“I should log off...” Shiki glanced at the real-world time. It was already eight in the morning the next day—he’d literally pulled an all-nighter.

In this game, even if you logged out, your character stayed in the world. So you had to find a safe spot before going offline. Otherwise you might log back in to find your character dead or your stuff gone.

Shiki lay down in the bed of his palace chamber and exited the game.

In reality, Shiki let out a huge yawn and planned to sleep for two or three hours.

Meanwhile, the major forums and sites across the net had exploded.

This was a full-dive VR game. Some people had still been skeptical before, but now...

“Buying unused game devices for a high price, DM to negotiate!”

A bunch of rich second-gens kept raising the price. It had already hit a terrifying seven figures.

“Ahhhh!!! I regret this so much! I saw that push message and deleted it as spam! Actual physical pain!!!”

Some people were pouring their hearts out. The game’s promo method was way too weird—it had been sent out via MMS. Some people just deleted it without downloading and completely missed the qualification. Now they were drowning in regret.

Even more people shifted their focus to the dev team behind the game and the content the beta players had revealed.

What kind of team could develop such a game device that was literally ahead of its time?

According to what the beta testers leaked, the sender on the package was “SanshuMu Game Studio, Mr. Xiao.”

In an instant, everyone started searching, trying to figure out who this mysterious person was.

On the other side, even more players were looping the leaked beta videos over and over to feed their cravings, itching to get their hands on this game.

At three in the afternoon, Shiki finally woke up. He checked his phone—his notification bar was flooded.

“Virtual reality game that shocked the world!”

“Exclusive inside scoop: the studio behind The Second World!”

…

Mixed in with a few clickbait headlines were messages from his friends.

In a heavily guarded secret base—

Inside an office—

A black-haired man stared at the threads and videos on all the big sites, propping up his head with one hand, muttering under his breath while his other hand clacked away at the keyboard.

“What’s wrong with these peasants? You get to play a game that’s beyond this era and you’re still complaining?”

“They actually submitted this many suggestions.”

“Didn’t you guys say you love hardcore? Why’d you all chicken out the moment it turned into a real other world?”

“You want me to give you a convenient system? You’re scared of pain now? Where are all those ‘hardcore players’? Fourth calamity, my ass!”

This man was the game’s producer. After reading through all the feedback from the beta testers, his head was pounding.

“Fine, fine, whatever. Achievements, exploration, affection system—I’ll add them for you. You even want a rating system? Let’s just go with EX, S, A, B, C, D, E. If I have to do full stats I might as well die. Everything similar, we’ll handle it like that...”

“You want simplified controls too? Sure, sure, I’ll simplify them. Reshaping a world really eats up energy...”

…

When he finally finished everything, the man slumped in his chair and opened the reading app on his phone.

“I’m dead tired. Time for some novels... This author’s still stuck on exactly two chapters a day, and scheduled at that? Damn it, I’ll toss him a big ‘Flame Emperor’ reward first, but if he doesn’t add more chapters, biss...”

The 0.2 patch notes for The Second World went live, instantly reigniting everyone’s hype.

This was a big update. They’d basically accepted all the suggestions from the beta players, and those players could now log in and test the changes.

“Holy crap, that fix speed!”

“Truly a studio with a conscience!”

“Say no more. I’m absolutely buying it day one of open beta!”

“Looks like they added internal streaming. Let’s go cloud-watch!”

“Cloud Server booting!”

“Dream Server booting!”

“Peach Server booting!”

…

After waking up, the first thing Shiki did was brush his teeth and wash his face. He might not be going out, but some habits were etched into his DNA.

He opened his phone and replied to his friends’ messages.

IceCream: wei, zaima? Hook me up with this. [Image]

In the picture was the device for The Second World, leaked by another beta player.

Shiki Kurumi: [Image] Don’t be jealous, cloud gamer. Just chill and wait for open beta.

Shiki snapped a photo of the device on his bed. A few seconds later, his friend replied.

IceCream: ??? You have one too? Why don’t I have it? What the hell, there’s no justice!

Shiki Kurumi: Maybe that’s just life.jpg

Shiki also knew the devices had already been driven up to sky-high prices, and there still weren’t enough to go around.

The value packed into such a cross-era device was enough to make entire governments sit up. Rumor had it some countries had already ordered the confiscation of all game devices from qualified players, wanting to crack them open and study them.

But the devices would actually self-destruct. Some countries flew into a rage and publicly slammed them, accusing them of collecting DNA, fingerprints, and body data for shady purposes, calling on people not to use them.

But who care?

Rumors said the game’s producer had already been taken into protective custody by agencies in Shiki’s country, but nobody knew the exact details. Judging from today’s update, though, the game hadn’t been affected at all, so it was probably fake news?

Shiki skimmed through the patch notes.

“They updated this much...” Shiki couldn’t help giving the game producer a mental thumbs-up for his dedication.

After getting a rough idea of the changes, Shiki, itching to try them, logged back into the game.

He woke up again in the palace chamber. As he stretched out his hand, he couldn’t help sighing at how insanely real it all felt.

Remembering something, he pulled up the system menu and checked the pain settings—that was one of the new features.

Some players had complained the pain was way too real. The weaker ones had even gotten a taste of what dying felt like...

Shiki saw that the pain level was set to 0 by default—meaning he wouldn’t feel any pain at all.

The logout section now had options too: one to disappear instantly, one to leave your character in the world. The default was to disappear.

Looked like a compromise for the players. Having your character stay in the world after logout had been a bit too hardcore.

There was also quest rating now.

The “source of dragon calamity,” the resurrection of the Nether Dragon King Visage, and the rise of the Black Dragon clan were all SSS-grade quests, just below EX.

As for the Death Monarch’s exclusive quest, the undead calamity—it was straight-up EX-grade. That was really something. Shiki felt like his quest-completion OCD was going to be very busy.

He closed the menu and started to get up.

“Huu... huu...”

Whose breathing was that?

Shiki looked over and realized Lilisa had fallen asleep right next to him. Right now she was wearing a blue-and-white maid outfit with lace trim and the standard loli combo: white thigh-highs. She actually looked pretty cute.

“Lilisa!” The door to the bedchamber flew open with a kick. Rorosa, also in a lace-trimmed red-and-white maid outfit, charged in and grabbed the sleeping Lilisa off the bed.

“Haa~ah...” Lilisa let out a long yawn and said lazily, “Sis, you’re so noisy.”

Rorosa angrily squished Lilisa’s cheeks. “I told you to wake Master up. Why did you fall asleep?”

“That’s... because Lilisa thought Master looked so peaceful while he was sleeping. So I didn’t want to disturb him and decided to wait quietly for him to wake up...”

The excuse had zero credibility...