Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 1: Fury

"Thud! Thud! Thud!"

Lincoln, hungover and not yet sober, was awakened by the urgent knocking on the door. He felt dizzy and struggled to find his way to the door to open it.

Before he could see who it was, a microphone was almost shoved into his mouth, and the flashing lights nearly blinded him. The noisy voices mixed together, and all he could hear was, "Excuse me, Mr. Lincoln..." "Mr. Lincoln, what do you think about..." "Why did you..."

Lincoln was completely confused and couldn't hear a complete sentence. He pushed the people out desperately, "Get out! Get out!"

He closed the door forcefully and locked it.

He sobered up instantly, looking around at the messy, unfamiliar room, with wine bottles scattered everywhere. He held his head, trying hard to remember what happened after he got drunk last night.

Unexpectedly, he recalled the memories of another Lincoln.

The reason reporters came knocking was simple: his predecessor got drunk at a class reunion, and since he had a poor tolerance for alcohol, he quickly became intoxicated. He then began criticizing NetDragon's "epoch-making human-computer interaction technology" mentioned at their press conference as just bragging.

One of the original quotes was, "The technical content is so low that it is ten years behind the industry. The only truly impressive thing at the press conference was the founder's thick skin."

It wouldn't have been a big deal if it was just idle chatter among classmates, but the technology that NetDragon mentioned at the press conference was something that insiders knew: it was not advanced at all. However, it happened to be uploaded online. Even more bad luck, Princess Camille, who rarely appeared in the public eye, was also at the party, and as a result, the video made it to the hot searches.

The big company called NetDragon was preparing for the IPO, but ended up being exposed by an excellent student from a top-notch national university for its poor technological capabilities. Irresponsible media outlets wrote about it online, undoubtedly much to their displeasure.

The PR department of the big company was not just sitting idly. On one hand, they paid for press releases to promote the advanced nature of their technology, and on the other hand, they exaggerated the great help that the "neural signal" interaction method provided to many disabled people.

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At the same time, the Water Army also took action. They maliciously dug up Lincoln's personal information to post online, while accusing him of maliciously attacking a national enterprise, and not knowing anything, which would stifle innovation enthusiasm of technology companies.

As the storm of public opinion rolled in, things quickly spiraled out of control. It wasn't just a barrage of online insults, but his phone was harassed with so many calls that he had to turn on the whitelist, and every three days someone would knock on his door to directly berate him, causing his predecessor to hide at home, afraid to go out.

Naturally, his part-time job was lost, and his tuition for the next academic year was in limbo. Faced with the indictments of countless people, unemployment and dropping out of school, he was utterly desperate, hiding in his room day and night drinking, until he was found dead of acute alcohol poisoning.

Reflecting on this, Lincoln couldn't help but sigh, "This young man was just too fragile."

"Buzz." A mobile phone vibrated.

Upon opening it, there was another text message labeled "Princess Camille": "I'm sorry Lincoln, I caused you trouble. If there's anything I can do to help, please let me know." He scrolled up the message history, and there were countless similar messages from the beginning until now.

"Unbelievable, the royal family still hasn't fallen yet." Lincoln marveled again at this wonderful world where the royal family was still in existence even in the age of the Internet.

"No need, thank you." After replying to the text message, Lincoln casually tossed aside his phone. He knew very well that at this stage, the princess coming out to explain would be useless and would only make the topic even hotter.

By then, it might not be about "college students attacking national technology companies" but "the love story between the poor boy and the royal princess."

Whether it was because she liked him or not, the princess often sat next to him during class and asked for help outside of class.

He knew that the princess was studying across disciplines, and the workload was a bit heavy, so she needed tutoring help, but others didn't know. If some tabloid reporters went to the school to interview and then fabricated royal love stories, it would be like pouring oil on the fire.

Lincoln scrolled through his phone, found the property management's number, and made a complaint. After more than an hour of trouble, the property management finally managed to drive the people away.

Feeling depressed, he went to sleep with his head down, leaving the difficulties for tomorrow.

But he did not sleep peacefully. In the hazy dream, there were indistinct crowds, noisy chatter, sharp car horns, violent explosions, and endless gunshots.

It seemed as if he was holding a thumb-sized ball of light in his hands.

"Ah!" Lincoln suddenly woke up, hugging his splitting head with both hands, as an overwhelming amount of information poured into his mind. A staggering amount of code, advanced and sophisticated designs, and countless technologies that were ahead of the times by several generations.

It took half an hour for him to fully absorb the information and belatedly realize that these were the complete technologies for constructing a virtual world, including the original collision code for artificial intelligence, neural access devices, neural modulators-demodulators, a complete human brain acceptable instruction set, methods for building a virtual system using distributed computing, and so on.

This unexpected surprise left Lincoln stunned for half a day. What was going on? A benefit from time-traveling?

With a web novel reading experience of ten million words per year, such a thing is all too easy to accept!

Thinking of the public opinion campaign that NetDragon launched, the overwhelming smear campaign on the Internet, Lincoln couldn't help but laugh out loud. This Italian Cannon is ready!

If this cannon doesn't make NetDragon and the Water Army's faces swell, I won't belong to the Lin family!

What? NetDragon is a leading technology company and elite master of the Internet?

I'm here to fight the elite!

Lincoln couldn't wait to turn on his computer and start coding right away.

If it weren't for the organized knowledge in his head being so persuasive, he would never have believed that a ready-made artificial intelligence's core code could be so simple!

He didn't even have time to eat, as if he was welded to his chair like a workaholic, his buttocks motionless, his fingers clicking away frantically on the keyboard, completely immersed in the world of code.

By the time the last line of core code was finished, Lincoln hit the keys hard.

Compile, run!

Of course, it's not that just half a day's work made the artificial intelligence possible, not even Lincoln, the ultimate touch-sensitive creature, could complete all the code for an artificial intelligence in just a few hours.

But with the core code input and running successfully, the subsequent code can be completed automatically.

Free both hands! Thanks to epoch-making technology! A true artificial intelligence is about to be born in his hands!

Lincoln sat in his chair, watching the lines of code cascading down the screen like flowing clouds, and let out a satisfied sigh.

"*Rumble~" The neglected stomach finally let out a loud protest.

Lincoln glanced at the setting sun outside the window, realizing that it's almost evening.

"What?! I haven't eaten all day!" Lincoln gasped.

The strong hunger felt like a fire burning in his stomach, and he was so focused on sitting for so long that he even felt dizzy when he finally got up.

He hurried to the fridge to find something to eat.

Upon opening it, he found only a few scattered expired vegetables, half a bag of eggs, half a pack of noodles, and a whole shelf full of alcohol.

"Well, what a great student, utterly ruined by cyber-violence."

Looking back at the messy room, filled with wine bottles, Lincoln imagined a bright future for the student who was suddenly condemned by thousands, unable to leave his home due to humiliation, with all his dreams reduced to nothing, forced to drink his days away in this less-than-twenty-square-meter rental room until he died of acute alcohol poisoning.

If it weren't for his time-travel, no one might have noticed until reporters barged in, photographing a cold corpse against a backdrop of cluttered wine bottles.

At this thought, Lincoln suddenly felt very angry: "Damn it! This can't be let go easily!"

Angered, Lincoln didn't even eat, and immediately began setting up a camera and arranging his desktop.

He had already decided to issue a declaration of war!

This time, NetDragon must die a very ugly death!