Chapter 1 When Faced with the Colossus

Mingmei was dazed as she stared at the wheel, nearly as tall as herself.

She had played games set in Old Blue Star before, and had seen buses from that era, but when this enormous, box-like bus, propped up by tires as tall as a person, appeared, Mingmei was still deeply shocked.

[Heavens, how can the bus be so big?!]

[Host, think about it. With such heavy snow and temperatures tens of degrees below zero, could those buses you saw in your previous games even work?] Gui Gui explained, sensing Mingmei’s surprise.

Times were changing. In this kind of hellish weather, even buses had to evolve, right?

Listening to Gui Gui's explanation, Mingmei boarded the giant bus after it stopped.

As soon as she got on, she saw that the driver was a player. The other person glanced at Mingmei, clearly recognizing her.

"Insert coins or swipe your card."

The classmate from the same school spoke, and Mingmei felt around in her pocket, pulling out her bus card to swipe.

"Move to the back."

The bus wasn't crowded. Mingmei saw there were empty seats at the front, but the driver’s reminder indicated something was up.

With her insulated backpack, she walked all the way to the back, stopping near the rear door and taking a seat.

Once seated, she looked around again, and in the very back, she spotted Zhen Po, hands in his pockets, head slightly lowered.

Mingmei finally understood what the driver meant earlier.

Zhen Po, feeling eyes on him, looked up and met Mingmei’s gaze.

His eyes lit up the instant he saw her; he clearly recognized her.

Zhen Po stood up, walked from the back to Mingmei, and before she could speak, he excitedly asked, “Why are you here too? What role are you playing?”

Without immediately answering Zhen Po, Mingmei’s gaze fell on the bulging bag on his shoulder. She smiled and said, "The role assignments are strange. I'm not sure yet… What are you doing in this game?"

"Hey, I'm a teacher."

"Huh?"

He didn't look like a teacher at all.

Seeing Mingmei staring strangely at the backpack behind him, Zhen Po immediately understood what she was wondering, and quickly explained, "No, I teach robotics. These are my tools."

"Wow, robotics?" Mingmei exclaimed. "Your role is much better than Lu Xiaoyao's."

Hearing Mingmei mention Lu Xiaoyao, Zhen Po perked up and asked about her. He learned that they lived in the same neighborhood as him.

The two of them compared notes on the number of classmates they knew.

"I’ve met a few other players on my side. After discussing it, the difference between the roles and the ending is really…"

Zhen Po shook his head at this. He couldn't imagine what his role could do after the space pirates invaded.

Heroically sacrifice himself, or just surrender and wait for the space pirates and the Zerg to destroy each other?

Seeing him getting lost in thought, Mingmei didn't say much, but asked him where he got off the bus and how the foot traffic was there.

To her surprise, Zhen Po's work area was in the city center, which was also Mingmei's ideal location for selling boxed lunches.

Getting off the bus with Zhen Po, Mingmei immediately asked when no one was around, "I'm secretly selling some boxed lunches. Do you want to buy one?"

After asking, she saw him nod decisively, and the deal was instantly made.

Zhen Po's eyes were as wide as copper bells as he pointed at Mingmei, almost unable to speak.

"You, you, you, how can you..."

"I told you, it's a game issue; I want to know too." Mingmei acted like she knew nothing. Zhen Po's brain was probably built by the same construction team as Lu Xiaoyao's, and he didn't suspect a thing, giving Mingmei no chance to show off her superb acting skills.

Therefore, after seeing the comparison, Zhen Po unhesitatingly chose the premium roujiamo (Chinese hamburger) set.

"If you're setting up a stall here in the future, I'll tell the other players when I get back, so they don't get too tilted," Zhen Po said as he devoured half a roujiamo in one bite. Mingmei felt a lump in her throat at his ravenous eating.

It was as if she had eaten that half roujiamo and was choking on it.

"Yes, I hope everyone comes to buy them. The food here…"

Mingmei hadn't tasted it yet, but based on Lu Xiaoyao's description, it was really inedible.

