Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 747: Chapter 707: You Can Avoid the First, But Not the Fifteenth

Lincoln answered the phone.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

For the first time, Lorin at the other end did not start to speak instantly.

It was probably somewhat awkward for him. After all, it was less than 20 minutes since their last conversation and now he had to convey a completely opposite message to Lincoln…

If Lincoln had a bit more understanding of social protocols, he should have spoken first to give Lorin a way out.

However, Lincoln was somewhat disgruntled from before, and coupled with his fun-loving personality, he remained silent.

“Ahem, ahem!” Lorin had to awkwardly clear his throat twice, then as if the last conversation hadn’t happened at all, casually said, “I’m just the messenger here…”

…

This conversation was even shorter. Just three minutes later, Lorin hung up on Lincoln.

Then, the [Lover Contract] was back online.

*

At first, people saw that only the [Lover Contract] was back online and not the [Marriage Contract]. This immediately sparked the sentiment of “unfinished struggle” among them.

They were infuriated and almost started cursing.

Fortunately, after carefully reading the announcement, they realized: the functions of the [Marriage Contract] were indeed still there, they just had been integrated into the [Lover Contract] by Cloud Dream to create a more advanced subsystem.

However, what was even more astounding was: within the short off-line period of 20 minutes, the [Lover Contract] system had actually been updated to Version 1.1!

As the news blew up across the Internet, with users about to explode in anger, Lincoln was busy taking advantage of the situation to update the system?!

Not to mention his ridiculous work efficiency, wasn’t his state of mind too calm?

With amazement and confusion, everyone clicked on the update announcement to see what had been updated in Version 1.1:

[1. Marriage Contract is included in Lover Contract System, fundamental functionalities remain unchanged.]

[2. Lover Contract age restriction is relaxed, lowered down to 16 years old, but “Intimate Interaction” is still available only for those above 18.]

[3. “Intimate Interaction” added a stamina mechanism.]

[4. “Intimate Interaction” removed invincible status, added injury and pain feedback mechanism.]

[5. “Contract Freeze” reduced the wait time from 7 days to 3 days.]

———-

The cheers of everyone were abruptly stifled in their throats.

A barrage of complaints ensued under the announcement:

“???”

“@Lincoln, we fought so hard for Cloud Dream, and this is how you repay us?”

“Disregarding the rest, what do you mean by adding stamina restrictions, Lincoln?”

“We were all set to see what it feels like to go a full day and night continuously with my boyfriend. You’ve directly put a limitation on that?”

“Be human!”

…

Apparently, everyone completely ignored the other changes, focusing wholly on the [Stamina Restrictions].

Despite not having tried yet in the game how much of a deal this stamina restriction was – in reality, it wasn’t a big deal at all. As long as one arranged reasonable rest times in between, stamina could be restored.

When Lincoln added this rule, it was less about restrictions and more about caring for their mental health, so they wouldn’t turn into sex-maniacs or suddenly start hating men or women. Of course, negative emotions could be somewhat alleviated by the Mirage, but it wouldn’t entirely eradicate it.

But the users didn’t care about this.

No matter how big or small, a restriction is a restriction!

And they weren’t happy with restrictions!

For a moment, users were even shouting to unite, to have a good talk with Lincoln again.

Maybe this was their chance to make Lincoln budge as long as the fighting spirit was still burning and the traffic still there?

But they had to hurry up, else they would miss the chance!

But at this crucial moment—

Spiritual Rhinoceros crashed.

In the Spiritual Rhinoceros operations office, the operation team was stunned.

They had just witnessed a “miracle” in the Internet World.

Although they didn’t know how this had happened, but based on the simple deduction “whoever benefits, has the motive”, and by ruling out Spiritual Rhinoceros itself, the biggest beneficiary was obviously Cloud Dream.

Considering Lincoln’s “dominant-class” capabilities in the digital world, accomplishing this incredible feat was entirely possible.

Compared to an idealistic “God”, or some technically invincible hidden hacker, they could more readily accept if Lincoln had done this.

After all, they’re experts in the field of internet security. If they lost to a mysterious hacker, they would lose face enormously. It would be utterly humiliating.

But losing to Lincoln, that’s not humiliating.

——As for whether it’s disgraceful to lose to Cloud Dream’s “little monster”… well, that’s subjective.

When Cloud Dream announced the ‘re-launch and version 1.1 update of the Lover Contract’, they almost believed that they had safely weathered this crisis.

The operation engineer who had been wailing “it’s all over” earlier was now feeling quite relieved: “Excellent! The annual bonus is safe now.”

But as soon as he finished speaking, the astonishing computational power that had emerged from nowhere suddenly vanished without warning — just as it had appeared without warning.

The technical staff didn’t know how all this happened and naturally, they didn’t know how it all ended.

All they knew was: The “miracle” had ended.

The Spiritual Rhinoceros server was also straightforward: If you dare to leave, I dare to die right in front of you—

The moment “God’s hand” was withdrawn, the server crashed promptly.

For a moment, everyone in the office, including the manager Gavin, all turned their eyes to the man who’d said “Excellent!”

The brother was shocked and blurted out subconsciously: “Scumbag…”

When we needed you, you didn’t give a hoot and used us. Now that you’re done, you just walk away??

If you could’ve simply held on a little longer, this crisis might have passed smoothly!

Can’t you end things more gracefully when breaking up?

“Sigh…” Sounds of powerless sighs were heard from all desks.

—The annual bonus, was brewed into the soup after all.

…

…

The sudden crash of Spiritual Rhinoceros made players’ idea of “charging” Lincoln immediately declared bankrupt.

Everyone could only curse: “Bloody Spiritual Rhinoceros, messing up my business!”

Then they slowly dispersed. Those with stuff to do went about their business, and those without went to test the 1.1 version of [Lover Contract], or scattered into various game forums, gaming communities, group chats, friend circles, and other small circles to continue discussing this major event.

*

Even though the players had dispersed, the matter wouldn’t end so simply.

From start to finish, every aspect of this incident sparked a fierce debate, causing a large-scale, cross-national public opinion upheaval.

Furthermore, it involved social psychology and social behavior theory. It’s a priceless treasure even from the perspective of a large-scale social experiment.

Not to mention the incident itself — What impact would the virtual world satisfying physical needs have on traditional concepts and social consciousness? These are all highly valuable, important topics that urgently need to be researched.

In the future, it’s likely that a large number of papers will be published on this. It’s even quite likely that valuable research results will be produced.

However, all of this requires time to ferment.

The worry of sociologists now is: their research might not have time to reach a sufficiently credible, widely accepted conclusion before Lincoln comes up with yet more shocking acts.

The unfortunate thing is, judging from the experience of the past half-year, this situation is likely to happen!

— Lincoln is just too fast.

Sociological research simply can’t keep up with his pace.