A Winning Strategy

"Even if I could guess what moves they will make, they will have seen millions of strategies if this game truly became popular."

"I can only rely on my knowledge of the code to somehow pull off a win…"

Brave felt extremely perplexed by the obstacle ahead, and worriedly sat down in the king's dinning hall. The beautiful servants around him bowed as he walked into the room and served him some red rose tea.

He took a sip of it and was surprised that it tasted like real red rose tea! He chugged it down as the hostesses giggled and walked off to dust and clean the various parts of the house.

The red rose tea had a calming effect in the game and granted +3 clarity to the emperor when he was randomly served it by his servants. This was something he never expected on his first game and could even feel his thoughts spinning faster in his mind and soul.

"Wow, so they really designed the features in this game to really affect the players, and the emperor? Does that mean these people are also real, and what he said about Tokugawa was real?"

Brave absolutely hated the bastard Tokugawa for shooting him in the head and selected him in his interface by mentally moving the cursor. In the year 2035, it was already common to have mentally controlled displays, and Tokugawa came up on his screen.

To his surprise, Tokugawa's appearance looked exactly the same as his old best friend Tokugawa. He immediately sent him to the most dangerous of the three dust factories and started him on white gems.

As for the other nine miners, since they could also build, he used four of the miners to build an artificer shop, and had the other five build a spirit stone formation for his cultivators.

At the beginning of the game, the first 1000 seconds were the easiest, and after 990 seconds went by his first two buildings were already completed. As for Tokugawa, that damn scoundrel had gotten him 10 gems, and his gem supply had returned to 440 while his energy was 10.

He immediately had the two cultivators go into the spiritual stone formation and used 10 energy to buy them the angel light body cultivation art with all 10 shards of his energy.

Since he 1000 gems, and 10 energy at the start of the match, it could be said that he was taking a risk by utilizing all his points on a body cultivation art.

However, anyone who had ever read a decent wuxia novel knew that body cultivators were overpowered. This way if he faced a five-man cultivator rush, it would give him enough time to gather resources for reinforcement.

As for the other nine players in this match, he had no idea what they were doing and anxiously paced back in forth until the last ten seconds counted down.

Finally, it hit zero, and a large body of text floated above him as if made of clouds.

"The first game of Immortal Kingdom is now starting!"

"Please prepare your defenses and create the ultimate immortal kingdom!"

"Find allies, reach for immortality, and open the door to heavens gates! Begin!"

Brave laughed seeing his own words spelled up in the clouds above him. To him, he remembered drinking some black coffee that tasted like arm pits. These were the only words that came out of his mouth at 3 am the day before publishing. Seeing those words in the sky, he was momentarily stunned, but quickly sent his other nine miners to gather gems.

The best strategy, in his opinion, would be to gather up to 600 gems and build a blacksmith shop early. Even though he imagined the gods laughing at him, he could only follow his best judgement!

As for his other nine opponents, he imagined at least three of them had sent out scouts. The distance between sect kingdoms was determined at random, and Brave could only hope five cultivators didn't come and murder him.

Killing an emperor would be like winning the lottery, you'd gather half their resources and a third of their men. He could only imagine that this had been a popular strategy a long time ago at the start of the game.

Wiping the seat off his head, the two cultivators got up and their bodies started shinning… He immediately opened up his interface, and entered in a micro command for them to start cultivating. Even with his lack of his experience, his mental response time could be said to be god like.

Immediately as the cultivators learned the first step of the Angel Light Body Cultivation Technique, they started gathering energy…

The longer they gathered energy for, the more spells he could teach them. As for this game, it wasn't meant to be played in just the course of a day. He made the game so it could be similar to an immortal journey, and some games could take months or even years to complete!

As for experience, he gained 20 experience out of 100 experience towards his level 2 goal. Every time a building was built, or a cultivator learned a skill, a certain percentage would go to your experience bar…

Finally, he walked back to the sect, and nervously waited for his only guard to tell him if anything odd was spotted. In the game, there was two guard towers given to each player at the start, but with only one guard… He truthfully made a typo when he submitted the game, and he can't believe it had never changed over the years!

In the sect, the ten servants started preparing dinner immediately as if their hearts depended on it. He walked up to one of the maids, and pulled her out of curiosity.

"Ah! I'm sorry… please don't hit me emperor! I accidentally added an extra few drops of salt…"

Brave laughed and looked at the pathetic but beautiful girl. What kind of 'man' would he be if he hit a girl?

"No, it's okay, but I must ask you does it feel weird to work so hard? I haven't seen you girls stop moving since I awoke…"

"We are born to serve the emperor, and of course can't stop working. If we did, wouldn't we suffer a heavenly tribulation and be burned to a crisp?"

Brave remembered entering something like that into his code, but laughed seeing the girl stir her hand nervously in the soup.

"Ha, since I am here… Not a single cloud of lightning will reach out and hurt you! Come join me as I tour the town… I want to go check on this one miner named Tokugawa…"

The girl gulped and was pushed off by another servant. "Go on you gullible one… He's the emperor… Do you really want to be struck by the heavens?"

The girl shrieked and realized she forgot that the code also stated the emperor's rule was even above the heavens! She immediately dropped to the floor and began kowtowing with guilt and shame.

"I really just want to hang out with someone who looks my own age. Come on and stop whipping the floor with your ass! There are better tools that I have then your pretty dress…"

The servant immediately threw her body forward and rushed up after Brave. He laughed seeing her follow him like a clumsy ditz, and he walked over to the mine to check on the facilities…

There was a random algorithm in the mine, and he might get lost if he had to truly search for Tokugawa. However, he didn't have to search for long since the game just started.

The very bastard who shot him in the head was digging into the walls, and he went up to him and shoved him on the shoulder.

"Hey… is it really you Tokugawa? Do you know who I am?" Tokugawa looked like he was under a spell, but still nodded his head.

"Yes… you are the immaculate Brave, and I knew you when I was in graduate school along time ago… I've always been meaning to tell you sorry for shooting you in cold blood, and destroying your prodigious genius…"

Tokugawa said that with a smile on his face, and Brave still didn't feel satisfied. As a thirteen year old, he held grudges, and remember to him getting shot was yesterday!

"Heh, well, I guess it's now time to mine for the rest of eternity. I don't even have to slap your face because it would dirty my hand with your dust…"

Brave sighed and walked off secretly feeling sorry for Tokugawa. However, that didn't mean he wouldn't make him work at the vanguard if they were ever invaded.

Of course, his luck seemed good in the first twenty minutes, and the miner's had already got him 600 gems…

"Alright… now I just got to build the blacksmith shop and hope that I don't get raided… My luck couldn't be that bad in my first game right?"

Brave looked around the field until he nervously spotted a little small demon flock running towards his sect's headquarters…