Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Warehouse Bird rushed forward while anxiously hollering.

A Nether alloy sword and three diamond swords were simultaneously stuffed into the neck of the Ender Dragon, glowing with a dim purple light.

The next moment, all four swords were pulled out and stuffed in again.

All the while, a dense shower of arrows, potions, and tridents flew in.

Thanks to the large size of the Ender Dragon model, and a sufficiently large weak spot, it could withstand so many attacks.

Similar scenes were happening almost simultaneously in several live broadcast rooms.

After Yelang discovered the effects of the pumpkin head, the leading teams quickly closed the gap, even entering the 5% kill range at the same time.

Super Tomato’s 52-member team, Chasing Wind and Warehouse Bird’s tycoon team, the esports club teams of [Frost Wind] and [Burned Boat], and the player team of Izumo’s [Brave Warrior against Evil Dragons], were all only seconds apart in their progress!

The live broadcast rooms were also extremely heated. Many players were watching at least three different live broadcasts, eagerly waiting for the emergence of the champion.

In the final seconds, shouts of “Kill it!” “Quick, quick, quick!!” “Now!” echoed amidst the increasingly rousing battle music, reaching the ears of millions of audiences worldwide.

The Ender Dragon emitted a last, pitiful roar as its health bar depleted.

But contrary to what the players and audiences expected, the Ender Dragon didn’t crash heavily onto the ground. Instead, as though it lost gravity, it began a slow ascent.

Simultaneously, a light many times brighter than dragon breath emanated from within the Ender Dragon. The intense purple glow pierced through the black dragon scales of the Ender Dragon, shooting straight into the dark sky and barren ground.

The light grew more intense until—boom! It exploded!

A purple sun rose above the floating island!

The players staring at the spectacle had to cover their eyes to shield them from the dazzling light.

When the light dispersed, the teleportation gate in the island center was finally activated.

At the same time, atop the center pillar of the teleportation gate, a pitch-black dragon egg quietly stood.

A series of achievement trophies also simultaneously appeared in front of every player in the team.

Normally, this egg would undoubtedly be the most dazzling sight in the field.

But now, no one cared about the egg. Everyone quickly lifted their trophies, hoping to see if they had won the first completion trophy.

Unfortunately, none of them had.

By the look of the trophies, they were extremely rare—these were also diamond trophies, but the first-ever black diamonds in the virtual world.

Atop the black diamond base floated a pixelated black diamond Ender Dragon, with the name of the achievement carved into the base—

[Dragon Slayer (This time it’s a real dragon!)]

As always, there was a subtle humor and mockery in it.

However, it was clear that it was not the first completion trophy.

In the teams of Yi and Yelang, everyone quickly stowed away their trophies, ignored the dragon egg, and hurriedly opened their panels. They checked online information and asked each other, “Who’s the first? What’s our ranking?”

But the audience, who had also anticipated a definitive answer, were left puzzled—”Why are they all saying they’re not the first?”

Thankfully, Cloud Dream quickly stepped in—

A pure white screen appeared in front of the return teleportation gate, and every team received a system prompt:

[Your team’s completion ranking is within the top 10. Please enter your team name to generate the leaderboard.]

Everyone then realized: This was a team challenge, and to distribute trophies, an official team name was needed.

But immediately, another problem arose: “What should we call ourselves?”

Coming up with a formal team name on the spot that satisfies dozens of people is not easy.

However, teams with existing names didn’t need to worry about this problem.

Just over ten seconds later, an empty board in the middle of the island displayed the first name—

[4. Brave Warrior against Evil Dragons (Izumo)]

Clearly, this was the final ranking of Izumo’s team.

Soon, [5. Frost Wind Esports Club (Daxia)] also appeared.

However, the audiences waited for a while but didn’t see the name of [Burned Boat Club] where Lance belonged, which puzzled them.

Both clubs finished their kills almost simultaneously, and the club names were already established. What was there to hesitate?

But the team members in [Burned Boat] just stood there. Some even went to look at the Ender Dragon egg and no one filled in team names, making the audience confused.

The next name that appeared was: [2. One, Two, Three, (Tomato) Eggplant! (Daxia) ]

This was Super Tomato’s team.

They were among the first teams to settle in the public world and have a considerable team size with many heavy-duty players.

When they started the Ender Dragon challenge, they had already accumulated abundant resources. Each person had dozens of golden apples and plenty of various equipment and supplies.

While Chasing Wind’s team had to rely on Money Ability to buy equipment, some in Super Tomato’s team were even rich enough to sell to outsiders.

They were also the first team to introduce Redstone technology.

Their only disadvantage of “having too many people” quickly turned into an advantage when they recruited a Redstone Expert, and when Yelang discovered the effect of pumpkin heads.

As for the team that Yi and Yelang pulled together—

[7. Protest Cloud Dream for depriving players of undressing freedom (Daxia) ]

This wasn’t a name that Yi and Yelang came up with. They democratically let everyone choose the name and then voted.

Yi’s suggestion of [Cross-world Bathing Enthusiast Association] and Yelang’s [Sons of Purity] had a considerable number of votes.

