Chapter 09

▪️ EXPLOSIVE PV TRAILER

Li Mu, male, 22 years old, with an average appearance and an ordinary family background, is a typical college student you could see everywhere in almost any country.

However, what sets him apart from the norm was that he has another identity—a VR game streamer.

Since virtual reality games have became rather popular worldwide around two years ago, Li Mu also followed the legion of streamers who joined the VR bandwagon and began live streaming his experience as well.

Coupled with his verbal eloquence and good sense of humor, this simple hobby of his has earned him quite a decent bit of income.

However, unlike many single-player game streamers, he instead specializes in critiquing various VRMMO-RPG games. In Li Mu's own words, although there are exciting virtual games that are constantly being released, so far there still hasn't been a single game yet that can truly amazes him and makes him want to keep on playing.

He also has a rather infamous nickname in the VR fandom, "The Nickpicking King" whom specializes in pointing out the flaws of various VR games.

In fact, this is quite normal.

Although virtual neural networks have fully been developed in recent years, and Immersion pods have grown way cheaper thus becoming more affordable to the general populace, the vast majority of virtual engines on the market still have a relatively poor performance and often encounter various bugs during gameplay.

Li Mu rose to fame by being able to win the audience's laughters by finding these sorts of bugs in every games that he played.

Sitting in front of the computer and making himself a cup of instant coffee, Li Mu opened a well-known streaming site.

"The new episode of 'Xiao Mu Reviews' needs to find a fresh target soon," he muttered, looking around the site in a rather bored expression.

He then finally sighed after scrolling down for almost an hour with no interesting results.

Lately, the quality of various newly released games has been too poor. It's gotten so bad that he doesn't even want to do any reviews on them.

This is also because VR has shown many people its possible business opportunities, and as with all new emerging technologies, all kinds of developers have rushed in to create half-baked games just to capitalize on the hype. Heck, some devs are even just flat out scammers and are merely there to trick people into giving away some personal information.

Furthermore, any game company needs to invest alot of capital and manpower to produce good quality products, and many VR companies doesn't have those capabilities hence the quality of many game releases are lacking to say the least.

Li Mu is somewhat of a famous streamer and he has a reputation that doesn't look at any low-rated trash games. He only has eyes for those big-budget AAA+ games that are produced by well-known game companies.

After all, it's more satisfying to find bugs in these high-profile games!

"I haven't uploaded anything in a week, let's see if there are any new titles on other platforms."

Humming a simple tune, Li Mu opened the virtual game recommendation on an e-commerce gaming platform.

His gaze skimmed over the ads, but didn't pause for a moment.

"Another fantasy game? Hasn't this theme been overused already? Tsk tsk, another cheap cashgrab game with lame graphics..."

"Shooter? Hmm...it's alright I guess, but there are already many good titles in that category...plus I already did this genre in my previous let's play series. I want to try something else this time..."

"Otome raising sim? Hehehe...this is great...good...very nice—no, I don't want to get banned yet."

He muttered to himself as he browsed through the various game s.

"Hmm?"

Suddenly, his movement paused, and the mouse stopped on a particular .

"'...Elven Kingdom'?"

It was an unremarkable with a stereotypical art cover featuring a towering world tree and a beautiful and pure golden-haired elf praying towards the front with closed eyes.

Although the elf girl on the cover was pretty, amongst the vast array of virtual game s, this art cover could only be considered passable at best.

After all, the cover is the face of the game, and no game developer wouldn't make a good-looking cover for their games. Furthermore there are far too many cases wherein the cover doesn't actually match the gameplay itself...

Li Mu was so used and numb to these eyecandy art cover, but what caught his attention this time was not it, but rather the visit's click-through rate of this game .

"T-Three million visitors, what the hell is this? Did some big corpo bought an army of paid online trolls to brigade this game?"

To his surprise, this was only released only two days ago but already garnered a staggering three million visitors!

Horseshit, these clicks are definitely artificially inflated!

But once curiosity arises, it can no longer be suppressed.

Li Mu took another sip of coffee and doubtfully clicked on the ad.

Like many ads, this game had only one promotional video and a pre-order link for the game. What surprised Li Mu however was that the number of comments below had exceeded 10,000+.

This is rare especially on virtual gaming category!

He didn't directly click on the promotional video to let it play, but rather scanned the comment section down first.

Demacia: Damn it! Did the developers hire a professional film company to make this trailer? Don't tell me they spent all their budget on this PV alone lol.

This was the most liked comment.

Is it a fantasy game?

Li Mu raised his eyebrows.

This genre has already declined in popularity in recent years right? It's considered an obscure classic genre although he also heard that it still quite popular in some other countries particularly in the west...

His interest in the game was immediately reduced by half upon finding this fact, but alas he was really bored at the moment, thus he continued to look on.

Black Emperor: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Fantasy MMO's have already declined in popularity here in my country. If this game really do become popular, then I'll live stream myself eating shit lmao

This was the second most-liked comment, and it seemed to be trending towards surpassing the first most-liked comment in terms of likes.

"Haha..."

Li Mu couldn't help but laugh out loud.

There are always people like these online that are all talk and no bite and chances are, he still wouldn't do his dare even if he was proven wrong.

Nonetheless his comment was funny so Li Mu clicked on the like button, and then scrolled further down...

Attack on Hairylegs: mind acceleration technology? It sounds really great but does this kind of thing really exist?

This was the third most popular comment.

Mind acceleration technology?