"Tell me about it!"

Speaking of this, Zhen Po also had a lot of complaints. "Last night, I managed to find half a pack of compressed biscuits to eat. The community canteen is really just about surviving; it's worse than nutrient solution!

"The guy upstairs from me is also a player. I don’t know what role he’s playing, but he was wailing like a ghost all night, so I went upstairs to knock on the door and ask what was going on. Guess what?"

Since Zhen Po asked, Mingmei naturally had to answer, "What?"

"It's because he bought a bowl of porridge back at night, but he couldn't accept the color of the water, so he didn't eat it and left it by the window. Then he got hungry in the middle of the night and couldn't resist eating it, but damn, the porridge had frozen into a solid block!

"But that’s not the end of it. He put the frozen porridge in the microwave, and the bowl exploded. He was busy all night and got nothing, so he cried."

Mingmei said, "That’s a bit fragile… It shouldn't be that bad, right?"

Listening to his description, Mingmei wondered how someone with that mental state could become a military academy student. In her uncle's previous games, wouldn't he have gone crazy already?

"Who knows, maybe it's a personality bonus that comes with the game role." As Zhen Po spoke, they arrived at a building. Zhen Po waved goodbye, and as Mingmei watched him go upstairs, she turned and saw a car, with a more vibrant color than the previous bus, stopping across the street.

Soon, Mingmei saw several adults leading a row of little kids, neatly lined up on the side of the road. The adults looked around and then led the little ones across the street, their giggling filling her ears.

"Come on, come on, line up, let Teacher see if any of my little sweeties aren't standing properly~"

The young female teacher stood smiling at the front of the line, while the two male teachers escorted the "trouble makers" across the street.

Mingmei turned her head, looking at the densely packed signs on the building behind her. Several of them were for tutoring centers, kindergartens, and other educational institutions.

Confirming that the group's final destination was here, Mingmei looked back and couldn't help but smile when she saw one of the male teachers protecting the students at the end.

On the one hand, she was happy to have found a classmate, but on the other hand, his smile was so hilariously mournful that she couldn't help but laugh.

If Mingmei didn't have a good memory and know that the guy with the eyeliner, named Wang Dian, was also a student at their school, she would have suspected that the kindergarten had hired such a teacher through some backdoor deal.

The other two teachers were calling out to the little ones with sweet voices, saying "babies~" and "sweeties~", but when it came to Wang Dian, it was a good thing he was standing at the back of the line. Any child who tried to sneak away would turn around and see such a serious, "fierce" expression and would behave themselves.

If you knew he was a teacher, you might think he was a kindergarten security guard.

"Come on, everyone hold hands and follow the teacher~"

The female teacher smiled sweetly and held up a small flag, which the children looked at. She led the group of children into the building. Wang Dian was about to follow when he saw Mingmei standing at the entrance. He immediately greeted the other teacher, fell back a step, and walked towards her.

Seeing him walking over, Mingmei moved to the side. Wang Dian, seeing this, wore a serious expression, as if "something big was about to happen," and his face was even more sour than it had been with the children.

Mingmei could tell that this guy just had a naturally sour face.

"What's up?"

He was very straightforward.

"Do you want to buy a boxed lunch?" Mingmei also cut straight to the chase, stunning Wang Dian.

"Buy what?" Wang Dian subconsciously thought he had misheard. "Wait, you can just buy and sell food here?"

Like Lu Xiaoyao, he was very clear about the rules here. Oh no, it was the roles that made them so clear about the rules here.

"Just tell me if you're going to buy one or not."

"Is it good?"

Great, hearing this, Mingmei knew what was going on.

She opened the backpack she was carrying, and the rich aroma of braised meat wafted out. Wang Dian's originally serious expression instantly softened.

"How much?" Wang Dian's eyes were fixed on the snow-white, soft bread, and the oiled, braised sauce soaking into the crust was definitely not like the yellow dough made from yellow water at this time.

"Points."

As Mingmei finished speaking, the game's electronic prompt sounded in Wang Dian's ears, indicating that a mysterious merchant had been discovered.

