Chapter 38: Game Lobby

As a member of the King's Guild, Wang Shun's personal skills are related to information gathering, so he is responsible for two main tasks, one is to collect data on all kinds of game passages, and the other is to find potential newcomers for the guild and recruit them. Wang Shun hesitated when he saw the announcement that the King's Guild was recruiting [puppet players].

If you report Bai Liu now, Bai Liu's superior intelligence and mental stats will most likely be noticed by the [Puppet Master] and will easily be forced to be selected as a [Puppet Player].

For the average player, being chosen as a [puppet player] seems to be a pretty good job, but for a newcomer like Bai Liu, who has the potential to develop into an S-rank player, it would be a shame to be a puppet.

Another thing is that, when Wang Shun did the stats analysis, he found that the panel of the players who had given this [Puppeteer] a [Puppet Player] had never gone up or had gone up very slowly after they had made the puppet.

The [Puppeteer], on the other hand, has gone from a mere 71 IQ points to 93, and the rest of the panel attributes have also soared.

Only Wang Shun, who does the data collection and analysis within the King's Guild, knows these figures well. He guessed a long time ago that [Puppeteer]'s personal skill was not only [Player Manipulation] but also [Potential Siphoning], but now many players know that [Puppeteer]'s skill is only [Player Manipulation].

Many of the players he rated as high potential from Wang Shun ended up in the arms of the Puppeteer, becoming puppets, gradually becoming mediocre and then abandoned by the Puppeteer or simply dying in the game, going from a polished piece of jade to a drained and crushed piece of clay.

Wang Shun, while feeling sorry for himself, has to accept this unavoidable reality.

The game is a game where the weak are prey to the strong, where the players at the bottom are exploited for what they are worth and then discarded by the guild or the strong.

This is why joining a guild is not always the best option for a player like Bai Liu, who is a very attractive player and is too easily controlled by the rules and regulations of the guild and then taken advantage of by the higher level players.

Coincidentally, it was this same [Puppeteer] who wanted Mu Sicheng to join the King's Guild. Mu Sicheng refused the Puppeteer's invitation by saying straight away that he would not be a puppet under anyone and be dominated by anyone.

Mu Sicheng also suffered a lot at the hands of this puppet master, and later became very powerful himself, gradually climbing up to around 300 in the overall standings before he was let go by the [Puppet Master].

But Bai Liu, a promising new player currently ranked in the mid-3,000s, was not so easily spared by the [Puppeteer].

Although Wang Shun did not submit Bai Liu's personal information to the King's Guild internally for selfish reasons, Bai Liu's eye-catching performance and panel stats caught the attention of the [Puppeteer].

The [Wire Puppeteer] has been stuck here at [93 IQ points] for a long, long time, and he needs a player with high intelligence as [sustenance] for his developing intelligence.

Is there better sustenance than a new player like Bai Liu who has only played one single game? Nope.

Wang Shun wanted to remind Bai Liu of the Puppet Master, who was also looking for Bai Liu, but with Bai Liu wearing a colourful chicken's nest head and black lipstick, even if Bai Liu was standing in front of Lu Yizhan, who had been playing with Bai Liu for over 10 years, Lu Yizhan might not Even if Bai Liu was standing in front of Lu Yizhan, who has been with Bai Liu for more than a decade, Lu Yizhan might not recognise him as Bai Liu.

Surprisingly, someone recognised Bai Liu through his odd appearance.

Mu Sicheng hugged his chest and looked at Bai Liu who was standing at the entrance of the game: "...... Bai Liu, what has the real world done to you to turn you into such a human and animal in just a few days?"

"You can recognise me?" Bai Liu was slightly surprised.

He had been wandering the halls in this guise for several rounds without anyone recognising him, but Mu Sicheng recognised him with certainty at first sight.

