The Unreal Engine editor interface lay before him like a blank canvas, silently awaiting the creator's first stroke. Grant's fingers hovered over the keyboard, but he hesitated.
Beep.
His phone screen lit up. A notification from his banking app—a reminder of an upcoming credit card payment—pierced through his ambitions like a needle popping a balloon. A profound sense of helplessness washed over him.
How was he supposed to build a demo for Outlast all by himself? This wasn't a problem that passion and dreams could solve. It was pure fantasy.
Then, a name suddenly flashed into his mind.
Arthur.
The computer science genius their professor had hailed as the strongest of their graduating class. His brilliance had even forced someone as talented as Grant to settle for second place in every coding competition. More importantly, Arthur was his best friend from university.
The floodgates of memory swung open.
A sweltering summer night. The boys' dormitory reeking of instant noodles. He and Arthur huddled before a single laptop, its screen filled with scrolling code.
"Look! Just add a recursive lock here, and we can perfectly resolve the concurrency conflict!" Back then, Arthur wore a faded T-shirt, but behind his glasses shone eyes burning with a fervent passion for technology. "We'll start our own studio one day, Grant. We'll use code to build something entirely new—something that will shake the world!"
And now?
Grant knew all too well that Arthur was trapped in a major tech corporation, likely at a giant like Global Nexus. He earned a massive annual salary, yet his daily work consisted of maintaining ancient legacy systems. It was the greatest irony in the world: using a dragon-slaying sword to chop vegetables.
Just as he picked up his phone to dial, a piece of industry news popped up at the top of his screen. Every word in the headline felt like a venom-dipped nail.
[Xunyou Network's S-Class Mobile Game 'Chibi Mecha Squad' Officially Announced! Led by Gold Medal Producer Leo!]
The accompanying image was precisely the heavy-metal mecha from Grant's own "Aegis Protocol." Except its thick, hardcore armor had been grotesquely modified into a chubby, round, "cute" style. The originally menacing electromagnetic cannon had become a ridiculous water pistol, still spurting blue droplets.
In the news video, Leo, dressed in a custom-tailored suit, spoke confidently to the camera. "We believe the mecha genre shouldn't always be so hardcore or inaccessible. We've innovated to make it more youthful, cuter, and more acceptable to the mass market."
"Shameless!" Grant clenched his fist, veins bulging on the back of his hand.
That was his life's work. The steel behemoth he had painstakingly built polygon by polygon through countless sleepless nights. Now, these bandits had twisted it into an unrecognizable caricature.
The fury in his chest catalyzed his determination. He needed Arthur. He dialed the number he knew by heart.
"Ring... ring..."
The phone rang for a long time before it was answered. "Hello? Who is this?" Arthur's voice was hoarse, sounding weary from another all-nighter.
"It's me, Grant."
"Oh... Grant. What's up? I just got out of a meeting. I was about to take a nap." In the background, Grant could hear the frantic clatter of keyboards and the muffled sounds of people discussing server loads.
Grant didn't beat around the bush. "I quit my job. Let's make a game together."
Silence followed for five full seconds. Then, an incredulous exclamation: "Are you crazy? You just quit a prime gig at Xunyou? Just like that?"
"What about your rent? Your bills?" A barrage of questions poured down like a bucket of cold water. Arthur spoke rapidly, his tone carrying the numbness of someone worn down by corporate reality. "Bro, don't be naive. I'm not like you. I've got a massive mortgage payment every month. If I miss one, I'm out on the street. No money, no team, no resources—what are you going to start a business with? Listen to me: go find another job, quick. The market's tough right now. Don't starve yourself."
Every word was brutally realistic. And utterly grating.
The cold water didn't extinguish Grant's fire. "I have an idea that could disrupt the entire market."
A bitter chuckle came from the other end. "An idea? Grant, ideas are the cheapest things in my head. I get a hundred of them a day. What's the use? Can they be turned into cash? Can they pay my mortgage?"
Idealism and reality collided with violent intensity. The air seemed to freeze. Grant didn't argue about intangible futures; he shifted gears, cutting straight to the most practical issue.
"You complained on social media recently about a stubborn bug in your server's underlying data synchronization, right?"
Arthur paused, thrown off by the sudden shift. He began to vent almost reflexively. "Don't even mention it. It's a ghost bug. Sporadic data corruption under high concurrency. We can't trace the source. The whole backend team—over a dozen senior devs—has been tortured by it for two weeks. We're all going bald. The boss said if it's not fixed by the end of the month, our bonuses are gone."
Grant listened without interrupting. Only after Arthur finished did he speak slowly. "Don't reject me yet. Give me half a day to look at this technical problem. I'll give you a solution."
"If my solution works, then you can consider whether to seriously listen to my 'idea.'"
Another long silence. Arthur was clearly processing this. A guy who had just been pushed out of the industry, currently unemployed, claiming he could solve in half a day a nightmare that had stumped a top-tier corporate team for a fortnight? It sounded even more absurd than "let's make a game."
"Fine," Arthur finally muttered. "I'll send the problem description and relevant code snippets to your email. Let's see what trick you've got up your sleeve."
His tone was dismissive. He took it as Grant's last bit of stubborn pride.
Click.
The call ended. But Grant felt no discouragement. He focused his mind inward, and the cerulean blue panel materialized once more.
[Game Vault System]
He didn't look at the enticing game titles. Instead, he focused on an inconspicuous corner of the system panel: a search box.
[Technical Repository]
Grant's consciousness formed a command. He entered keywords:
[High Concurrency] [Distributed Servers] [Underlying Data Synchronization] [Atomic Lock]
Instantly, a torrent of data, vast as a sea of stars, surged before his eyes. This wasn't technology from this world; it was perfected theory from Earth's civilization, refined through millions of iterations to its absolute pinnacle.
Grant's consciousness rapidly sifted through the data, searching for the solution that was not only perfect but most likely to leave Arthur absolutely stunned.