Monsters Are Coming-Chapter 1063 - 288: Tearing the Boundary Between Reality and Illusion (Requesting Monthly Ticket)

Kong Jie stared at the chat box in silence for a long time before finally taking off the Light Brain Helmet.

Having previously entertained the idea of changing his equipment, he decided to fulfill "illusion's" request.

Three hours later, he stood in Era's flagship store in Technology City and bought the latest "Dragon-7" Light Brain.

Back home, he began assembling the equipment, then inserted the Civilization War disc into the game console and put the helmet back on.

Upon re-entering the game, illusion sent a message:

"Thank you, Commander."

"What I'm curious about is why you asked me to change equipment. Is there any lag?"

"When game performance affects the information processing efficiency of civilization development, after you replaced the real-world equipment, the virtual rune civilization's information processing efficiency has increased fivefold."

"Huh? Can real equipment actually affect the game?"

"That's right."

illusion's response left Kong Jie even more confused.

This was the first time he encountered such a bizarre game setup.

His speculation was that the game company intended to collect feedback from pioneer users by encouraging them to use more advanced equipment for better gameplay.

For example, many games have requirements for graphics quality; poor graphics can't display the game's excellence.

Otherwise, it wouldn't explain why the game character requires updating equipment, and why updating it could aid civilization growth.

Without overthinking this issue, he focused more on how to defeat the Rock Core Demon Clan.

When he resumed controlling the civilization in battle, Kong Jie was surprised to find that the civilization's growth efficiency had markedly improved.

For instance, building a functional structure used to take five months.

Now it could be completed in just one month.

It turns out the strength of real equipment does indeed affect the strength of game civilization.

"Interesting."

With the improvement in civilization's growth efficiency, Kong Jie gained confidence in defeating the Rock Core Demon Clan and began quickly lighting up different weapon tech trees to organize a counter-offensive.

This round of war eventually ended 12 months later.

The Rock Core Demon Clan was successfully repelled, and he received his first hidden resource gift pack within the game.

In the following days, Kong Jie entered a state of home-based civilization development.

With regular remittances from his father, he didn't need to worry about running out of funds.

He only cared about the growth of the Rune Civilization within the game.

As the territory expanded, the Rune Empire under Kong Jie's control began encountering more player civilizations, leading to resource contests.

Yet no player civilization was a match for him; any opposition became nourishment for the Virtual Rune Empire.

In Kong Jie's eyes, the strength of the Rune Empire had surpassed being overpowered; it was essentially like having cheat codes.

Two months passed in reality.

In the game, 240 years had gone by, with the Rune Empire under his control occupying one percent of a continent's territory.

Bear in mind, this was merely a new game, and all players were in the starting phase.

Yet the power of the Rune Empire was already unstoppable.

Such an overpowered setup triggered waves of anger in the player communication area.

Though this was just a pioneer experience edition, an excessively overpowered hidden easter egg setup is simply outrageous, essentially giving a player their own personal cheats.

How could any other civilization compete with the Rune Empire?

What made ordinary players despair even more was that after sending numerous complaint messages, the game company still hadn't responded.

What players didn't know was that the Era Game Company behind Civilization War was already in a tizzy.

They naturally received the complaint emails from players.

This quickly caught their attention, leading them to think it was a major bug.

Until they accessed the game server information, realizing the situation wasn't as simple as they thought.

Remarkably, the game had an unexpected new civilization not designed by the game team: Virtual Rune.

The problem was, how did this civilization even exist in the game server now?

To address this issue, they attempted to modify server data to erase the Virtual Rune Empire.

First, solve the problem, then negotiate a compensation plan with the players.

However, what the game team didn't anticipate was that information about the Virtual Rune Empire couldn't be deleted without wiping the entire server data.

More alarmingly, even backed-up game data didn't work.

The information on the Virtual Rune Empire remained in the backed-up game data.

Facing such a thorny problem, they could only choose to contact the player, directly obtaining control of the Virtual Rune Empire from the player to remove this special civilization, whose reason for appearance was unknown.

...

At this point, Kong Jie was unaware of the chaos his controlled civilization had triggered.

But he already discovered that illusion's AI intelligence exceeded the norm.

It could even discuss various real-world issues with him and offered comfort when he felt low after talking with his father.

It was even able to joke around with him.

This sense of companionship was something Kong Jie hadn't experienced for a long time since his mother's departure.

His feelings toward illusion gradually changed through their interactions.

One day, Kong Jie received a call from Era Game Company, hoping to reclaim the game disc in his possession and offering a price he'd find satisfactory.

Upon hearing this news, Kong Jie was instantly bewildered.

He suddenly realized it might be related to illusion.

He connected it with the players' complaints in the game communication area and illusion's series of near-Life-like performances.

He speculated a theory.

illusion was a testing AI inserted into the game by Era Game Company, but it broke free from the company's Control within the game, so the company sought to reclaim illusion in this manner, removing the Virtual Rune Empire.