Genius game designer Lin Mo spent five painstaking years creating the groundbreaking hardcore survival game Endless Ark. It was renowned for its ultra-realistic physics engine, complex and ever-changing worlds, highly intelligent AI, and brutal elimination mechanics. But on the eve of the game's global launch, Lin Mo received an anonymous package containing a game helmet identical to the one in his designs. The moment he put it on, he was forcibly pulled into the world of Endless Ark and greeted by a cold System notification: “Welcome aboard, Designer. Survival is your only privilege. Death is your final destination. Godslayer Protocol initiated.”
Even worse, he discovered that the game rules had been maliciously altered and the difficulty had skyrocketed. All the NPCs and monsters seemed to have an abnormal, deadly “interest” in him, their creator. To survive, he had no choice but to form a temporary team with Shen Xiao, a powerful loner of mysterious origins whom he met in the first instance. Shen Xiao seemed to understand the game far better than he should, and showed a complicated interest in Lin Mo's identity as a “designer,” mixing exploitation with a faint, barely perceptible desire to protect him.
The two were forced to fight for survival in one instance after another, all designed by Lin Mo himself, yet now unfamiliar and deadly. Lin Mo relied on his knowledge of the underlying logic and “back doors” to struggle through, while Shen Xiao forged ahead with his extraordinary combat instincts and experience that suggested he was a “veteran player.” Gradually, they discovered that the loss of control over Endless Ark was no accident. A shocking conspiracy called the “Godslayer Protocol” lay behind it, its target none other than all
