Chapter 8
Originally, Eagle indeed had no intention of going out. He knew someone wanted him dead, which was no joke. However, there had already been some leads from Atwell’s side, and with Eagle staying within the manor, it would be difficult for the other party to make a move.
“So, given this opportunity I’m offering you, will you come?”
Pei Sen thought that this brat Eagle was genuinely trying to keep an eye on him to see if he would take something out, but in reality, it was far from that simple.
But at this moment, Pei Sen had no mind to care about anything else; he stared intently outside the carriage, hoping to catch even a glimpse of a single player.
In truth, Pei Sen knew well in his heart that there was still a certain probability he wouldn’t see so much as the shadow of a player.
After all, during this time he had already confirmed that this was a real world. Could it be that the game in his memories was merely generated based on this very world?
It was not impossible; in fact, the likelihood was quite high.
If that were truly the case, Pei Sen could only offer a bitter, helpless smile.
“What exactly is wrong with you, looking so uneasy?” Eagle’s icy voice rang out. “Are you really deceiving me?”
Pei Sen actually had no mood to answer him, but he had to perfunctorily address the young master’s suspicions. “No, it’s just that returning to Caixi City brought back some unpleasant memories.”
Eagle knew that Pei Sen had once been captured by the Kui Wolf in Caixi City; Lady Mary had told him all about those events.
Nearly being sold off… well, those certainly wouldn’t be pleasant memories.
The spacious and ornate carriage slowly made its way toward Caixi City. The carriage Eagle rode in was, of course, completely different from the one Vago had taken when transporting Pei Sen and the others; this one was far larger and much more luxurious.
The carriage ahead was drawn by no fewer than six tall white horses. Its spacious interior could easily seat over a dozen people without feeling crowded, while handholds and footrests on the exterior allowed two rows of male servants to stand firmly outside.
This journey to Kaixi City was described by Lady Mary as “traveling light.” Yet inside the carriage, besides Eagle and Pei Sen, there were two maids and Vesi, a low-ranking general servant who normally never appeared before Eagle. Usually attending to Vago, Vesi lacked the status to serve Eagle directly; now he stood guard by the carriage door, not even permitted to sit, assigned solely to open the door for Eagle.
Flanking the carriage were four more male servants, forced to stand outside gripping the handrails and swallowing dust all the way. Ahead and behind, eighteen mounted bodyguards and attendants rode alongside the carriage.
And this was supposedly… traveling light?
Pei Sen had previously felt a flicker of relief that he had managed to join the recruitment line for personal butlers; had he ended up among those ordinary male servants, his days would likely have been even harder than they were now.
But soon, even that sentiment vanished, as the time was surely approaching ten o’clock.
He was so nervous that his breathing fell into disarray, and he could no longer pay attention to Eagle’s strange, puzzled gaze fixed upon him.
Suddenly, he spotted a group of people emerging from a small path just outside the gates of Kai City, all dressed uniformly in drab gray short tunics and trousers. At first, there were only a few, but gradually their numbers swelled. Even though the carriage was some distance away, Pei Sen immediately felt a surge of excitement.
In that instant, it felt like gulping down a large glass of ice water on a summer day, refreshing every part of his body.
“Stop the carriage!”
No matter how loudly Pei Sen shouted, no one would listen to him; the people in this carriage only obeyed Eagle’s orders.
Eagle glanced at him, raised his hand slightly, and the carriage immediately began to slow down before coming to a halt. “Are you sure this is the place?”
“Yes, but there are many more people there now. I don’t know if anything has been dug up,” Pei Sen hurriedly said.
Eagle glanced expressionlessly at the dusty crowd not far away, his brow furrowing slightly. Where did these people come from? They didn’t look like residents of Kai West City.
Pei Sen grabbed the car door, about to step out, but Eagle stopped him. “This isn’t a suitable place. Let’s enter the city first.”
The origins of this group were unknown, and their numbers were considerable; every glance Eagle cast toward them was filled with vigilance.
Pei Sen wanted to say that nothing would happen, that these people wouldn’t hurt him, but he suddenly realized that he truly couldn’t predict what the players might do.
Thus, the carriage moved forward slowly once more, and after entering the city, it came to a halt beside the towering spire at the end of the street.
Upon spotting the players, Pei Sen felt considerably reassured. He accompanied Eagle up the tower, where he discovered that the summit housed an amplification magic array. A small magical eye there offered a crystal-clear view of everything within the city.
Although Pei Sen had been a player for many years before his arrival, he had never known about this feature within the tower.
To be precise, players initially lacked the qualification to enter this tower. As for later stages… after the area became embroiled in war, the tower was abandoned, its magic arrays destroyed by people, naturally rendering this function obsolete.
Eagle sat on the sofa chair brought in by the mage’s servant from within the tower, observing alongside Pei Sen through their magical eyes those who had just entered the city.
Kaixi City itself is tiny; though called a city, it could more accurately be described as a small town. In the game, it is the most well-known starting village for beginners, while in this world, it remains nothing more than a backward rural area, a frontier region of the Asmia Empire, far distant from the capital.
Because the place is so small, even the appearance of a few strangers stands out noticeably, yet this time, an entire group appeared all at once.
