Alice in the Land of Steam

Chapter 32 Is this a pay-to-win game?
"Ha~"

Alice yawned again. This was her third yawn since she woke up early in the morning. This listless posture really made people worry about the physical and mental state of young people today. Lingge, who was busy heating up the vegetable soup, looked back at her and found that his maid had obvious dark circles under her eyes. He frowned immediately: "Did you stay up late again last night?"

Alice nodded weakly, "Yeah."

Ling Ge knew exactly why she stayed up late, and it had something to do with that weird game console. Considering that it was the maid's personal property, he didn't think of confiscating it, but just gave her a cold advice: "Take care of yourself."

“Hey, are you concerned about me?” Alice forced herself to perk up and stared at Lingge with sharp eyes, but the latter ignored her and stirred the vegetable soup in the pot with a wooden spoon to make it evenly heated. He casually replied: “I just don’t want you to sleep in class and affect other people’s studies.”

"That's just worry!" Alice concluded, "I didn't expect you to be such a tsundere, Lingge!"

"..."

"Although I am touched by your concern, my fatigue has nothing to do with staying up late. It is not a physical factor, but a mental blow!" Alice sighed and said, "As for why I suffered a mental blow, that is a long story."

Lingge didn't really want to listen to Alice's story. After all, her cerebellum didn't seem to have evolved to such a developed level. However, the golden-haired maid with burning eyes had already fallen into her memories and dubbed herself in an inexplicably deep tone:
"The cause of all this can be traced back to a long, long time ago..."

***
Midnight, twelve o'clock, in a dim little room.

"Nice!" Alice excitedly raised the cassette in her hand: "Finally finished!"

Well, including Xiao Huangyou (guilty).

The blue screen made the girl's face look a little pale. On the main interface full of steam flavor, there was a familiar pop-up window: [Game data editing completed, please reinsert the cartridge to complete the reading. ]

After the excitement, Alice put down the cassette in her hand, stood up, and did a set of radio gymnastics on the spot to loosen up her bones that were a little stiff due to squatting for a long time. Then she sat back in front of the game console, inserted the cassette, and prepared to start saving the world.

[Game cartridge detected, start scanning cartridge data]

If not, there wouldn’t be so many low-cost independent games made with RPGMAKER on various independent game platforms.

[Cartridge data scanning completed, please wait for the game interface to initialize]

【Welcome to AliceGame system, Player (Dear players, welcome to the Alice system)】

However, she certainly doesn't care about these false reputations. What excites her is the sense of accomplishment brought by "making games". Every game player must have a dream of making games in his heart, eager to present his fantasy world to everyone, so that they can immerse themselves in the world view settings he carefully constructed, the ups and downs of the plot development, the distinctive character images and the unique and interesting gameplay.

Don't forget, there is still a group of vampires in Linville City waiting for her to deal with.

[Game interface initialization completed]

After three days - or four days? Maybe even longer - in short, after a long period of hard work, Alice completed her transition from a genius player to a genius game producer, and successfully developed the first RPG game in the 19th century, which is roughly equivalent to "Ping Pong" in the history of the earth. If this world points out the technology tree of electronic games in the future, Alice will undoubtedly go down in history as the founder!

Along with the last pop-up window, there appeared a cold, mechanical girl's voice, without any human emotion. Alice was startled and quickly grabbed the headphones next to her and put them on, for fear of waking up the sleeping Metien and Ling'er.

“Is that the voice of the system’s built-in AI?”

She muttered something, but didn't care. She focused on the game interface. It was still a giant building made of steel, gears, metal bearings and mysterious runes, shaped like a clock tower and a temple. At this time, the blue runes were filled with mysterious light, and the steel gears were slowly rotating with a creaking whisper. The main door of the hall, which was more than 30 yards high, opened up, revealing the scene inside to Alice. Then, the girl was shocked to find that the scene inside the temple was exactly the same as the structural layout of the chapel on the first floor of Tianxin Church!
The glass windows and silver candlesticks on the wall refracted the sunlight, the oak benches were divided into two rows, the central aisle leading to the altar area, and the statue of the goddess with her head bowed in silence. Her face was shrouded in a hazy veil like the night, and it was unclear. Only those eyes were kind and compassionate, gentle and loving. Where His eyes were fixed, a ball of golden light slowly floated, like dust in the wind, rising and falling. After being stunned, Alice tried to control it with the handle, and found that in the entire game interface, only this ball of light could be selected. She gently pressed the [OK] button, and the ball of light exploded like fireworks, and light golden streamers flew out, and soon weaved into a square wooden frame on the game interface. The edges had the texture of gilded pine grain, and the main body of the frame depicted the following scene:
Under the gloomy sky, the steel city shrouded in dark mist was lifeless, like a ferocious beast that would choose its prey; there were no pedestrians on the streets, which were desolate and depressed; in the dark alleys, evil eyes were peeking and blood was flowing, which looked particularly weird; the girl with a sword on her back raised her head slightly, staring at the end of the street with a firm gaze; behind the girl, there were three companions, but their faces were blocked in the mist, and only the outlines of their bodies could be seen.

Alice was surprised at first glance: "Isn't this just me and my three crutches!?"

Although the statement was a bit offensive, she really meant it.

The whole picture is presented in the style of oil painting, with distinct colors, strong contrast, and a very textured look. Beyond the end of the steel city, in the depths of the vortex of dark clouds, black letters can be vaguely seen, together with the silhouetted characters and the counterintuitive LOGO of GI, forming the name of the game: "First Fantasy-Four Warriors: The First Fantasy-Four Warriors".

The moment Alice saw the name of the game, her mouth twitched: "Tribute?"

It can't be plagiarism, right?
The game was made by Alice. If the game is plagiarized, doesn’t it mean that Alice also plagiarized?

Absolutely not.

No matter what, just start the game first.

Alice pressed it, rubbing her hands together, ready to show her skills.

Then, something unexpected happened.

A pop-up window popped up, and at the same time, the cold, mechanical girl's voice that had appeared before reminded again: [The cartridge is not activated, and the game cannot be started]

Alice nearly dropped the controller.

What a joke! ?

I worked so hard to make the game, and now you tell me that I can't start it? Is it because I didn't pay or something? If you don't give me an explanation today, I will go back and blow up the headquarters of the game command company!
But before things came to a conclusion, she exercised the utmost restraint and asked calmly, "So, how can we activate it?"

If the answer was to charge money, she would definitely charge money without hesitation.

Small amounts of money don’t count as money.

However, the system AI's answer was completely beyond her expectations.

The cold girl's voice, like a rigid mechanical creation, gave an equally rigid answer: "Fate."

"What?" Alice blinked, looking confused.

The system AI explained to her in a flat voice: "The subsystem with the SLP game network access device as the server can only provide limited computing power, and more data must be connected to maintain the integrity of the underlying architecture. To improve this situation, the main system recommends that you connect the subsystem to an external database that meets the requirements, and use the data stored in it to bear the computing power consumption required for the operation of the SLP game network access device. The main system scanned and found that the current world's overall technological level is limited. The only external database that meets the requirements is the large-scale information interference source located in the core of the star, that is-"

"destiny."

　Give me some meow
　　
　
(End of this chapter)