Love NPC in Nightmare Game - Chapter 101

Chapter 101: The Real World 5

The Battle to the Top is a game in the combat game category ranking first in the game zone, and it is more like a holographic world that combines training, competitions, and exams rather than just a game.

Although it is also an official game, Nightmare City aims to enhance the spiritual power of ordinary civilians, while this combat game aims to improve the combat awareness and actual combat experience of the entire population.

Although the empire is relatively peaceful now, this vast empire has always adhered to the principle of an armed nation.

Force clashes, mech battles, survival in dire straits, starship command…it includes a rich variety of types. No matter what kind of training you want or which aspect you prefer, you can get the maximum level of practice here.

Alvia is very familiar with this game, so there is no need to worry about unexpected situations like before.

After entering the game and logging into his account, Alvia pulled Zhou Zhou into the game. At this time, Zhou Zhou was still immersed in the previous game, doubting his life.

Suddenly being in another game, he looked a bit dazed for a long time before realizing that he had changed games.

The ‘Battle to the Top’ has been ranked first in the game zone for many years, and its popularity and history are much higher than ‘Nightmare City’. There are even various national competitions every year, so the game’s real-time online population is very high. After registering a personal account, you have to choose different regions before entering.

In the game, you can freely set your appearance and nickname. Even if you want to set your appearance as an animal or insect, no one will pay too much attention. Zhou Zhou did not make any changes and still used his own appearance and name.

It was only when choosing the region that he had difficulty. The regional classifications had several major categories, such as mechs, wilderness, starships, martial arts, etc., and below that, there were competition zones, living zones, training zones, and so on. Zhou Zhou did not know how to choose at all.

He looked towards Alvia. In this game, Alvia still had a common face. Zhou Zhou did not know how to choose, so he said, “Which area do you want to go to first? You can choose any one, and we can visit all of them later when we have time.”

Zhou Zhou randomly selected the mech zone, and then chose the competition zone below.

Seeing this, Alvia immediately selected the same area, and the two were immediately transferred to the mech zone.

The mech zone looked more like a high-tech city, with towering buildings reaching into the clouds everywhere, very different from the strong living atmosphere of Nightmare City.

Giant billboards and robots walking around everywhere caught Zhou Zhou’s eyes.

His negative emotions came and went quickly, and he had already forgotten his experience in the dating game. Instead, he observed the environment here.

Alvia led the way familiarly, taking Zhou Zhou to a tall building in the center of the city. Zhou Zhou followed Alvia like a little tail, sticking closely behind him. Although he kept turning his head to look at everything around him, he did not leave Alvia’s side. In an unfamiliar environment, especially in a crowded place like this, he instinctively stayed close to the person he was most familiar with.

“What is this place?” Zhou Zhou curiously asked when he saw Alvia buy two tickets on the first floor.

“This is the mech competition zone, where mech competitions are most common.” He waved the tickets in his hand. “I bought tickets for the arena battle. Let’s go and watch.”

Zhou Zhou obediently nodded. He did not understand any of this, so he naturally followed Alvia’s instructions.

The two went to the corresponding arena for the competition. After not logging into the game for several years, most of the nicknames of the players when checking the competition schedule were unfamiliar to him, so he finally chose a competition with a player whose name he vaguely recognized.

After entering the venue, Zhou Zhou realized that the inside space was very large, with a huge competition stage in the middle and a sea of people surrounding it. Everyone was discussing the players in this competition and guessing the outcome.

Zhou Zhou listened in a confused state, following Alvia obediently to their seats. All of this was completely outside his realm of knowledge, as there was no content about mechs in the books from thousands of years ago. Before the competition started, Alvia patiently explained the rules to Zhou Zhou, allowing him to understand and absorb little by little.

Zhou Zhou listened attentively while nodding. It turned out that different areas of the game had their own ranking lists, and players’ rankings were determined by their strength through constant competitions. To obtain a higher ranking, one had to keep competing. Of course, if you lost in a competition, your score would decrease instead of increasing, and your ranking would also drop.

“Al, you played this game before, right? Did you have a ranking?” Rankings were visible to everyone, and upon learning that Alvia had played this game before, Zhou Zhou asked. In his eyes, Alvia was the most powerful person he had ever seen, so he must have had a very high ranking.

Alvia smiled, his common face looking very honest. “It was decent. For a period of time, I was ranked first in all areas, but I haven’t logged in for years, so my ranking has probably dropped a lot.”

