The Unbounded City pulsed with a frenetic energy, its digital streets awash in a kaleidoscope of neon and holographic allure. Virtual reality had evolved into a playground of infinite sensation, catering to every whim—thrill, nostalgia, or forbidden desire. In their younger days, Zhou Wei, Ya Ning, and Yan Jingyi had flocked here for the Sky Ladder tournaments, honing their mech combat skills in high-stakes duels. But now, barred from the Federation's elite team and with their academy schedules light, the competitive circuit held little appeal. Their ranks had slipped from neglect, and matching against mid-tier opponents felt like slaughtering minnows in a pond—pointless and unsatisfying.
"Why don't we try the virtual theater?" Ya Ning suggested, his voice bright with curiosity.
The "virtual theater" was no stage for public performances but a collaborative role-playing game, a narrative labyrinth where players dove into scripted worlds. Each scenario had a fixed backdrop, but the roles, events, and outcomes were fluid, shaped by player choices. A single script could spawn hundreds of endings, with non-player characters (NPCs) reacting dynamically to every decision, their behaviors driven by the Unbounded City's colossal computational power. The result was a game of dizzying randomness and replayability, a digital tapestry woven from chaos and choice.
"I've heard about it," Zhou Wei said, his tone measured. "They say the immersion's so intense it feels like a second life. Forum posts mention players breaking down, not from clever writing but from how real it feels."
Jingyi glanced at the city's shimmering lights, her brow arching. "More real than this?"
"Could be the mental energy involved," Ya Ning said, lowering his voice as they wove through the bustling crowd. "Most of the City's systems require mental input to function. But haven't you ever wondered? Some of the tech here feels too advanced—beyond even the Federation or Empire's cutting edge. Any single innovation could revolutionize the real world, bring untold wealth. Yet no one's cashed in. Either they don't dare, or…" His voice dropped to a whisper. "They can't."
"There's something hidden here," he added, barely audible. "We've explored most of the City over the years, but this virtual theater's new. We've never touched it."
Jingyi cut him off, her patience thinning. "So you just want to play tourist? Look, I'm not into this acting nonsense. What if I get stuck as some frail scholar? I'd rather punch my way out than simper through a script."
As military cadets, the trio's martial prowess far outstripped the average citizen. In reality, their first instinct was to solve problems with force. But the virtual theater was unforgiving, its systems blind to real-world skills. A player's avatar was bound by the scenario's rules, not their personal strength. Combat experience meant little if the game's logic decreed defeat, its narrative kills as ruthless as fate.
"You've got a point," Ya Ning conceded, scratching his head. "Let me see if there's a scenario where we can customize our stats."
Minutes later, he returned with news. "Good and bad. Good: there are scenarios where you can build your character from scratch, full stat control. Bad: they're nightmare-tier, one-life-only. No saves, no retries. If you die, your character's gone, and if the team wipes, the game ends. You're locked out for three weeks."
In gaming, the drive was to see a story through, for better or worse. A three-week lockout meant a bad ending could haunt you—either fading into indifference or gnawing at your patience. For team players, a mid-game wipe without even a cinematic payoff was a special kind of frustration, leaving the story unresolved.
"Low-difficulty scenarios are safer," Ya Ning said. "Easier to clear, but the AI's dumber, and side quests are sparse. Less computing power."
Jingyi scrolled through the theater's script list, her frown deepening. The low-tier options were lackluster: saccharine school romances, pastoral farming sims, or management games. These required minimal strategy—push the plot or follow algorithms for crops and commerce. Safe, leisurely, but dull. One solo script, I Am the Empire's Lost Emperor, caught her eye, clearly riffing on Bai Sha's rise from obscurity to Crown Heir. The twist? The protagonist started as an amnesiac emperor with absolute power, tasked with unmasking the conspirators behind their exile. It was pure wish-fulfillment, too easy for Jingyi's taste.
"Why bother with kiddie scripts?" she said, baring her teeth. She dragged the list to the top, where the hardest scenarios gleamed like a gauntlet. Pointing to the pinnacle, she declared, "If we're playing, we go big."
The top script, Tomorrow's Lighthouse, was labeled nightmare-tier, freshly released with no forum guides or spoilers. Its setting was a mystery, but its stat allowance was generous, letting players craft near-perfect avatars—hexagonal warriors balanced in every trait. The promise of such freedom sparked curiosity about its challenges.
"You sure?" Ya Ning asked, wincing. "This tough, and you die at the start? You'll be stuck watching us."
