Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 689: Chapter 656: Lincoln Breaks the Game?!

Although the Terraria Survival Challenge had ended, the race to be the first to defeat the final boss was far from over.

Before the event ended, Roger unexpectedly managed to defeat the Moon Worshiper without taking any damage, only to die miserably at the hands of the minions of the four Celestial Pillars.

These four Celestial Pillars only appeared in the world after the Moon Worshiper had been slain – the Star Pillar, Solar Pillar, Stardust Pillar, and Nebula Pillar – which summoned large numbers of unique monsters.

It was only after dealing with the many monsters that players could attack the Pillars themselves. Destroying each Pillar would grant the player powerful new equipment for their class.

As for Roger, he was able to defeat the Moon Worshiper by walking on a tightrope of razor-thin margins and relying on his extreme dodge skills.

However, facing the hordes of new monsters coming at him from all directions, achieving a no-damage run was rather unrealistic.

After being killed by the monsters once, all his items were reset.

He tried again with a new character, but the lack of strong items led to an even more tragic death.

This resulted in his progress being stalled for quite some time.

Finally, he had to swallow his pride and start considering digging holes and building walls as a means of avoiding completion…

This was a tactic almost universally employed by players in the Normal difficulty.

Upon trying this method, he realized—

It was amazing!

Although he was quietly killed twice by monsters that could phase through walls, he managed to acquire the powerful weapons for the Warrior class from the four Pillars. He subsequently destroyed all four Celestial Pillars, opening the way for the ultimate challenge—

[Moon Lord]

A gigantic creature with an exposed brain, five eyeballs on its face, and tentacles lining its jaw appeared abruptly amidst dizzying white light and tremors. Despite only having an upper body, it was colossal and terrifying.

There was no doubt that Roger’s technical abilities were up to the task.

However, his equipment was severely lacking due to his multiple deaths. Apart from his weapon, none of his gear met the standards for challenging the ultimate boss, making the fight extremely difficult, and even a moment’s inattention could result in instant death.

The Normal difficulty boss differed from the Expert difficulty boss – they began similarly, but as the boss’s health decreased, its attack frequency, skill quantity, and even the speed of the bullets would change.

Practicing too much in the Normal difficulty might be counterproductive, causing great difficulty for players vying for the Expert difficulty’s first kill.

It was the same for Roger, Warehouse Bird, and all players within and outside of Terraria competing for the first kill.

They had no choice but to go through the cycle of starting a battle, making a mistake, dying, upgrading equipment, starting the challenge again, and dying once more…

This endless loop continued.

As a result, equipment and items that could be obtained by repeatedly killing bosses became their top priority, as they could significantly reduce the time needed to start the next challenge.

The [Destroyer], in particular, had become a veritable [Hallowed Armor] manufacturing machine since players had figured out how to cheese its fights for quick kills.

Countless [Destroyers] were killed every day just for their dropped [Hallowed Bars], which could be used to craft armor…

Thanks to the [Destroyer]’s selfless contribution, by today, the fastest progressing group of players had already seen the light of victory.

With relentless fighting spirit and constantly honed combat skills, the Moon Lord’s moves and behavior patterns were thoroughly understood.

Top-tier players from both domestic and foreign territories had their own combat strategies, and the patterns of their fights barely changed. They were nearly able to perform the fights like clockwork, with only a bit of familiarity and luck missing.

They also understood that they were only a little behind each other, and that anyone might accomplish this achievement at any time, so no one dared to let their guard down.

Just like Roger, Warehouse Bird, and many other players who started fighting from the morning until late at night, only briefly logging off to eat and replenish their energy.

If it weren’t for the fact that the main battlefield was in the virtual world, the level of devotion over the past week would have turned their rooms into garbage dumps.

He had had no time to clean his room for a week, all in pursuit of this opportunity.

The expansion of Cloud Dream’s user base meant that the competition for first kills in games would become increasingly fierce, and the difficulty of achieving success would grow exponentially.

Right now, Warehouse Bird felt like he was about to touch the fruit of success.

The Moon Lord’s health had already dropped to its last 10%, and he was running up and down the stone platform with full buffs and health. Even his healing potions weren’t in cooldown, ready to be consumed to recover any lost health.

As the boss’s health dwindled, his originally exhausted spirit became more and more excited, contrary to what one would expect.

This made his focus even sharper, and each evasive move felt more and more natural.

While fighting, he shouted aloud in his heart the remaining health of the boss:

5%!

