Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Of course, no matter how many times they saw it, Camille Victoria couldn’t accept the appearance of the soul-eating monsters—

On their rotten flesh-like bodies, they had long, yellow-green hair, five large and small eyes on their backs constantly spinning, and a pair of giant pincers as menacing as ant jaws.

On her second exploration of the Land of Corruption, seeing such strange creatures diving towards her from a distance, Camille Victoria still felt her scalp tingle, and quickly drew her bow and arrow, not wanting to let any soul-eating monster get close.

What’s more disgusting is that these monsters seemed to spawn randomly from all directions, including the path her team had just taken, causing Camille Victoria’s idea of “teammates leading the way while she provides support from the back” to fall apart early on.

“We’ll hold off the monsters; Camille Victoria, look at the map and find the Shadow Beads!”

When they arrived at the destination where they had shattered the first Shadow Bead, the teammates surrounded Camille Victoria, urging her to find the beads quickly.

Camille Victoria hurriedly opened the map, switching from [Overlook Mode] to [Cross-Section Mode].

The screen on the map immediately transformed into a vertical 2D view, allowing Camille Victoria to examine the underground carefully. However, she couldn’t find any Shadow Beads.

But she didn’t get discouraged. Centering the map on herself, she slowly rotated the cross-section view to 360 degrees until she successfully located the hidden spherical purple beads underground and marked each one.

“Found them! I’ve marked six! If we blow them up one by one, the Fire Gun should drop eventually.”

Camille Victoria closed the map and looked at her surroundings.

At this point from her perspective, she could see the obvious dark purple glow guiding her to the location of the beads.

“Let’s go, head to the nearest one first.”

This time, Camille Victoria led the way, and the nearest Shadow Bead was just over 20 meters away but required digging six meters down.

With the team’s efficient cooperation, it took them only six minutes to break the second Shadow Bead using the bombs they threw.

However, the moment the bead shattered, an extremely harsh and terrifying scream suddenly erupted!

Caught off guard, the team jumped back in alarm, nervously holding up their weapons to scan the surroundings.

But in the corrupted cave, the only sound was the dreadful scream echoing through, and nothing else happened.

The team, with their nerves on high alert, stood back to back in a circle, remaining vigilant until the screaming stopped.

From beginning to end, nothing frightening occurred aside from the usual soul-eating monsters spawning.

“Whew, that scared me! What a big fuss just to scare us! What a freak!”

One of the teammates sighed with relief, and after complaining, jumped into the bombed pit to check the loot they had found: a fierce-looking close combat weapon [Mace].

After giving it a few swings, it seemed genuinely powerful.

However, this kind of “exotic weapon” ultimately felt awkward to use and didn’t seem as useful as the Magic Light Sword in hand.

He turned to ask if anyone was interested in it.

As it turned out, no one wanted it—they were all in it for the gun. Who would want to swing a chain hammer to smash people with?!

So, the group set off again to find the next bead.

This time it was 50 meters away, in a 15-meter-deep cave. They needed to blast one more meter down at the bottom of the hole.

As they walked, Camille Victoria habitually glanced at the live broadcast room and noticed something strange:

“Why are there more people in the live broadcast room? That’s over half a million more than ten minutes ago! Aren’t you guys sleeping?”

She had only casually mentioned it, but she didn’t expect the viewers’ reactions to be very enthusiastic. The dense comments surged out so fast that she almost couldn’t see them clearly.

Cloud Dream Live Broadcast Platform’s smart comment plugin is a unique technology that other live streaming platforms don’t have.

That’s why, in the live stream rooms of popular anchors, whenever there is a surge in comments during peak times, it’s difficult for the anchor to accurately capture the content of the messages unless they pay for conspicuous messages.

What you see depends on luck.

As a result, anchors often get tricked by comments.

It’s not entirely because the anchors are gullible, but more likely because they just happen to spot the misleading comment among many others…

For example, right now, as the comments flowed like water before Camille Victoria’s eyes, she could only make out one message: “Natural growth, natural growth.”

She felt that something was off, but she couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

Just as she was about to investigate further, her teammates had already reached the location of the third Shadow Bead, and they were preparing to descend.

But as a veteran anchor, Camille Victoria was quite sensitive to the abnormal increase in viewers in her live stream room and sensed that something was wrong.

So she pulled back her teammate and said, “Don’t go down yet, let’s throw the bombs directly downward and throw some extras to make sure we shatter the bead before collecting the loot.”

“Alright.” The teammates didn’t struggle with the decision since bombs were now easy to buy and reasonably cheap.

They threw five bombs down together, and after a few seconds, they exploded with consecutive “bangs.”

Amid the five continuous explosion sounds, there was a crisp sound of a Shadow Bead shattering mixed in.

After confirming the shattering of the bead, the teammate set down a rope, intending to descend into the hole and collect the loot.

However, Camille Victoria stopped him once more.

“What’s wrong?” The teammate asked, puzzled.

