At the same time, on Starstream, the Federation's largest streaming platform, the third-ranked channel in the gaming section was thick with tension.
Streamer "I'll Carry You" had just finished an unpleasant co-stream. She faced the camera with puffed cheeks, her pretty face full of indignation.
"Why not? Why can't I be a hot-invite guest for the Dawn Project?
Are the officials blind? Liora has the looks, has the skills... has the followers! I'm a major streamer, okay!"
The chat immediately erupted like a sudden storm, but the comments were far from kind.
"Come on, Liora, don't you have any self-awareness? Your gaming skills? It's ridiculous beyond words."
"Exactly. Last time you played Starry Wanderer, you managed to fly the rescue ship into a black hole. I was impressed, really."
"Old lady, stop being stubborn. Stick to being an entertainment streamer. The technical stuff isn't for you."
"The officials invited god-tier streamers like Riege and Foehn. Liora, just keep coasting along."
I'll Carry You watched these cutting comments, especially the ones repeatedly spamming "trash" and "old lady," nearly choking with rage.
She slammed her hand on the desk. "Ahhh! You haters! You're driving me crazy! Fine, you say I'm trash, say I'm coasting? Today I'm going head-to-head with this Dawn Project!
I'm going to find something from the preliminary works right now, experience it myself, and show you all my 'hardcore' taste!"
Ignoring the taunting and mocking comments, she switched directly to the Dawn Project's preliminary works library interface and, without hesitation, sorted by score from highest to lowest.
"Hmph, if I'm playing, I'm playing the highest-rated one! Let me see what kind of masterpiece..."
Her voice trailed off. Her gaze froze.
Ranked second in the gaming section was a cover she'd never seen before, saturated with steel, flames, and the aura of death.
A soldier wearing a strange green helmet, his eyes both numb and vicious, dominated most of the frame. The background showed burning ruins and a dark red sky.
Most jarring was the title: Battlefield: Warhammer 40k, and next to it, a warning so blood-red it seemed ready to drip:
[Warning: This product contains extremely high-intensity realistic violence, graphic gore, and themes of extreme nihilistic despair. May trigger severe physiological and psychological discomfort. Not recommended for the psychologically fragile.]
"Whoa!" I'll Carry You gasped, but her eyes instantly lit up. "90 points! With such an intense warning? Battlefield? Warhammer 40k? What even is all this?"
Her contrarian impulses and professional streaming instincts kicked in simultaneously.
The more they said not to look, the more she wanted to. The more unconventional it was, the better the streaming potential.
"This is it!"
Without a second thought, ignoring the scattered comments saying "Liora, think twice" and "looks scary," she moved the cursor and clicked hard on "Enter Experience."
"Family! Today Liora is going to show you what 90-point 'despair' art looks like! Spam those shields in the chat!"
With a hint of defiance and overflowing curiosity, I'll Carry You lay down in the full-immersion gaming pod. The stream's perspective switched to her first-person view.
Darkness.
Then, what filled her ears wasn't gentle tutorial music, but deep, grand chanting that seemed to echo from ancient stars, interwoven with the faint rumble of artillery fire.
Rough Gothic lettering emerged from the darkness, accompanied by a male narrator's voice, heavy as mountains:
"In this moment, amid eternal strife, a mighty empire rises across the universe. It is the legacy of a fallen god, forged in blood and battle, seeking hope in darkness. This is a cruel and dark era, an age where only war is eternal..."
I'll Carry You's heartbeat inexplicably skipped. This atmosphere... something was wrong!
The next second, the darkness before her eyes was violently torn apart!
"BOOM...!!!"
The deafening explosion nearly blew the top of her head off! She felt as if she'd been instantly thrown into hell itself.
Before her eyes was an apocalyptic battlefield: scorched earth riddled with craters, twisted metal wreckage burning with roaring flames, dense laser beams crossing through the air like the reaper's scythes.
Massive tanks like mobile fortresses rumbled with deep thunder; each flash from their cannons sent huge fireballs erupting in the distance.
The camera zoomed in. She saw countless soldiers in khaki uniforms surging like a tide through mud and ruins.
A man in a crisp uniform wearing a cape, a skull badge on his cap's brim, stood atop a makeshift barricade, waving a chainsword and shouting hoarsely, his voice even drowning out the artillery:
"For the Emperor! Forward! Crush the traitors!"
His figure was swallowed by a plasma beam from nowhere the very next moment.
The camera rapidly cut, displaying every brutal detail of the battlefield: a soldier hurled into the air by an explosion's shockwave; a medic kneeling beside the wounded, trying to stop the bleeding, only to be hit by stray fire; two soldiers fighting savagely in a trench, bayonets plunging deep into each other's bodies...
The final frame froze on an extremely realistic close-up: an Imperial soldier and a rebel soldier, their bayonets simultaneously piercing each other's chests.
Blood flowed down their uniforms. The final emotions in their eyes—madness, agony, a trace of release, were magnified infinitely.
I'll Carry You had completely forgotten to breathe.
The massive visual and auditory assault left her mind blank. This... this was the opening CG?
This level of realism, this brutality, this unmasked gore... compared to all the "entertainment products" she'd played before, this was from an entirely different dimension!
The image gradually darkened. Finally, three characters seemingly cast from steel and blood branded themselves heavily at the screen's center:
For the Emperor!
Only then did I'll Carry You gasp for air, feeling her heart pounding wildly in her chest.
She opened her mouth, wanting to say something to the stream, but found her throat parched, unable to force out a single word.
The chat also froze briefly, then exploded like a geyser:
"Holy shit!!! What the hell was that?!"
"I damn near pissed myself! That was a CG? Way too real!"
"That officer... just gone like that?"
"That final bayonet scene... I'm stunned. How did this pass review?"
"Liora, are you still alive? Say something!"
I'll Carry You struggled to swallow, forcing herself to stay calm.
The darkness before her eyes faded, replaced by a menu interface so simple it was almost cold.
The background showed the slowly rotating, battle-scarred Imperial Aquila, with only three stark options below:
[Match Game]
[Settings]
[Exit Game]
No tutorial, no fancy decorations. Just an invisible, cold pressure.
"G-guys," her voice carried a tremor she hadn't even noticed, "this game... has something to it."
She stared at the [Match Game] option, her finger hovering over the virtual confirmation button, hesitating for the first time.
What would it be like once she went in?
Would it be... even more real than that CG?