4%!

3%!

Inside the live broadcast room, there were an astonishing number of viewers, yet the number of comments was surprisingly low.

Almost everyone was holding their breath, counting down in their hearts with extreme tension and anticipation for the birth of a historic moment!

2%!

1%!

Everyone was ready to cheer!

Warehouse Bird threw the last spear, his eyes brimming with tears of excitement, feeling that all his efforts were finally about to be rewarded!

But at that very moment, he experienced a bizarre sensation, as if the entire world had frozen for an instant, or as if a frame had been removed from the world before his eyes.

In the next moment, the world was suddenly plunged into darkness without any warning.

At the same time, his live broadcast room went dark too.

The viewers in the live broadcast room hadn’t realized what had happened yet, thinking this was the game clearing and that the screen would display some sort of ending animation or developer credits. They were still excitedly sending gifts and comments—

“Congratulations!”

“Awesome!”

“Invincible!”

“World’s first!!”

“God-level!”

…

But after a few seconds, the live streaming room’s screen was still pitch black.

Everyone gradually felt that something was wrong, and the excited comments and gifts quickly stopped.

Someone couldn’t help but ask: “What’s going on? Weren’t we supposed to have cleared it?”

But as soon as they asked, a line of text appeared:

[Live streaming signal lost, reconnecting…]

“???”

Everyone was dumbfounded.

“Is this… a disconnection?”

“Disconnected at the last second? Just one hit short? Are you kidding me?!!”

“How miserable is Warehouse Bird’s mentality right now…”

True enough, Warehouse Bird’s mentality had exploded:

He opened his eyes and found that he had left the virtual world and returned to reality!

And when he looked at the Mirage Console, he saw that it was actually restarting?!

“What the hell?”

“Network issue? Hardware failure?”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Couldn’t it have waited one more second?!!! Let me finish the achievement first before having problems ahhhhh!!! ”

Warehouse Bird felt like he was going crazy!!

He simply wanted to take off the headband and smash it!

But Warehouse Bird’s mentality was extremely strong, and he took a deep breath, desperately controlling his emotions: “I can’t smash it, I have to continue fighting after it reboots! I can’t give up like this!”

“Buzz~ Buzz~ Buzz~”

“Buzz~ Buzz~ Buzz~”

The mobile phone vibrated rapidly.

Warehouse Bird picked up the phone, thinking that he would see comforting messages from his fans.

But that wasn’t the case.

All the game chat groups he had joined were endlessly spewing out messages, and the mood of the group members was quite intense.

Warehouse Bird took a quick look and immediately realized that his disconnection was purely coincidental, and he was not being targeted:

Very simply –

“Terraria” had crashed!

At that very moment, all the players in “Terraria”, whether they were casual gamers or those challenging the first kill, no matter whether they were players from Daxia or those far away overseas, every single one of them was instantly kicked out of the game!

This was an unprecedented situation!

In fact, since the birth of the virtual world, many tech-savvy people could not understand:

Why didn’t this cross-era technology have a more mature and iterative process, but instead appear as flawless as a work of art upon its birth?

This completely contradicted their technical common sense.

But with real-world facts in front of them, they had nothing to say, and could only keep their twisted feelings in their hearts, reluctantly telling themselves: What if Lincoln’s abilities really were above and beyond?

They meant no ill will towards Lincoln, but their common sense being severely challenged made it hard to accept.

Now, the virtual world was finally having major problems!

Even though it wasn’t the entire virtual world collapsing, but just “Terraria”, it still affected tens of millions of players worldwide!

This unexpected “virtual world glitch” actually put their minds at ease, making them feel that this was only normal, and even voluntarily helping to explain on Lincoln’s behalf:

“It’s normal and reasonable. This incident will help the virtual world become even more perfect.”

However, the players had no interest in listening to their explanations at this moment. They were all excitedly sending messages to all their friends, informing them of this “major event”.

All player communities are also boiling with excitement, passionately discussing the matter – even though nobody knows what happened yet.

But just a few minutes later, the truth was discovered by the players.

The hashtag #LincolnBreaksTheGame instantly made it to the top of the hot searches!

Everyone collectively believed that it was Lincoln who broke the game!

Their reasons were quite sufficient:

Just before the game crashed, Lincoln had just announced that “Terraria” would begin an online update.

As soon as he mentioned the game update, the game crashed!

If it wasn’t because of him, then who could it be?!