Without looking at him, Camille Victoria, with a confused expression, stared at a particular spot and said, “Did you hear something strange?”

“What? No…” The teammate stopped mid-sentence, suddenly freezing in place.

The other two teammates also froze where they were.

Because they all heard an unfamiliar sound, a sound that made their brains associate it with the long, jointed limbs of a creature crawling rapidly along the cave walls, only amplified dozens or even hundreds of times and—it was quickly approaching them!

Worse, music had started playing!

“Shit! Why is there suddenly a BGM?!” The teammate exclaimed in shock.

“Is there a BOSS?”

“In this damned place??”

The last teammate, looking at the narrow underground cavern beside him, let out a desperate wail in advance.

There was no room to maneuver, how could they fight?

A line of dark purple text finally appeared slowly, right in the middle of everyone’s view—

“The Eater of Worlds has awakened!”

Almost at the next moment, a monster burst through the soil and charged directly into the faces of the four!

“Dodge!”

Despite the narrow cave, they all managed to avoid the BOSS’s pounce.

Camille Victoria hadn’t had time to see the appearance of the BOSS, but relief instantly flooded her heart —

At least, it doesn’t look too big.

It’s only about a third of the size of King Slime and Eye of Cthulhu?

‘After all, only three beads were blown up.’ she comforted herself in her heart, ‘It might just be a monster protecting the beads, and it’s not too big …’

“Holy shit!”

A teammate exclaimed in shock, interrupting Camille Victoria’s daydreaming.

Even without his exclamation, she would not have thought any further, for a simple reason —

“How long is this BOSS??”

As the BOSS emerged from the ground, its first round of biting was dodged, but it didn’t turn its head. Instead, it went straight back into the soil, continuing forward.

Camille Victoria and the others pressed their backs tightly against the wall, watching the BOSS’s body pass through the cavern.

They realized then: the Eater of Worlds looked like countless larger Eaters, head and tail connected, forming a centipede-like chain of segmented limbs.

Only on the back of every limb, there were countless eyes!

Not just five, but encircling the central watermelon-sized eye, numerous other eyes were irregularly packed!

As each segmented limb passed through the cavern, the eyes on their backs all rotated crazily. They didn’t all look at the same target but seemed to have their own ideas, randomly staring at Camille Victoria or one of her teammates.

This was already unbearable to look at directly, but what’s even scarier was:

It’s been almost 10 seconds, and the boss’s body is still burrowing forward! The tail hasn’t even come out yet!

But the next round of attacks had already begun —

The head of the BOSS burst out of the ground again from another position, biting directly onto a person’s back and slamming them into the opposite wall with great force!

Once again, it burrowed into the ground sideways. At the same time, the hidden sharp teeth on the abdomen of each segment took a vicious bite out of the teammate, causing his health to plummet.

Only then did Camille Victoria see the tail of the BOSS emerge from the original position and disappear in the blink of an eye.

She forcibly suppressed her discomfort, grabbing her confused teammates away from the BOSS.

But soon, the BOSS broke through the wall again, this time attacking the one holding the Magic Light Sword.

Finally, everyone came to their senses from the initial shock and started slashing and shooting wildly!

Camille Victoria couldn’t stand the sight of so many eyes and practically shot her arrows with her eyes closed.

Fortunately, the distance was so close that it was hard to miss even when shooting blindly.

But with their counterattack, the BOSS began a new form of attack: spitting phlegm!

This terrifying monster burst out of the ground again — by now, three of the BOSS’s segmented bodies had completely encircled the team in this narrow cavern.

Each segment had limbs randomly spitting phlegm at them!

And it was an extremely disgusting black-purple saliva!

It made them feel weak all over the moment it touched them.

The one holding the Magic Light Sword was the first to die.

But before he died, he finally severed a limb of the BOSS.

However, before the remaining three could celebrate, the severed limb began to move autonomously without any impact!

They were devastated to see the BOSS transform from one to two!

The attack became even more fierce!

Next was the teammate with the Fire Gun, screaming as he fired wildly.

The Fire Gun had excellent penetration, and the bullets pierced through several segments of the BOSS’s body, causing multiple times the original damage.

Under this powerful firepower, he broke the body of the BOSS once again.

As a result: the BOSS’s health dropped by a segment, but the number of BOSS’s increased to three…

Even this teammate was gnawed to death by the newly split BOSS while being bitten several times.

Afterward, it was the last teammate…

…

At last, all the screams in the dark, disgusting, narrow underground cave vanished, leaving Camille Victoria alone and helpless, surrounded by the five-sectioned Eater of Worlds trapping her in the center like a hunting python.

Long since terrorized into muteness, Camille Victoria’s face white, clutching her weapon tightly, she could hardly pull the string of the bow.

Then, in an instant, hundreds of eyes from all around stopped spinning and stared directly at her!

Next, they all rolled toward her with a fierce momentum!

At that moment, Camille Victoria finally reached her limit and couldn’t help but scream —

“Mom!! I was wrong!!!”