New Game

Kiana's melancholy remained known to no one.

After Chen Changsheng briefly updated her on Sirin's recent situation, he began to plan for Ai's future growth.

In the real world, as Serafall became deeply engrossed in the game, the new generation of devils from the Underworld, acting under Beelzebub's plan, frantically funneled devils into the game.

Meanwhile, after becoming Rias's pawn, Koizumi Koichi, with the support of the Gremory clan, wanted to unite numerous capital groups to monopolize the virtual reality gaming industry. Many high-ranking members of the Gremory clan even planned to use this opportunity to promote the Underworld, with the intention of establishing the Gremory family as the leader when the time came.

Their idea was naturally excellent. After all, even the devils of the Underworld actually needed human faith.

It was just that even without faith, they could still rely on other methods to grow stronger.

However, while they had beautiful dreams, Chen Changsheng would never let them get their way.

If they monopolized virtual reality games, wouldn't that suppress Ai's path to godhood?

Therefore, Chen Changsheng directly pulled the rug out from under them.

He open-sourced all the virtual reality technology mastered by Akihiko Kayaba and had Ai act directly as the server, allowing all game companies and even individual game creators to develop virtual reality games.

They only needed to provide the ideas, world-building, and code.

Everything else was left to Ai.

Just like that, a few months ago, a mysterious gaming platform equipped with foolproof game development software swept across the entire internet.

Countless players and game creators hailed the software's publisher, the God of Games, as the savior of the gaming industry.

Through this, Ai also managed to absorb a certain amount of faith even before Aincrad was cleared.

And now, as Aincrad was about to be conquered by the players, game creators in the real world took advantage of the software and platform's convenience to launch a massive number of games.

Today was the day of the open beta for the platform's first virtual reality game.

At this point, someone might ask: how could a virtual reality game enter open beta so quickly?

It had only been a few months, right?

That would simply be underestimating the shamelessness and drive of those capitalists when it came to making money.

As early as when the platform first appeared before the players, many major game companies had already tried to use various connections to bring it down.

However, after discovering that the platform's technological capabilities were levels beyond theirs and seeing all their cyberattacks fail...

Adopting the mentality of if you cannot beat them, join them, they quickly rewrote the code of their previous games and prepared to publish them on the platform.

Since they could not stop it, they would immediately seize the market.

If it were not for the fact that producing gaming helmets required modifying production lines, they could have churned out a virtual reality game in a week.

However, the gameplay experience of such games would be entirely a matter of personal opinion.

Ai, once the second virtual reality game is released, take over that game and judge for yourself whether it qualifies to be absorbed into the Gaming Divine Realm.

Yes, Master.

The so-called Gaming Divine Realm was actually the trinity godhood of technology, Shinto, and Immortal Dao within Ai's main body. It was also her true form.

The Gaming Divine Realm was not just a supercomputer that was rapidly growing every moment, but also a spiritual world that was constantly expanding.

The nourishment for this expansion came from the dissipated spiritual energy of the players, their flashes of inspiration, massive amounts of faith, and the data of future virtual reality games.

In the future, for every virtual reality game acknowledged by Ai, all of its data would transform into a spiritual world like Aincrad and appear within the Gaming Divine Realm.

...

Huaxia, Goose Factory, Gaming Department.

Pony Ma, who had not paid attention to the gaming department for a long time, paid a rare visit to the studio to supervise and command on-site.

Because after two months of hype, the game under his banner that used to be the company's cash cow was finally preparing for its first open beta under the national spotlight.

He had paid a massive price for this open beta.

Just hiring engineers from all over the country to rapidly modify a large number of assembly lines to produce gaming helmets had cost him hundreds of millions in cash flow.

And that was only because those assembly lines originally belonged to him anyway.

Otherwise, the price would have been even higher.

But also because of this huge investment, he finally managed to rewrite all the game's code ahead of the other major companies.

Now, with millions of gaming helmets completely sold out, even he had come to the gaming department, ready to monitor this grand occasion at any moment.

Boss, there are only ten minutes left until the open beta begins.

Just then, the secretary approached Pony Ma and spoke in a low voice.

Hearing this, Pony Ma nodded.

Let us hope there are no accidents this time.

As he spoke, he looked at the large screen nearby used for observing real-time data. Looking at the icon of the software that had suddenly risen to prominence over the past few months, he sighed softly.

Sigh, you really need to own the platform.

But what do you think this new gaming platform is really after?

Open-sourcing virtual reality technology, providing free servers, and even offering that foolproof development software, the resources required for just these things are already astronomical.

Yet they have no profitable projects, and they do not even take a cut of the game revenues.

I always feel like they are plotting something bigger.

Pony Ma was incredibly worried.

However, no matter what they were plotting, the ones who should be most anxious were not him, but his peers who were deeply entrenched in the gaming industry.

After all, although gaming was still a very important source of cash flow for his company, it was no longer the only one.

As he had extended the company's tentacles into various fields, even if a massive earthquake struck the gaming world in the future, he could cut his losses and survive.

This was also why the Goose Factory was the only one capable of launching the first virtual reality game ahead of everyone else.

And just as his thoughts were shifting, the game officially began its open beta.

On the data monitoring screen, the number of player logins skyrocketed like a rocket, growing rapidly at a rate of tens of thousands per second. In just a few minutes, the number of concurrent online players had reached a massive one million.

Seeing this, Pony Ma breathed a slight sigh of relief.

Forget it, let us not worry about those things for now.

He said, looking at his secretary.

Xiao Wu, pay close attention to the profitability on the first day of the server launch. Give me the data tomorrow morning.

Understood, President Ma.

After giving his instructions, Pony Ma happily left the gaming department.

Regardless of what the future held for the gaming industry, at least in the short term, their Goose Factory could ride this tailwind to see a huge surge in their stock prices.

He also needed to hurry up and secure enough benefits for himself.

And just as Pony Ma returned to his office full of anticipation and began fighting for his own interests...

Huaxia's first virtual reality game, Dungeon and Fighter.

In the game, as players of all ages used their gaming helmets to enter the game world known as the Arad Continent, excitedly embarking on their adventures, Ai's tentacles had already enveloped the game.

"So it is this game."

Ai observed the mountain of messy code of the game before her, curling her lips in slight disdain.

"There is way too much garbage in here. They completely threw away their dignity just to make a quick buck."

"However, Master seems to really like this game. Plus, it has a fully fleshed-out worldview and a highly robust power system. It really does seem perfect to serve as the stage for my first global debut. I will choose you, then."

After muttering to herself, Ai hesitated no longer. She immediately expended a portion of the energy she had accumulated over this time, pulling the entire game into her own Divine Realm.