Back in Leo's office, it was well past midnight.
Melina rubbed her eyes. "Traffic spikes from unusual sources again. IP patterns look… off."
Tina yawned. "Probably bots scraping the leaderboard. Nothing serious."
Leo glanced at the code logs. One sequence stood out — a repetitive probing pattern hitting the lower layers of their system.
He frowned slightly.
"No," he said softly. "That's not bots."
Melina looked up. "You think someone's trying to break in?"
Leo didn't answer directly. He just pulled up a separate console and began typing a string of commands — hidden behind multiple layers of encryption.
"Let them try," he said quietly. "They'll see what happens when they poke the wrong server."
Tina watched the screen with curiosity. "What are you doing?"
'Building a guard dog,' he said — a self-adaptive security layer that tracked and mirrored intrusion attempts."
It's the new technological skill he recently received from the system — his golden finger.
With this, at least his game will be free from hackers and attacks, both in-game and outside.
….
The next few days blurred into one long surge of chaos — the kind of chaos developers dreamed of but rarely survived intact.
Every social platform, every stream site, every video feed was flooded with Ground Zero content. Kill highlights, stealth takedowns, insane sniper flicks, or just people panicking and screaming when someone jumped them in a building.
Tina sat cross-legged on her chair, scrolling through a reaction compilation. "This is gold," she said, laughing. "Half the clips look like movie scenes. Look—this guy thought a bush was an enemy and wasted his entire mag."
Melina was on the other side of the room, screens reflecting in her eyes. "Forums are exploding. The top thread's titled: 'Ground Zero made me forget I'm in VR.' Retention's gone up another four percent."
Leo didn't reply. He was focused on server performance charts, watching the heatmaps update in real time. The red clusters of player activity had begun forming recognizable shapes — choke points, ambush routes, sniper zones. Player hotspots were forming naturally — the game maps showing how humans shaped the battleground.
…
By the end of the third week, Ground Zero wasn't just a game — it was a cultural event.
News feeds covered it like a sport. Analysts broke down combat strategies. Streamers competed for "most creative kills." Someone even made a documentary clip titled 'The Day Reality Learned to Respawn.'
A few threads began to connect Leo's older titles — Temple Run, Candy Crush, Among Us, Minecraft Rebuild, Robloxverse — to Ground Zero.
People started calling it The Leo-Verse.
Melina showed him one article on her tablet. "They're calling you the architect of modern gaming."
Leo barely reacted. "That's just marketing."
Tina grinned. "So what are we, his angels of code?"
Melina rolled her eyes. "You're definitely the noisy one."
The trio's dynamic was calm amid the storm. They'd worked together long enough to understand each other without much talk — Leo handled architecture and system logic; Melina balanced AI and gameplay dynamics; Tina handled live events and community integration.
"Patch 1.01 deployed," Leo finally said, watching the confirmation appear on screen.
"Minor balance changes, right?" Melina asked.
"Mostly recoil, net optimization, and something small," he replied.
Tina raised a brow. "Something small?"
He didn't elaborate, and they didn't push. Leo's "small updates" usually meant hidden surprises.
….
Riya's name started appearing more and more in the trending tabs — a familiar face for those who'd been following Leo's games since the early days.
Her fans called her "The Leo Veteran."
She'd been there through every title — from sprinting across Temple Run's endless paths to building her first castle in Minecraft Rebuild. Her humor, energy, and raw skill had kept her audience loyal through every release.
Now she was back — headset on, streaming live to a hundred thousand viewers as her Ground Zero character parachuted down into the map.
"Alright, chat," she said, voice steady but playful. "First rule of Ground Zero — don't trust bushes, footsteps, or your teammates."
Her viewers spammed laughing emojis.
She landed near a deserted factory, looted fast, and crouched near a window. The sound design — distant gunfire, footsteps echoing through the concrete — felt too real.
"Okay, whoever made this sound engine deserves a medal," she said. "I actually flinched."
She moved with precision — checking corners, switching weapons smoothly.
Twenty minutes later, she was in the final circle — two players left.
Heartbeat sound effect kicked in.
She stayed prone in grass, scoped in.
A silhouette moved — she fired once.
Headshot. Victory.
"Winner," the voice announced.
Chat exploded.
> Chat:
"RIYA IS BACK!!!"
"That snipe was clean!"
"From Candy Crush to Ground Zero legend!"
"LEO'S GAME GODDESS RETURNS!"
She laughed, pulling off her headset. "Okay, that was unreal."
The replay of her match hit every major highlight channel within hours. Her snipe became the most viewed clip of the week — even Aether Corp developers watched it in their morning meeting, frowning quietly.