Chapter 38: Game Lobby

As one of the members of the King's Guild, Wang Shun was mainly responsible for two tasks because his personal skills were related to information collection, one was to collect the pass data of all kinds of games, and the other one was to look for newcomers with high potential for the guild and recruit them, Wang Shun had originally wanted to report Bai Liu's data, but when he saw the announcement of recruiting puppet players in the King's Guild, he hesitated. But when he saw the announcement that the King's Guild was recruiting [Puppet Players], Wang Shun hesitated again.

If Bai Liu were to report it now, Bai Liu's superior Intelligence stats and Spirit stats would most likely be noticed by the [String Puppeteer], and he would easily be forced to be selected as a [Puppet Player].

For normal players, being chosen as a [Puppet Player] seemed to be a pretty good job, but for a newcomer like Bai Liu, whose potential for development was as high as S-rank, it would be too much of a shame to be a puppet.

Another thing is, Wang Shun found out when he did the stats analysis, that the panels of the players who had given this [Puppeteer] a [Puppeteer] haven't risen since they made the puppets, or they have risen very slowly.

On the contrary, the [String Puppeteer], his intelligence points had risen from only 71 to 93, and the rest of his panel attributes were also soaring.

These data were only clear to Wang Shun, the King's Guild's internal data collection and analysis, who had guessed a long time ago that the [Puppeteer]'s personal skill wasn't just [Manipulate Players], but also [Potential Sucking], but now many players knew that the [Puppeteer]'s skill was only [Manipulate Players].

Many of the players that Wang Shun had rated as high potential ended up falling into the arms of the [Puppeteer], becoming puppets, gradually becoming mediocre, and then being abandoned by the [Puppeteer] or simply dying in the game, turning from a piece of jade that could emit luster after a bit of polishing to a piece of mud that had been sucked dry and crushed.

Wang Shun, while feeling sorry for the situation, had to accept this helpless reality.

In the game, the weak are the strong, and after the bottom players have been exploited and utilized, they will be thrown away by the guilds or the strong, here, the most worthless thing is not the lagging discounted goods that are sold for one point, but the lives of the human beings.

So joining a guild is not necessarily the best choice for Bai Liu, a very eye-catching player, too easy to be clamped down by the rules and regulations of the guild and then be taken advantage of by the higher level players, back then, Mu Sicheng also saw through this, so he bit the bullet and didn't join the King's Guild.

By coincidence, back then, the one who looked at Mu Sicheng and wanted Mu Sicheng to join the King's Guild was also this [Puppeteer of the Lift String], Mu Sicheng directly said that he would not be a puppet under anyone, and be dominated by anyone, and refused the Puppeteer's invitation.

Later on, Mu Sicheng also suffered a lot at the hands of this puppet master, and later on, he himself became very powerful, and his ranking gradually climbed up to about three hundred up in the overall standings before he was spared by the [Puppet Master of the Lift String].

However, Bai Liu, a very promising new player who was currently ranked at over three thousand, was not so easily spared by the [String Puppeteer].

Although Wang Shun did not submit Bai Liu's personal information to the King's Guild internally out of selfishness, Bai Liu's eye-catching performance and panel stats still attracted the attention of the [String Puppeteer].

The [String Puppeteer] has been stuck here at [93 Intelligence Points] for a long, long time, and he needs a high-intelligence player as [Nourishment] for him to develop his intelligence.

Is there better sustenance than a new player like Bai Liu who has only played one single game? There isn't.

Wang Shun kind of wanted to remind Bai Liu to pay attention to this [Puppeteer], and the [Puppeteer]'s people are also looking for Bai Liu, but the way Bai Liu is wearing a colorful cocktail hat and black lipstick, even if Bai Liu is standing in front of Lu Yizhan, who has been playing with Bai Liu for more than ten years, Lu Yizhan may not recognize that the person in front of him is Bai Liu. Even if Bai Liu is now standing in front of Lu Yizhan, a person who has been playing with Bai Liu for more than ten years, Lu Yizhan may not recognize this person in front of him as Bai Liu.

