Starting from Zero

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"For God\'s sake! I\'ve been waiting for too long!" A young man complained.

"You know what? I didn\'t even have any breakfast. You at least ate a hamburger!" Wayne murmured.

Wayne Reno, my sidekick plus roommate. We\'ve known each other since childhood. Same class in middle school, same high school, same class in college AND got assigned to the same dormitory room. We started playing games together since middle school. The game room at Wayne\'s house was our favorite hang-out spot! Now we\'ve gotten into university, we live in a twin room. That\'s because I\'m quite a loner, I don\'t have many friends besides Wayne! Now we are freshmen, and there\'s plenty of free time before our courses begin. It would be a good idea to play games in the dorm!

Wayne\'s family is pretty rich, they do real estate business. I don\'t know exactly how rich but definitely no richer than mine. He got his own game room beside his bedroom, with several tens of gaming machines and consoles in it, all from his family! My family however, is a bit more complicated. My father runs a multinational corporation called the Dragon Fate Corporation. The corp doesn\'t have any focused business. We do anything that is profitable. In fact, our biggest source of income are specialized military projects.

Um? You don\'t know what "specialized military project" is? It means producing special weapons, for example biological weapons, electronic weapons, space weapons and so on. Weapons that require highly advanced technologies and are not largely used. If I\'m not the young master of the family, I wouldn\'t know that Dragon Fate produces these stuff! My grandpa gave the corporation to my father, and it\'s now the second largest group in the whole world. My father owns 51% of the shares. I don\'t know exactly how much those stock worth... But it should be more than last year\'s Gross National Product of our country. My mom is the president of the Zhong Hua Company. Not like dad, she established her career from scratch on her own, thus she holds 78% of the shares. Zhong Hua Company is not a big one, but her share should be somewhere more than hundreds of millions. Compared with Dragon Fate, though, that\'s like a drop in the ocean! Because of the rich family, I didn\'t get to experience an ordinary childhood. Wherever I go, there would be hundreds of bodyguards following behind. Even when I\'m in the toilet, a small group would have to form a circle around me (with their backs against me of course!) My parents are always busy with their affairs, on my tenth birthday, they each reached a business contract with someone! Because of the guards I couldn\'t make friends, plus the fact that most people who tried to talk to me were mostly drawn by the money, I don\'t easily trust friends. As a result, Wayne is my only friend now (Actually my parents hope I can be happier this way), and my family started to try to make me feel normal, without getting bothered by all the superior perks. So my identity is now hidden, father found some connections to help change my records and information. Now most people wouldn\'t know whether my father have a child or not, let alone who I am. The best thing is my hundreds of stalker guards are now several hidden guards, and I can attend school like everyone else. (My primary school years were held by a teacher exclusively employed by Wayne\'s family, we studied together) This strange childhood caused my solitary personality!

There\'s another reason that made it hard for me to make friends: my appearance and voice. I don\'t look horrible. It\'s the opposite, I\'m beautiful. Yes you heard it right, beautiful. I would win several rewards if I\'m to participate beauty contests around the world. But the problem is, I, a pure-blooded male, got a body shape nowhere like a man. I\'m not transsexual mind you, from biological perspective, I\'m 100% male, I have everything a man is supposed to have and I don\'t have anything I shouldn\'t, even my sexual preference is totally normal. But! 99.99% people will get it wrong if they try to guess my gender when they haven\'t known in advance! (Gah!) Every time there\'s a guest visiting my home, the first comment would be: Mr President, your daughter is absolutely stunning! Yes, most people\'s first impression on me is a super pretty little girl, and for some reason it seems I never went through a voice mutation, I sound like a child which makes it even harder to distinguish my gender! Just imagine, a bunch of guys staring at me and drool on the ground, how do I make friends like that?! For my face, I never experienced a stable school life. Now there were more than 200 cases when I scared groups of boys out of men\'s toilet! Thus, Wayne is the only who has been considering me as a buddy, a best friend. (He doesn\'t get attracted by my beauty is probably because he grew up with me, he didn\'t feel anything when he\'s little and now he got used to it. Wayne loves pretty women too, he complained that he won\'t find a girlfriend easily because of me---I raised his standard! Well I\'m pretty sure he gets all "tensed up" when he meets a woman, any kind of woman.)

Today we\'re queuing up for the newest online game, [Zero]. It\'s the release day, the first 10 thousand players who claim their account can receive special gift. The gift is the VR Helmet specially designed for [Zero], plus random hidden in-game reward. The helmet is no big deal, it\'s 2062 now, it only costs like 300 Yuan, not that expensive. Actually it\'s the random hidden reward that is tempting. In fact, [Zero] is a cooperated product between my father\'s corporation and world\'s largest company, the European Union Countertrade Association. My mother\'s Zhong Hua company will be running the game. But father said I shouldn\'t use my privilege, I have to wait in the queue myself if I want an account. So here we are!

