Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 166 - 166: 164: Lincoln, can you sleep?

His parents, who were easygoing, agreed to his request.

Regrettably, he couldn’t complete the mission tonight.

Lance’s parents had agreed, but Lincoln did not.

Previously, he had been saved by the white-bearded old man, Pavel Vaclavsky, and was brought to the real old Dad—Old Daddy Cross’s residence.

Lance found that this house was just a train track away from the house where the game started—the house where the main character had always lived.

The old Dad had always lived near his son, but he never appeared just to keep his son away from the disputes.

Listening to the old man with the white beard telling him how much his old Dad cares about him, willing to protect him with his life, every attack he thought he had encountered was actually to save him from the control of the alliance.

By the way, Lance also learned the reason Old Daddy Cross left the alliance— Leader Sloan’s name appeared on the destiny weaver, he had already abandoned his faith.

The Alliance had also become Sloan’s money-making tool, he arbitrarily set the targets.

Old Daddy Cross was not the traitor of the Alliance, Leader Sloan was the real traitor!

Outraged and deceived, Lance completely lost his cool. After finding the hidden workspace of Old Daddy Cross, he grabbed a weapon hanging on the wall without thinking, and headed straight to the textile factory.

Needless to say—the results ended with sudden death. Again and again.

Faced with such a heavily fortified, fortress-like assassin base, he couldn’t break in alone.

Then Lance was kicked offline by the system.

High -intensity combat is already a huge strain on one’s mental energy, not to mention Lance had been fiercely fighting for a while. Furthermore, he wasn’t an adult yet and hence had stricter standards.

He could only return to his bedroom with a sense of strong resentment.

However, he tossed and turned for a long time in bed, and simply couldn’t fall asleep.

He angrily took out his mobile phone, intending to vent his frustrations in a post.

But halfway through writing his post, he remembered his status as a professional player, and despite his current frustrations, the game was still cutting-edge in its excellence.

So, not willing to blatantly complain, he painstakingly deleted his post one letter at a time.

In the end, he only posted a short update: “@Lincoln, can you sleep? I can’t!”

The comments section erupted in joy: “Someone is falling apart, I don’t want to say his name.”

“Feel the malice from the producer himself!”

“Boohoo, Lincoln, you’re not human! You’ve broken my Giegie’s heart!”

“My wife cheated, old Dad died by my own hand, the chance to change fate was actually a big scam… did the game planner suffer some psychological trauma?” “Look at this, @Lincoln! We’re talking about you!”

“Could it be that Lincoln was once attacked by online, and so he made the game in revenge? Fighting against society?”

“How cruel… how many people must have been hurt by this…”

This chaos didn’t last for too long, nor did it affect anything offline.

The Cloud Dream Experience Store, operating normally as usual, had a special customer today.

Ma Lian, using his father’s ID card, successfully made an appointment, and came to the experience store.

In a rash moment, he ran to vandalize Lincoln’s door, but was immediately blocked by Lincoln, preventing him from registering for a Cloud Dream account, let alone playing the game until now.

His parents wouldn’t buy him a console anymore, especially since he was scolded by the police after the last incident.

He later considered making an appointment at the Cloud Dream Experience Store, but soon found that from the start, he needed to log in to the Cloud Dream Net account.

Afterwards, he reluctantly wrote many emails to Cloud Dream.

From complaining about the unfair treatment; to sincerely admitting his mistakes, stating that he had deeply recognized his errors; finally, his tone was almost tearful—pathetically requesting Cloud Dream to lift his ban.

Unfortunately, if real people were managing Cloud Dream’s inbox, they might show some compassion, but the public inbox of Cloud Dream was managed by Mavis.

Only after Mavis’s first round of screening, the emails would be selectively distributed to the relevant employees.

Like the job application emails, they would also go through the first round of screening by Mavis, and then be distributed to Cloud Dream’s HR Supervisor,

Quentina.

So, it was like wasted efforts, throwing charm into blind eyes.

