The guys from his dorm gathered around, faces full of curiosity.
Mainly because they had never seen Wang Zixu shop online before. Today, for once, he had come back carrying a big thing, and there was even a shipping label stuck to the cardboard box.
Everyone was curious as to what exactly could make this iron rooster pluck its own feathers.
“Heh heh, I didn’t buy this. Someone gave it to me.”
Wang Zixu chuckled. He hadn’t expected that he and Brother Jun were actually in the same city. No wonder it had arrived so quickly.
“From your girlfriend?”
“Oh? You’re dating? Explain yourself.”
“Who sent it isn’t important. Everyone who sees it gets a share!”
Wang Zixu waved his hand, too lazy to explain. In front of everyone, he opened the cardboard box. Lying inside was a helmet.
The thing’s shape looked a bit like an eye massager. No—perhaps it would be more accurate to describe it as VR goggles.
He held it in his hands and examined it carefully, but didn’t find anything particularly special about it.
“A virtual helmet?”
The guy beside him picked up the helmet and fiddled with it a couple of times, then shook his head to himself. “But the shape doesn’t really look like one.”
“It should be a virtual helmet. I just don’t know what brand it is, or how realistic it is.”
By now,
conceptual devices like virtual helmets and motion-sensing pods were already everywhere.
There were countless companies developing this type of product.
Only the Aurora-brand virtual helmet or motion-sensing pod under Penguin could reach over seventy percent realism.
It could be said to dominate the field.
As for other smaller brands, their quality varied wildly.
“I’ll try it.”
Brother Jun had said it was one hundred percent virtual reality.
He wanted to see whether that was true or not.
Wang Zixu took the helmet and, following the instructions, tried putting it on his head.
He pressed the start button.
After a brief daze,
a beam of blue light appeared in his pitch-black vision, reflecting onto his retina.
【Identifying information… Verifying… Reading…】
【Binding… Binding successful!】
【Welcome, player Wang Zixu. We wish you a pleasant gaming experience.】
【Time until closed beta begins: 19 hours 36 minutes】
Holy shit!
It really was a virtual helmet!
Even the cheapest virtual helmets on the market cost over a thousand yuan, didn’t they?
And this one had been given to him for free!
Wang Zixu became a little excited all over.
“Fucking awesome.”
Taking off the helmet, Wang Zixu sighed with emotion.
The roommate beside him looked eager to give it a try. Rubbing his hands together, he asked, “How realistic is it?”
Wang Zixu shrugged. “The game hasn’t opened yet. I don’t know either.”
“What? Isn’t this thing just like a game console? Doesn’t it have a game library? Or can’t you choose games yourself?”
“Let me see what’s going on.”
That roommate took the virtual helmet and put it on his own head. A moment later, he took it off with a blank look on his face.
“No, wait. Is this helmet of yours broken? Why can’t I see anything?”
“Shouldn’t be. It reacted when I put it on just now.”
It was Wang Zixu’s first time using a virtual helmet too, so he wasn’t entirely sure.
“Let me try.”
The remaining two roommates tried it on one after another. Without exception, after putting it on, the helmet showed no reaction whatsoever.
“Bro, did you hallucinate just now?”
“The device can’t even start. Where would a countdown come from? You got scammed, didn’t you? Hurry up and contact the seller for a return.”
Wang Zixu frowned slightly. Refusing to believe it, he put the helmet on again.
Blue characters reappeared before his eyes.
【Time until closed beta begins: 19 hours 33 minutes】
Not only had the countdown not disappeared, it had advanced by three minutes.
Now he was certain. There should be nothing wrong with the device.
Wang Zixu sat on the edge of his bed, rubbing his chin as he sank into thought.
The virtual helmet Brother Jun had sent him might be very different from the products on the market.
……
……
Night fell.
The computer screen in front of Chen Jiajun was the only source of light in the entire room.
“Ha…”
He couldn’t help yawning.
Eight straight hours of high-intensity work had left his eyes dry, sore, and swollen.
He irritably scratched his hair. Developing the modeling function was far more troublesome than he had imagined.
Originally, he had thought that after taking the system item 【Mind-Clearing Goji Berry】, it would be a piece of cake and he would finish it very quickly.
In the end, bugs kept appearing one after another.
From the looks of it now, getting the modeling system updated before the closed beta began was impossible.
As the energizing effects of the Mind-Clearing Goji Berry were exhausted,
a heavy wave of fatigue quietly crept up on him, and his eyelids grew increasingly heavy.
He was clearly so young, yet his body was this weak.
He wanted to keep grinding away at work, but his body had already sounded the alarm.
“Forget it, forget it. My pathetic life comes first.”
Just as he was about to press the shutdown button, a notification popped up in the lower-right corner of the screen.
【Time until closed beta begins: 12 hours 0 minutes】
The closed beta start time he had set was almost here.
He estimated that Freeloader King and Shen Yingying had already signed for their virtual helmets by now.
As for the remaining few, since they weren’t in the same city, the earliest they could receive theirs would be tomorrow or the day after.
“Whew…”
Chen Jiajun withdrew his thoughts and stopped dwelling on it.
His gaze fell on the virtual helmet beside his desk, and he reached out to pick it up.
A one-hundred-percent realistic immersive game was not something he had simply bragged about.
Nor was it a gimmick created for publicity.
Once the virtual helmet was put on and the player entered the game world, the player’s sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste… would be no different from the real world.
The flow of time in the game world and the real world was basically the same.
Most importantly, due to the technical principles involved, the time players spent in the game world was equivalent to deep sleep.
This meant
that even if someone played in the game for an entire night, their body in reality would only receive complete rest, without affecting their work the next day in the slightest.
This technology came from the system. At present, it was unique in this world.
If it could be popularized in the future, it would have a disruptive impact on all of Jiuzhou.
Even those who were unwilling to play games, those who felt games were a waste of time—
who would mind experiencing it while they slept?
They could simply treat it as having a dream in which they could do whatever they wanted.
Dreaming could still burden the body, but his virtual helmet absolutely would not.
With technology and effects this advanced,
even if the game Bloody Golden Triangle: Survivor did not explode in popularity as expected, the bundled boost from the virtual helmet alone would be enough to ignite the market.
Even if the games developed afterward were terrible, as long as they had the device’s support, there would absolutely be people willing to pay.
It was just like many veteran authors. Once one book became popular and their fame rose, even if everything they wrote afterward turned into a pile of crap, there would still be readers willing to pay for it.
This was what people commonly called making rotten money.
However, human wisdom could not be underestimated.
Technological barriers would be broken through one day.
Only continuously producing high-quality game content would be the company’s core competitiveness in the future.
It was also an important path for him to complete missions, obtain reputation, and even extend his life.
“Ha…”
Intense drowsiness spread through him, and Chen Jiajun let out a long yawn.
Although the independent modeling function had not yet been opened, the game’s core framework was already complete and would not affect the game’s operation.
After adjusting the virtual helmet in his hands, he fastened it onto his head and pressed the start button.
His administrator privileges allowed him to skip the closed beta waiting period directly.
He could enter the game at any time.
An electronic prompt sounded immediately:
【Welcome, administrator Chen Jiajun. We wish you a pleasant gaming experience.】
【Start game?】
“Yes!”
With a thought, Chen Jiajun chose to start the game immediately.
【Generating character…】
【Character generated!】
【Entering game soon!】