Surprisingly, someone recognized Bai Liu through his strange appearance.

Mu Sicheng hugged his chest and looked at Bai Liu who was standing at the entrance of the game boarding portal, "...... Bai Liu, what did the real world do to you to turn you into this human and animal indistinguishable appearance in just a few days?"

"You recognize me?" Bai Liu was slightly surprised.

He had paraded around the halls in this guise for several times, and no one had recognized him, but Mu Sicheng had recognized him beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Mu Sicheng laughed slightly smugly, revealing a small tiger tooth on one side of his smile, "I can't believe it Bai Liu, I can recognize you no matter how you disguise yourself, I told you I'll make you return everything you stole from me last time, you can't get away with it! I can find you!"

"If you don't rely on appearance to recognize people ......" Bai Liu swept Mu Sicheng head hat that very weird hip-hop monkey, "you rely on the sense of smell to recognize me, right, your skills are related to this monkey Your skill is related to this monkey, isn't it? Strengthening the five senses?"

Mu Sicheng's smile grew thicker, "Wrong guess~ My personal skill isn't to strengthen my five senses, but I did recognize you by your sense of smell, you have a very strong smell of copper, or money."

"That should still smell pretty good." Bai Liu was noncommittal, he looked at Mu Sicheng very calmly, "What is it that you are looking for me for? ""A player looking for another player-" Mu Sicheng looked up at the huge game boarding portal behind Bai Liu, the smile on his face was obscure, the red light in his eyes flickered "--Of course it's to play the game, I won't allow you to hunker down in a single-player game, how boring would that be, and the mortality rate is too low."

Bai Liu nodded approvingly, "I gave up on this poor partition after I realized that the point rewards for multiplayer were ten times the rewards for single player."

"......" Mu Sicheng's attempts to scare Bai Liu were all stuck in his head, he looked at Bai Liu, who was really carefully screening the multiplayer game he wanted to enter, and asked in a depressed manner. "No, Bai Liu, it's very easy to die going to a multiplayer game, aren't you afraid?"

Next to the entrance on Bai Liu's back is a huge projection screen with a random assortment of game covers and names.

Bai Liu rested his chin on the fingers of his arm to select the games he wanted to enter, his eyes darting through them without giving Mu Sicheng an unnecessary look as he spoke faintly, "In an objective sense, I have a fear of death, but that fear is nothing compared to the fear that poverty has brought to me. "

Mu Sicheng couldn't understand Bai Liu's brain circuits at all, but the stifling feeling that Bai Liu brought to him was incredibly real: "No, you didn't even panic when you entered this game? You're a bit too calm, aren't you?"

Bai Liu looked at the game on the screen with one eye and talked to Mu Sicheng with two minds, "The reason I'm calm and not afraid is probably because what I came to this game with is a mindset of coming to work."

"Come to work?" Mu Sicheng was utterly speechless, "You came to work in a horror game?"

"Yeah, I get five days off for working once a week, I can make at least two hundred thousand dollars for a good job, I don't have any supervisors to dock my bonuses or paychecks, and the whole time I don't have to deal with humans who can't understand me, blundering or barely communicating with them, I just do what I'm good at- -just play horror games."

Bai Liu finally gave up and turned to look at Mu Sicheng for a second, he shrugged his shoulders, "Apart from the slightly higher mortality rate, but I also often stay up late when I work in the real world, and it's not certain when I'll die suddenly, so this point of a high mortality rate can be ignored, to sum up, this is an ideal job with a high income for me, and I would never be able to find this kind of job in the real world, so it's hard to have any fear of the game, right? It's absolutely impossible to find this kind of job, so it's hard to have any fear of the game, right?"

Mu Sicheng: "......"

Mu Sicheng felt fucking, convinced by this Bai Liu bastard.

"Can I ask?" Bai Liu asked Mu Sicheng, as he pointed at the wide variety of games on this huge wall, "Are these 100 kinds of horror games in this game the only ones on this screen? Judging from the number of small TVs and players in the game, 100 is a bit too few, I'd like to ask if there are any other games?"

