Conquering OtherWorld Starts With a Game - Chapter 165.1: Battlefield Map

Integrating military training into a game was an outright impossibility. It wasn’t an issue of whether the “damned developers” would receive the ire of players but more about whether it would outright cause a player revolt.

In the more liberally designed MMORPGs, it wasn’t uncommon to see players slaughtering city NPCs en masse to make a statement or show off their skills. If the NPCs in games like World of Warcraft or Swordsman 3 were sentient, they’d surely have a lot of grievances to air.

But as the saying goes, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Employers, who bluntly demanded overwork from their employees, suggesting they slogged through the 996 workweeks so the boss could afford a new Rolls-Royce Phantom, would likely find themselves being smashed in the head with an ashtray by unhappy workers.

However, if this exploitation was rephrased as part of the corporate culture or a pursuit of personal success, one would suddenly find many more willing to embrace the grind, even mocking those who refused to sacrifice their wellbeing for the boss’s luxury.

In any case, while it wasn’t possible to outright demand players to undergo military training for Yang’s conquests, they could be enticed into accepting a militarized command structure reminiscent of semi-feudal times. By prioritizing mission objectives and following orders during combat, players could be encouraged to willingly participate.

For instance, introducing a battle honor system, a superficial military rank system, and offering mass-produced quality equipment as rewards could effectively engage players to invest their passion and youth in the battlefield.

Summoner’s Rift, Warsong Gulch, Azeroth, the Celestial Basin, the Silk Road… These were all places where Yang Qiu had spilled his youthful vigor in the past.

The only issue… was that this world wasn’t a game, and everything of OtherWorld wasn’t data. Moreover, developing new scenes wasn’t as simple as pushing developers to work overtime for a few months.

Yang Qiu’s approach to this was—”Programmers have their own methods, and so did spellcasters.”

As players that were online received the battlefield trial announcement, Yang Qiu was riding atop a fearsome black bone wyrm, surveying the primordial wasteland below with satisfaction

Under the eerie glow of a blood-red moon, the metal megacity built against a colossal mountain stretched beyond human imagination.

At the base of the towering city walls, countless demonic creatures engaged in a frightening and brutal meat grinder of a battle.

A giant mole monster the size of tanks bulldozed through the chaotic ranks until a headless knight speared through its skull, thus ending its rampage.

Enormous treants, scorched and bitten by swarms of flame ants, roared in defiance before collapsing.

“Lord of Calamity messing with the Lord of Fear again?” Yang Qiu mused, then turned to his pale-faced companions on the wyrm’s neck. “This battlefield is perfect for training the undead, don’t you guys think?”

Lieutenant Wagner Pitt and Captain Kenn who were in the Dimensional Realm for the first time: “…”

“The feud between these two demon lords is well-known throughout the ten layers of the Demon Dimensional Realm. However, we must tread carefully to avoid alerting the petty Lord of Calamity of our intrusion from the material plane and our covert military drills using his demons.”

While saying that, Yang Qiu steered the bone wyrm away from the main battlefield.

In this Demon Dimensional Realm, where bone wyrms were a common sight, their presence went unnoticed—Yang Qiu had his pick on his previous visit here, choosing the largest from a flock of bone wyrms to be his steed.

After a wide detour, he landed in a secluded valley near the giant mountain, far enough from the main battlefield to remain inconspicuous.

“This spot isn’t too bad.”

Letting his companions down from the wyrm’s neck to catch their breaths, Yang Qiu surveyed the surroundings. He then drew out his staff, sprinkled some magic dust, and conjured a large cave into the mountain side.

“One respawn camp and two military encampments. There wouldn’t be meaning without opposition,” muttered Yang Qiu as he once more scattered magic power to move the earth, conjuring two earth houses similar to Exile Town’s town hall on the left and right of the cave.

Yang Qiu took out some supplies from his spatial ring and got Wagner and Kenn to settle in. Then, he entered the newly made cave to install a “modified mental imprint matrix” and added an undead summoning spell (respawning and teleporting).

Players definitely couldn’t wait offline for half an hour after dying in battle, and Yang Qiu had too many things on hand to always be camped in the Demon Dimensional Realm to act as a battery for players’ resurrection. Therefore, he decided to splurge—power the imprint matrix core with a magic core.

Magic core was a purer form of magic energy than even magic crystal that only few monsters could occasionally harbor in its body. Were this sold on the open markets, it would be worth its weight in gold.

Ever since OtherWorld’s “launch,” players had barely stumbled on slightly over ten of these magic cores… all of which Yang Qiu had cleverly exchanged for seemingly worthless territorial prestige points.

After setting up the respawn and teleportation point, Yang Qiu started working on the teleportation point for the living. It would be unfair to expect Wagner and Kenn, beings of flesh and blood, to remain on duty around the clock. The battlefield would just have to be open for 12 hours each OtherWorld day.

The material world was the primary realm, and the ten layers of the Demon Dimensional Realm belonged to the same plane. High-level black mages could manually tear through the dimensional barriers with ease, so the tearing sensation of the teleportation point wouldn’t be as bad as journeying from OtherWorld to Earth. At most, it was slight disorientation amounting to nothing more than dizziness.

Emerging from the cave, Yang Qiu noticed the two battlefield NPCs aimlessly standing around, unsure of what to do next. He beckoned them over and handed each a booklet.

“You two are to organize our undead friends when they report to you and lead them to take advantage and profit from the main battlefield over there,” explained Yang Qiu. “I have a slight acquaintance with the Lord of Fear, who is far more magnanimous than the Lord of Calamity. He wouldn’t mind us visiting his realm.”

Kenn, feeling the pressure of their situation, resignedly accepted his fate, while Wagner, pointing toward the tumultuous main battlefield filled with bizarre creatures, protested, “Hold on, how are we supposed to distinguish friends from foes among those monsters?”

“Don’t worry, the undead will know,” Yang Qiu assured with a smile. “Just tidy up this area to resemble a base. I need to have a word with the Calamity’s army.”

With that, Yang Qiu took off, leaving the two men bewildered and alone.

“Have I actually ended up in a Dimensional Realm?” Kenn was regretting his life choices.

Wagner sighed heavily and went back inside their makeshift quarters to start cleaning up, resigned to their bizarre situation.

Yang Qiu’s claim of having a “slight acquaintance” with the ruler of this layer of the Demon Dimensional Realm was an understatement. Although he had met the demon lord before, it was unlikely that he was remembered.

High-level black mages often interacted with native demons when searching for summons in the demon dimension realms, which, contrary to their portrayal in the material plane, had their own structured societies and rules.

Of course, not all Demon Dimensional Realms had the orderly civilization of the demon race; there were chaotic layers that lacked a demon lord which black mages would avoid.

Not all among the ten layers of the demon dimension realm governed by powerful demon lords were accessible. The realms of Calamity and Endless, for example, were off-limits—the former’s demon lord was akin to a lunatic, while the latter’s demon lord had too deep a connection with the void and had gone completely insane.