Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 410: 394: The Boss’s Emergency Task

At a certain moment, those players hiding in the corners, suddenly felt a chilling sensation on their necks, or a sensation as if something had hit them in the back. Then, their vision went black, and they found themselves at the respawn point.

In a very short time, all the gunshots around the respawn area stopped.

Only a handful of players, just before dying, had time to see that they were attacked by a group of ninjas wielding Izumo-style short knives.

These were the ninjas from the Heike family [High Platform Table], skilled in assassination techniques.

They were also an easter egg that Lincoln had added beforehand.

Players wouldn’t encounter them in the main storyline. When wandering around Night City, they might even have tasted the sushi they had made.

But before this, no one knew their identity.

The reason they appeared here was that Lincoln had mentioned to Fred and the others in advance what might be a worst-case scenario when they were discussing players getting blocked at the respawn point.

Although in Lincoln’s expectation, he just wanted to prevent players from being targeted and blocked at the respawn point; he hadn’t anticipated the current situation where over a dozen or even dozens of players were being slaughtered like pigs at the respawn point.

Fortunately, this “anti-blocking” mechanism still worked well.

The Heike assassins deployed over thirty of their members and simultaneously assassinated all ambushing players, freeing those trapped at the respawn point from their predicament.

In the future, if players started fighting again, they would definitely consider the possibility of being blocked at the respawn point and the fact that targeting the respawn point could lead to NPC sanctions. The chance of this kind of assembly line slaughter would be greatly reduced.

Of course, even so, Lincoln had already decided to expand the Heike ninja squad in the afternoon.

“Speed Chase” and “Light Encounter” might have similar online mechanisms, but their scales were far from comparable.

In “Light Encounter”, if there are 12 players on a map, the system would stop allowing more players to join. Even if players invite friends, it can only accommodate up to 20 people.

In “Speed Chase,” however, Lincoln’s approach was entirely different. As long as the server and the player’s local devices allowed it, the number of players could keep increasing until it reached the player’s limit!

In the future, the possibility of hundreds of players surrounding the respawn point could happen.

Why wouldn’t it reach the server’s limit?

Because this afternoon, Cloud Dream’s third supercomputing center in Yangcheng City would be officially launched.

Mavis had already prepared champagne, fireworks, and large red firecrackers with 3,600 shots to celebrate the occasion.

She even prepared a bottle of champagne for Lincoln so they could have a champagne war together.

This was the second most anticipated event for Mavis in recent days, just after participating in the indiscriminate death race.

Over at Yi’s side, everyone had already realized the change in the situation. The players who had been previously blocked at the respawn point decided to fight back with their enemies’ tactics and attempted a counter-encirclement.

Meanwhile, the players who had surrounded the respawn point also sensed the crisis and tried to get away quickly.

The two groups quickly clashed, fighting directly at the respawn point in a “manly wrestling” battle.

For the time being, it seemed that their love-hate relationship was not going to end anytime soon.

On the other side, the real bandits also encountered significant setbacks.

At first, their attack on the casino cash transport vehicle went very smoothly. After all, they were well-prepared, while the cash transport vehicle only had three security vehicles.

Once [One Cake] drove the big truck head-on and flattened two of their vehicles, the outcome was already decided.

The problem was, just as the bandits were about to rush towards the stopped cash transport vehicle, another big truck suddenly charged out at full speed and collided with them!

With a loud “bang!”

The truck driver was baffled when the [Task Completed] prompt appeared in his vision.

Upon checking the panel, he found that he had a new task –

[Continental Hotel Bounty · Bandits]

Task Objective: Find and kill the members of the bandit team that robbed [Paradise Casino].

Reward amount: 500,000 for ordinary members; 1,000,000 for head members.

Task progress: (2/20+) (Killed members: [One Cake], [Four Bars])

Bounty accumulation: 1,500,000

Bounty claim location: Night City, Continental Hotel.

Killer Ranking: Increased by 1,500 points.

“Huh?” The driver was stunned.

“Did I…just pick up money?”

Before he could think any further, a dense barrage of bullets came towards him.

But instead of panicking, he gripped the steering wheel tightly, slammed down the clutch, and started reversing.

His teammates were arriving soon, so there was no reason to back down!

Better try to knock down a few more before the teammates arrived.

It’s all about the money! Robbing the casino’s cash transport vehicle also meant sharing the loot with teammates, but with this task, whoever grabbed the money first would get to keep it. Why not seize the opportunity?!

“Bang!”

A gunshot rang out.

Before the excited smile could fade from his face, a 12.7mm rifle bullet pierced his skull.

These bandits weren’t lambs to the slaughter.

Judging from their activities over the past two days, their ability to organize and execute was obviously quite strong. There was a good chance they were classmates in a class or colleagues in a department or something similar, but in any case, they probably knew each other in reality.

Otherwise, it would be difficult for them to get organized so easily and stir up trouble for two consecutive days.

Next, the two teams preparing to rob the casino cash transport vehicle naturally started fighting.

Then, more and more NPCs and bounty hunting players appeared one after another, and without saying anything, they joined the “bandit suppression” faction.

