Qiao Liang was controlling protagonist Captain Rude, wreaking havoc and taking down several drones. Hearing this message, he was momentarily stunned, and when he turned to look, he was completely dumbfounded.

Tenda Group’s army was approaching from all directions, blanketing the area.

The sky was filled with countless drones and enforcement units, while the ground was covered with infantry combat vehicles and soldiers wearing Tenda Group battle suits. Their suppressive fire instantly covered the entire area.

“Damn! This is definitely cheating!”

“Our resistance has fewer than 10 people, and you’re practically deploying an entire army corps.”

Qiao Liang was completely bewildered—this was like using a cannon to shoot a mosquito, completely disproportionate.

With a series of violent explosions, the Headwind Logistics convoy was engulfed in flames, and the resistance immediately retreated.

Drones and enforcement units quickly gave chase. Even though each resistance fighter could take down hundreds of enemies and shot down many drones, it was still like trying to put out a fire with a cup of water.

Teammates kept getting injured and falling behind, dropping out of combat.

Qiao Liang controlled the protagonist, fighting while retreating, and soon triggered a cutscene.

A super-muscular man wearing a mechanical exoskeleton descended from above. Half of his body had been converted to machinery, and combined with his specialized exoskeleton, he looked like a mountain of steel.

Qiao Liang was momentarily stunned, because he thought this muscular man’s face somewhat resembled Guo Licheng.

Before he could react, the protagonist was grabbed by the man’s thick mechanical arm and thrown aside.

As everything spun around him, chaos engulfed the protagonist. It seemed he had been through a brutal battle, and his vision gradually darkened.

The camera pulled upward from the protagonist’s closed eyes, revealing his body covered in bruises. His mechanical exoskeleton was completely damaged, his body had multiple wounds, and his entire right lower leg was missing.

Around him were the remains of numerous Tenda Group combat robots and drones.

Further away was the cyberpunk cityscape. On the outskirts of Hope City, countless convoys moved back and forth.

The convoy that had been destroyed earlier was just an insignificant amount of Tenda Group’s resources.

The cyberpunk-styled city continued to operate methodically, as if the fierce battle that had just occurred was merely a trivial incident, unnoticed by anyone.

With the massive city as a backdrop, the game’s title appeared on the screen.

In cyberpunk-styled font:

THE FUTURE YOU CHOOSE

After a brief blackout, the sound of mechanical welding could be heard.

Captain Rude opened his eyes to find himself lying on an operating table, with a cybernetic doctor installing a mechanical prosthetic for him.

His right lower leg had been destroyed in the previous battle and needed to be replaced with a mechanical limb. His other wounds had already been properly bandaged.

The cybernetic doctor remarked: “The fact that you escaped from that war machine losing only one leg is fortunate amidst misfortune. Next time, you might not be so lucky.”

Captain Rude was silent for a moment, seemingly recalling the brutal battle and his sacrificed comrades.

After a long while, he sighed deeply: “Tenda Group is too powerful. I need to gain greater strength to match them.”

The doctor pulled down a display screen in front of Captain Rude and said: “Perhaps I can help you with this, but it’ll go on your tab.”

…

This concluded the opening part of the game. After the basic combat tutorial, players could now modify parts of their body at the cybernetic doctor’s clinic.

The right leg modification was required by the plot, but besides that, players could freely choose to modify other parts of their body.

For example, mechanical eyes, head chips, body, arms, and even internal organs could be modified.

Each modification would grant some new abilities.

Of course, one couldn’t turn the entire body into a robot all at once. New modification opportunities would become available as the plot progressed, but the modification process was relatively free—which parts to modify first was entirely up to the player.

Modifying different body parts would grant derivative abilities, and in the upcoming plot missions, players would need to utilize these special abilities to help them progress.

According to the game’s setting, the resistance wasn’t just limited to the protagonist’s small squad. There were also numerous other branches and various progressive forces hidden in cities or wilderness secretly helping the resistance, with this cybernetic doctor being one of them.

The player’s task was simple: participate in battle after battle, continuously make various choices, enhance the protagonist’s combat power, and ultimately overthrow the dark rule of the world’s largest monopolistic financial group—Tenda Group.

Although Hope City’s distant view appeared in many scenes including the opening, it was merely a backdrop.

The game didn’t actually create a massive city, as creating a city of that scale would be too difficult. Moreover, it wasn’t closely tied to the game’s main gameplay.

The game still followed the general approach, creating many high-precision scenes and stringently connecting these scenes according to the in-game plot.

The protagonist was more like a lone wolf, moving from one scene to another, with his comrades falling one by one or going their separate ways. Throughout this process, the protagonist kept winning battle after battle, achieving one victory after another, continuously being promoted, and gradually becoming the spiritual leader of the resistance.

Of course, the protagonist’s body was also being modified to increasingly resemble the war machine that had once defeated him.

But from the protagonist’s perspective, all of this was worthwhile. More and more people were inspired by the resistance and joined in.

