Pickaxe

Pickaxe

Volume One: Hidden Star, Eye of the Sky

Mu Sichen received an email.

-- Dear player, hello. Your upright and outstanding performance has made you stand out in town-building. My Ideal Town sincerely invites you to participate in this game's closed beta test. If you are willing to help us build the most ideal town, please fill in your personal profile, mailing address, and contact information through the link below.

Mu Sichen was a second-year university student who had just turned 20. As long as it did not affect his studies, he took on part-time game boosting jobs to earn some living expenses.

A few days ago, he had discovered My Ideal Town, a game that had not yet been released. Seeing that the official website was recruiting closed-beta players, he played a small test instance. His test results were good, and he soon received this closed beta invitation email.

Games all required real-name registration these days. Mu Sichen did not think too much about it and filled in the relevant information through the link.

After submitting his information, he browsed the game introduction on the official website.

The official site claimed that this game used brand-new VR technology and had truly reached the full-dive standard. It would change the entire era.

Mu Sichen did not believe it.

VR games were popular nowadays, and the experience brought by VR goggles was already quite realistic. Mu Sichen had played plenty of games of this sort. But the more he understood, the more clearly he knew how difficult brain-computer interface technology was to overcome. Full-dive games were still far beyond reach.

Not to mention, this game's official website was all drab gray, the test instance looked cheap, and the official poster did not show a cozy town at all. Instead, it showed ruins that looked almost apocalyptic.

Still, by participating in the closed beta, he could get more invitation codes, and both invitation codes and accounts could be sold for money after the game was officially released. Mu Sichen would not miss this closed beta opportunity.

He was studying the game introduction when his phone rang.

When he answered, the delivery guy told Mu Sichen to come to the gatehouse for a package. It was a very large package and needed to be handed over in person.

Only after Mu Sichen reached the gatehouse did he realize this package was not ordinarily large. Its outer packaging looked like a single bed.

"When did I buy a package this big?" Mu Sichen looked at the shipping label in confusion and saw that the sender was actually the sales department of My Ideal Town. The item listed was a game pod.

Less than two hours had passed since he filled in his address, yet such a large game pod had already been delivered. Mu Sichen suddenly gained some confidence in the full-dive online game the advertisements had promised.

In front of the older gate guard, Mu Sichen repeatedly promised that what he had bought was not a treadmill, not a sofa, and absolutely not a massage chair. He promised it would not violate the dorm management rules. Only then did he carry the delivery box back to his dorm.

Fortunately, it was summer break. His roommates were all away, and only Mu Sichen had stayed behind in the dorm. There was enough floor space to place the game pod.

To his surprise, although the box was large, it was very light, as if it were filled with foam. Mu Sichen suspected that the so-called game pod might just be a plastic shell.

But when he opened the packaging, the silver-gray game pod inside, full of metallic texture, was stunning. The shell was light yet hard. He had no idea what kind of impossible tech they had used to make a game pod this good-looking, sturdy, and light.

If they could even make a game pod like this, Mu Sichen began to believe this was a full-dive online game that surpassed modern games.

For such an advanced game, once it officially released, the closed-beta account and the game pod would definitely sell for an astronomical price.

The more Mu Sichen thought about it, the more excited he became. He quickly installed the game pod according to the manual and lay down inside it.

He was 180 cm tall, and the space inside the game pod actually matched his body exactly. It did not feel too large or too small at all.

Mu Sichen closed the pod door, put on the VR goggles inside the game pod, and impatiently clicked Start Game.

The instant the game pod started up, Mu Sichen felt the world spin before his eyes. His mind went blank, as if he had lost control over his body.

But he did not panic. The game pod manual had mentioned that this was a normal reaction during the brain-computer connection and would not last more than a second.

Mu Sichen instinctively closed his eyes. After the dizziness passed, he slowly opened them.

The moment he opened his eyes, he was badly startled.

He was no longer in the dorm. Instead, he was in a one-person apartment of about 20 square meters. The curtains were drawn, and the indoor lights were not on. Only the four walls gave off a faint white glow, providing a little light in the dim environment.

Mu Sichen had no attention to spare for the eerie setting. This experience was too amazing. He was wholly occupied with marveling at the game's realism.

He tried running, jumping, kicking, and other movements, and found that his control over his body was exactly the same as usual. It was as if he were truly moving with his own body. If he pinched his face, he even felt pain.

If a System screen had not popped up before his eyes and reminded him that he was in a game, Mu Sichen might almost have thought he had really crossed over.

The System screen floated in midair like a virtual display. At the very top was a countdown.

[Novice Protection Period: 00:09:27.]

It seemed that novices had a 10-minute protection period. He had already wasted more than 30 seconds.

Mu Sichen had plenty of gaming experience. He knew that in a new game like this, certain special benefits for new players were very important and could not be wasted lightly.

He immediately stopped the calisthenics-like stretching and leg-kicking, then focused on reading the prompts on the System screen.

[Please select your starter tool as soon as possible. The starter tool is an important early-stage tool and weapon for the player. It determines the player's early-stage attribute preference. Please choose carefully. Scythe/sledgehammer/rope/gun with six bullets/pickaxe/folding shovel/pushcart...]

There were quite a lot of starter tool options. Aside from that strange gun, the rest all looked like farm tools.

Mu Sichen guessed that the starter item should be related to the player's initial stats. Choosing the scythe should lean toward attack power; rope would be control; the gun would be speed...

To choose a starter item suited to him, he still needed to consider this game's own features.

