Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor-Yui, Proofreader-Woojoo
“You were originally a character from a 2D manga. Now, they are doing real-life modeling, trying to preserve the original details while making some adjustments for entertainment purposes.”
“The author of [Eternal Day] had passed away, so after contacting his editor friend, the modeler made adjustments to your appearance.”
At this moment, Yi Shuige adjusted his glasses, revealing his sharp, focused gaze on Nan Zhou.
“According to the initial design, in normal circumstances, you are an ordinary teenager around 1.7 meters tall, the most inconspicuous one. And with each player’s entry, your normal face would randomly update. You have a collection of up to 267 popular face models.”
This design enhanced the suspense and added the game element of “find Nan Zhou in the town” for players.
[Eternal Day] was posed as a mystery + combat instance, with an estimated gameplay time of 3 to 12 hours. The date would be fixed on the night before the glamorous [Day of Extreme Sunlight] in the original setting.”
“Players needed to identify the boss in their daily interactions, be wary of attacks from other light demons, or quickly familiarize themselves with the terrain. On the second day of the “Day of Extreme Light,” they use a variety of items to kill various small monsters and face the boss “Nan Zhou,” whose power, intelligence, speed, and agility are all at the S+ level.”
“After transforming into a light demon, your appearance would try to resemble the original from the manga as much as possible. Your height would increase to 2.1 meters, creating a contrast.”
“Your hair would turn into white wavy patterns, and you would grow pointed fish-like ears that can perceive sound at a dolphin level. You could freely use ‘Light’ as a medium to attack players, and the longer the time passed, the stronger you would become.”
Nan Zhou touched his earlobe.
Yi Shuige rested his chin on his hand, appearing relaxed but with a slightly serious tone.
“So, Nan Zhou, let me ask you now, are these settings I mentioned the same as your experiences?”
Nan Zhou shook his head.
He had never had those strange settings.
It’s just that one day, an intruder entered his world, and drew an apple on his seemingly rich but blank canvas of life.
Li Yinhang was confused when she heard this, “What does this mean?”
“I’ll put it another way,” Yi Shuige said, “Nan Zhou, in your understanding, before you met the player for the first time, did you have any previous memories?”
Li Yinhang had a moment of realization as if she understood Yi Shuige’s question.
In the manga “Eternal Day,” Nan Zhou was indeed the protagonist.
But when “Eternal Day” became a popular game, “Nan Zhou” himself became less important.
What’s more important was for game designers to do their best to satisfy players’ immersion, enjoyment, and desire for exploration.
Players were the most important.
So, in this newly constructed virtual world, as the boss, Nan Zhou couldn’t possibly know about his past.
He should be a beautiful, powerful, data-driven model designed to serve and cater to players.
Hearing about the previous events, even the usually irritable Xie Xiangyu quieted down.
He looked at Nan Zhou with surprise, and his eyes once again burned with intense interest.
Under the various curious, astonished, and passionate gazes, Nan Zhou felt a hand secretly grabbing his wrist, with fingertips gently touching the butterfly tattoo on the side of his wrist, soothingly caressing it.
Jiang Fang did not look at him.
He simply smiled faintly, stood by his side, and welcomed those gazes together.
Nan Zhou suddenly felt at ease.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
He responded, “Hmm.”
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But the words he spoke made Li Yinhang’s hair stand on end.
“It means… Nan Zhou has always existed.”
“Ever since he was born in ‘Eternal Day,’ he has been living in the world of ‘Eternal Day.'”
“The game didn’t recreate a new world, but rather, intentionally or unintentionally, broke down the barriers between two worlds.”
Li Yinhang tightly clutched her clothes and said hesitantly, “Is this… is this possible?”
If this statement is true, then does it mean that all the comics and novels she has read from childhood to now also contain a real world?
They would feel pain, cry, and be driven by the plot, heading towards an unforeseen ending.
She instinctively resisted such a conclusion.
But Jiang Fan easily broke through her defenses with just one sentence.
“Don’t you find this behavior familiar?”
Jiang Fan said, “If none of this is possible, then why are we currently in a mysterious game?”
Yi Shuige exhaled slowly.