Initially, only small companies secretly helped the resistance, like the cybernetic doctor who had been treating and modifying Captain Rude. Gradually, more and more large corporations and financial groups also joined in supporting the resistance.

These companies contributed what they could—some with money, some with manpower. Some provided material aid, while others directly supplied military equipment, making the resistance grow increasingly powerful.

Even the lower-class citizens, street thugs, and criminals were inspired by the revolutionary army and joined the righteous alliance against Tenda Group’s rule.

A trend swept across the entire world—a trend of resistance against Tenda Group.

Under this trend, the resistance, like a tidal wave, began launching counterattacks worldwide. The battles the protagonist participated in grew increasingly large in scale and intensity.

In the chaotic battlefield, Captain Rude always stood as an unwavering flag. He was invincible and undefeated, a symbol of shining justice in everyone’s hearts. It seemed that as long as one fought alongside Captain Rude, victory was assured.

The entire story’s plot only experienced setbacks at the very beginning, after which it continued to climb. Captain Rude continuously gained new abilities, fought with increasing courage, and consistently achieved new results, liberating one city after another from Tenda Group’s tyrannical rule.

Meanwhile, the large corporations that had aided the resistance began actively participating in post-war reconstruction. While fighting on the front lines, these corporations replaced Tenda Group’s industries with new technologies in the rear and continued to provide powerful military weapons and personnel to the front lines.

However, as the game progressed into the middle and later stages, Qiao Liang gradually felt that something was off.

Some major financial groups had transformed themselves into significant figures within the resistance. And the resistance fighters, like these major financial groups, not only used increasingly sophisticated weapons and equipment but also wore increasingly luxurious clothes and used increasingly expensive luxury items.

Captain Rude’s true comrades, those he knew inside and out, fell one by one in battle, to the extent that by the middle and late stages of the game, players couldn’t find a single familiar face around the protagonist.

At a victory celebration, Captain Rude looked around and realized that the only people he recognized were the bosses or executives of various large corporations. The resistance fighters who came to him for autographs and photos were unknown to him—he only knew they had fought alongside him on some battlefield.

He felt like he had become an elevated god, lifted high by the masses, even beyond the clouds. But when he looked back down, he found himself completely alone.

The world was indeed changing, but Captain Rude became increasingly uncertain whether this was the change he had originally envisioned.

The taste of the final battle could be described as both natural and bland.

This scene was called the City of Origins, clearly modeled after the real-life Jingzhou. In the game’s setting, this was Tenda Group’s birthplace and where their headquarters was located.

After fighting continuously around the world and destroying Tenda’s branches one by one, the resistance army finally arrived at Tenda Group’s headquarters.

After a long and intense battle, Captain Rude successfully breached Tenda Group’s headquarters, fought the war machine one last time, and narrowly won.

He decided to press forward and find the true culprit behind everything—the current helmsman of Tenda Group.

But when Captain Rude led the charge into Tenda Group’s CEO office, he found the entire space empty—nothing was there. No desks, chairs, computers, or any other personal items, as if no one had ever been there.

Captain Rude couldn’t accept this. He firmly believed there must be secret doors or other mechanisms in the space, but no matter how hard he searched, the entire space seemed completely empty.

Captain Rude couldn’t accept this reality. He couldn’t understand how, without a CEO, Tenda Group, as the world’s largest monopolistic conglomerate, could rule the entire world for such a long time, and what exactly they had been fighting against all this time.

Captain Rude left the CEO’s office and searched the entire floor, eliminating many more enforcement units in the process.

Fortunately, his efforts weren’t entirely fruitless. He pursued and caught up with a Tenda HR department head surnamed Wu, who was preparing to jump from the edge of the building’s rooftop.

After the resistance captured Tenda, the reactions of these department heads varied. Some defected to the resistance, becoming traitors; some fled in advance; others, like the war machine, took up arms and fought to the end. Only a few, like this HR department head surnamed Wu, came to the rooftop planning to end their lives by jumping.

However, he was too slow. Captain Rude arrived in time to prevent his suicide attempt and demanded to know who had been issuing orders as Tenda Group’s CEO all this time, maintaining Tenda Group’s autocratic rule.

Captain Rude needed to identify the ultimate war criminal and understand what motives had driven them to commit such serious crimes against humanity.

The HR department head surnamed Wu gave a bitter laugh and revealed the truth.

“Tenda Group never had a real CEO who controlled everything.”

“All of Tenda Group’s department heads made decisions collectively. When opinions diverged, the most advanced AI system, AEEIS, would analyze the content of the resolutions and ultimately produce the decision most beneficial for Tenda Group as a whole.”

“This decision would then be voted on again. If it didn’t pass, the AI would need to make adjustments until more than 80% of all department heads approved.”

“You can consider all the department heads as playing the role of the war criminal you imagine. But you could also say that the concrete person you imagine as a war criminal doesn’t exist in this world.”