Jingyi bristled. "Who says I'll die first? Maybe it's you two!"
"Fine, nightmare it is," Ya Ning said, raising his hands. "Stat allocation comes after the intro. Balance your points and pick skills that fit the setting to survive." He turned to Zhou Wei. "You in?"
Zhou Wei blinked, snapping out of a brief daze. "Yeah, no problem."
Since parting with Zhou Ying, he'd been prone to these lapses, his mind drifting to his brother's perilous gambit at the Zhou estate. Ya Ning and Jingyi exchanged a knowing glance but said nothing.
They approached the virtual theater, a weathered building steeped in atmosphere, its facade evoking an ancient opera house. No staff or AI guides greeted them; a self-service terminal stood at the entrance. They selected team play and Tomorrow's Lighthouse. A light screen flashed: Confirm entry to nightmare-tier scenario 'Tomorrow's Lighthouse'? Yes/No.
All three tapped Yes.
A wave of disorientation hit, a weightless vertigo as their surroundings dissolved into fragmented light. They were cocooned in darkness, their minds adrift on a digital sea—the City's servers weaving a new reality. They lost sense of each other, a known quirk: team players spawned apart, scattered across the scenario's world. Anticipating this, Jingyi felt a thrill, eager for the opening narrative and her chance to craft her avatar.
A curtain rose before her, shimmering with vibrant, alien patterns that seemed alive yet indecipherable. A voice, soft and somber, filled her ears.
"We've never encountered intelligent life beyond ourselves. Extraterrestrial civilizations, a missing piece in humanity's saga, have eluded us like a lost puzzle fragment. We scoured the cosmos to break this fated solitude, but found nothing."
"We imagined alien civilizations, born beyond the Milky Way, with values, logic, and biology vastly different from ours. Perhaps, in a million-to-one chance, we could understand each other."
"But we never foresaw that our first contact would herald humanity's doom."
"Perhaps the universe's resources are finite, and civilizations must vie for survival. We prepared for a war to decide our fate—"
A star map materialized, vast and intricate, pitting glowing human colonies against swarms of alien forces. Jingyi's eyes widened. Starbugs. The scenario was set during the Starbug invasion, an era predating mech soldiers, explaining the absence of her familiar skills.
Her vision darkened, and a panel appeared, black with white text: Please allocate your initial attributes.
The points were plentiful, enough to max out strength, intellect, and willpower. Jingyi didn't hesitate, pumping her combat stats to the limit. A skill tree unfolded, but mech piloting was absent. She selected military training, hand-to-hand combat, firearms mastery, and starship piloting, adapting to the era's tech.
The voice resumed: "Humanity's collective wisdom forms a 'Lighthouse' on the cosmic shore, researching a technology vital to our survival. It may succeed—or fail."
"Our civilization, born from a cosmic spark, will it fade like foam on the tide?"
A light burst before her, and she entered the scenario. Objective: Reach the Lighthouse and reunite with your team.
Jingyi felt a weight in her hands—a bulky, black-armored suit and a high-caliber rifle. Firearms mastery kicked in, flooding her mind with the weapon's mechanics. She grinned, relieved she'd chosen the skill; the gun was archaic, its safety a puzzle without her training. A misfire could've been disastrous—or hilarious.
"Recruit 0637, what are you doing?" a voice bellowed.
Jingyi looked up, spotting a burly officer six meters away, his chiseled face etched with fury. He stormed over, boots thudding, and swung to cuff her head. "Still gawking? You're heading to war—your distraction will kill you and your squad!"
One strike, two, three. Jingyi gritted her teeth, but the blows were brutal, rattling her skull. Enough. She tossed her rifle upward, freeing her hands, seized his arm, and flipped him over her shoulder onto the ground. In a fluid motion, she pinned him with her knee, catching the falling rifle as it landed. The barrel hovered by his cheek for half a second before she pulled it back.
"As you can see, sir, I won't be the death of anyone," she said coolly. Releasing him, she stepped back and saluted under the stunned gazes of onlookers.
The officer's face darkened—not from rage, but embarrassment. "Your salute's wrong!"
Jingyi blinked. Seriously? She wasn't a historian—how was she supposed to know ancient military protocol? The scenario's obsession with minutiae was absurd.
Within five minutes, she earned a demerit.
She quickly grasped the setting: humanity's early clashes with the Starbugs. Spacefaring tech enabled colonies beyond the solar system, but the bugs' onslaught was relentless. In four months, two colonies fell, losses catastrophic. Her fleet, paired with a mobile space station, formed a defensive line, guarding the last habitable systems and the Lighthouse, humanity's scientific bastion.
