22: Chapter 22 Getting Rich

Every player stared at the poster, their eyes nearly popping out of their sockets and onto their screens. It featured a white-haired girl standing in an endless sea of fire, holding a tattered black flag, her face wearing an incredibly defiant, yandere, and maniacal smile.

"Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap!!!"

PD literally jumped onto his chair in the stream room, even snapping his headphone cable in the process.

"Jeanne d'Arc?! That final boss who led hundreds of Wyverns in France and slaughtered us until we cried for our parents... she's actually in the gacha pool?!"

"Players can actually pull the boss to be their waifu?!"

In the gaming history of this parallel world, this was an absolute first!

In traditional games, a boss was always a boss—a tool for players to defeat and harvest for gear.

But in FGO, Gu Yi used the theme of "Counterfeits and Obsessions" to turn this tragic, villainous witch—who was already explosively popular across the internet—into a Servant that players could control!

The lore buffs, meta-chasers, and researchers on the forums went completely berserk:

"Aaaaah! She's so wild! She's so arrogant! I love her!"

"Waaaah, my waifu Jeanne d'Arc didn't die! She was resurrected by Father Gu! Even if she's a counterfeit, she's one of a kind in my heart!"

"A brand new class? Avenger?! She gains damage when she takes hits?! Isn't this the perfect nuke for a desperate comeback?!"

“Do the copycat dogs at Tianpeng Interactive Entertainment see this? That trash game you copied isn't even worth one of Chaldea's toes! This is what you call character building! This is the ultimate charm of the ACG world!”

"Nobody stop me! Even if I have to hock my underwear today, I'm bringing Jeanne d'Arc home to Chaldea! I want to tell her personally that she isn't a fake dream!"

"Come home! Come home! Jeanne d'Arc waifu, get in my bowl!"

In the Shark Stream Room, A-Dai—a usually elegant lore-focused streamer—now had bloodshot eyes. Like a crazed gambler, she was frantically drawing crosses in front of the VR summoning circle.

With the official release of the [Da Vinci and the Seven Counterfeit Heroic Spirits] event, combined with the extreme buildup from the France storyline, the popularity of the "Dragon Witch" Jeanne d'Arc had completely skyrocketed.

As a low-spending lore fan, A-Dai had painstakingly hoarded every single free quartz she got from clearing Fuyuki City and France just for this moment.

A-Dai rubbed her hands nervously, watching the light from her final ten-pull flash wildly within the summoning circle.

Just as a brilliant "rainbow-colored" ring suddenly lit up in the center of the circle, signaling the arrival of a maximum rarity gold card—

*Buzz—*

A sudden, heart-wrenching sound of static rang out.

The gorgeous special effects, the summoning circle, and even the sci-fi hall of Chaldea vanished before A-Dai's eyes like a receding tide.

In their place was a deathly silent darkness and a very prominent white disconnected icon in the center of the screen.

[Network connection lost.]

[Server is reconnecting, please try again later (Error Code: 502).]

"What the hell?!"

A-Dai froze completely. She frantically slapped her VR headset and mashed the reconnect button.

But no matter how she clicked, the screen only showed that heartless "Error 502."

"My freaking rainbow ring! My Jeanne d'Arc was about to come out! All my quartz were consumed! You're cutting my connection now?!"

A-Dai was so frantic she was nearly in tears, screaming in despair in the stream room.

However, she was not alone.

At that moment, the viewers in the stream room also let out wails of despair:

"A-Dai, stop hitting your headset. It's not your internet; Chaldea's servers just exploded!"

"I got kicked out too! The $100 pack I just bought hasn't even hit my account yet!"

"Trash devs! This is the first big event since launch, couldn't you get better servers?!"

The entire internet of the Blue Planet was instantly filled with a chorus of curses.

Tianpeng Interactive Entertainment, which had been beaten so badly by FGO that they couldn't lift their heads, saw this and immediately acted like sharks smelling blood. They hired a massive amount of internet trolls to start stirring up trouble on the forums:

"Lol, so this is the so-called masterpiece? They can't even maintain a server!"

"A small workshop is just a small workshop; their technical strength is non-existent! Everyone's hoarded quartz are probably going to be swallowed. Hurry up and get refunds!"

"Our 'gods and demons defense line' is much more stable. Come back and play!"

Under this deliberate instigation, the anxiety and anger of both F2P players and whales began to skyrocket at a visible rate.

However, what none of these players in the other world knew was that this "epic server explosion disaster" that was tearing at their hearts wasn't a technical glitch at all.

In the real world, inside a top-floor penthouse on the 120th floor of the Global Financial Center in Tianhai City.

Within a top-tier quantum server room worth sixty million, the deep blue indicator lights were flashing with extreme stability.

The monitoring panel showed that even with millions of players worldwide flooding in simultaneously and the terrifyingly high-frequency stream of gacha data, the load on this performance beast was only a measly 9%.

It was as steady as a mountain; it was impossible for it to crash.

But Gu Yi, sitting in a large executive chair and looking at the peak player count on the backend data panel, had a mischievous smile unique to a veteran ACG fan curling on his lips.

"The atmosphere is sufficiently built up, and everyone's emotions have reached a climax."

Gu Yi leisurely picked up his iced pour-over coffee and took a sip. "Cutting the connection now and leaving their waifus hanging in mid-air... that should make them jump in frustration."

As a veteran from Earth who was well-versed in the ecosystem of ACG gacha games, he knew all too well.

How could a phenomenal ACG masterpiece be missing the classic server explosion and the traditional 'making a fortune relies on maintenance' meme?

This wasn't malicious torture, but a little "surprise" prepared for the players.

It was about the build-up and the payoff. Once the players' emotions had gone through a massive roller coaster (and contributed a massive amount of System Emotion Points to him), they would eventually find that not only had they lost nothing, but they'd also received a huge amount of compensation for free. That joy of recovering what was lost was the best catalyst for narrowing the gap between the devs and the players and establishing a unique community culture.

Gu Yi decisively reached out and pressed the red physical button on the Master console that symbolized [Force Cut of All External Server Connections].

*Click.*

With a smirk of a successful prankster, Gu Yi personally pulled the plug on all players worldwide, artificially creating this "server explosion incident" that shocked the entire internet, forcing the game into a [Server-wide Maintenance] state.

Then, he simultaneously posted a notice on all major social platforms and the official game website, using sincere wording and an extremely humble attitude.

[Chaldea Emergency Maintenance Notice]

"To all esteemed Masters: We are terribly sorry! Because the Chaldea Control Room encountered an unprecedented 'Mana Surge' (the server crashed because everyone's enthusiasm was simply too high), we will be conducting emergency repairs for two hours.

This is a major failure on our part, and we apologize for the shock caused to everyone currently saving humanity.

Your summoning data has been safely stored in the cloud and will definitely not be lost.

As compensation, after the servers reopen, we will distribute the following resources to every Master across the server:

[30 saint quartz] (Enough for one full ten-pull summoning!)

[10 Golden Fruits] (Can restore full AP)

We know this cannot make up for your regrets; the entire staff of Chaldea is currently kowtowing to the servers while repairing them. Please take a short rest."