Lu Qiuchen was forcibly awakened by Beta while still in a daze. When he opened his eyes, he found himself still lying inside the same mine cave, with yellow warning signs flashing relentlessly before his vision.
“This is bad! The time to enter the dungeon is almost here! I’ve survived all the previous stages, and liberation is just within reach. Luckily, nothing went wrong here.”
The countdown for the final stage of the story mission ticked down second by second before his eyes. Lu Qiuchen had no idea how long he had been unconscious, but he could feel his body brimming with power. It seemed that the bloodline fusion that Odin spoke of had indeed succeeded.
‘Am I a Gold Dragon now? Or a Silver Dragon? Or perhaps a Gold-Silver Dragon?’
Lu Qiuchen’s mind was filled with wild thoughts. Seeing that the dungeon countdown was about to end, and without even having the chance to check his status or the upcoming mission details, he hastily summoned Beta and entered the game dungeon.
*****
Since the last prank, Liu Qingzhu hadn’t mentioned Lu Qiuchen’s matter again, but Zhang Cheng, after some “psychological counseling” from his mother, began to spiral into strange thoughts.
For several consecutive nights, Zhang Cheng’s dreams were filled with images of Lu Qiuchen. At first, these were just memories of the two of them, but as time went on, things took a more perverse turn. Zhang Cheng began to frequently dream of Lu Qiuchen’s female form.
In these dreams, their relationship rapidly deepened—friendship distorted—until eventually there were scenes of a ceremonial hall and wedding dresses.
Zhang Cheng jolted awake, sitting up abruptly. His mind replayed the image of a beautiful woman in a pure white veil dress, wearing white gloves, extending her hand to him with a charming face and tender, affectionate eyes. An uncontrollable flicker of anticipation stirred deep in his heart.
Realizing the twisted nature of his thoughts, Zhang Cheng chastised himself, slapping his cheeks twice, but his heart secretly began justifying those feelings. After all, beautiful things always arouse desire and provoke imagination.
Determined to shake off these thoughts, Zhang Cheng prepared to get out of bed and wash his face to clear his mind. But when he pulled back the covers, he saw his perfectly straight small figure covered in a sticky, milky-white liquid on the bedsheet, and he fell into deep contemplation. No wonder he’d felt something strange earlier.
He got up, opened his wardrobe, and quickly changed into a fresh set of pajamas. After opening the door and seeing no one in the hallway, he quietly slipped out with his underwear in hand, heading downstairs to the washing machine.
The washing machine was tucked away beneath the staircase on the first floor. Zhang Cheng peeked around and, seeing the living room empty, breathed a sigh of relief and dashed downstairs.
Rounding the corner of the stairs, he spotted his mother standing inside the laundry room, loading clothes into the washing machine. Hearing his footsteps, she looked up at him.
Zhang Cheng froze. He had never expected his mother to be there. Forcing calm, he slowed his pace and went to another washing machine, hurriedly stuffing the clothes and bedsheets he held into it under her puzzled gaze.
Liu Qingzhu had initially intended to lecture Zhang Cheng about being more composed but suddenly sniffled, realizing the reason behind her son’s panic that day. A teasing smile appeared in her eyes.
After starting the washing machine and turning around, their eyes met. Zhang Cheng coughed guiltily and hastily returned upstairs, unaware that Liu Qingzhu, still downstairs, wore a satisfied grin and made an OK gesture to the empty air before her.
In the days that followed, Zhang Cheng blushed every time he saw Liu Qingzhu, embarrassed and awkward. Adding to that, his relationship with Zhang Guang was far from smooth. Once the third day of the New Year passed, he found an excuse and hurried back to his home in the city center.
Logging into Eternal through the game pod, Zhang Cheng was immediately greeted by a glaring system announcement.
“Main storyline Chapter One, final stage has been unlocked for all players level 80 and above. Players may now accept the quest at the Adventurers’ Guild.”
“Quest Objective: Exterminate the Calamity Dragon.” Zhang Cheng opened his quest log and, after reading the objective, headed toward the local Adventurers’ Guild.
Zhang Cheng had learned from Lu Qiuchen that she wouldn’t truly die from the main storyline’s death scenes, so a weight lifted from his heart. He no longer worried about it.
Already at the final boss battle? ‘Because I’ve been focusing on work recently, my playtime has decreased, and I haven’t been keeping up with game news,’ he thought. He didn’t even know the Bone Dragon’s first kill had already happened.
Opening the level leaderboard, he saw the top 100 players were around level 95, while the lowest on the list was nearly two levels ahead of him. At level 86, he had already been left far behind by the main group.