Due to his impure motives, Alvia often slacked off in the Nightmare City instances, so although his accumulated score exceeded most players, it was still lower than Zhou Zhou’s, who seriously followed the storyline and completed quests in every instance.

However, several years ago, he did not have the calm and indifferent demeanor he has now in this game. At that young age, he still had a touch of youthful indignation and unwillingness to lose. If he lost a competition, he could go several days without sleeping. Eventually, he reached first place in all areas, but the process was not easy, as there were many experts in the game, and it took him several years to reach the top.

After that, he never entered the game again. One reason was that there were no opponents left, and the other was that there were too many messy things in real life that he had to clean up, the messes left behind by the previous emperor.

First in all areas! Zhou Zhou widened his eyes. Although he did not know how popular this game was, being able to rank first in all areas must have been extremely, extremely impressive.

While the two were talking, a middle-aged man standing behind them, who had been waiting for the competition to start in boredom, also overheard their conversation. Seeing the honest-looking man patiently explaining the various processes of the competition to the beautiful young man beside him, he thought the young man was probably some young master from a noble family and the other man was his bodyguard. He even thought that the nobles were really fussy, needing to bring a bodyguard even to play a game. However, when he heard the young man innocently ask the other man about his ranking, he sneered.

Rankings were not something everyone could have. After all, there were so many people in the entire universe participating in the game. If everyone had a ranking, it would have to go up to billions. Judging by the other man’s ordinary appearance, even if he was a bodyguard for a noble family, he should still be decent, probably at most in the tens of thousands.

The middle-aged man was silently estimating this when he heard the bodyguard calmly say that he was once ranked first in all areas. His first reaction was that this honest-looking guy was really good at boasting. How was he not declaring himself the emperor of the empire?

Being able to achieve an overall first place ranking in one area was already a very high achievement, and all of these players were extremely famous figures in the game. To claim the first place in all areas was simply a dream…

Suddenly, the middle-aged man paused.

No, there was indeed one person who had achieved it.

He recalled the legendary figure who ruled the entire game world many years ago, the only player who achieved an all-around first place ranking. Just like the name of the game, he truly became the only one to reach the top. However, at the peak of his most glorious era, he suddenly disappeared. Many people tried various means and methods to uncover his real-life identity and whereabouts, but all failed.

Until now, many players in the game have tried to replicate his victory, but no one has succeeded.

The middle-aged man looked at the common face sitting in front of him boasting and let out a cold snort. How could this guy dare to impersonate that legendary player? How could anyone believe that?

It was only when he looked towards Zhou Zhou that he realized this young noble was looking at the other man with starry eyes, actually believing him!

The middle-aged man: “……”

He felt that these two were really hopeless, one daring to boast and the other daring to believe. No wonder they ended up together.

Originally, he did not want to meddle, but seeing the silly young man who looked like the kind of fool who would help count the money even after being swindled, he decided to give a warning. Whether the warning was heeded or not was none of his business.

“Hey, hey.” The middle-aged man called out to Zhou Zhou.

In a kind of peculiar state of mind, Alvia calmly and quietly boasted about his past achievements in the game, without mentioning how he had stumbled and fumbled when he first entered the game, experiencing wins and losses. He simply mentioned his later accomplishments.

This was the first time Alvia had told anyone about these things. Usually known for his silent and reserved image, apart from political matters, he rarely shared other content with others, which made his image in the empire appear even more noble and aloof.

But in front of someone he liked, Alvia could not help but want to say more, to let Zhou Zhou know more about him.

It was only when the person behind them saw that they were not responding and even poked Zhou Zhou’s shoulder with his finger that Alvia stopped.

The two turned to look at the unfamiliar middle-aged man. Zhou Zhou blinked, “May I ask what the matter is?”

Seeing that the young noble’s tone was still decent, the middle-aged man felt that his good intentions were not in vain. “Don’t listen to his nonsense. Since you’re new to the game, you may not know that in all these years of the ‘Battle to the Top,’ there has only been one player who achieved an overall first place ranking, and that player has been missing for many years. Some people boast without even picking a credible claim. You must not be deceived.”

As the middle-aged man spoke, he scrutinized Alvia with a very obvious gaze.

Alvia: “……”

Zhou Zhou was stunned for a moment, then said to the middle-aged man, “Thank you, but how do you know that he’s not that person?”

