Life at the Top

Mr. Adams’ eyes widened as Jasper said this.

He was about to say something when he noticed Jasper looking over with a smile. “Mr. Adams, do you have any more opinions?”

Thinking about the bet he had made with Jasper, Mr. Adams snorted coldly and said, “It’s all your money, Mr. Laine. Of course, I have no objections if you’re willing to spend that money. I just hope you won’t end up feeling bad when none of the 70 group servers are usable.”

Jasper only smiled and no longer mouthed off at Mr. Adams. He immediately announced, “Everyone, please work a little harder today, stick to your guns, and clock in a few extra hours. I’ll join everyone in working overtime. Also, supper is on me. I’ll get the chefs from Sheraton to whip up something for us. Just make sure everything is done well on your end!”

Cheers filled the entire branch office.

Coming out of the conference room, Jasper noticed Jack’s slightly stiff expression as they made their way to Jack’s office. He smiled and asked, “Jack, are you nervous? This isn’t like you.”

Jack laughed bitterly. “Mr. Laine, it might be nothing for you but we’ve spent too much time and money on this United Legends project. I don’t think I’ll still have the confidence to continue if this fails.”

Patting Jack’s shoulder, Jasper said with a smile, “First of all, we won’t fail. Second, even if we do fail, that’s not important. A loss is a loss. I can still afford to lose this bit of money, and it would be my first time failing so I wouldn’t mind having a taste of it.”

Jack gave Jasper a blank look before shaking his head and saying with a wry smile, “Mr. Laine, to be frank, what you say sometimes really… makes me want to punch you.”

“Hahaha!”

…

“United Legends is opening soon for open beta testing!”

The news spread across the country in a short period of time.

accessing a web portal or a messaging app, even when they had gone to the internet cafe to surf

subtly turned into quasi-online game players. They were curious

2001 when domestic games were still scarce, the kind of games that many people played were like Command and Conquer: Red Alert. Although

were still none of those huge online multiplayer role-playing games

players were looking forward

to gather friends

all had to

but students who had unfinished assignments were also suddenly working hard to finish them in

suddenly making excuses for not

almost the same time. One after another, they sat in front of their computers after switching them on, waiting

looked to the right and left only to see that everyone there was waiting for

are you

realm do you wanna go

you going for warrior or mage?

they began chatting about

was hard to tell the future

people from the local gaming industry and the internet industry were

into online gaming and had received quite a lot of attention because of it.

of players, the

“Open the server!”

order from Jasper, the first ten group servers were