“If he is different from others…” Jiang Fan turned his gaze toward Yi Shuige and posed another question, “As engineers who built the game world, you should have been the first to notice something was wrong.”
Upon hearing this, Yi Shuige took off his sunglasses and pressed his temples twice.
He performed this action with familiarity, most likely his habit when deep in thought.
“The [Eternal Da]’ instance had two lead engineers replaced.”
“The first lead engineer’s surname was Mo. I know him. He enjoys dancing the waltz and is quite a romantic person in his personal life.”
“Engineer Mo really loved [Eternal Day] and strive for perfection. That’s why he insisted on pixel-level reconstruction of the closed location, Never Town, and had extreme demands for the crucial element of ‘light and shadow’.”
“His programmers were working to the bone under him, but he showed me the concept art.”
“I have to say, if his vision is realized, it would be another miracle of the Ninth Art.”
“But…”
Yi Shuige lifted his eyes and looked at everyone. “On the day the ‘miracle’ started testing, he died.”
“He smashed through nineteen layers of glass and jumped down. The reason is unknown, and there was no suicide note.”
The more objectively and calmly he narrated, the colder and more chilling it became.
“No one knows why he chose to end his life.”
“This incident made headlines for a while, and eventually, surveillance footage showed that he jumped on his own. It wasn’t murder.”
Yi Shuige described in detail the scene captured by the surveillance footage.
In a dimly lit room, a man in his thirties stood before floor-to-ceiling windows that framed the city’s lights and neon signs. His reflection danced in the center, his face contorted with an intense, wild expression.
He embraced his imaginary dance partner with unclear significance, completing the final solo waltz of his life.
Then, he smashed the glass with his computer, amidst the piercing alarm sound, and with the sound of the wind, he jumped.
“With this solid evidence, coupled with his long-term use of anti-anxiety medication, no one would doubt that it was suicide.”
“The final conclusion was also excessive work pressure. How should I put it, it was not surprising.”
“Vice Chief Engineer Cen, took over his position and everything returned to normal.”
“…No, I should say, everything became even more abnormal.”
According to Yi Shuige’s description, Vice Chief Engineer Cen took nearly three days to sort out the materials and data left behind by Engineer Mo.
Then, it was as if he was possessed by Engineer Mo’s ghost.
He, who was not usually so nitpicky, started working day and night, almost like a madman.
“He grasped the core and boldly overturned the original modeling plan, demanding a complete redesign based on the appearance of Nan Zhou in the comic, and he personally took charge of it.”
He originally came from a modeling background.
“He took full control of the power, meticulously arranging the schedules of other designers, programmers, testers, and modelers within a fixed framework. Each person was only responsible for their own small portion of work, and they had no knowledge of each other’s progress. Everything converged under the supervision of Vice Chief Engineer Cen.”
“This meant that his workload increased exponentially.”
“But he was tirelessly enjoying it.”
“…But he was never like this before.”
Yi Shuige summarized, “It was like he’d discovered a whole new world.”
“He claims that he’s embarking on a great exploration, a journey into a different world.”
Jiang Fang furrowed his eyebrows slightly, “Isn’t anyone supervising him?”
“Everyone in the company is under a lot of work pressure. Some strange behaviors seem completely normal,” Yishui Ge said. “I’ve even seen someone in the break room, wearing a sweatshirt and shorts, saying they want to become light.”
“After the game went live, the review was that it was too difficult, and the boss’s intelligence was too high. Some book fans protested, saying that this kind of ‘liberation’ achieved by killing Nan Zhou went against the spirit of freedom and the pursuit of freedom in the original work.”
“But the voices of these fans were too small. Most people still think that killing ‘Nan Zhou’ is too difficult and affects the player experience.”
Yi Shuige laid out the timeline very clearly, with a simple train of thought, and explained it eloquently, so Li Yinhang could keep up with his ideas.
Li Yinhang asked, “Did engineer Mo have multiple storyline settings when hosting ‘Eternal Day’?”
“Yes,” Yishui Ge said, “Vice Director Cen directly removed the multiple storyline settings, keeping the ‘kill the boss’ storyline and cutting off the ‘I’ll take you out’ redemption storyline.”