The problem now was that Mu Sichen still had not figured out what kind of game My Ideal Town actually was.

The test minigame he had played for the closed beta was a bit like Plants vs. Zombies, but the opposing sides were reversed. In the minigame, he controlled a clump of grass and turned the zombies guarding a house into fertilizer. The more fertilizer there was, the larger the lawn became. In the end, he eliminated the zombies and reclaimed the house.

After reclaiming the house, he then had to collect materials, gain stamina, clear and trim the lawn he had grown earlier, rebuild the house, plant flowers, and farm.

The first half was like a strategy puzzle game, while the second half was more like a base-building farming game.

The fact that this kind of minigame could be used as the screening standard for closed-beta players meant the test minigame and the official game had something in common.

It was just that the similarity seemed far too small. Mu Sichen looked at the realistic furniture around him and recalled the puzzle minigame from the test. He only felt they were worlds apart.

But it had some reference value in the end.

Mu Sichen guessed that the official game should follow two modes: a strategic confrontation mode for contesting territory, and a base-building defense mode for consolidating territory. Put simply, taking territory and holding territory.

In that case, the strengths and weaknesses of each starter tool became obvious.

For weapons like guns, the advantage was strong attack power and speed in early-stage contests for territory, but the number of enemies they could damage was limited, and they would clearly be useless in the later base-building mode. The sledgehammer was also attack-oriented rather than construction-oriented. The scythe was fairly light and balanced, but it could do very little on the base-building side. The pushcart, meanwhile, was utterly useless in early-stage contests.

A pickaxe was a steel tool used for quarrying, road-paving, and mining. One side of the head was pointed and the other was flat. The pointed end could be used to attack, the flat end was suited to digging, and its length was moderate. When swung, it could keep enemies within one meter from closing in. The folding shovel was a tool of the same type, but it was lighter and its attack power could not compare to the pickaxe. Its advantage was that it was easy to carry.

Faced with a brand-new game, Mu Sichen made a somewhat conservative choice. He selected the pickaxe.

After making his selection, Mu Sichen saw a pickaxe in the corner of the room. It leaned quietly against the wall, as if it had been in the room from the start.

Mu Sichen felt the room was rather cold. A chill was slowly seeping into his limbs. He gripped the pickaxe's long handle, and the cold dissipated considerably.

This game really was too dark and gloomy. It always gave people an ominous feeling.

The pickaxe had been placed beside the window. Mu Sichen faintly saw a pale light leaking from behind the curtains. It seemed the outside was bright, and the room was so dim because the curtains blocked light too well.

Mu Sichen placed his hand on the curtain, wanting to pull it open and see the world outside the window.

At that moment, a jarring red flashed across the screen. The Novice Protection Period countdown had only 3 minutes left. The red light from the System screen was a warning.

Mu Sichen suppressed the urge to open the curtain and returned to the screen to check the next System introduction.

After selecting his starter tool, his personal stats appeared before him.

Sure enough, the upper limits for stamina and defense were higher than those for speed and attack. At the same time, he had gained a novice skill.

[Congratulations, player. You have obtained starter tool [Pickaxe] and gained skill [Undermine].]

Seeing the skill name, Mu Sichen felt that, compared with the high-end and luxurious game pod, My Ideal Town's gameplay model and skill descriptions were a little too down-to-earth. He wondered whether they would be upgraded in the future.

[Undermine], as the name implied, meant digging out the lower part of a wall in order to collapse the entire wall. In modern society, the original term also carried the meaning of poaching a competitor's personnel or technology.

At present, [Undermine] only had a simple digging function, and the skill level was 1. However, Mu Sichen analyzed that after the skill leveled up in the future, it might even evolve into the ability to seize the other side's minions or skills.

Only 2 minutes remained in the Novice Protection Period countdown, and the white light emitted by the walls was growing fainter and fainter. Mu Sichen quickly clicked through the System panel, rapidly familiarizing himself with the game content.

Next, the System panel did not have Mu Sichen choose an item or identity, nor did it have him modify his character's appearance. Instead, it explained the game's initial mission and displayed a game map.

The initial mission was to find the "Pillar" in the current town and think of a way to build the first safe house to protect the player's life.

When he saw this, Mu Sichen faintly felt that something was wrong. How could a game mention protecting his life? If it wanted to warn him about anything, it should be to prevent addiction and log out on time, so that excessive immersion in the game would not harm the player's health.

Before he had time to think this through, the countdown had only 1 minute left. The screen switched interfaces, and a map appeared.

Mu Sichen felt this map was very important, so he studied and memorized it carefully. He discovered that this was not a map of one town, but a map of a very large region. There were many towns on it. Most of the town icons were gray, and only the largest town's icon was lit.

Before Mu Sichen could memorize the whole map, only 10 seconds remained on the countdown.

He seized the time to record it in his mind. At the same time, the white light on the walls also began flickering.

At the final second, Mu Sichen finally memorized the entire map. He reached out and touched the screen, clicking to the next page, and saw the "Exit Game" button in the lower right corner of the screen blinking.

Just as a thought of confusion arose in Mu Sichen's mind, the countdown reached zero. The "Exit Game" button vanished from the screen, and the white light on the surrounding walls disappeared as well.

The entire room was pitch-black. Only the faint glow of the game screen remained, barely enough to illuminate his face.

For some reason, Mu Sichen felt as if there were countless eyes in the darkness, quietly watching him.

He tapped the lower right corner of the screen. The "Exit Game" button did not appear.