Mu Sicheng smiled slightly smugly, showing one side of his little tiger teeth, "I can't believe it Bai Liu, I can recognise you in any disguise, I told you I'd make you return everything you stole from me last time, you can't get away with it! I can find you!"

"You don't recognize people by their appearance ......" Bai Liu swept up the creepy hip-hop monkey in the hat on Mu Sicheng's head, "You recognized me by my sense of smell, didn't you, and your skill is related to this monkey Is it? Enhanced five senses?"

Mu Sicheng's smile grew stronger, "Wrong guess~ My personal skill is not enhanced five senses, but I did recognize you by your sense of smell, you have a strong smell of copper, or money."

"That should smell pretty good." Bai Liu was noncommittal as he looked calmly at Mu Sicheng, "What do you want from me? "

"One player looking for another player--" Mu Sicheng looked up at the huge game login behind Bai Liu, a smile obscuring Buming on his face and a red glint in his eyes, " -- for the game, of course. -- to play the game, of course, I won't allow you to hunker down in a single player game, it's so boring and the death rate is so low."

Bai Liu nodded approvingly, "I gave up on this poverty division after I found out that the points reward for multiplayer was ten times the reward for single player."

"......" Mu Sicheng's attempts to scare Bai Liu all stuck, and he looked at Bai Liu, who was really carefully sifting through the multiplayer games he was going into, with a somewhat incomprehensible look and asked back in a depressed voice. "No, Bai Liu, it's easy to die going into multiplayer, aren't you afraid?"

Next to the entrance behind Bai Liu is a huge projection screen with a random spread of covers and names of various games.

Bai Liu, with his chin resting on the fingers of his arm, selects the games he wants to enter, his eyes darting over them without giving Mu Sicheng a superfluous look, and he speaks lightly: "Objectively speaking, I have a fear of death, but this fear is nothing compared to the fear that poverty brings me. "

Mu Sicheng didn't understand Bai Liu's mind at all, but the boredom Bai Liu brought to him was unmistakable: "No, you didn't even panic when you entered this game? You're a bit too calm, aren't you?"

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

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

"Yeah, I get five days off once a week for a good job, I make at least 200,000 a time, there's no boss to dock my bonuses or pay, and the whole time I don't have to deal with humans who can't understand me, fudge or barely communicate with them, I just do what I'm good at - -play horror games and that's it."

Bai Liu finally turned to look at Mu Sicheng and he shrugged, "Apart from the slightly higher mortality rate, but I work late at night in the real world and I don't know when I'll die suddenly, so the high mortality rate is negligible, IMO, it's a good paying job for me, and I'd never be able to find that in the real world. I would never be able to find that kind of work in the real world, so it's hard to be intimidated by the game."

Mu Sicheng: "......"

Mu Sicheng feels like he's been fucking convinced by this Bai Liu guy.

"Can I ask you something?" Bai Liu asked Mu Sicheng, pointing to the variety of games on the huge wall, "Are the horror games in this game only the 100 on this screen? From the number of small TVs and players in the game, 100 is a bit too few, I would like to ask if there are other games?"

Bai Liu has been browsing around for a while, but he has not found any popular threads about the game, so now Mu Sicheng has come to his door, and Bai Liu is the one to ask.

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

Bai Liu rubbed his chin: "That means that there is a general "pool" of games, and we players don't know exactly how many games are in this pool."

"Each time the system randomly or not randomly draws 100 game test questions from this pool of questions and puts them on this screen for us, the players, as test takers to choose one of the game questions to answer, sometimes we get lucky and come across a duplicate question, sometimes they might all be new questions, is that what you mean?"

"That's right." Mu Sicheng said.

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

Bai Liu was thoughtful, "The big guilds in the early game would have summarised some of the [answers] to the [heavy questions] of the games that came up, i.e. how to get through them quickly and safely, and shared them as internal information through which to net competent newcomers."

"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 with the [live] presence, the [answers] of the game are public at a certain level, this system cannot exist for long, now the guild's should not rely on the game [answers] to develop, it should reach the stage of relying on the growing guild of stage of senior players now."

