Chapter 1 Arrangements

"Magic calendar year 3401, rainy month, 26th day, night"

"The sky fire burns the city, the earth shakes, as if it is the end of the world"

"The ring fades, the royal veins wither, the floating nine cities finally return to the earth, and the glory of magic dims"

"——A brief history of the empire·Prologue: The day of destruction"

………

Xia Yuan opened his eyes.

In front of him was a familiar mirror, but the person reflected in the mirror was young and a little unfamiliar.

He had a handsome face with regular features, and his light black hair was a little longer. The pale skin flickered in the swaying candlelight, and the overall temperament seemed a little weird.

Raising his hand in disbelief, Xia Yuan pressed it on his face with a little trembling. He looked at the figure in the mirror who made the same move and took a deep breath.

"Boom boom boom——"

A huge thunder sounded outside the window, causing Xia Yuan, who was still a little dazed, to tremble all over.

He remembered that night, the thunderstorm caused a short circuit in the power supply, and he had to light a white candle to illuminate himself.

In his memory, three days later - to be precise, two days, twenty hours and sixteen minutes later, the game that was ahead of the entire era for who knows how many years: "Mysterious Era", will release the first trailer.

And began to release semi-public internal beta qualifications to the whole society, announcing its arrival to the entire era.

In this era when mainstream online games are still stuck in VR, an almost unbelievable 98.25% immersive game is a complete dimensionality reduction attack on the entire gaming industry.

The internal beta service will be launched one week after the trailer is released, that is, ten days later.

Major studios confirmed that their publicity was not exaggerated, but was indeed true.

Decisively began to cancel all other game businesses one after another and switch to "Mysterious Era".

When the fifteen-day internal beta ended, ordinary players who had been envious for a long time swarmed in. For a time, the price of game materials soared, and countless people relied on this game to get rich overnight.

Half a month after the official launch of "Mystery Era", the daily activity of all other games dropped to almost zero.

I don't know how many game company bosses pulled their hair out for this, but the wig industry has ushered in a small wave of enthusiasm.

It is said that when "Mystery Era" was first released, a boss of a large game company was unwilling to give up and found the chief engineer of the company's R&D department.

He hoped to crack the principle of the "Mystery Era" game helmet and game cabin within three months and develop similar equipment.

The chief engineer told him on the spot in a tactful and polite way: he was living in a dream.

If someone could crack the principle of that strange helmet within a year, he could take off his ball and kick the cracker in the head!

After hitting a wall in the technical department, the boss who still had a glimmer of luck in his heart went to find the game engineer,

but when he entered the personal office of the chief game engineer, he was shocked to find that this guy was lazy and played "Mystery Era" during work!

Of course, the bosses of game companies will not sit idly by. They found some experts and professors, and they advocated that this game was too real, which might cause serious identity recognition obstacles to players.

And they used this as a reason to hope that the government would take action and completely ban this game.

But for some unknown reason, these "experts" soon stopped one by one, and the release of "Mysterious Era" was completely unaffected.

………

Xia Yuan let out a long breath, ended the frantic memories, patted his face lightly, and thought quickly.

Since he was reborn at this time when "Mysterious Era" had not released a trailer, he had to find a way to get a spot in the internal test of "Mysterious Era".

Although the files will be deleted after the internal test, only those who obtain the internal test qualification can get the priority to purchase the first generation of game cabins that are released in limited quantities worldwide.

The game officials only put 5,000 game cabins in Xia Yuan's continent, and there are too many people and too little porridge.

Except for 500 priority purchases for internal test players, the remaining 4,500 are not accessible to ordinary casual players at all, and they are even booked long before they enter the market.

The biggest difference between the first-generation game helmet and the game cabin is the online time limit.

Considering the player's physical need to eat and go to the toilet, the helmet can only be online for a maximum of 16 hours a day.

The game cabin with nutrient solution as a supplement can be online for 18 hours, which results in the game cabin players having one-eighth more game time than the helmet players!

For high-level players who make this their profession, this is a difference between heaven and earth. And everyone's helmet is bound to their identity, and changing equipment to circumvent restrictions is also not feasible.

In addition, there is also the nutrient solution that comes with the first-generation game cabin, which is also a good thing, but it is only sold to players who own the game cabin. It was stopped after only one month on sale, and the price increase in the future is more outrageous than a house!

Before rebirth, Xia Yuan was just an ordinary casual player, and his family was not rich.

As a result, he naturally didn't get a place in the internal test, didn't buy the first generation game cabin, and didn't stock up on the first generation of nutrient solution. He perfectly dodged all opportunities to make a fortune.

He didn't even realize that his dodging skills were so good when he was fighting the boss!

Although his skills and awareness were also at a high level, due to the game time limit, he gradually widened the gap with the first echelon of game cabin users.

This directly reflected on his income, resulting in a month later, when the second generation game cabin and nutrient solution with lower prices and unlimited quantity were released, he was still short of money.

It wasn't until almost three months after the game was launched that he could barely get enough. But at this time, his level had already widened the gap with the first echelon.

Therefore, he simply let himself go, no longer obsessed with leveling up to improve his strength, but instead visited famous libraries in the mainland.

