Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Lincoln finally got a chance to post an announcement, shifting the blame away from himself:

[Everybody take a break, we’ve found the cause.

A group of people did something huge, and it caused the game to crash. Honestly, I was shocked too.

I won’t go into the technical jargon. Let me just show you the video so you can experience it yourselves.

Oh, and the issue has been resolved. Don’t try to replicate this behavior and crash the server again. That’s impossible now!

Last reminder: To compensate for potential loss caused by the unexpected disconnection, we’ve reverted everyone’s game state to the moment right before the crash. So when you log in, you might not be in a safe zone. Keep that in mind.]

Warehouse Bird was overjoyed!

He didn’t even bother to watch the video Lincoln had posted, afraid that someone else might snatch the world first kill while he watched the video.

He raced into the bedroom, put on his headband, and logged into the game.

As soon as he logged in, he saw a laser beam shooting straight at him!

“Shit!”

Warehouse Bird narrowly dodged the laser beam and opened fire with full force, accurately shooting the bullet into the heart of the BOSS. The final sliver of health for the ultimate BOSS, the Moon Lord, was gone.

Finally, amid the dazzling light, the Moon Lord’s last wail echoed through the world, and Warehouse Bird felt the air rumble and his eardrums pound.

But none of this could change the fate of the BOSS –

Its colossal body exploded into pieces in mid-air, plummeting to the ground.

Glittering loot and treasure bags were mixed in between.

That is, without a doubt, the ultimate spoils of war for the entire game, but at the moment, Warehouse Bird couldn’t care less.

He even hurriedly took a glance at the grand music and diamond trophy that appeared in the air, then –

Rushed to watch the video Lincoln posted!

Defeating the ultimate BOSS and getting the world’s first kill was exhilarating, but the most thrilling and exciting moment had already been interrupted once.

Even if it continued now, it wouldn’t seamlessly reconnect with the feeling of that moment…

So the achievement trophy wasn’t as captivating as the video Lincoln had posted.

Warehouse Bird quickly opened the panel, clicked the external link, and started playing the video –

The video’s primary focus is on Stanley, but some aerial shots were also included.

Lincoln didn’t immediately show the moment when Stanley crashed the game but instead rewinded the timeline, starting from when he discovered the synergy of [Lance] and [Floating Ring]. The video quickly recapped his exploration journey.

It wasn’t until the [Hell-Space Express] was built that the video slowed down.

That’s when players saw how Stanley used those two ordinary items to accelerate himself to over twice the speed of sound.

And how he enlisted the help of a circuit master to use teleportation gates to prolong the acceleration process, with his speed digits soaring exponentially until reaching over 80,000 meters per second!

The damage numbers at one thousandth of the speed of light, a whopping -1.7 billion, were truly jaw-dropping!

Especially for Terraria players, they knew the game’s numerical system well.

Under normal circumstances, even in the late game, single damage numbers often hover below 1000. Players usually rely on higher attack rates to increase their DPS to the level of thousands.

But to reach a DPS of 10,000, one would have to be a top-level boss.

And what did they see now?

-1.7 billion?!

The numbers overflowed!

How much damage did he deal before the overflow? At least 1 billion, right?

Adding those two numbers together, he dealt a total of over 2.7 billion DPS?!

That’s 270,000 times more than a top-level boss!!

Upon realizing this, Terraria players went crazy:

“Where the hell did this mysterious powerhouse come from?!”

“321,338m/s?? One-thousandth of the speed of light?! Is this guy still alive?”

“Would hitting Australia at this speed turn the whole continent into glass?”

“I think it’d be even worse!”

…

Not only gamers, but even ordinary netizens who don’t play games were shocked by the two numbers and exclaimed that it was unbelievable.

Even though Lincoln had announced that the glitch had been fixed.

There were still a large number of players entering the game and blindly started to replicate this set of equipment.

Even if Lincoln didn’t put up much footage of Vincent designing the teleportation gate circuit, many players were still confident.

This was not difficult to understand: as long as the principle was known, the circuit design of this device was not too complicated.

The only difficulty was to make the teleportation gate run smoothly, be triggered correctly at the right time, and be able to repeatedly trigger.

As long as this goal could be achieved, the circuit design could also be changed.

Aside from that, some players were genuinely worried about Stanley’s condition and repeatedly asked in the comment section—

“Is he still alive now?”

Lincoln couldn’t help but smile bitterly.

But since these people kept asking, Lincoln had to come forward and reply, “He’s fine, just needs a few days of rest.”

However, not answering would have been better. With this answer, it immediately confirmed the fact that the protagonist in the video had encountered an accident with his body.

This was not a trivial matter.

At present, the Mirage Console has nearly 200 million users in Daxia, and when overseas users are added, the global number is almost 400 million.

This volume, any safety risk would be infinitely magnified.

Many media outlets, like sharks smelling blood, were immediately sensitive to the fact that there was deeper content to be dug into behind this incident.

In the video uploaded by Lincoln, the participants’ IDs were not marked.

After all, Stanley himself was still asleep, and Lincoln was unsure of his opinion. However, the game crash was a huge impact and a clear explanation had to be given to the players. That’s why the video was directly released.

As for the participants’ IDs, Lincoln would communicate with them after Stanley had rested.

But players and netizens are very resourceful people.

If it’s just a single player or netizen, it may just be an ordinary person.

But as a collective “player” and “netizen”, it is almost omnipotent.

It wasn’t long before Stanley’s game ID and real-life identity were dug up, and even the fact that he was lying in the hospital was unearthed.

Many reporters who were close by didn’t hesitate to rush to the hospital, wanting to get first-hand information.

Considering the heat of the whole network’s attention, whoever gets the first-hand information first will definitely gain a huge amount of traffic!

Even if they couldn’t get an interview, just taking a photo would be fine!

As long as there were photos, the news could be written.

As long as they didn’t arbitrarily attack Cloud Dream and Lincoln, there was no danger.

Yes, so far, no tabloid had published any hearsay news like “Mirage poses a safety risk, causing players to be hospitalized”.

—Without any decisive evidence, no media dared to publish baseless reports considering Lincoln’s deterrent power.

And to get decisive evidence, the best way, of course, was to go for a real person interview as quickly as possible.

Especially to catch it before Cloud Dream’s public relations people sealed it off!

—Of course, this was just the idea of some conspiracy-loving media people.

In fact, Lincoln didn’t care if they interviewed Stanley, nor did he care what Stanley would say.

If he was worried about that, he wouldn’t have insisted on sending Stanley to the hospital.

The doctor had said that Stanley’s condition didn’t require hospitalization, and he would be fine after resting at home for a few days.

It was Lincoln who was not at ease, and in case of an emergency, insisted on having the doctor take him back to the hospital.

Lincoln’s exact words were:

“Even if he’s just sleeping, drag him to the hospital to sleep. Just don’t let him have any problems during this time, no colds, fevers, headaches, or indigestion!”

“As long as there’s space in the intensive care unit, just shove him in.”

“I’ll pay whatever it costs. Take good care of him, and I’ll donate money and equipment to your hospital later!”

Yes, Lincoln knew very well how important Stanley’s health was.

It had nothing to do with what he did. As long as he was a Mirage user and had an accident while using Mirage, it could become a reason for Cloud Dream to be attacked.

His response was to do what he was supposed to do openly and honestly.

What was left to see was what Stanley would say and how the media would report it.