"If I were to develop the guild, I should have the senior players would take the lower players through, but the lower players would need to pay a certain amount of points to the senior 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 obtained by low level players are distributed by the guild at its sole discretion, most of which will flow into the pockets of high level players, thus stabilizing high level players to remain in the guild." Bai Liu sighed tersely, "But this will inevitably lead to exploitation of low level players by high level players, curbing the development of low level players, and many low level players can only survive as affiliates of high level players in the guild because they don't have props and personal skills."

"But there is a constant stream of newcomers joining the guild so that the exploited lower level players can exploit the newcomers, layer by layer forming an exploitation chain for the guild to exist stably, tsk, newcomers are the equivalent of bottom leeks, ah, no wonder so many bottom level players in this game are so malicious towards me as a newcomer."

Bai Liu had seen the forums tearing himself apart, but he didn't really care, now he can understand a little.

Mu Sicheng Wood up: "......"

Bai Liu is right, almost word for word, about what Mu Sicheng has learned about the Guild.

Bai Liu looked at Mu Sicheng strangely: "Why are you looking at me with such a strange look?"

"I was thinking ......" Mu Sicheng was full of vicissitudes, "Is it true that your intelligence value is only 89?"

Just fucking outrageous! How the hell did this guy deduce that!

He had only answered the words about the type of game, and this guy had already flipped the whole system of guilds in the game over and over to smooth it out!

"A lot of newcomers join guilds in order to survive, because the high rollers in the guild do protect them through the levels, and although they need to pay a third of the points they get for passing, it does make them safer and less likely to die, but a high potential newcomer like you should be groomed straight away, and I was just about to ask you why you didn't join the guild." Mu Sicheng ripped open a lollipop and held it in his mouth in depression, "Now I don't think I need to ask."

"Because it's stupid to join a guild." Bai Liu said quite bluntly, "There won't be any public interest groups 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 may seem that the guild helping you will reduce your mortality rate, to keep cowardly paying large amounts of points to the guild is self-defeating in a game like this where personal performance is needed to attract an audience, and by the time the guild can no longer cull any benefit from you, it will surely give up on you, and with most of your points and props surrendered, without any capital to survive on your own, you will inevitably will die."

Mu Sicheng looked at Bai Liu with amazement as he surveyed him with a little amusement, "What exactly do you do in the real world, and why do you know so much about how this ...... guild organisation works?"

Indeed, many useless low-level players are rarely brought in by later guild high rollers.

"That's how the vast majority of companies in this world run, by painting a big picture and and supposedly internal resources to attract employees, then when they stay up late until their productivity drops, they fire you to hire younger employees to squeeze."

Bai Liu's face was expressionless, "I'm just a bottom tier social animal that gets fired and exploited in the real world, so entering the game and then asking me to join the guild to be exploited is absolutely out of the question."

Mu Sicheng: "......"

This guy exudes so much resentment when he talks about life as a social animal in the real world ......

"So have you decided what game you want to go to?" Mu Sicheng glanced at the screen, "Is there a game you like on there? Or do you want to take another look?"

"The login limit for single-player games is one hundred, and all the single-player games on this screen are already fully logged in." Mu Sicheng points to a [FULL] symbol in the bottom right corner of a game icon, and with a lollipop in his mouth, he vaguely introduces it to Bai Liu, "No, if the game icon has this mark [FULL] on it, it means that the game is full and no new players can be logged in."

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

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

"No." Bai Liu refused without a second thought, "Even if I had the information, playing the old game I would definitely be much slower to react than those who have played the guild many times and could easily be pre-empted, my strengths would need to be used in the new game."

"That's true." Mu Sicheng nibbled his lollipop once, "You're quite adventurous, most newcomers still go to the old game for stability."

