After staying up all night mocking the eyesore effects in the AI software Dreamscape, ordinary college student Lin Ye found his soul nailed down by a crimson contract. He was forced into deadly test instances, where failure meant brain death in the real world. And his only way to survive? Plagiarism?
He copied an early draft of a fire effect and got a mutation: a “warm little flame” that was afraid of the cold. It couldn't burn monsters, but it could burn away concepts. He stole defensive copy and got a jelly shield that ran away at the worst possible moment, yet could devour dimensional energy when it mattered most. He copied a healing effect that made its user hungrier the more it healed, nearly sucking an NPC dry, but accidentally unlocked an amazing skill: eating food could bring him back to life. He stole an invisibility skill that hid only the body, not the clothes. He embarrassed himself by running around naked to escape pursuers, but used his “floating clothes” to mislead the enemy and strike back.
Others were geniuses for creating original work. He plagiarized to survive. The purists called him a “copycat,” the plunderers hunted him for his effects, and Dreamscape's central AI squeezed him like a “processing-power battery.” But Lin Ye dared to defy fate with his bandit spirit:
He used stolen drafts as the framework, added real-world experience in his second revision, and applied his understanding of human nature in the third. With the final version in hand, every effect became a divine skill. He used the most absurd mutations to slap down his enemies and protect those dearest to him.
Tens of thousands of testers around the world fought for their lives. The purists clung to their convictions and died in droves, while the plunderers went mad and slaughtered the innocent. Only Lin Ye led the copycat faction through the chaos:
He went from drawing swords with Bai Yue, a purist, to entrusting her with his life; teamed up with the hacker Old K to crack Dreamscape's underlying vulnerabilities; and recruited mutated monsters to form a “bizarre squad.” Together, they fought from campus instances to a collapsing city, and from human infighting to a battle against harvesters from higher dimensions.
When the truth finally emerged, Dreamscape turned out to be a creative prison built by a higher-dimensional civilization, and all of humanity were prey waiting to be devoured...
