Champion’s Sword] on the battlefield for the first time –

They were fucking cool!

However, Cloud Dream has yet to remake the [Freedom Day] event, and he could only stare and drool.

If Chang’an has a similar event, he must not miss it!

To live and game in the Chinese zone, learning Chinese is a must.

*

He had barely settled into the hotel and put his luggage down when there was a knock on the door.

It was the rental agent.

After learning his lesson in Paris, he decided to go for a short-term lease and test the waters by renting for a quarter first.

The housing agent proficiently exchanged pleasantries with him in English, then quickly got to the point: “Do you have any requirements for the house?”

“Where does Lincoln live?” Turner immediately stated his most urgent requirement.

As everyone knows, having a neighbour is invaluable. Turner wanted to be Lincoln’s neighbor.

If becoming a neighbor was impossible, living in the same community would suffice.

However, the agent became defensive upon hearing this: “Why are you asking this?”

Why was an American who had just landed today asking where Lincoln lived… that was very suspicious!

They wouldn’t think twice if a Chinese person asked, but an outsider asking made the agent wary.

Only after Turner explained that he was a “Player” and a “Streamer”, did the agent stop questioning him.

However, the answer was: “We don’t know where Lincoln lives. Why would we?”

I can’t tell you even if I knew!

“Then somewhere near Cloud Dream, the closer to Cloud Dream Company, the better.” Turner compromised.

“That’s no problem, though the rent is a bit high.”

The agent wasn’t trying to fleece him.

Since Cloud Dream has been growing more and more successful, rents in the surrounding areas have indeed risen substantially, with even the Eco-Culture Creative Park – where the company is situated, showing signs of increasing in value. @@novelbin@@

——Cloud Dream subsequently bought another two office buildings in the park, with the prices going higher each time.

However, all within a reasonable range, there was no one trying to make an obscene profit from Cloud Dream —— every time situations like these occur, Quentina always appreciate the toughness of her boss’s background and the reputation of his “unrestrained extravagance”.

“Rent it! Even if it’s expensive! To live in the center of the world, no price is too high! Even better if I can see the Cloud Dream office building just by opening the window!”

Turner wasn’t short on money, so he immediately signed the contract that afternoon and moved into a high-end apartment less than a kilometer straight from Cloud Dream, and went to bed early, looking forward to the non-deletion beta test of “Pokémon” the next day.

As for his lost Spirit Beasts in Paris …

If they were mythical beasts from legends, it should be easy for them to get from Paris to Xiajing City, right?

…

…

In the eager anticipation of Daxia and the surrounding countries’ players, and the envy, jealousy, and hatred of the players in the Middle East, Europe, America, and Australia, a day quickly passed.

First thing the next morning, before going to school, Shuihua double-checked the battery on his [Eight Sides], made sure it was fully charged before stuffing it into his backpack and heading to school.

Those with jobs were also stuffing their [Eight Sides] into their bags, taking them to work.

Game media, and all kinds of video uploaders, and game streamers, had their mobile phones ready early in anticipation of the official opening of ” Pokémon”.

—— Regardless of how awesome the device they were using earlier, now it’s mobile phones all the way.

Until Cloud Dream allows [Eight Sides] to do live streaming, or comes up with new intermediate equipment, filming “Pokémon” would only be possible on mobile phones.

Finally, around the eagerly anticipated 8 o’clock, the hands on the clock hit the hour.

Camille Victoria, who was watching Connar bullying the little white tiger, suddenly noticed a shadow overcasting.

Looking up, she saw thick rolling clouds approaching quickly, covering the entire sky.

“Is this… the opening cutscene?” Camille Victoria immediately thought of the most likely possibility.

“I knew it, this isn’t a beta test!” Instead of staying in his apartment, Turner came to the Eco-Culture Creative Park early to be ready to catch some Spirit Beasts once the game started.

Seeing the big scene unfolding beyond the window now, he immediately understood that this wasn’t a beta test, but rather a treatment as if the game was officially launched!

“Do we not need to purchase? It’s a free game again?” The players speculated about how the game would be monetized.

“To what extent has Cloud Dream’s technology developed?” Slightly beating out of rhythm, peers watched the sudden change of the world created by Cloud Dream.

A blind user walking on the street, seeing many people stopping to look up at the sky, after a split-second of hesitation, pulled down a menu with two fingers, turned on [game mode], and also looked up to the sky.

…

Under the many gazes, the rolling lead clouds covered the sky.

Dense lightning rumbled and flickered within the clouds, yet no thunder was heard.

A moment later, a phantom of a continent tore through the clouds, appearing in the sky. The edge of the continent was slowly collapsing, fragmenting, and disappearing in the lightning…

An apocalyptic vision.

In the center of the continent, however, was a crowd of legendary creatures, their stature astonishingly huge compared to the scenery around them:

The eminent Kui Ox as tall as a mountain, the Nine-tailed fox whose tails were stirring up the clouds, the Yinglong dragon stomping on the mountainside and roaring upwards …

Around them, a mass of large, majestic, and strong creatures gathered.

All these behemoths were enclosed within a dragon’s body, which was as thick as a mountain, forming a circle. It was the most divine beast in the world —

Zhuyin.

But even it was powerless against the destruction of the entire land.

Yet they gathered in the center of the land, not to cling to life till the last moment, but for the last ray of hope!

Various colored lights emerged from each beast’s body, gathered together bit by bit, and gradually formed the outline of a mountain.

This peak formed by the power essence from the beasts grew continually, reaching up and touching the sky, then —

It began to erupt like a volcano!

Light spewed from the peak, forming countless spots of light that completely dissipated the clouds, falling towards the real earth.

To the players, it looked like a rain of light.

But it wasn’t rain.

As the scattered spots of light fell lower and lower, the players finally saw clearly:

They were young Spirit Beasts!

Some of them were already familiar to the players, but many of them had never been seen before.

Everyone watched the baby Spirit Beasts – the hope of their parents, falling from the sky and disappearing into the buildings of the city before they could blink, they felt that they simply didn’t have enough eyes to take it all in.

On the ground, Camille Victoria had a sudden realization: “No wonder all the Spirit Beasts are babies, so that’s why!”