I Forged the Myth of the Ancient Overlords
Chapter 703 - 703 702. Players_1

Chapter 703: 702. Players_1 Chapter 703: 702. Players_1 “Players?”

Hearing this word, Stone expressed his lack of understanding.

In his mind, players were essentially those who mingled in the casinos, hoping to strike it rich each day, but the end result was always getting caught by the gang and sent to dig potatoes in some remote area, spending the rest of their lives paying off their debts.

Many people misunderstood the gang, thinking they loved to give usurious loans and enjoyed cutting off the limbs of those who could not repay, but in reality, this was not the gang’s practice at all.

If you couldn’t pay off a usurious loan, the gang would just lose money. The severed limbs weren’t even as sellable as pork, so the gang wasn’t such a cruel bunch.

They only sometimes offered you terms you couldn’t refuse.

Therefore, when Lu Ban mentioned players, Stone didn’t quite catch his drift.

Cui Siter, however, was more worldly. He had heard some talk and knew the value of keeping silent was golden. Furthermore, one shouldn’t recklessly speak up after Lu Ban’s words, or it might lead to some very awkward situations.

An old Chosen by Gods, indeed.

Shia had visited Lu Ban’s world before and had some concept of players, but she couldn’t make the connection between the players Lu Ban referred to and their current mission.

It couldn’t be to bring those players to the Night Country.

“Yes, in fact, I’ve developed a game device in my world. You can think of it as a drama that one can watch and participate in alone. I think I can try to have them descend into this world,” Lu Ban explained.

He had already made some changes to this quagmire. Now, it had become the arrival point for the players to descend.

“Are you saying you want them to cross over here? Isn’t that a bit difficult?” Cui Siter found it quite marvelous. It had been a while since he last saw Lu Ban, and now Lu Ban had already mastered the technology to let people travel across the Foreign Domain. This somewhat exceeded Cui Siter’s imagination.

He thought about what Lu Ban had mentioned about his own future demise in his world and felt a touch of melancholy.

“Letting the flesh travel across the Foreign Domain is something only certain special creatures or higher beings can accomplish. Of course, I can’t make them come over, and besides, it is too dangerous here. Physical crossing over would make them lose their greatest strength,” Lu Ban explained.

“The changes I’ve made to this quagmire allow it to create mimetic creatures to a certain extent. Then, by using some methods, I can project the consciousness of those players from my world onto these mimetic creatures, and the summoning will be completed.”

“It’s almost like necromancy.”

Shia found Lu Ban’s idea extremely fanciful, but in the Foreign Domain, anything was possible, and she still chose to believe him.

“So, are we starting the summoning now?”

“No, we need to wait a little longer,” Lu Ban said, picking up a stick from the ground.

“What are we waiting for? What else needs to be prepared for the summoning?” Stone asked, puzzled.

“We need a little promo time,” Lu Ban answered, closing his eyes.

Meanwhile, at his home, a droplet of Lu Ban began to expand and soon took on the appearance of Lu Ban himself.

However, due to the insufficient quantity of the substance, this Lu Ban was only a paper-thin figure, invisible from the side.

The paper-thin Lu Ban quickly booted up his computer, prepared a document, and then sent it to his work group chat.

Shi Ming, the person in charge of Silence Games, was the first to see Lu Ban’s document.

His expression went from puzzled to shocked, then to longing and anticipation, and finally burst into sheer excitement.

“Indeed, there are still ways to use it like this.”

Shi Ming was deeply impressed by Lu Ban’s genius idea.

Ever since “Morning Star” had been created, Shi Ming had felt that it would undoubtedly bring a new revolution to the human gaming industry.

“Night of Summoning Spirits” was merely an appetizer, an experiment; it was the open-world games that would truly cause a qualitative change in “Morning Star” without question.

Just as the appearance of several MMORPGs marked an epochal shift in online gaming, captivating all players with their vast, authentic worlds, virtual reality open-world games could definitely revolutionize the entire gaming industry.

After all, open-world games that relied on keyboards, mice, and controllers were ultimately just players executing specific operations. While it sounded good to get what you see, most games were nothing more than performances arranged within fixed frameworks. Now, a chance lay before the players: to continue clinging to those outdated games and drown with them or to embrace virtual reality—the answer was self-evident.

However, Shi Ming’s only concern was the development time for this game.

Though some game companies release an open-world game every year, mockingly referred to as “can factories,” it’s because they have mature accompanying tools, and different studios stagger their releases; in actuality, it still takes two to three years to develop one game.

And for Lu Ban, with virtual reality and the open-world aspect to deal with, it would seem to require four to five years to realize, right?

Yet Lu Ban’s second file soon followed.

Upon seeing it, Shi Ming was dumbfounded.

It was promotional material.

Lu Ban asked Shi Ming to recruit the first batch of testers from gaming forums both domestic and international, with the first round of closed testing set to begin the next morning.

“When exactly did he do all this?”

Shi Ming couldn’t help but marvel.

Previously, with “Morning Star,” Lu Ban had actually only used Shi Ming’s assembly line workshop and distribution channels, registration materials, etc., without involving Shi Ming in the actual game development.

As someone in the gaming industry, Shi Ming was well aware of how difficult it was to develop a high-quality open-world game.

To develop an excellent open-world game, it required hundreds of excellent software engineers working tirelessly to debug and create, almost a thousand artists to provide lifelike textures and materials, a planning team willing to innovate and focused on details, a powerful game engine that could support various designs, and, most importantly, a visionary and superbly talented producer.

Whether Lu Ban was such a person, Shi Ming dared not say, because from “Soul Summoning Night,” Lu Ban’s breakthrough in gameplay wasn’t all that remarkable; the excellence of “Soul Summoning Night” lay in the immersive experience it offered when paired with virtual reality technology, and its gameplay was just like Lu Ban’s initial interactive videos.

Painting a picture on a canvas with a computer is innovation, but interpreting and creating with pixels is a true act of creation.

The open-world genre is a perennial favorite among players, and all game manufacturers innovate and reinterpret it. There weren’t many gameplay options left for Lu Ban.

However, puzzled as he was, Shi Ming still carried out Lu Ban’s instructions, posting the test announcement on forums and some social media platforms, and even inviting some well-known players for the experience.

Instantly, the players were abuzz.