After entering the Adventurers’ Guild and accepting the quest, Zhang Cheng discovered this main storyline mission, like the second phase, was a massive dungeon where all players band together to hunt a world boss.
According to background info, the “Calamity Dragon” Cecilia’s every appearance brought tremendous suffering to humanity. Recently, a legendary-level hidden-identity expert discovered the demon race’s plan. On top of that, the discovery of the dragon soul remnants left exposed after the Bone Dragon’s defeat confirmed the demon race’s alliance with Cecilia.
This matter quickly drew the highest attention from all factions on the southern continent. Cecilia, the “Calamity Dragon,” was once again under a wanted notice.
Just days ago, adventurers found traces suspected to be Cecilia’s near the border of the Kingdom of Knights and the Morton Kingdom. They promptly reported this intelligence to the Adventurers’ Guild headquarters.
The guild took it very seriously, quickly dispatching personnel to verify the remnants. It was confirmed to be Cecilia’s traces. After further exploration, Cecilia was found asleep in a valley within Morton Kingdom.
The Adventurers’ Guild rapidly mobilized internally and, together with major factions such as the Church, launched a joint extermination campaign against the “Calamity Dragon.”
Within the guild, a large number of epic-level adventurer teams, along with the only two legendary-level adventurer teams, were deployed to participate in the operation.
Adult dragons are all legendary-level powerhouses, their strength exceeding other races’ equivalents by one to two times. This made the mission a truly once-in-a-millennium legendary-level extermination quest.
By the rules, players below epic level weren’t permitted to participate, but due to heavy casualties in prior guild battles, epic teams and saint-tier adventurers were specially allowed on the battlefield outskirts to guard against possible mid- and low-level demon incursions.
Of course, to players, this was just background lore. Once on the battlefield, NPCs were irrelevant—players could pile corpses on the boss and win.
Zhang Cheng didn’t pay much attention to these details, choosing instead to catch up on other previously missed information.
Like the second-phase battlefield dungeon, the world boss would appear inside an exclusive massive dungeon that perfectly replicated the open world’s terrain.
However, this time there were notable differences: many support NPCs were added to assist players in tackling the boss.
A recent promotional event attracted a flood of new players. The developers unusually launched a double experience event to give more players a chance to face the boss.
The official reason was that in Eternal, the giant dungeon that can hold millions of players and features the world boss is extremely unique—it won’t respawn and appears only once with the main storyline.
It was essentially a limited-time event that would not be replayed. Players who missed it could only imagine the boss’s hologram in later mainline quests.
Many players voiced dissatisfaction with this setup, but the game company arrogantly responded that it was a limited-time benefit for core players.
In truth, the company’s real aim was to boost player retention by converting casual players into core users. This was an open secret.
Since Eternal had no competitors yet, players had no choice but to accept these heavy-handed terms. After all, most wouldn’t quit over this, especially since Eternal offered unprecedented unique gameplay experiences.
Due to the massive outcry from new players after the announcement, the company finally compromised and launched the double experience event.
Zhang Cheng no longer worried about his level, only needing to meet the minimum requirement to join the new mainline.
White light flickered all around as players began activating teleportation. Seeing this, Zhang Cheng realized the dungeon was opening and quickly followed suit.
Since today was a holiday and weekend, most players worldwide had time to play. The massive influx caused queueing to enter the dungeon—something unheard of even during the public beta—highlighting Eternal’s current popularity.
Watching his rank rapidly climb, Zhang Cheng recalled the player data he had seen in the company’s backend before the holiday, a worried look crossing his face.
By then, Eternal had been live for 40 days, attracting nearly two billion players worldwide—over one-fifth of the global population.
Considering server stability and previous hacker attacks, Eternal Group’s headquarters planned to expand their North American and Asian branches, building a new supercomputer, Omega “w,” to help shoulder the heavy workload currently handled by Beta “β.”
Zhang Cheng’s unease stemmed from his intuition that Zhang Guang had withheld information.
If the group merely wanted to return to the Eternal world, they could easily secure enough qualified test subjects through official scientific research channels, using huge funds or government cooperation. Why expend so much effort to establish a game company on Earth?
Moreover, the Eternal residents inside the group had already confirmed the possibility of returning home through Lu Qiuchen. Logically, they should have conducted more experiments to collect data by now. Instead, they abandoned that and shifted their focus to the game company’s commercial success, ramping up publicity. There had to be hidden motives behind this.
Just as Zhang Cheng’s mind wandered with these thoughts, his turn in the queue arrived. White light enveloped his body and transported him into the dungeon.