Oh, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Sairin, from New Nanjing City. I think you may need to know about this "New Nanjing". In 2012, there was a major military conflict between China and Japan, over ocean boundary issues. It developed into a large-scale war. During the war, Japan launched 37 heavy Fuel Air Explosive Missiles towards us, 36 of which were intercepted by the Space Directed Energy Interception System (This system is Dragon Fate\'s very first successful military deal, when my grandfather was still the president), but the last one hit Nanjing City and burned the entire place to the ground. The death toll was more than 4 times the total number of victims during the Nanjing Massacre in WW2, 1.35 million. As a revenge, we detonated a Crust Bomb at Honshu Island, sending it beneath the Pacific Ocean (Today Japan only has three main islands left). The resulting tsunami severely damaged neighboring nations, for this, China paid about 5.22 trillion Yuan to South and North Korea. This "New Nanjing" was built upon the ruins of the original Nanjing City.

"Look, they opened the doors!" Wayne dragged me out of my thoughts.

Now we need to strain every muscle to push forward. Dang it. The orderly queue is no more the very moment they saw the door open. The crowd pushed me into the release hall without letting me touch the ground at all. It\'s even more chaotic inside the hall. It\'s not big, and there are already about three thousand people stuffed in here. I guess there are at least another ten thousand on the outside trying to get in. Wayne was behind me but is now nowhere to be found. Must have been carried away to somewhere.

The account sales booth ahead already started selling, now I also have to squeeze forward with all I got. The security is trying their best to keep order....to no avail. "Help..." I heard a faint call for help, it came from...under me? I tried to lower my head, and saw someone down on the ground being stepped over, and obviously cannot get up. This poor soul will definitely die if it goes on. I tried to push the surrounding crowd away. And using my shoulder to keep them from coming back, stretching out one hand and pulled the downed man over.

And now I\'m stunned. The one I just saved is a girl beautiful like a descended angel! More beautiful than me! I haven\'t met many girls this pretty and few ones are willing to walk alongside me -- I took all the spotlight! She looks miserable with all the footprints on her, but that doesn\'t cover her absolute beauty.

"Thank you so much, sis!" Although the voice is pleasant to hear, I still feel like crap. Another one! Misunderstood!

"It\'s ok. I can\'t just watch you die from trampling can I? Need me to take you out of the hall?" I instantly regretted after saying that. If I really send her out, I don\'t know if I can get back again and seize the top-10,000 account. Besides, the game is being released around the world at the same time, even if the main publishing company is here in New Nanjing, we could probably have 3 to 5 hundred accounts at most.

"No! I want an account!" That\'s a relief.

"Alright then, follow me close!"

We continued to fight our way towards the booth, and I\'m able to make a way. Exhausted, I finally swam to the booth. Yes, swam. My feet never touched the ground. "An account please!" I shouted to the sales lady.

"An account here too!" The girl also made it to the booth.

The sales lady quickly passed two helmets to us. "The account is affixed inside the helmet. Read the instructions if got any questions."

There\'s no other way, we have to push through the crowd again, to the exit. We finally got out. Looking at the dense mass of a crowd outside, I don\'t even know how I got in there before. I heard panting from behind, and looked back at the girl.

"Thank you! The name is Lica, Lica Lin. If not for you, big sis, I\'d probably died in there! Let alone the account!" She reached out with her hand.

I shook that black-ish (it should be white) hand, and I don\'t want to explain for now. We probably won\'t see each other again anyway. "You\'re welcome. Since we both got the account, let me remember yours and I\'ll send you message when I\'m in the game."

"Sure!" Lica wrote down her account from the helmet and gave it to me. "I\'ll go now. Let\'s talk later!"

"Alright!" Watching her leave, I glanced back at the crowd. It looks impossible to find Wayne, so I started heading back to the dorm.

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I finally arrived at our room, but Wayne is not back. I started eating the breakfast I grabbed along the way while reading the instruction. The game server officially opens at 8 pm tonight.

There\'s not much instructions, only 17 pages in total. It seems the 10 thousand accounts are associated with helmets, the actual account isn\'t important, it\'s the helmet that matters. The first time the helmet logs into the game, the system will consider the used account as a gifted account and initialize rewarding procedure. Of course each account can only accept the reward once, using two helmets and log into the same account twice will not work. The system only recognizes the first reward. The second will be ignored. The instruction also mentioned that each individual can only use one account. When logging in the first time, the helmet will scan user\'s brain wave and iris then bind them. Once bound, no one else will be able to use the account. This method completely prevented powerleveling and account hacking. Each individual\'s identity will also bind with the account. No one can register a second one. The other instructions are all omitted. It only says that you can ask the system NPC once inside the game.

Wayne is back when I just finished reading.

"How was it?"

Depression is written all over Wayne\'s face:"Forget it. I got pushed out from the beginning. I didn\'t even see the helmet! You got one?!" Wayne saw my helmet. "Well no big deal. I\'m no professional. A normal account is fine."

"No worries. When I leveled up I\'ll help you, it would be faster than others." I comforted him.

"Deal! Don\'t forget it!"

I ate lunch early and caught some sleep to get ready to work all night. I woke up at 7, had dinner, and waited for the game to launch. After a painful wait (less than half an hour actually), it\'s 8 pm!