What is this? How come he had never heard of any news regarding this tech?

Li Mu read the comment carefully.

Then to his surprise, he found that it seemed like a new technology mentioned by the devs in the brief introduction of the game.

It was said that this technology could enable players to think faster while playing their game. Players only need to spend fifteen minutes or so in the real world to stay in the game-world for an approximate hour in exchange!

That is to say, players would gain more time at a fraction of a time spent playing this game.

That's so epic, but was this claim greatly exaggerated? Could this game actually be a secret project by some wealthy tech tycoon or perhaps even created by those massive cutting edge corpos that's leading the charge in terms of technological innovation?

Li Mu doubtfully smirked as he glanced at the game developer's name.

"Yggdrasill Cutting-edge Technology Corporation...?"

His expression then clouded in confusion.

What company is this? A foreign one? He definitely never heard of this company locally or even once in his life .

"Could it be just another offshore company that's trying to scam people?"

Li Mu frowned slightly, feeling a bit skeptical.

Nowadays, these internet corpos are always trying to make some big claims, regardless of their actual abilities...

Li Mu shook his head and had already decided that this was probably just another scam to generate some attention.

However, thinking about the high click-through rate of 3 million, he decided to watch the promotional video before leaving.

"Let's watch this trailer! The reviews for it seem pretty good anyways."

He lightly clicked the play button, and the screen entered the interface of the promotional video...

As the video played, the computer screen suddenly went dark.

Li Mu took a sip of coffee and began to casually watch as he reclined back to his chair.

Accompanied by ethereal singing, the screen slowly brightened once more.

The first thing that caught his eye was a towering World Tree...

The camera gradually zoomed back from the World Tree, and a series of magnificent cities appeared before Li Mu's eyes. Graceful and beautiful elves wandered through the lush green cities, whilst talking and laughing as if presenting a real picture of the elven civilization...

At first, Li Mu was not impressed, but soon he was drawn in by the constantly changing sceneries.

The fantastical and pleasant surroundings along with the magnificent and otherworldly cities as the elegant and noble elves go on their daily lives whilst a lively and soothing music play on the background, made him feel as if he was personally there as well.

A pleasant and melodious female voice slowly started to tell the story of the world tree and the elven race in this fantasy world...

"The game plot's quite interesting and unique, the cinematics are great, furthermore the character models are also very detailed, plus the movements are very smooth. I wonder what's the BGM's name? It's sounds really nice, but it seems like I've never heard it before..."

Li Mu couldn't help but exclaim in admiration.

Regardless of the game itself, this opening sequence is really well made and absolutely realistic!

Gradually, Li Mu became more enamored as the story continued...

Powerful forces gave the elven race a brilliant civilization, but at the same time, it also led to thier vanity and arrogance.

Their civilization's wealth and abundance also attracted the envy of others.

The scent of conspiracy constantly lingers in the shadows, and eventually, it finally turned into a crisis.

Suddenly, the screen changed, and a golden light illuminated the skies. With sacred chanting and roaring, vague and towering figures slowly appeared one after another.

Thus the war had begun.

Blazing rocks rained down from the heavens as the earth split apart whilst countless holy angels clashed with giant wooden treants, and the once peaceful landscape turned into a magnificent bloodied battlefield...

Brutal battles, dazzling magics, rivers of blood, magnificent miracles...

One scene after another occurred as the tragic and wondrous scenes faded into oblivion whilst accompanied by ethereal and majestic music made Li Mu widened his eyes as his blood boils in excitement and could only utter one single phrase filled with utmost sincerity,

"Wow."

As he marveled at the stunning cinematics, he also felt a hint of concern and sympathy from the bottom of his heart for these fictional elven race.

Li Mu became even more fascinated by it.

At the end of the war, there was a dispute amongst the gods. Under countless magical attacks, the lush and verdant World Tree finally came to an end and withered away.

Thus finally in a chorus of mourning aria, the civilization of the elves gradually faded into the annals of history.

Accompanied by the mournful and ethereal singing, the screen finally plunged into darkness and silence.

After a moment, a sorrowful and solemn music began to faintly echoes once more.

Completely immersed in it, Li Mu unconsciously let out a long sigh, feeling a strange resonance within him.

"Prosper in adversity but decay in pleasures...such is the rise and fall of civilizations."

After a moment, the scene changed once again.

A beautiful elven girl appeared on the screen.

She was dressed in a gorgeous ceremonial gown, kneeling in a ruined temple, tearfully praying to the broken deity effigy...

With the girl's prayer, the ethereal singing gradually reached its climax. Finally, in the last chant, a deafening bell rang out!

The statue flickered slightly...

The screen went dark again, and all sound fell silent.

Seconds later, rows of stylistic and artistically striking large characters appeared on the screen:

"Otherworldly mind acceleration technology allows players to enjoy the game world!"

"Intelligent AI brings you an unprecedented gaming experience!"

"Create the most realistic, immersive, and highly customizable epic fantasy world!"

"On June 1st, the virtual reality MMORPG 'Elven Kingdom' will officially start its non-deleting closed beta phase! Everyone are welcome to sign up!"

"Elven Kingdom - awaits for your salvation!"

The promotional video then ends there.

Li Mu watched it with a dazed expression, as if he hadn't yet recovered from the shock of the epic battle scenes just now.

After a moment, he pinched his thigh and said,

"Damn! How much money did they spend on producing this trailer and rendering those CGI!?"