The Lighthouse housed elite researchers, each a priceless asset. But soldiers like Jingyi, honed for combat, were equally vital. Her officer's restraint—reprimanding rather than expelling her—reflected this.
Life became a grind: train, fight, repeat. A year passed in-game, compressed to thirty minutes by the theater's time dilation. Weapons evolved rapidly, thanks to the Lighthouse. Jingyi's rank climbed four tiers, earning her a transfer to the Lighthouse itself.
On the shuttle, the trio reunited.
"A year," Ya Ning groaned. "You know what I've been through?"
"Quit whining," Zhou Wei said. "The game warps time perception—it's only been half an hour."
"The objective said we'd meet at the Lighthouse," Jingyi added. "I tried finding you earlier, but no luck."
Their roles diverged: Jingyi as a frontline officer, Ya Ning in civilian logistics, and Zhou Wei in the Lighthouse's defense force, a privileged post. Their paths hadn't crossed in the chaos of war. Most players wouldn't have survived the first year.
They'd converged because the Lighthouse signaled a breakthrough: a technology to counter the Starbugs, nearing completion. The final push required vast resources, and a summit was called.
The conference hall was cavernous, its ceiling aglow with star-like lights. A vast screen encircled the room, casting attendees' shadows like swarming ants. Even minor figures like Jingyi and Ya Ning received seats, each with a pear and water bottle—calculated precisely, no waste.
A speaker droned about the Starbugs and humanity's resistance, familiar rhetoric. Then a researcher took the stage, cutting to the core: the bugs' unique energy nullified human weapons, making combat grueling. The Lighthouse proposed using "source crystals" from bug corpses to forge weapons and proto-mechs, imbued with the bugs' mysterious power. Veteran soldiers could wield them, but the gear was unstable, its radiation deadly—a desperate, costly tactic.
"Consider the bugs not as biological but as energy entities," the researcher said. "Harnessing their energy requires complex conversion, a puzzle too vast for our current tools. With the Lighthouse's resources, solving it would take a decade."
The final step was the hardest. Jingyi raised an eyebrow. "They called this meeting to admit they're stuck?"
"No choice," a voice sighed nearby, feminine and weary.
Jingyi and Ya Ning turned, glimpsing a woman in the dim light—ebony hair, slight frame, and a glowing white coat. "Energy conversion sounds physical but needs immense computation," she said. "Without it, the project's dead in the water. This meeting isn't just to gripe—they're proposing a new tool, a supercomputer to crack the puzzle like a can opener."
Researchers rarely engaged soldiers, but she spoke freely. "Thanks," Ya Ning said. "What's this tool?"
"A self-adaptive, iterative AI," she said, her voice aligning with the speaker's. "Not just smart—truly intelligent, with an ecosystem to evolve. It's complex, but it'll give machines minds."
Ya Ning chuckled. "You sound... relieved."
"I'm a mech engineer," she muttered. "I pivoted from machines to mechs, ready to dedicate my life. Now they've dragged me to AI frameworks. Once this super-AI's born, it'll handle research. Maybe I'll get back to mechs."
A young researcher whispered to her, and she nodded, smoothing her coat and excusing herself. As she passed, a light caught her face—gentle features, a confident smile exuding quiet mastery. Jingyi marveled. This is what a true scholar looks like. Unlike Bai Sha's raw, combative brilliance, this woman was elegance incarnate.
Applause erupted. Tablets displayed a contract: the super-AI's development was pivotal, requiring collective approval due to ethical and safety concerns. It could empower humanity but risked future crises if unchecked.
Jingyi scoffed. They're not wrong. The Starbugs' defeat birthed the Silver Nexus, which later turned on humanity.
With humanity on the brink, long-term risks were irrelevant. The room signed eagerly, as if endorsing a devil's bargain. Jingyi's tablet pinged: Objective: Make your choice.
She glanced at Ya Ning, who'd signed Agree. "What? It fits our roles' logic," he said. "Disagree, and we might get booted or trigger a 'humanity falls' ending. Scary stuff."
Jingyi, ever defiant, grabbed her stylus and scrawled: I disagree.
Instantly, darkness swallowed her. She was ejected, her character erased.
"What the—?" she sputtered. "This game's rigged!"
No bugs, no lag—just a brutal end. Where was the spectator mode? Her screen remained black, a void mocking her choice.