The bandit crew had no choice but to abandon the tantalizing cash transport vehicle and initiate a great escape within Night City.

Some of the “bandit suppression” players chose to drive and chase, while others chose to fight for the money in the cash transport vehicle, splitting the battlefield once again.

By the time Lincoln finished eating and napping and started looking for Xu Chun to practice boxing, there were still two places where the battles were intense.

The real bandit team had successfully escaped after losing six more members.

At the cash transport vehicle, bags of money were constantly changing hands, and several bags had even been pierced by bullets, with unknown amounts of money lost.

In the end, it’s hard to say how much would be left…

At the Continental Hotel, the battle within the hotel itself had ended, but the killing cycle at the respawn point was not over.

It was just because of the addition of the Heike ninjas, the outer players being sent to the respawn point after killing a few rounds, becoming the ones being killed.

If they restrained their desires and left after shooting a few times, they wouldn’t be targeted by the ninjas. The problem was that most people couldn’t restrain themselves and even tried to fight back against the ninjas…

Adding in the constant joining of passersby who didn’t know the situation, the whole scene remained chaotic.

However, Yi had already escaped, citing that “anchors are public figures who should be mindful of their impact.”

But the audiences thought that the main reason was that Yi would often be targeted by “fans” and could not survive in this chaos.

In the real world.

Lincoln had just finished practicing a set of boxing moves, Xu Chun watched and praised him.

“Boss, I realized I underestimated you. If you had practiced boxing since you were young, you might have become a top-notch expert by now!”

“How so?” Lincoln was curious.

He remembered clearly that when he first started learning boxing, the look in Xu Chun’s eyes was like seeing a useless piece of wood.

In the beginning days of learning the basics, he even told Lincoln gently, “Boss, to be honest, you’re naturally cut out for scientific research and game development; you’re not really suited for this kind of rough work…”

The implication was that Lincoln was not meant for martial arts.

If he insisted on practicing, he might only achieve a third-rate level at most.

But now, according to Xu Chun’s words, it seemed that there was a chance to become second-rate?

“When you first started practicing, you were actually not that good, especially in terms of physical condition, which was much worse,” Xu Chun didn’t mince words, and directly said, “It’s probably because you didn’t get enough nutrition when growing up, and it’s hard to make up for your weak foundation.”

“But now, as you progress in your boxing skills, I found that you have a strong comprehension and your progress is extremely fast, far beyond what the ordinary students I’ve taught before,” Xu Chun continued.

Almoyst’

From then on,

Through the “imagination” of some things, Lincoln could help to restrain his scattered distractions and keep himself focused.

Moreover, this “focus” must be completely applied to his body, focusing on each movement, each joint, and each muscle.

The power that originated and went to, as well as the entire process of power flow in the body, every detail.

All of these needed to be clear in mind and captured accurately.

This was why Xu Chun repeatedly emphasized “feeling”, “awareness”, “state”, and so on.

In fact, they were all the same thing.

First, to find this feeling, then to get used to this feeling, until no matter when practicing, naturally enter this state, by then, it would be what they call “gaining skills.”

Although at that time, the “skill” was not related to “combat ability”, the foundation could be said to be well-laid.

Afterward, one could confidently build specialized training on this foundation.

For Lincoln, this step was logically taken rapidly.

With his current level of brain training, he was already able to enter the focused state at any time without the need for the focus headband.

Concentration, association, memory… these were all his strong points, and much stronger than ordinary people.

His only shortcoming was his physical fitness.

This would limit him from becoming a top-notch “combat” expert but wouldn’t limit his improvement in the so-called “realm” described by Xu Chun.

After all, the essence of the “realm” is rooted in “imagination” and “sensation”, and the next step is to perfectly combine “sensation” and “movement.”

Of course, this was Xu Chun’s perspective, which might not reach the height of grandmaster level, but it was enough for Lincoln.

He wasn’t really trying to mass-produce grandmasters in the game anyway…

“So you mean, my training plan can actually be completed ahead of schedule, right?” Lincoln concluded.

“Uh, it can be,” Xu Chun was a bit speechless. Shouldn’t you be overjoyed? What do you mean by only thinking about finishing?!

Despite feeling speechless, Xu Chun still professionally continued: “From now on, you just need to maintain your own boxing training. In the following courses, we will shift our focus to weapons and, at the same time, you need to start getting exposed to some simple weapon combat in the virtual world!”

“Understood, let’s get started,” Lincoln said eagerly.

In the virtual world.

Vincent, who had just joined the company, was assigned an urgent task by the boss.

She was a bit nervous as she came to the “Speedy Chase” development team and found the team leader, Fred.

There was nothing to be nervous about doing psychological counseling for people, as she has plenty of experience in that. But doing psychological counseling in the virtual world was indeed something new to her, and she was somewhat uneasy.

Especially since boss Lincoln specifically instructed that the situation was “very urgent” and required “immediate” attention.

This made Vincent even more serious.

On the other hand, Fred was a bit confused.

Here he was doing his work, and suddenly a gentle and intellectual beauty appeared in front of him, softly saying that she hoped to have a chat with him.

What did this mean? Fred was a bit lost.

Was he being hit on?