I began to study documents and materials recording "backstory" in various places, trying to find clues related to treasures, hidden tasks, hidden professions, etc.

This type of players are collectively called plot flow players, and there are quite a few of them.

Xia Yuan's logical analysis ability, insight and luck are all good. In the end, he really unearthed several hidden missions and relics through careful collection of information, obtained a lot of good things, and returned to the first echelon of strength.

This earned him a lot of fame among plot streamers, and he was nicknamed "Lucky Silver Hand".

In the process, he also accidentally unlocked a hidden title: [Junior Relic Scholar]. When trading unidentified relic items, he can get a 5% price correction.

From then on, a door to a new world opened to him, and the extremely real background story of "The Mysterious Era" fascinated him. He even took exploring ancient mysteries as his main mission without doing his job.

Click, click, rumble, rumble—

Another huge thunder echoed across the sky, bringing his thoughts back to reality.

"There are still ten days until the internal beta starts, which is enough..."

Putting aside his thoughts for the time being, he looked at the younger version of himself in the mirror, and an uncontrollable smile crept onto Xia Yuan's cheeks.

He was so full of pride that he couldn't help but raise his chin slightly, put his left hand behind his back, and read a poem on the spot.

"The heroic figure shines in the sun and the moon, and the economics is hidden in the belly. The stranger is like jade, and the young master is unparalleled in the world——"

"Crack - boom, rumble -"

As if in response to his words, a huge thunder exploded in the sky again.

Amidst the thunder, the quietly burning candle flame suddenly swayed, and the shadows in the room squirmed slightly, as if they had gained life.

Xia Yuan was not aware of the slight changes in the candle flame, but when he stared at the eyes reflected in the mirror, he couldn't help but feel an impulse in his heart. He raised his right hand slightly and slowly moved his lips.

Speaking of which, I haven't done this for a long time.

The rain outside the window became even heavier, heavy raindrops pattered against the glass, dazzling lightning continued to divide the dark night sky, and huge thunder could be heard endlessly.

In the dark room, a strange and inexplicable scene appeared——

Under the flickering candlelight, a young man seemed to be possessed and kept making some weird movements in front of the mirror.

He was also reciting strange syllables according to a certain rhythm, as if he was performing some ancient evil ritual!

"Rock-paper-scissors!"

"Rock-paper-scissors!"

………

After a while, Xia Yuan finally decided to stop this meaningless move as his right hand became slightly sore in protest.

I didn’t lose a single round, as expected of me!

Nodding his head in praise in the mirror as if nothing had happened, Xia Yuan turned around and prepared to leave the bathroom...

…………

?

At this time, his movements suddenly stopped.

Wait... in the penultimate game just now, when I played the cloth... he seemed to, did he... play the scissors?

After carefully recalling a certain detail from before, Xia Yuan blinked and his smile gradually solidified.

Can I still lose with mirror guessing?

It was still midsummer in August, but Xia Yuan felt that the air was a little chilly.

Slowly turning his head, he looked at himself in the mirror, and tentatively raised his right hand. The reflection's movements were still synchronized.

Did you remember it wrong?

He relaxed slightly.

"That's right, how could the reflection move on its own?"

On the coffee table in the living room, in the dark display of the electronic watch, blood-red colors formed a row of cold numbers:

[23:59:59]

Although he comforted himself that he was fine, Xia Yuan decided to leave here quickly.

But when he picked up the candle and turned around to go out, the candle flame flickered inexplicably and then went out silently! The room suddenly fell into darkness——

Xia Yuan was startled, and cold sweat broke out on his back.

"Rumble, rumble—"

Just at this moment, a huge blue-white lightning pierced the night sky, accompanied by deafening thunder, and the dazzling electric light suddenly illuminated the room.

At this moment, he noticed a detail with all the hairs on his body standing on end: the corners of the mouth of the figure in the mirror quietly curled up with a strange arc!

As if aware of his gaze, the reflection in the mirror turned its head suddenly! The eyes that turned into pure black and white at some point turned and stared straight at his face!

Xia Yuan's hair stood on end, his brain was like crazy and he wanted to escape, but his legs were as motionless as if they were filled with lead.

The next second, the light brought by the lightning disappeared as instantly as it appeared, and the mirror and reflection returned to darkness.

Only the black and white eyes in the reflection were still clear and eerie.

Xia Yuan stared at the mirror with a cold look on his body. As their eyes connected, a twisted and cold flow of information suddenly came from the dark mirror and was injected into his brain along the lines of their connected gazes.

It was an extremely sour feeling, as if there were hundreds of little black ants crawling in the ravines of the cerebral cortex.

The content of the message is only one sentence:

"At the end of the seven light and dark cycles, you will come, Yunivar——"

Passively accepting the infusion of a large amount of spiritual information, Xia Yuan trembled violently as if he was electrocuted, and held his head in pain with both hands.

The next moment, the ceiling light suddenly lit up, and the soft off-white light fell, dispelling the darkness in the room again.

A new character of Unival has been created. If you don't have fan art of the character, please submit it here.