The forums usually discuss more about a certain player and a specific game, but not about the basic mechanics of the game, Bai Liu browsed for a while but didn't find any game-related popularization threads, and now Mu Sicheng came to his door, which was exactly the right time for Bai Liu to take as an object of questioning.

"There are far more types of horror games in this game, and we don't know exactly how many there are." Mu Sicheng spread his hands, "It's just that this wall will only project 100 games at a time, and then when all 100 of those games are full with players logged in, this screen will refresh and a screen of new games will appear, though sometimes there will be duplicates of the last one."

Bai Liu rubbed his chin, "That is to say, it is equivalent to this game has a total game "question bank", this question bank exactly how many kinds of games we players do not know."

"Every time the system will randomly or not randomly take 100 kinds of game exam questions from this question bank and put them on this screen, let us players as examinees choose one of the game questions to answer, sometimes we will be lucky to meet a re-take, and sometimes they may all be new questions, is that what you mean?"

"That's right." Mu Sicheng said.

"Well, if that's the case, it's no wonder guilds exist in this game."

Bai Liu thoughtfully, "Early in the game, the big guilds should summarize the [answers] to some of the game's [heavy questions] that have appeared, i.e., how to pass the level quickly and safely, and share them as internal information, through which they can net newcomers with strength."

"And players with strength or potential can open up to play some new games to accumulate [Answers], they will get more resources from the guild, but there is [Live Streaming] exists, the game's [Answers] is public on a certain level, this system can't exist for a long time, the guild's now shouldn't rely on the game's [Answers] to develop, it should be at the point where it relies on the guild to grow up in the stage of senior players now."

"If I'm going to develop a guild, I should make it so that the high-level players will take the low-level players through, but the low-level players need to pay a certain amount of points to the high-level players, which is equivalent to a reward, and a certain amount of points to the guild, which is equivalent to paying taxes."

"And at the same time the props that the low level players get are distributed by the guild at its sole discretion, and most of them will flow into the pockets of the high level players, so as to stabilize the high level players to continue to stay in the guild." Bai Liu sighed tersely, "But this will inevitably lead to the exploitation of low level players by high level players, curbing the development of low level players, and many low level players can only survive in the guild as affiliates of high level players because they don't have props or personal skills."

"But there is a steady stream of newcomers joining the guild, so that the exploited low-level players can exploit the newcomers, layer by layer to form a chain of exploitation the guild can only exist stably, tsk, the newcomers are equivalent to the bottom leek ah, no wonder that so many of the bottom players in this game are so malicious towards me, a newcomer."

Bai Liu had watched the forums tear themselves apart, but he didn't care much for it, and now he could understand it a little better.

Mu Sicheng 木了："......"

Bai Liu is absolutely right, almost exactly as Mu Sicheng has learned about the current state of the Guild.

Bai Liu looked at Mu Sicheng strangely, "Why are you looking at me with such strange eyes?"

"I was thinking ......" Mu Sicheng was full of vicissitudes, "Is your intelligence really only 89?"

Just fucking outrageous! How the hell did this shit extrapolate!

He answered just the words about the kind of game, this one had already flipped over and over and smoothed out the entire system of guilds in the game!

"A lot of newcomers join guilds in order to survive, because the high players in the guilds do protect them through the levels, although they need to pay a third of the points gained from the leveling, it's really safer and less prone to death, but high potential newcomers like you should be groomed straight away, and I was just about to ask you why you didn't join the guilds." Mu Sicheng depressedly tore open a lollipop and held it in his mouth, "Now I don't think I need to ask."

"Because joining a guild is stupid." Bai Liu said quite bluntly, "There won't be any public service organizations in a game like this that will kill you, and it's bound to be profitable to help you."

