In an Infinite Game, I Lead the Whole Team in Faking Our Downfall

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[Please add my upcoming novel, The Infinite Game Forces Me to Coast Through Life, to your reading list]

On a certain day, in a certain month and year, player Jiang Xichu entered a dungeon for the first time and ate one of my monsters.

--Excerpt from the Divine Oracle Diary.

Jiang Xichu was a little-known local model citizen in his twenties. For years, he prided himself on loving life, work, and existence. Then, while working overtime, he accidentally spilled an iced Americano into his monitor, wrecked his computer, and called it a day.

When he opened his eyes again, he was face-to-face with a black goat standing upright like a person.

The goat flicked its tongue and said it was a little hungry. Jiang Xichu smiled shyly and took it straight to the players' camp.

His whole operation was a whirlwind. Jiang Xichu, model citizen, sweet-talked the black goat into trusting him, praising it as a good little goat while it was alive. Once it was dead, he ate its meat and drank its blood, roasting its legs until they smelled delicious. After squeezing every last bit of value out of the goat, Jiang Xichu took his leave, victorious.

Jiang Xichu was standing on a goat leg, wondering how he could fashion a couple of knitting needles out of whatever was around and knit himself a sweater to keep warm. At the same time, his wrist flickered, and the System finally showed up, fashionably late.

The System and the goat's head, which Jiang Xichu had been using as a stool, stared at each other for a long time before letting out a piercing shriek.

Jiang Xichu looked at the terminal on his wrist and smiled faintly, then tapped the System panel.

Jiang Xichu said, "Send me back to work."

The System said, "Just get first place."

And so, later on, lone-wolf player Jiang Xichu racked up an impressive record. The players in his dungeons could only stare, dumbfounded, as he cleared them in a celestial glow, carried out on rainbow clouds, and ground their teeth in frustration.

Those goddamn...

A few people in the group stroked their chins thoughtfully, then happily copied Jiang Xichu, opened their boxes, cleared the dungeon, and headed straight for the rest area.

He's got cheats. Stick with him.

The team had just formed, and Jiang Xichu, suddenly thrust into the role of captain, sat in the middle and laid out their tactics with a smile:

From today on, we're going to start failing spectacularly.

Character warnings for the whole team:

An utterly unflappable, steady-as-a-rock, everything-under-control show-off x a pampered, sickly, world-weary great beauty

A laid-back, ingenious connector of minds, the captain's highly in-sync soul partner

A righteous-to-the-core, capable, steadily growing, slow-witted, pure-hearted college boy

A reserved, taciturn, refined, rebellious young master from a wealthy family

The captain's battle-crazed right-hand man, with incredible fighting ability and a brain that doesn't always make the turns

Content warnings:

1. Two endings, a bad ending and a happy ending. Each ending will continue as a different story. Readers who don't enjoy bad endings should proceed with caution.

2. The gong is a massive show-off, a massive show-off, a massive show-off. The whole team is ridiculously full of themselves. The shou's world-weary side isn't obvious early on.

P.S. The tragedy tag applies only to the bad-ending route!

[Upcoming novel blurb]

On a certain day, in a certain month and year, the delinquent player Chu Xun fell from the sky, abducted my kid, and kicked me twice in the dungeon.

--Excerpt from the Divine Oracle Diary.

Chu Xun, a model citizen and the people's good son. His three great hobbies in life are eating, sleeping, and ten-kilometer marches. Whenever he's bored, he teases the fluffy teammates who can't stand him. He spends his life chasing cats and dogs and making himself a nuisance. Once, with sheer persistence, he chased a military dog that hated him for thirteen blocks. He's the very picture of perseverance, getting knocked down and getting right back up.

At twenty-three, this carefree delinquent was ordered to take his teammates into the full-dive game Divine Oracle for a rescue mission. As soon as he entered the dungeon, he picked up two youngsters who had just come of age and were already bold enough to talk back to him, then happily added them to his team. From then on, he ran in circles around one of the kids he'd picked up, spoiling him with food and drink while comforting himself that it was just volunteer work. Truly a moving tale of a male nanny.

One night, unable to take it anymore, Chu Xun poked at the campfire and complained to his teammates about the beastly behavior of the kid, Shang Qi: The kid's obviously smart, but insists on slacking off. He's naturally gifted with perfect stamina, yet every day he'd rather lie down than sit and sit rather than stand. He's fussy and eats three of my canned meat rations every day. What a waste of talent, what a waste!

His teammate took a swig from a canteen and gave him a sidelong look. "So what? You still get so lovestruck over him you can't see straight."

Chu Xun was speechless. Shang Qi, who had heard the whole thing, expressionlessly rolled over and went back to pretending to sleep. He'd lost track of how many times he'd thought himself unlucky.

What kind of person enters a life-or-death System on his eighteenth birthday? Who could be unlucky enough to run into a delinquent like this? Who would have their routine of checking into dungeons to earn a living disrupted just because they joined a team? And who would get dragged around everywhere while having to put up with their captain's harassment all the time?

What a terrible run of luck. He couldn't be any more unfortunate.

Divine Oracle is a large-scale, globally available full-dive game System. Players enter the dungeons themselves. A fatal injury means death, dungeon bosses kill without rhyme or reason, and the sensations are completely realistic.

Character warnings for the whole team:

A carefree, wholesome delinquent gong x a powerful shou with a beautiful face and show-off behavior

A melancholy, aristocratic gong with mild psychological issues x a sunny, naive, natural-born shou

An emotionally detached, impeccably righteous, rational, cold-faced man x a calm, self-possessed, beautiful military queen

Content warnings:

1. Contains plenty of foreshadowing and reveals related to Failing Spectacularly. You can read this without having read Failing Spectacularly.

2. Team members pair up with each other.

3. The main couple have a conflict later in the story.

4. It's an age-gap pairing with the gong younger, not older.

The setting is quirky, the world is entirely fictional, and the story is all made up. Please don't associate it with real life.

No writing advice, please. If it's not your thing, click away, and we'll meet again somewhere else.

Theme: Spreading love and freedom.