Chapter 3

The night in Beijing doesn’t feel deep at all.

It’s already three in the morning, yet the streets are still bustling with traffic, far from the quiet of a deep night.

Lu Yuan sat down by the window and lit a cigarette.

This is the 22nd floor of a street-front building on Financial Street, the operations center of a certain bank. It’s already late at night, and although the traffic outside is noisy, only Lu Yuan’s project team is still working overtime on this floor.

"Once this project is done, I’ll quit and take a break."

He said to himself. Actually, this wasn’t the first time he had made such a resolution, but it had been dragged out time and again, and it was really just a way to vent his frustration.

After working overtime for half a month, his brain felt like a rotten log in the forest, solid and unable to function.

But the project team had been scattered by the company, and it was all up to Lu Yuan to hold things together. Could he really take a break?

The room inside was filled with the sound of arguments, which made his brain throb painfully. Those newly graduated college students always got stuck in technical details, which did nothing to speed up the project. They lacked a sense of responsibility and only thought about themselves. Lu Yuan was particularly frustrated by a new hire who said, "If I can’t learn new things, why am I here?" He came to the atrium to find some peace and quiet.

He was too lazy to say much more. These new graduates thought the company was there for them, and there was no point in trying to reason with them. It would be better to send them back to the company tomorrow. They would have to experience some setbacks to realize they weren’t the main characters and that they were still far from the center of the world.

Cigarettes, coffee, and an iPad—three essentials for overtime work.

Lu Yuan stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray, picked up his iPad, and found a comfortable position on the sofa, ready to play a few rounds of Quell to relax. This game involves guiding water droplets through mazes on a glass screen, a clean and nostalgic game that he loved.

He opened the iPad and organized the open documents. Just as he was about to tap the Quell icon, his gaze involuntarily stopped at the dark gold skull icon next to it.

Baldur's Gate, yes, how could he forget Baldur's Gate?

Back in college, he had stumbled upon this game while browsing a computer market, finding it among a pile of pirated discs.

"Boss, is this game fun?" At that time, the mainstream computer was a 486, with no internet, and for Lu Yuan, who only played Chinese versions, he didn’t know what had attracted him.

"Baldur's Gate, it’s quite interesting."

"What’s it about?"

"It’s about adventuring! You can bring a few archers, and you can basically clear the game."

"Sounds good."

...

For a long time afterward, Lu Yuan recruited five archers, forming a ranged team to push through the game. He didn’t know how to learn magic back then, thinking that reading all the books would increase his intelligence. He always thought Aerie was the female lead, and he didn’t know about Black Isle or Dungeons & Dragons, but the game was still so engaging that he quickly became addicted.

The various class and companion combinations always left him with a sense of regret and an inability to stop playing.

After that, he played through the Sword Coast Legends expansion, Baldur's Gate 2, and Throne of Bhaal, each time trying different methods to complete the game. The game’s rich and deep content gave him a sense of complete relaxation time and again.

Later, when Black Isle Studios closed, the parent company teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, and the copyright issues surrounding Baldur's Gate became a mess, making the sequel seem distant. With the emergence of new games, it gradually became a backup on Lu Yuan’s computer that he never touched.

Until this year, when he saw the news of the Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition release, Lu Yuan immediately bought the iOS version to support it. Unfortunately, due to work, the game had been on his iPad for almost three months without being touched.

"I’ll play this one." Looking at his watch, Lu Yuan tapped the dark gold game icon.

After a slightly changed opening, he entered the character creation screen.

"Male/Female"

"I’m a real man, of course I’ll choose male!" Lu Yuan selected the male option. Of course, when playing 3D games like The Elder Scrolls, he actually preferred female characters with the nude patch, but would he go around telling everyone that?!

"Race"

"Still an elf, with 19 agility." Although elves have lower constitution, as a certain expert said, "Baldur's Gate isn’t a game about health points!" There are too many ways to survive, even the final boss can be defeated with a level 1 character, so health points are almost useless.

"Class"

"Warrior/Thief/Mage multiclass." After not playing for years, he still preferred the solo class from back then.

"Alignment"

"Although choosing good would let me kill Gorion and get the Amulet of the Shield, I still prefer standing with Jaheira!"

He habitually chose "True Neutral."

"Attributes"

Seeing the attribute screen, Lu Yuan immediately perked up! Baldur's Gate doesn’t use the 30-point elite system like Neverwinter Nights.

The 30-point system means that the initial six attributes are 8, and you have 30 points to distribute among the six attributes, with different costs for each point. For attributes below 14, 1 point costs 1 point; for 15-16, 2 points cost 1 point; for 16 and above, 3 points cost 1 point. The initial character’s highest attribute is 18 (not counting racial adjustments).

Baldur's Gate’s strength lies in the dice roll system! You roll six dice to determine the attribute points! After rolling, you can reduce attributes you don’t need and add them to the ones you do, one for one.

In other words, if you have incredible luck, you could roll a god’s bastard with all 18s. ... Of course, that’s a dream. However, there’s a bit of a trick, as each class has a minimum necessary attribute. For example, a sorcerer’s charisma can’t be below 15, so the roll will only be between 15 and 18. Therefore, the downside of multiclassing is slower leveling, but the upside is that you can roll higher numbers more easily.

Lu Yuan’s best roll ever was a character with 94 total attribute points and 18/00 strength, a god-like character with five 18s but an extremely ugly face.

He kept tapping "REROLL," watching the six attributes change, mentally calculating the total, which was one of the joys of Baldur's Gate. Lu Yuan had once happily rolled for two hours... a bit silly.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t in good form today. Gradually, his eyelids started to droop, and several times he rolled a 90+ but his hand shook and he rolled again.

As his head grew heavier, he tapped "REROLL" again, and the numbers started to change rapidly like a carousel. In his drowsy state, Lu Yuan’s vision blurred, and he lost consciousness...

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