"Although in the short term, it seems that the guild helping you will reduce the mortality rate, but to keep cowardly paying a large amount of points to the guild, in this kind of game that requires personal expressiveness to attract the audience is self-defeating, when the guild can no longer compile any benefits from you, it will definitely give up on you, and most of your points and props have been surrendered as well, and without any capital to survive on your own, you are bound to will die."

Mu Sicheng looked at Bai Liu in amazement as he sized him up with a bit of amusement : "What exactly do you do in the real world, and why do you know so much about how this ...... guild organization operates?"

Indeed, a lot of useless low-level players are rarely brought in by the later guild high rollers.

"That's how the vast majority of companies in this world run, by drawing in employees by painting a big picture and and so-called internal resources, and then when the employees stay up all night until their productivity drops off, they fire you and recruit younger employees to squeeze."

Bai Liu was expressionless, "I'm just a lowly social animal that gets fired and exploited in the real world, so entering the game and then having me join a guild to be exploited is absolutely impossible."

Mu Sicheng: "......"

This guy exudes a strong resentment when he talks about the real world of social animal life ah ......

"So have you thought about what game to go to?" Mu Sicheng looked at the screen, "Are there any games on there that you like? Or do you want to look again?"

"The login limit for single-player games is one hundred, all single-player games on this screen are already logged in full." Mu Sicheng pointed to a [FULL] symbol in the lower right corner of a game icon and vaguely introduced it to Bai Liu with a lollipop in his mouth, "Noo, if there is this mark [FULL] on a game icon, it means that the game is already logged in at its full capacity, and no new players can be logged in."

"And multiplayer, each multiplayer game has a different login limit, I've played ones with only 4 people and ones with 50, depending on the specific game. By the way, this Haunted Mansion over here, City of Doom and this Ghost Pass multiplayer are all games that have appeared before."

Mu Sicheng pointed out a few games at random, "Do you want to play those? I can help you find some clearance information for these games, but it's not free for you."

"Don't." Bai Liu refused without thinking, "Even if I have the information, playing the old game I will definitely react much slower than those who have played the guild players many times, and it will be easy to be pre-empted, my advantages need the new game to be utilized."

"That's true." Mu Sicheng bit the lollipop one at a time, "You're quite adventurous, most newcomers still go to old games for stability."

"My aim is to earn money, not to survive." Bai Liu replied with a flat attitude, "I need to win, I need to be number one to get enough points."

"You, this person, are really strange-" Mu Sicheng pondered for a while, giving up on understanding Bai Liu's train of thought, and instead wrinkled his nose in a very puzzled manner, "You earn so many points, if you were to die in the game and die, you won't have anywhere to spend them."

Bai Liu replied naturally, "I don't earn points to spend them, I earn them to hoard them, and-" he suddenly crooked a very strange smile, Bai Liu turned around to look at Mu Sicheng, who froze for a moment because of his sudden smile. "Do you think I'll die in the game?"

"I'm still a bit confident, playing horror games is what I'm best at, I probably won't die that easily." Bai Liu smiled, "I'm better at designing levels in games for other players to die, but I've never died myself in a game designed by someone else."

Mu Sicheng: "......"

What the hell does this guy do in real life! Is he really not a criminal or something!

"Why isn't there a single logged in player for this game?" Bai Liu taps on a game icon on the screen with an image of a train burning in fire, the icon zooms in and falls into the game manager on Bai Liu's chest, Bai Liu taps on the icon to check out the game's specific information, "Explosive Last Train?"

It's a little conspicuous and odd when a hundred games on this screen are going to be full, but this one is still empty.

[Name of game: "Explosive Last Train"]

[Level: Tier 2 (games with a player mortality rate greater than 50 percent and less than 80 percent are Tier 2 games)]

[Mode: Multiplayer (0/7)]

[General Description: This is an exciting collection-oriented multiplayer game, burning in the flames of the last train, four broken pieces of glass and hanging on the rings of the charred bodies, so that many players linger and stay here forever ~]

Mu Sicheng's brow furrowed at the icon, "You're going to play with this?"

"What's wrong with this game?" Bai Liu asked.

