Trailer

"So boring..." "Time to go evaluate more trash again..." In a room packed with game pods, Mantou rested his chin in his hand, listlessly scrolling through the newest game rankings. A title called Specter that had launched two days prior had given him a splitting headache. Clipping through walls and dropping frames were the least of its issues; the repeated crashes and black screens were truly infuriating, making it a "horror game" in every unintended sense of the word. "I could well have borne the darkness, had I never seen the light." That was how Mantou genuinely felt deep down. After experiencing the lifelike, fully immersive realism of Elezerg, he found it nearly impossible to force himself to endure anything else. At the thought, Mantou clutched his bird's nest of hair, consumed by grief and despair. "Damn it! When the hell is Elezerg launching its next server? Those scumbag devs haven't given a single reliable word!" More than three months had passed since the servers shut down. During that time, Mantou had edited all his recorded footage into videos and uploaded them to major video platforms. His video of the Imperial Duel Tournament had blown up once again, reaching unprecedented heights of popularity! In particular, elements like the "Roman Empire" and "Machine Cult" featured in the video had not only sent domestic players into a frenzy, but also drawn massive attention from overseas gamers. Mantou's commentary video of Machine Cult vs. Age of Rome had already surpassed a hundred million views on streaming platforms. And after witnessing the guild battles, gamers from all over traced the trail back to watch the rest of Mantou's Elezerg Log series. Those videos stunned them even more, hitting them with an impact akin to Columbus discovering the New World as they were introduced to a breathtaking fantasy universe. The freedom of choice was actually that high? The NPCs' intelligence was practically indistinguishable from real people? The level of realism went this far? You could even conduct scientific research and make original inventions in the game? Thus, Elezerg set off shockwaves across the globe. Tens of millions of gamers were craning their necks in eager anticipation, waiting for the game's servers to reopen. "Haaah—" Mantou yawned, clicking on a random title to see if it was worth a shot. Suddenly, his phone chimed with rapid beeps as notifications flooded his screen one after another. "@GoingToEatMantou!!" "Old Thief Mantou!" "Go look! The official channel dropped a promotional video!" "Hurry! Get over here now!" "Holy crap! It's not just the Great Anzetta Wasteland this time—they unlocked the full map of Feanso!" Mantou nearly wept tears of joy. Without a second thought, he quit out of the no-name game and rushed straight to the official website. "It's finally happening!" [Elezerg: Version 2.0—Clash of Kings, Coming Soon!] [For this launch, we will be opening all regions of the Feanso Continent: Kingdom of Cassander, Kingdom of Thrace, Kingdom of Seleucia, Silvermoon Bay Free Trade Confederation, Therenian Elven Kingdom, Mountain Dwarf Kingdom... At the same time, we will unlock 314 respawn points, including the original points in Anzetta: City of Sunrise—Auguste; Capital of Sunset—West; Dwarven Capital—Black Mountain Keep; Ancient Elven Capital—Theran; Sunflare City—Teotihuacan; Gate of the Western Sea—Port Victoria...] Reading this, Mantou's eyes bulged, his jaw nearly hitting the floor. "Holy shit!" "They opened up this many new regions?! This update is a total game-changer!" During the closed beta and the Northland Winds version, players had only explored the Great Anzetta Wasteland, following in the footsteps of the empire's expansion, and that had already felt extraordinarily vast. —Bear in mind that wasteland spanned five to six million square kilometers! In the real world, that exceeded the territory of most nations. And now, the devs had unlocked so many new regions whose total area far surpassed the Great Anzetta Wasteland. It was finally a true "open-world exploration" game. Mantou rubbed his hands together in excitement, muttering under his breath. "The teaser info alone is already this explosive. What's the actual trailer going to be like?" "Come on!" With trembling fingers, he clicked the play button on the video. The moment the video loaded, the screen was the familiar black, but it was already blanketed with a dense layer of bullet comments. This time, it wasn't just Chinese—messages were streaming in from all over the world in countless languages. "It's here!" "Whoa, the trailer is finally out!" "Closed beta veteran reporting for duty!" "It's about damn time!" "Devs were playing dead every single day." "I can't wait any longer! Let me in! I want to play Elezerg!" An ethereal female voice rang out, chanting what sounded like a tragic, majestic epic, and the screen suddenly flared with light. Appearing in the frame were magnificent white ramparts and a towering spire hundreds of meters tall standing proud and resolute. The city within was prosperous and beautiful, with happy smiles gracing the faces of its citizens. A magnificent Godblood Legion composed of titans and angels stood assembled in awe-inspiring ranks beside the tower. At the very summit of the tower, upon an ornate solar disc, a towering figure appeared—crowned, winged, and clad in radiant golden armor. He possessed an imposing bearing, resting his hands upon the pommel of a greatsword planted firmly into the ground. Around him, more than a hundred arcanists in gold-and-red robes chanted incantations under their breath, causing the light radiating from the solar disc to grow increasingly dazzling. Suddenly, the sun suspended high in the heavens unleashed a blinding glare, bathing the disc in brilliance as if transforming it into a divine realm. A majestic golden figure descended from the heavens, roaring in fury as eyes brimming with endless radiance glared down upon the mortals atop the tower. With his descent, the background music swelled into something holy and grand, resembling a hymn of prayer. "Hahahaha!" "Holy Fadlan shall step into eternity alongside me!" The music abruptly turned frantic. A split second later, a colossal explosion swallowed everything, boundless heat and light churning violently in the upper atmosphere. Meanwhile, the sun turned deathly dim in an instant, plunging the entire sky into a dark, blood-red hue. "Rumble—" The hundreds-of-meters-tall spire crashed down, slowly toppling toward the ground as debris and blazing fire rained across the earth. The city's populace was thrown into utter chaos, fleeing in terror amidst the horrific catastrophe. The land was scorched black, buildings were reduced to rubble, and billowing smoke and ash swept over the entire city. Amidst the weeping of women and children and the wails of men, that familiar narrator's voice returned once more. "Through the folly of seeking to supplant the Sun God, Aragorn I slew himself with his own hands, bringing ruin to the empire he had forged. "With the catastrophic collapse of the Tower of the Eternal Sun God, the Holy Fadlan Empire, which had ruled the Feanso Continent for a century, came to an end." "Holy crap! Talk about high-budget!" "Starting off this intense?!" "I'm so hyped!" "We were just fighting the Northern Coalition, and now we're going head-to-head with actual deities?!" "This has to be the holy city of Teotihuacan. I heard about it from some Thracians who came to trade in the empire." A desolate, somber melody struck up, evoking an inexplicable sense of grief. The scene suddenly shifted. It was still that same holy city, but gone was its former glory; it now lay battered and broken, reduced to endless ruins. Across that once-fertile, prosperous land, the earth was riddled with scars, corpses piled into mountains, and blood gushed forth to form scarlet rivers. The voiceover continued: "Upon the shattered corpse of Holy Fadlan, the three kingdoms of Thrace, Cassander, and Seleucia launched the Battle of the Three Emperors. Stooping to any means to seize the empire's legacy, they brought about countless tragedies upon this land... "The holy city of the past was reduced to ruin; former kin slaughtered one another. This was an age of sorrow—an era drenched in blood and death."