"WORLD BACKGROUND EVOLUTION...99%...100%"
"EVOLUTION COMPLETE, LOADING WORLD."
"THOUGHT ACCELERATION ACTIVATED, SEARCHING FOR SAFE POINTS..."
"SAFE POINT SEARCH COMPLETED, COMMENCING DEPLOYMENT..."
"...DEPLOYMENT SUCCESSFUL!"
Max Stone was startled awake!
He had been sleeping soundly, but the coldness gradually intensified. He subconsciously tried to pull the blanket over himself but found nothing to hold onto.
Initially dressed in his pajamas, Max felt a different texture than the familiar cotton fabric. This sudden realization jolted him awake.
However, after waking up, he was dumbfounded.
The first thing he saw was an unfamiliar grid-patterned ceiling. The familiar layout made Max involuntarily turn his head to look around.
It seemed like an office.
The entire space was laid out similarly to Max's workplace.
The same room size, the same arrangement of desks; the only difference was that instead of his usual computer setup with a monitor and tower, there were sleek all-in-one computers on each desk.
Various files of different sizes were scattered messily on the desktops, and the text on the files was familiar: they were written in a widely-used font.
Some desk drawers were pulled open, as if they had been rummaged through. The floor was a mess, littered with files, broken glass cups, and other miscellaneous items.
Just as he was bewildered, the next scene left him even more confused.
A light blue rectangular holographic screen suddenly appeared in front of Max, with snowflakes floating around. The transparent icy frame gave off a wintry feeling.
On the screen, Max saw familiar characters arranged in rows.
But the combination of these characters left Max dumbstruck once more.
"Current World: 《Ice Age: Winter is Coming》"
"Category: Post-Apocalyptic Crisis"
"Game Mode: Easy"
"World Realism: 95%"
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"World Background: The first snowfall in 2056 came later than usual. No one on Earth could have predicted that once it started, it would never stop."
Proceed with the secondary creation.
Temperatures plummeted, storms, hail, earthquakes…
As natural disasters occurred frequently, the entire world seemed to be encased in ice. All of this happened in a short period of time, and most terrifyingly, the sun appeared to be hibernating, its heat receding, and Earth's illumination began to decrease.
During the day, a snowy world; at night, extreme cold waves; changes at the technological level; human lives flickering like a candle in the wind. Destruction was almost instantaneous, and now, the true winter apocalypse was about to arrive…”
These contents were written clearly in large, simplified characters, explaining the background concisely.
However, for Max…
"What the hell…"
"Who can tell me what the hell is going on?!!!"
…
Rewind the clock by one month to October, 2028, under the bright sun.
Although it was nearly autumn, Far Ocean City, one of the five hottest cities in Daming, showed no signs of the bleakness of fall. Green willows and grass lined the sidewalks, and the blazing sun still felt like the height of summer.
Max was leisurely idling at his desk in his company.
This company mainly focused on game development and platforms, and Max was a game planner, or more precisely, a story planner.
Game planning involves various roles, such as numerical planning, system planning, and story planning. Max's primary responsibility as a story planner was to collaborate with the system planners to create the game's background and in-game dialogue system.
Yes, those sweet and charming lines spoken by the game's characters were designed by someone like him.
His job had some similarities to that of struggling writers.
As the previous project had ended with favorable feedback, the entire planning department received a considerable bonus. The company was now working on a new single-player survival game.
The project had just started, and the system planners were already working. Max had completed the summary of his last project a few days ago, and the new project hadn't yet reached his part of the process, so he had been idling for the past few days.
Time always flies when you're idling, and soon it was time to leave work.
Max clocked out at precisely 17:30:01, happily picked up his backpack, and left the office.
Squeezing onto the crowded subway, Max arrived home and cheerfully ordered some takeout. He then turned on his computer, logged onto his company's Gear Platform, and started playing his favorite sandbox game.
Video games were one of the few hobbies Max had in this world and probably his most important one. He had a unique relationship with gaming.
As everyone knows, Starting Point is an orphanage.
Max was a member of the Far Ocean Starting Point Orphanage.
At the age of thirteen, Max's grandfather passed away from a heart attack, and his parents left him due to an accident when he was fourteen. He was then placed in a Starting Point Orphanage in the Far Ocean's Fengzhi District.
That time in his life wasn't a pleasant memory for Max, and he didn't want to revisit it. However, during that period, video games indeed played a unique role in his life.
Simply put, it's a clichéd story of someone accidentally saved by gaming.
After playing for a while, eating his takeout, and playing a few rounds of a popular game with friends, it was already 11 PM. Max finished the last game with his friends, logged off, washed up, lay in bed, and scrolled through some short videos. At 11:45 PM, he put down his phone and finally fell asleep just before midnight…