Mu Sicheng paused, "It's actually an old game that's been on the gaming screen a couple of times as well, but there's no pass information on it at the moment."

Bai Liu instantly understood, appeared several times, here the game wall refresh system and must be all the game full to refresh, then it should have gone in several batches of players.

But there is no record of a single pass ...... Bai Liu looked sideways at Mu Sicheng : "The players who went in before are all dead?"

"It's strange, if there aren't any players passing through ......" Bai Liu's eyes swept over the icon of Exploding Last Train, his finger tapped twice in the [Mortality Rate] line falsely, "This game How is the mortality rate of less than 80% and more than 50% measured? The mortality rate should be 100% from the data of the player's total annihilation."

Mu Sicheng retorted to Bai Liu with his pockets thrust out in disbelief, "It's just a way of grading games, almost all games have this grading rating."

"If, according to you, this mortality rate of the game is an actual measurement, then any game with a mortality rate that is not 100% should have the existence of pass players and pass data, but I have watched the videos of the VIP library and asked many very qualified gods, and I indeed have not found any any player who has passed this Explosive End of the Line, and I don't think there are indeed any pass players at all. "

Bai Liu suddenly gave Mu Sicheng a meaningful look, "Just because you didn't realize it, doesn't mean it's not there."

"The mortality rate of "Burst Last Train" is between 80%-50%, if according to what you said, passed this "Burst Last Train" that at least twenty percent of the players really exist--" Mu Sicheng Very unconvincingly retorted, "Such a not-so-small number of player groups have been on small TVs and successfully passed, they will always post forum posts, or small TVs or videos have been seen by whoever, it's impossible to have no traces at all, right?"

"How many players do you think are in this game?" Bai Liu turned his head to look directly at Mu Sicheng.

Mu Sicheng was flabbergasted by the question, "I don't know, but there should be a lot."

"Has such a not-so-small group of players as us ever existed in real life?"

Bai Liu asks nonchalantly, "Can everything we do in relation to this game be seen by people in the real world? Can our comments related to this game, in whatever form, exist to form traces or be remembered by anyone? For those who are not in the game, do [players] have traces of existence? Of course not."

Mu Sicheng was completely dumbfounded by Bai Liu's question.

Bai Liu asked the last question without skipping a beat: "Okay, now back to the first question, we game [players] have no trace of existence in the real world, so what do you think, do we exist?"

"Of course we exist." Bai Liu replied quickly, "We just have traces of having existed erased, so is it possible that at least twenty percent of the players who have cleared Explosive Last Train are the same way? That the traces of their existence were erased by the game, or the system?"

Mu Sicheng Daigo: "Their pass data and player data have been deleted!"

"It's very likely that they themselves have been "deleted"." Bai Liu looks at the icon for Burst Last Train, "These players who have cleared it are most likely dead, or they wouldn't have come to the game for a second go."

Mu Sicheng was given goosebumps by Bai Liu, but he was still a bit offended, "But everything you said is based on the fact that the [game mortality rate] thing is actually measured, but if the [player mortality rate] thing in the game is measured virtually ...... "

Mu Sicheng said, stunned.

Bai Liu glanced up at Mu Sicheng, "As I'm sure you've discovered by now, mortality is a statistic that cannot be measured virtually."

"Ever studied statistics?" Bai Liu asked Mu Sicheng, "There are two values in statistics that must be actually measured, one is the birth rate, and the other is the death rate."

He said as he casually tapped twice on the icon for Burst Last Train on his game panel, and to Mu Sicheng's horrified gaze and screams, Bai Liu eased into the game.

Mu Sicheng was devastated, "Why did you suddenly go in there!!!"

Bai Liu faded in front of Mu Sicheng's eyes as he thoughtfully replied to Mu Sicheng's words, "I'm very curious as to what exactly is this player data from these passes of Explosive Last Train that the system specifically deleted... experience has taught me that the more something is hidden by the higher-ups the deeper it is hidden, the more profitable it is... ..."

The game "Explosive Last Train" has already gathered one player, and needs six more to start.