True Apocalypse Game

Staring at the dark screen, Vasily felt a sudden emptiness in his heart.

The game was just too realistic. Once it hit midnight in-game, it actually forced the characters to rest, which meant the players were all forcibly logged out.

’Who would’ve thought there’d be a forced logout mechanic.’

He found himself faintly hoping it would all start again soon.

And he knew he definitely wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

It was nearly midnight in Moscow. ’Players in other regions must have it rough,’ he thought. ’It should be five in the morning in Hua Country, and night has probably just fallen over in Eagle Country.’

After a quick shower, he got into bed, kissed his wife goodnight, and closed his eyes. But Vasily couldn’t fall asleep.

The game he had just experienced was so intensely realistic it had shaken him to the core.

The nuclear war scene was a perfect depiction of Hell on Earth.

’No matter what, we can’t let this happen in reality.’

’Perhaps the very existence of the Dead Hand system is a mistake.’

He didn’t fall asleep until nearly three in the morning, Moscow time. A little over two hours later, his alarm jolted him awake, and he immediately got out of bed and went to his study.

Despite sleeping for only a little over two hours, his eagerness to play the game banished any hint of fatigue. He was practically buzzing with excitement.

After booting up his computer and logging in, a brand-new scene appeared before his eyes. It seemed the forced logout had just been for a game update.

The sky was overcast, as if hidden behind a thick curtain, and the ground was covered in gray snow.

As far as the eye could see, the wasteland was devoid of green. There was only gray.

It was cold. The ambient temperature was nearly twenty degrees lower than before.

Even the Shelter they were in now felt precarious.

In the time between logging off and logging back in, more than two years had passed in-game.

The nuclear winter was still in full effect.

The players exchanged brief greetings. It was obvious many of them were listless and drained of energy, clearly from lack of sleep or having their days and nights turned upside down.

Time in the game then began to accelerate.

Their Shelter had limited resources but far too many people. Food was quickly running out, and finally, a violent conflict erupted.

The players were naturally all in the same faction, but the NPCs had split into several, with some soldiers who had integrated with the residents over the two years forming their own cliques.

A fierce conflict erupted. In the end, thanks to their coordination, the players’ faction emerged victorious. Including their allied NPCs, their group numbered around two hundred.

The more than seven hundred people from the other factions were all brutally slaughtered. The players lost over thirty of their own, who vanished on the spot—presumably to respawn back in the city ruins where they started.

Now, there wasn’t enough food in the Shelter. To survive, the players and the remaining NPCs began to sustain themselves on the dead.

This intense moral transgression was a shock to every player. Even though it was just a game, they had to watch the entire process of the bodies being prepared.

There were even close-up shots of bodies being disemboweled—clearly the developers’ sick sense of humor.

They endured the nausea, and after some time, the nuclear winter finally passed. News arrived of other human survivors. It was said that the remnants of humanity wanted to hold a conference for all mankind to determine the future course of civilization.

Not only people from their land but also those from distant continents were reportedly answering the radio summons.

After a discussion, the squad Vasily and Li Tongchen belonged to immediately decided they had to check it out as well.

After all, based on the information, it had to be a main story quest.

Their Shelter still had plenty of vehicles, which meant they were relatively well-supplied.

The group set out by car and arrived at a newly constructed city in the middle of the wilderness.

Everything there was brand-new. The city was clean and orderly, like a flower of hope blossoming in the wasteland.

As expected, there were plenty of other players there as well.

Or rather, it seemed most players had made their way there.

The ones who hadn’t made it had likely died in accidents along the way.

However, judging by the appearance of their in-game characters, the other players had clearly not been doing well.

Many were missing arms or legs.

And while their game characters were resilient, their injuries never seemed to heal properly, and their disfigured faces grew more ugly and grotesque.

The same was true for the NPCs. Few were unscathed, and some had even brought with them deformed infants born after the war.

But none of that mattered anymore, because this was to be a conference of hope, one that would decide the future.

Humanity was about to be reborn.

Time in the game accelerated dramatically. After a few more in-game days, more and more representatives of humanity’s remnants arrived from all corners of the globe.

Some arrived in armored vehicles, others came by ship from across the sea, while still others landed planes at the airport outside the city.

The remnants of humanity officially began the conference.

The conference, held in the stadium of the City of Hope, was dubbed the Hope Conference. It was attended by nearly twenty thousand people.

Everyone felt a deep-seated disgust and hatred for the global nuclear war.

The years of miserable survival during the nuclear winter had instilled in many an instinctual revulsion toward technology.

Representatives from America and the Western Pacific Islands proposed that the remnants of humanity return to an agrarian age, regressing their technology to forever prevent the emergence and development of nuclear power.

The proposal was met with approval from most of the NPCs. Even many of the players, who internally disagreed, kept their silence.

They had only been playing the game for a short while, yet they already felt a suffocating sense of despair and found the misery almost unbearable.

If someone were to actually survive for years in such an apocalyptic world, it was plausible that everything they once believed in would completely shatter. Developing a hatred for technology would be a normal reaction.

Besides, if this agreement was reached within the game, it would greatly increase the chances of human civilization’s resurgence.

That would also make it easier for them to complete their own missions.

After all, upon reconnecting and comparing notes, the players discovered that of their three main objectives, they only had a lead on one. The nuclear strikes had been stopped, but they had absolutely no clues about the other two.

Soon, the agreement was reached, and the representatives of the human survivors began to sign the Hope Covenant.

The covenant not only called for technological regression but also declared that humanity would never again wage war amongst itself. It was a proclamation of peace.

The events of the conference were broadcast across the globe via radio waves. The nearly obsolete Morse code once again proved its worth.

The players watched this unfold with a sense of relief, as if they had personally lived through it all and witnessed an epic moment in human history.

The dark clouds that had long blanketed the sky finally parted, allowing rays of sunlight to stream down into the stadium, filling the players with profound relief.

Vasily, Li Tongchen, and John exchanged a look and clapped each other on the shoulder, sharing a moment of heavy, heartfelt relief like old friends.

Just then, a piercing shriek tore through the sky once more. A fireball, like a meteor, descended from above, instantly splitting into eight separate warheads that rained down on different parts of the City of Hope.

Towering mushroom clouds billowed into the sky, followed by shockwaves and searing firestorms that rushed in from all directions. The stadium was at the epicenter of several of the nuclear detonations.

The players on site stared at each other in stunned disbelief. Many were incinerated by the super-heated flames before they could even utter a curse, turned instantly to ash...

"Motherfucker!" A furious roar erupted from the Director’s office at Eagle Country CIA Headquarters, followed by the CRASH of a computer hitting the floor and a cacophony of smashing sounds.

The staff members passing by the office door were scared into absolute silence, not daring to make a single peep.