"What the heck!"

Wang Dian was dumbfounded, and couldn't help but click his tongue, thinking, Are NPCs these days so overpowered?

He had been talking to her for so long and didn't even realize she wasn't human!

"It's me. The game has a bug, and I came in like this."

Her gaze was too familiar; Mingmei could immediately guess what he was thinking of her. It was nothing more than the game company being awesome and the NPC being overly "humanized."

"Then doesn't that mean your mission is different from ours?"

Wang Dian was still concerned about everyone's game missions. Mingmei nodded slightly, but then shook her head and said, "But doesn't my boxed lunch business depend on everyone surviving to make a good profit? If you guys are gone, what's the point of my mission?"

"Ah, that's true." Wang Dian scratched his head and looked longingly at Mingmei's bag again, licking his lips and asking, "Then, sell me one first… just the regular one."

"Just the regular one?" Mingmei was stunned. This was the first time she had encountered someone who, knowing the difference in water quality, still chose the regular version.

"Yeah, although the water looks bad, it's better than what I got at the community center yesterday, and…" As he spoke, Wang Dian chuckled softly, "I don't have that many points. I need to save them. Fortunately, thanks to the kids at the kindergarten, the water we drink is still drinkable."

For very young children, they couldn't handle the water that adults drank.

Therefore, from birth until the age of eight, their drinking water was subsidized by the state.

Kindergartens also had these types of drinkable water for children.

Wang Dian had drunk some, and it looked similar to the drinking water in Mingmei's regular set.

However, it cost one point to exchange, and for someone like him with only twenty points, even the regular set had to be saved.

He couldn't run out of points before the game was over.

Although the senior had said before entering the game that there would be a large number of points settled after the game ended, calling it a welfare round, who were they kidding?

Had he even looked in the mirror before lying and seeing his mouth was almost as twisted as a villain's in a TV show?

Sure enough, when he entered the game, Wang Dian realized even more what a pit this game was after seeing the game mission and understanding the background!

What did it mean to survive the Zerg invasion and preserve as many people as possible?

The issues and difficulties that Old Blue Star faced back then, the interstellar people might not know, but your company from Hua Blue Star couldn't possibly not know, right?

The earliest group of people on Hua Blue Star, those who had read history, knew that they had survived with a certain amount of luck.

First, they were invaded by space pirates. Their technology couldn't compete, and they couldn't win in a fight.

They were caught and used as "livestock" for labor. They were supposed to be taken away and sold, but then they encountered a Zerg invasion. The space pirates and the Zerg hurt each other, which allowed them to be rescued.

After that, after so many years, they finally had Hua Blue Star.

These histories were only briefly mentioned by the empire's history teachers.

Wang Dian himself had also learned about it, because Hua Blue Star's influence on the interstellar world had been increasing over the years, but it was a gradual and subtle process, permeating many aspects of the interstellar people's lives without them even realizing it.

Wang Dian might look rough and serious on the outside, but he actually specialized in data analysis at school.

Proficient in big data analysis, he had long noticed Hua Blue Star.

Therefore, he had also learned a lot about Hua Blue Star in private.

It was truly inspiring.

And also truly lucky.

By "lucky," Wang Dian meant the group of people who had survived.

Three hundred thousand sounded like a lot, but it was very few compared to the entire population of Old Blue Star!

From the moment he entered the game, Wang Dian had been wondering if he could really become one of those three hundred thousand.

This game was too difficult!

Although he wanted to turn the tables through the game, based on the current situation, he was likely to be squeezed dry of his last remaining points.

Thinking this, Wang Dian couldn't help but look up again at Mingmei, who had over a thousand points before entering the game, and even the change was higher than his total. He was filled with mixed emotions!

Mingmei felt uncomfortable all over from the look and sigh, and goosebumps popped up all over her body.

Mingmei: Weirdo!

Fortunately, he didn't know that two-thirds of the points he spent would go to Mingmei, or it would be hard to say whether Mingmei would see a tough guy shed tears.