“Now it seems… probably because he can’t erase the memory of an existing character. He’s worried that repeated deceit with the goal of clearing the game will backfire, making it hard for you to believe and causing the ‘game’ to spiral out of control. He’s also afraid that you might actually be able to come out with the players.”
Yi Shuige gently touched his lips as he said this.
“There’s another interesting point. In the past, I didn’t understand it, but now I probably get it. That is, from releasing the public beta to the official launch of ‘Eternal Day,’ there were never any bugs in terms of scenes or characters. It ran too smoothly.”
“So far, the most common complaint we’ve received is that the difficulty is too high.”
“Due to strong demands from the company, Vice Director Cen had made two revisions and adjustments, but each time he personally handled it and the correction process became unbelievably long.”
One day, when Yi Shuige was late, he saw Vice Director Cen stumbling out of the office building.
Under the sunlight, he looked like a pale and floating wandering soul, with dark circles under his eyes etched like rings on a weathered tree trunk.
Yi Shuige patted him on the shoulder and waved his hand in front of him.
He had no doubt that this person could collapse and die at any moment.
Vice Director Cen’s consciousness seemed to be nearing its limit due to long-term suffering.
With a blank expression on his face, he greeted Yi Shuige and walked straight ahead.
After taking a few steps, he suddenly seemed to activate his facial expressions, turned his head, and chuckled, “Advisor Yi?”
Yi Shuige turned around.
Vice Director Cen mysteriously lowered his voice and said, “Have you…seen a miracle?”
After dropping this random sentence, he waddled away like a penguin.
All these doubts unfolded, confirming Jiang Fang’s previous speculation.
Engineer Mo opened that door.
He couldn’t accept the existence of another world, or perhaps he wanted to venture into another world.
Anyway, he chose death.
Vice Director Cen, on the other hand, passionately fell in love with the world behind the door.
He kept that door and, with the help of others, created an exact replica of this world as a game world.
But he would unknowingly send players into that deeper inner world, allowing them to experience this perfectly crafted game world while relying on the safety mechanisms of the game.
It also belongs to Nan Zhou’s world.
Nan Zhou thought of the strange frog-like webbed hands on the snowy mountain.
The [Brain Invasion] library mini-game with the one-legged tin soldiers losing their autonomy.
And the swarms of wild swans from “The Wild Swans” mini-game.
Could those be remnants left behind by certain players from a higher dimension?
After explaining all the information he knew, Yi Shuige stood up and straightforwardly, without wasting any words, said, “Alright, I’m done talking. We should probably go now.”
“It’s best not to stay in the same place for too long. I can’t be sure if those players have used their various positioning tools on you.”
Nan Zhou, “Do you know where we plan to go?”
Yi Shuige smiled and said, “If it were me, I would go there. So be prepared, there will be plenty of people waiting for you there. Get ready.”
He turned around and casually patted Xie Xiangyu’s head, saying, “Stay here and wait for me.”
Xie Xiangyu quickly dodged and sneered, “Don’t touch me. I might bite off your finger.”
Yi Shuige’s brain seemed to have no “anger” module loaded at all and replied, “You have good communication skills. Next time, try to finish your sentences properly in bed.”
When Xie Xiangyu’s breathing rate noticeably increased, Nan Zhou walked over to Yi Shuige’s side while carrying NanJi Star.
Yi Shuige glanced at Jiang Fang and gave Nan Zhou a look, asking softly, “Don’t you want to hear about his situation?”
He was referring to the fact that Jiang Fang is the only surviving player of “Universal Gravity” after a serious accident.
Nan Zhou clearly showed interest, but after displaying that hint of interest, he remained silent.
Yi Shuige wanted to know the reason.
Nan Zhou gave him a reason, saying, “He will tell me.”
…Although he was reluctant and would blush, he would stare into his eyes and tell himself word by word.
Nan Zhou wanted to hear Jiang Fang speak to him like that.
Wow. Just, wow.
Thanks for the chapter.
Jiang Fang, please don’t break Nan Zhou’s trust and tell him everything as soon as possible. Time is ticking. The angst is coming. I’m silently preparing my tissues right here…
AWWWWW the confidence in him “He will tell me.” That is so cute >.< Thank you so so much for the update! <3<3