Chapter 1: Idle Game

It was dark, and the city went into sleep mode.

Li Chengxi checked the doors and windows of his store, then took a box of instant noodles and two sausages from the shelf and went upstairs.

He turned on the computer and looked at the dazzling array of games in the game library. Li Chengxi felt a little uninterested and didn't want to touch anything.

At this time, a new email popped up on the QQ in the lower right corner. He clicked it and saw that it said "Congratulations on your early test qualification" and attached a download link.

This email did not write the name of the game, nor did it have any pictures.

Li Chengxi didn't have a particular focus on playing games. He would try all types and often applied to play unlisted games. He couldn't remember when he applied for it for a while.

Anyway, he was free anyway, so he just clicked it and took a look.

But this email looked a bit like a virus. To be on the safe side, Li Chengxi turned around and took out an old laptop from the drawer and plugged it in to start it up.

This thing was called an ultrabook back then. It can be used as a laptop or a tablet. When I was in school and there was no internet, I relied on it to play stand-alone games to kill time.

But after all, it was ten years ago, there is no personal information in it, and even if there is a virus or the computer has problems, I don’t feel bad.

I sent the download link and clicked to download. The speed was quite fast. With the maximum speed of broadband, it was downloaded in a short while.

Li Chengxi saw that the installation package was only more than 700 megabytes, and he was a little disappointed. It might be an unknown domestic stand-alone independent game.

The good thing is that a game of several hundred megabytes should be playable on his ultrabook from ten years ago.

Unzip, install, and run.

A black picture squeezed on the screen first, and then three big words "AAI" popped up.

Li Chengxi still had no impression, and clicked the mouse to enter the main menu.

Although he was mentally prepared, he couldn't help but complain when he saw the main menu:

"This is too simple!"

The game name "AAI" was still on the top of the black interface, and it was written in English below (Anyone Anything any Idea).

It feels like another game that plans to create a framework and wait for the game content to grow from the creative workshop.

Below the game name, there are three clickable buttons, which read "Magic", "Martial Arts" and "Science Fiction", and a row of red words below the buttons read "Please select the type of script you want to generate".

To be honest, this UI design is not as good as a flash game, as if it was made with a drawing tool.

It has not been three seconds since Li Chengxi opened the game, and his expectations for this game have dropped to the lowest. He thought that since it has been installed, he should at least see how bad it is, right?

He casually clicked the martial arts button in the middle, and a line of prompts popped up saying "50,000 gold coins in inventory are required to unlock".

Li Chengxi understood that this routine is still a pigeon game, repeating a set of game processes to get points to unlock new content.

He then clicked on magic, and this time he successfully entered, and the screen prompted "World Generating".

Taking advantage of this time, Li Chengxi tore open the lid of the instant noodles and filled the electric kettle with water. When he came back, it had been loaded.

The picture that appeared on the computer screen was a pleasant surprise to him.

This game uses a refined high-definition pixel style, and the characters are all Q-versions with two heads and bodies. Compared with blindly stacking 3D, this pleasing style is the favorite of independent game production teams.

The screen shows a team of little people riding horses entering a city protected by high walls. Because it is displayed at a 45-degree oblique view and many details are made, it does not look simple even though it is a pixel style.

After this cutscene, Li Chengxi moved the cursor to the pixel-style city. As the moving position changes, some prompts such as "Palace District", "Residential District", "Commercial District" and "City Wall District" pop up.

Maybe because it is an early version, there is no novice guide at all, but for the time being, only the palace area can be clicked, and Li Chengxi clicked it.

The picture turned, and it looked like a pixel-style church, with a row of pixel little people kneeling on the ground to worship.

At this time, a character portrait popped up first.

Simple and capable red short hair, two sword-like eyebrows on the pretty face make her look heroic, she wears a breastplate on the upper body, and a red long sword on her waist, which is the style of a paper-like female knight.

Li Chengxi understands that some game production teams like to use paper people to attract players first, but he doesn't understand why a pixel-style game has realistic character portraits, which feels completely out of place.

On second thought, it may be that the production team is too poor to hire painters, and the portraits are probably generated by AI. Anyway, they are pretty good-looking, so it doesn't matter if they are inconsistent.

The name tag on the portrait is marked: 'Viola. Avarus', which should be her name.

Then a dialog box popped up, saying 'With this body as a sacrifice, pray to the Demon King to give us strength' and so on. It feels like the game plot is told in the tone of a female knight.

Li Chengxi was too lazy to read this, but the game did not have the function of fast forward and skip, so he could only press the space bar boredly and read the words of the female knight roughly.

To put it simply, there was a country called the Demon Kingdom of Avarus that was attacked by the surrounding Demon Kingdoms. Viola's father and brother died in the battle. As a princess, she took the legendary treasure that could contact the Demon God at the last moment before the capital was breached, and fled to the most remote territory with her guards and remaining soldiers, planning to make a comeback.

The player is the ‘Demon God’ mentioned by Viola. No wonder the game doesn’t let you enter the player name. It’s already set.

Li Chengxi has played several games where the player plays the role of God. The setting is not unusual.

After the story, a bar with the word ‘Faith Value’ appears on the left side of the screen. The number is 500. Resource windows such as wood, gold coins, and stone appear on the top, and the date is on the right.

So far, it feels like an SLG game similar to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but Li Chengxi clicked around and couldn’t find any part that could be operated.

On the contrary, when he clicked randomly, he saw pixelated figures carrying wood to repair damaged buildings in the city, and a group of two-headed soldiers holding long spears were training under the city wall.

“After all this time, this is just an idle game?”

The picture is obviously very beautiful, but it’s not interesting to just idle.

Li Chengxi was about to close the game and pour hot water on the instant noodles. At this time, a red warning dialog box popped up on the screen, saying ‘Bandits are approaching’.

Then he saw the little man who was busy training quickly ran up the city wall, and the game camera also moved outside the city wall.

Li Chengxi released the mouse:

"Since the style of painting is to my taste, I will play for a while longer."

Outside the city wall, a large group of NPCs crowded together appeared, holding swords and spears, wearing tattered clothes, and they could indeed be recognized as bandits at a glance.

The soldier little man on the city wall began to shoot arrows down, and the bandit little man typed dialog boxes such as "charge" and "kill", and quickly moved towards the direction of the city wall. After a while, he was blocked under the city wall and began to put things like ladders on the city wall.

Apart from anything else, the high-definition pixel-style graphics of this game are really good, it would be better if there were more places for operation.

Just when he thought of this, Li Chengxi saw a hand-shaped icon appear on the ladder that the bandits had put on the city wall, and it was written with "tap".

"Could this game be a port of a mobile game that can't get a version number?"

He picked up the mouse and clicked it. Each ladder needed several clicks before it would break or fall over, and it seemed endless.

The rough and continuous clicks also caused the mouse, which was the same age as the computer, to go on strike. This was not a big problem. One of the selling points of the ultrabook was that the screen could be operated by touch.

So Li Chengxi threw away the mouse and stretched out his index finger to touch the screen.

"What the hell?"

The moment his finger touched the screen, it seemed as if there was a suction force coming from the screen, and Li Chengxi's finger sank directly into the screen.

For a moment, Li Chengxi thought he had seen it wrong. He shook his finger, and the finger on the screen also shook.

Surprised, Li Chengxi retracted his hand and pulled his finger back from the screen.

At this time, there was a slight tingling sensation in the index finger, and many tiny cracks appeared on the skin, which seemed to be caused by too dryness, and there was a little bleeding.

"What's going on?"