But out of nowhere, someone suggested [Protest Cloud Dream for depriving players of undressing freedom], and this absurd name immediately got an outrageous 35 votes, crushing all other names.

In the end, Yi dutifully filled it in.

Yelang, who earned his livelihood through Cloud Dream Live Broadcast Platform, shivered and solemnly said to the camera: “It has nothing to do with me, I’m just passing by. I neither approve nor disapprove of any opinions expressed by this team’s players.”

The one who came up next was number six:

[6, We’re not meant to be, it’s all his money (Daxia)]

Chasing Wind strongly protested against this name.

He didn’t think there was anything wrong with playing along, but he felt that this name obliterated everyone’s efforts.

True, he had contributed quite a bit of equipment and supplies, but it was everyone’s united efforts and relentless dedication throughout this long battle that were key to achieving this ranking.

However, he couldn’t withstand the 29 other people on his team laughing heartily, raising their hands and feet in support.

At last, the minority yielded to the majority.

The eighth, ninth, and tenth places were revealed. Apart from the ninth-place team being a team from Russia, the remaining two were also from Daxia.

Only after all the rest of the rankings were announced did the Burned Boat Club submit their name-

[3, Black Tiger SUV, the best choice for off-roading (Daxia)]

This name left the players in a daze.

The fifth-ranked [Frost Wind Club] was even more dumbfounded: Can we do that? Shouldn’t Cloud Dream do something about it?

Of course, Cloud Dream didn’t care.

This name was smoothly listed, and the system did not give any response.

Eventually, at long last, the first place winner made their appearance:

[1, Mavis Global Fan Club Southeast Normal University Branch]

It was the 38-member team that Mavis initially had high hopes for.

Now, however, this team had grown to 41 members.

On their team, a full three people had girlfriends who were all in fields related to automation.

After urgently bringing their girlfriends from “Light Encounter” world to help, the girls explained what redstone was and introduced a few design prototypes posted on the forum. The three of them solved the technical shortfalls of redstone.

The moment the last name was filled in, the list dissolved into a beam of light and rose up from the air, appearing as a giant list in the sky for all online players to admire.

At the same time, Lincoln’s Spiritual Rhinoceros account was updated again, simultaneously posting this list.

The audiences and netizens were in a flurry of discussion.

They were taken aback that the first place was not any team from the live stream, but a student team that was unknown to everyone. A fan club of Mavis?

However, the players among the top 10 teams didn’t have time to care about that.

As soon as the rankings were confirmed, rewards were given one by one.

Members of the top 10 teams received the additional achievement trophies of [Mainline completion of “My World”: First Place], [Second Place]… all the way to [Tenth Place].

In addition to indicating their rankings, team names, personal names on the trophies, it also remarked “MOD Creation Permission Unlocked.”

But to use this permission, one must first quit the game and enter MOD editing mode.

So until now, everyone finally turned their eyes to the dragon egg, a lone object that had been standing for a long time.

Everyone studied for a long time how to get hold of this teleporting dragon egg.

Once they got it, they discovered this dragon egg’s system instruction was rather tricky:

[Ender Dragon Egg]: A magical egg. You can try to hatch it. But please be careful, the wrong hatching method may have disastrous consequences.

The first thing everyone did with this dragon egg was: pass it around to everyone.

So it can be cataloged, right? Create as many as you want in creative mode, what secrets can’t be unraveled?

As for distribution, considering each Ender Dragon only drops one egg, most teams distributed this egg to the house owner of the Personal World.

For Public Worlds, they either determined ownership by rock-paper-scissors or gave it to the team leader first, and then agreed to regroup, help everyone in the group defeat the Ender Dragon in their Personal Worlds, and get the dragon egg.

At the same time, Chasing Wind also began receiving employment orders; many people wanted to hire his team to help fight the Ender Dragon.

Although he didn’t lack money, he didn’t refuse either. Instead, he informed his team members, asking if they wanted to make some extra money by working.

These experts had no expert’s demeanor; they quickly raised their hands to agree without any hesitation.

So, except for Chasing Wind, the remaining experts didn’t have time to study the MOD issues. They immediately planned to kick off their “Boss-leaving” career.

…

The Ender Dragon First Kill Battle finally came to an end.

But the impact of this event itself would not end so quickly.

But, that’s for tomorrow.

It was already late, and the players were heading to the return portal, also known as the “Pool of the End.”

As the players who started the live broadcast also entered the Pool of the End, the screen darkened.

However, unlike the one-time blank before the immediate completion of the teleportation, this time the live broadcast room did not light up.

“Did it freeze?”

“Cloud Dream Games can freeze?”

“Crap! It must not be a problem on Cloud Dream’s side, what a rubbish live broadcasting platform!”

…

Audiences casually grumbled a few words, not thinking much of it at first.

But ten or so seconds passed and the screen was still pitch black. To their surprise, they found that all the live streaming rooms of players who had defeated the Ender Dragon and returned through the teleportation portal had not lit up again after their screens went black.