Pei Sen first looked toward the area near the entrance and indeed discovered someone he hadn’t noticed during his initial arrival. Above this person’s head floated the white text “Game Guide,” written in small characters, yet the people of Kaixi City around him seemed completely oblivious to his presence.
Regarding this point, Pei Sen knew exactly what was happening. In the early stages, there were quite a few service-type NPCs like these; it seemed only players could see them, as if they were set up like ghosts.
Only then did he shift his gaze to the players who had just entered the city.
As expected, each of them had a semi-transparent, light silver ID hovering above their heads. It wasn’t conspicuous, and just like the NPCs, this feature was visible only to other players; the surrounding NPCs could not see the text of the IDs above their heads.
“I recall that the function to hide IDs was only introduced two or three years after the game’s launch. They shouldn’t be able to hide their IDs yet, right?” Pei Sen thought to himself.
Though both are game interfaces, Pei Sen’s panel is actually the player interface developed over many years of Bix Cube’s operation. It not only features a hidden ID function but can also conceal level-up effects, representing a standard mage class interface.
In contrast, these new players have only one career choice available: swordsman. The emergence of mages is still far in the future.
Beside him, Eagle frowned. “What’s wrong with these people? Their behavior is so strange.”
Pei Sen looked at the players standing foolishly on the street or wandering like zombies with unfocused eyes, barely able to hold back his laughter. He didn’t need to guess; he knew perfectly well that these people were undoubtedly taking screenshots and frantically posting them on the forums.
Things were still manageable at this stage, since the game hadn’t yet introduced the character customization feature. When that function first launched, players couldn’t import their real-life data, leading many to create bizarre and grotesque avatars through the holographic system—now that was truly hilarious.
Before character customization became available, everyone simply adjusted their in-game appearance based on their actual looks, so at least no one ended up looking strange.
However, over by the city walls, there were those pressing themselves almost flat against the stone, attempting to bite it with their teeth; others lying prone on the ground, staring fixatedly at the dirt like lunatics; and some who had wandered off to intently scrutinize an elderly woman in her sixties or seventies, staring at her until she turned pale and trembled uncontrollably…
“Strange” feels like too mild a word to describe it.
Pei Sen opened the forum and found it buzzing with activity, almost as lively as the one he remembered from his past life.
“Weren’t there only two hundred players in the first closed beta? How is the forum already this火爆?”
After scanning through the posts, he realized that the vast majority were actually from people who hadn’t been selected for the closed beta. There were countless pleas begging for a chance in the second round of testing. After all, the second closed beta was scheduled to begin in just one month. Initially, many had dismissed the game as a joke or even a scam, but now that it had truly materialized, regret was spreading rapidly among those left out.
“Shocked! The realism is off the charts—way, way too high! They claim 95% realism? I’d say it’s even more than that! Saying it’s 100% wouldn’t be an exaggeration!”
“I’ve played quite a few games and even tried those so-called virtual reality devices, but damn, nothing compares! This is just too realistic!”
“Most games have some sort of animated style. Even those claiming to be realistic still show obvious gaps between their models and reality, unless they’re making CGI movies… But do you know how much money burning through just one second of decent CGI movie footage costs?”
“Say no more. [Image][Image][Image] See for yourselves.”
“Indistinguishable from reality, it utterly crushes the special effects of even the highest-tier blockbuster films!”
“Look at the precision of this city wall’s texture map; it’s absolutely insane.”
“To those mentioning blockbuster VFX earlier, apologies, but this game’s visuals completely dwarf the special effects of any movie, no explanation needed. If it weren’t for the game interface, I’d almost think I’d transmigrated.”
“Exactly, that’s the feeling—it’s unrealistically real!”
“…”
Today’s forum, fueled by various images and videos, directly sparked an explosive reaction. Unfortunately, Pei Sen couldn’t witness the responses outside the forum, but he did observe how people who failed to secure beta access yet were drawn from elsewhere were sharing links across different websites.
For instance, on various video platforms, users posted short clips of the game; some questioned which movie’s promotional footage this was, with no one believing it to be a holographic game.
Furthermore, screenshots appearing across different forums have increasingly drawn more people to the official Bix Cube forum.
Less than half an hour after the game’s official launch, Pei Sen already witnessed the forum teeming with an overwhelming crowd.
Countless users were begging for closed beta access codes; upon learning that today’s players could no longer transfer their codes to others, the feeds were instantly flooded with desperate pleas to be selected in the second batch of the closed beta list.
With the second closed beta phase scheduled a month later, everyone lamented whether they would have to rely entirely on the seasoned players currently in the game, as featured on the forum, to get through this long wait.
Pei Sen scrolled through various humorous posts, noting how many had trending topics; the terrifying volume of comments beneath these trending threads further drove an astonishing surge of traffic to the forum.
“If this were just a small website, it would have probably crashed under this surge of traffic by now.” Yet the game forum for Bix Cube remained stable and smooth, without even a hint of lag.
In fact, players currently in the game were either frantically taking screenshots and recording short videos or had already dived straight into gameplay, beginning their exploration of this “starter village.”
Soon, the entire city of Kaixi became visibly… chaotic.