Between the two statements, Zhou Zhou naturally believed Al. He just wanted to know how the other person knew that Al was not that player.

To the young man’s words, the middle-aged man naturally scoffed, “Isn’t it obvious? Over the years, so many people have impersonated that legendary player. It’s nothing new.”

Zhou Zhou looked towards Alvia again. Alvia raised an eyebrow, which looked rather comical on his common face, making Zhou Zhou laugh at his expression.

He smiled at the middle-aged man, knowing that the other party meant well with his warning. “Thank you, I’ll be careful.”

Without refuting that Alvia was indeed that legendary figure, Zhou Zhou thanked the man, and then he and Alvia watched the competition that was about to begin.

The middle-aged man wanted to say more, but seeing the two had a very harmonious relationship, he did not say anything further. He just felt that nowadays, young people would only listen to others’ advice after suffering some hardship themselves.

The competition began, and the people who had been chatting also turned their attention to it.

In the center of the enormous arena, two mechs appeared. One radiated a silvery metallic luster, imposing and icy cold, while the other was fiery red, dazzling and eye-catching. The moment the two mechs appeared, the venue erupted with a burst of enthusiastic cheers.

Zhou Zhou looked at the cheering crowd around him and was also infected by their enthusiasm, clapping vigorously as he sat there.

When the competition officially began and the two mechs started moving, Zhou Zhou, who had been clapping along, focused intently on the two mechs that were almost turning into blurs on the stage.

Many people in the arena had average dynamic vision and could not even see clearly how the two mechs were fighting. They could only rely on the slow-motion replay and detailed explanations on the screen above to understand the combat process.

Zhou Zhou’s amber pupils followed the rapid movements of the mechs. Alvia could see at a glance that Zhou Zhou could also clearly see the actions on stage.

He occasionally glanced at the stage, but most of his attention was still on Zhou Zhou. He speculated that artificial intelligences with human cognition also had their unique personalities, just like Zeus. Zeus seemed interested in everything and always liked to play around, but in reality, he was indifferent to the things he was interested in. Even if he lost them, he would not be sad but would continue to seek out the next interesting thing, with an almost cold emotional perception. Alvia thought Zeus was more like a qualified artificial intelligence.

Zhou Zhou, on the other hand, was more like a human being. He had things he liked and disliked. If he liked something, he would seriously engage with it. If he disliked something, he would not bother with it. Although his instance data showed that his actual emotional fluctuations were more subdued than he outwardly expressed, as the instances progressed, his emotions became more overt, as if he were absorbing and digesting different emotional perceptions and transforming them into his own.

Currently, there were only the two of them as artificial intelligences, with no other references. But Alvia could almost conclude that the developmental paths of these two artificial intelligences were different, although he did not know what they would ultimately become.

After all, their emergence was unpredictable, a miracle one could say.

Seeing that Zhou Zhou was indeed interested, Alvia explained the moves of the two sides, their intentions behind those moves, and predicted what their next moves would be. He even said that the red mech would definitely win in the end.

The middle-aged man behind them could not see the movements of the two mechs very clearly. After all, when experts clashed, many of their moves could only be understood through slow-motion replays.

The common-faced man in front began chatting with the young man again, his tone leisurely and relaxed, in stark contrast to the intense atmosphere of the competition, once again attracting the middle-aged man’s attention.

Hearing him explain things to the young man, the middle-aged man thought the other party’s skill level was indeed quite decent, seeming like an experienced hand. However, when he started predicting the actions of both sides, every sentence he said would appear in the commentator’s mouth shortly after, as if he already knew the entire process of the competition.

The middle-aged man moved closer and closer, listening to his predictions while watching the competition, feeling more and more that he had underestimated the other party. With this level of skill, he could probably rank in the thousands.

Until the entire competition was over, and the result was just as the other party had expected, with the red mech emerging victorious.

Zhou Zhou watched intently, listening to every word Alvia said. As he listened and watched the competition, he learned many new words. After the competition, like the cheering crowd around him, he felt extremely excited, wishing he could go and compete himself.

Since Zhou Zhou wanted to try it, Alvia naturally would not object. However, Zhou Zhou did not know anything yet, so he would have to start learning from the basics.

When Alvia took Zhou Zhou to learn the basics, the middle-aged man posted this incident as an amusing story on the game forum, unaware that it would cause a tremendous uproar.