No, Mavis is not blind! Mavis simply inherited a particular shrewdness from Lincoln. As long as her master doesn’t say anything, she’ll pretend she hasn’t seen a thing.

Ma Lian looked at the automated replies. He couldn’t accept it and kept sending mail.

A few days ago, he could no longer endure these futile efforts, so he decided to use Old Dad’s personal information and mobile phone to register a Cloud Dream account. He then booked an appointment at the Cloud Dream Experience Store, betting that he wouldn’t be recognized.

For this, he dressed completely in black: black clothes, black pants, black mask and black baseball cap. He even scheduled his visit after dinner.

The Cloud Dream Experience Store is ultimately like an internet café and doesn’t close at 5 p.m. like their studio. They have sufficient staff working round the clock in rotation.

Ma Lian managed to slip through and enter the private room, donning the headband for himself.

After nervously taking a couple of deep breaths, he closed his eyes, pressed the activation button on the side of the headband,

The next moment, he opened his eyes and found himself on an enveloping, peaceful water surface.

He’d seen this place through live streams, but it still felt incredibly surreal being here. Even this monotonous environment overwhelmed him!

He tried stretching his arms, kicking his feet, squeezed his hand. The genuinely real feedback left him speechless.

Next, a system prompt popped up:

“Please log in your Cloud Dream account.”

Ma Lian entered his account and password for verification.

With trepidation, he watched a rotating circle at the bottom of the interface, his heart sinking.

He’d seen people instantly bind their accounts when logging in for the first time during live streams, hardly having seen this loaing page.

Surely enough, his fears came to pass you.

A tiny red triangle of warning showed on the screen.

“The verified account identification information and your appearance differ significantly, please check whether your account details are accurate.”

Ma Lian reluctantly tried twice more to no avail.

In the end, even this security warning was generated:

“Multiple login attempts failed to verify the identification information, suggesting a serious security risk. Your account has been frozen, please unfreeze it yourself after 24 hours.”

Then he was kicked off the server.

Ma Lian took off his headband, grinding his teeth, seethed with rage!

Fury boiled over within him and courage surged!

He raised his headband, about to smash it on the ground!

Not letting me play, huh? No one will get away with this! I’m going to make a scene at your store every day from now on! Let’s see who can take it!

But before he could smash the headband, he suddenly heard chaotic footsteps and screams from outside the booth.

He vaguely heard someone screaming: “Put it down! Stop him quickly!”

Ma Lian peeked out and saw two men each with a Mirage Console running to the door while the store employees were not prepared.

They didn’t run though but stood at the door of the store, shouting protest slogans holding the Mirage Console: “Monopoly! Dictatorship! Destroying the gaming industry ecology! Destroying the environment! Spiritual opium!” and so on.

A crowd immediately gathered outside the store to watch the commotion, not only hindering but also taking up their phones and filming.

Ma Lian also noticed that several people seemed to be providing cover. They shouted to stir up trouble, yet they kept sneaking into the store.

The people who were not in the virtual world in the store were also attracted by the commotion and rushed to the door to join the crowd.

The employees of the Cloud Dream Experience Store were all anxious. One by one, they rushed up to try to stop them.

However, seeing the crowd and cameras, they hesitated.

In this moment of hesitation, they were quickly stopped by the clamor of accomplices hidden in the crowd.

With all the employees of the experience store rushing to the door, the idle players also left the store and gathered at the door to watch the excitement, and the remaining players were still in the small box, still sinking in the virtual world.

This left the store momentarily unguarded.

Then Ma Lian heard the sound of the door opening.

He looked over in the direction of the sound and saw that the normally closed fire doors of the store had been opened and a group of people dressed all in black with black hats and masks quickly entered the store.

They then marched straight to a door, opened it, and began moving backup consoles.

Some people filled big bags, packed two or three machines, and ran, quickly leaving through the open fire doors. Their movements were efficient and quick.

Watching this scene before him, Ma Lian’s heart pounded!