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

"You, you're really weird-" Mu Sicheng thought for a moment, giving up on understanding Bai Liu's train of thought and instead wrinkling his nose in a very thoughtless manner, "You earn so many points, if you die in If you die in the game, you won't have anywhere to spend them."

Bai Liu replied naturally, "I don't earn points to spend, I earn them to hoard, and-" He suddenly evoked a very strange smile, Bai Liu turned his head to look at Mu Sicheng, who was frozen for a moment by his sudden smile. "Do you think I'll die in the game?"

"I'm still a bit confident that playing horror games, which is what I'm best at, I probably won't die that easily." Bai Liu smiles, "I'm better at designing levels in games and letting other players die, but I've never died 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 tapped on the game icon of a train burning in fire on the screen, the icon zoomed into the game manager on Bai Liu's chest, Bai Liu tapped on the icon to check the game's specific information, "Burst Last Train?"

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

[Game copy name: "Bursting Last Train"]

[Level: Level 2 (games with a player mortality rate greater than fifty percent and less than eighty percent are Level 2 games)]

[Mode: Multiplayer mode (0/7)]

[General Description: This is an exciting collection-oriented multiplayer game. The burning last train in the flames, the four shattered glass fragments and the charred corpses hanging from the hoop have made many players linger and stay forever~]

Mu Sicheng's brow furrowed at the icon: "You want to play this?"

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

Mu Sicheng pauses: "It's actually an old game that's been on the game screen a few times too, but there's no clearance information available."

Bai Liu instantly understood that it had appeared several times, and the refreshing system of the game wall here is again that all games must be full before it can be refreshed, so several groups of players should have gone in.

But not a single pass was recorded ...... Bai Liu looked sideways at Mu Sicheng: "All the players who went in before died?"

"It's strange, if there aren't any players passing ......" Bai Liu's eyes swept over the icon of Burst Last Train, his finger tapped twice on the [mortality rate] line, "This game How is the mortality rate of less than 80% and more than 50% measured? The mortality rate should be 100 per cent based on the number of players wiped out."

Mu Sicheng pokes his pocket in disbelief and retorts to Bai Liu: "It's just a way of grading games, almost all games have this grading."

"If this mortality rate of the game is actually measured according to you, then any game that doesn't have a 100% mortality rate should have pass players and pass stats in place, but I've watched the VIP library videos and asked a lot of very old qualified gods, and indeed I haven't found any players who have passed this Burst Last Train, and I think there are indeed just no pass players. "

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

"The mortality rate of Burst Last Train is between 80% and 50%, so if you're saying that at least 20% of the players who have cleared this Burst Last Train actually exist -" Mu Sicheng "With such a small group of players having been on the TV and successfully passing it, they would have posted on the forums, or the TV or video was seen by someone, there can't be no trace of it, can there?"

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

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

"Has such a not insignificant group of players as ours ever existed in real life?"

Bai Liu rhetorically asks, "Can everything we say about the game be seen by people in the real world? Can what we say about the game, in any form, exist as a trace or be remembered by anyone? For those who are not in the game, does [the player] have a trace 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 do we exist, do you think?"

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

Mu Sicheng enlightens: "Their clearance data and player data have been deleted!"

"It's likely that they've been "deleted" themselves." Bai Liu looks at the icon for Burst Last Train, "These players who have passed the game are probably dead, or they wouldn't have come back for a second look at the game."

Mu Sicheng got goosebumps from Bai Liu, but he was still a bit offended: "But everything you say is based on the fact that the [game mortality] thing is all actually measured, but if the [player mortality] thing is measured virtually in the game ...... "

Mu Sicheng says here with a start.

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."

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

As he spoke, he casually tapped twice on the Burst Last Train icon on his game panel, and to Mu Sicheng's horrified stares and screams, Bai Liu eased into the game.

Mu Sicheng broke down: "How did you suddenly get in there!!!"

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

[The game "Burst Last Train" has gathered one player, six more players are needed to start]