Her name is Bokona.
She is not the kind of girl in the real world, nor the kind of folk singer who performs in bars, nor the girl who rides bicycles that I met in Lhasa. She is a girl that I slowly raised in another world, a place called New Elidu.
If you have also played “Zero”, you should understand that feeling.
At first, I didn’t think she was so special. She was just the new agent with white skin, cold eyes, standing quietly in the character selection interface. She didn’t say anything, and she was not as exaggerated as other characters, just looking at you quietly.
At that time, her level was very low, and her skills were only at the starting point. Want to train her? It takes too many resources. I hesitated for a while, and almost gave up.
But you know, there is always a moment when you suddenly decide to “take a person, a thing, or a character seriously once”.
So I clicked on her skill tree and began to study her breakthrough line.
I remember that the material she needed for the first stage of breakthrough was called “Primary Breaking Cognition”, which required four copies and Dingni, 24,000. These materials can only be obtained by playing simulated battles. You have to consume physical strength every time you play, and it may or may not drop. It’s annoying.
But at that moment, I just wanted to give her the best.
I wanted to pull her to the maximum level, so that she could calmly swing physical attacks in battle and become the most stable member of my lineup.
Once I woke up at three in the morning and got up to play simulated battles. As a result, I played six games and dropped two materials. I also got the 75 advanced chips and 250 specialized chips she needed to upgrade one by one.
I’m not playing games, I’m accompanying her to grow up.
Her skills are divided into many levels, from level 1 to level 12, and the resources required for each level are skyrocketing. From the initial few basic chips, to more than a dozen specialized chips per level later, plus a prop called “Hamster Cage” access device, this name sounds funny, right? But when you can’t hit it, you can’t laugh at all.
And every time you level up, you need Dingni. Do you know how much Dingni is needed? She wants 3,705,000 Dingni skills + 800,000 breakthrough + 400,000 sound engine, a total of 4,905,000!
This is the price of zero in the absolute zone, and it is also the price of my life.
But I still smashed it for her.
I did all the tasks that could be given to Dingni, cleared the daily tasks, finished the activities, and exchanged all the materials that could be exchanged in the store. I was like a worker who worked hard to save money to buy jewelry for his beloved girl, and she was really worth it.
When she fought, her voice was low and clean, unlike some characters who were annoying. Her combo was very refreshing, and the feeling of breaking with one blow made me feel that all the “investment” was not in vain.
I began to understand her, began to plan resources for her, calculated the shortest training path, and even began to persuade my friends around me: “Pokona, it’s definitely worth it to train one.”
Her exclusive sound engine is called Scarlet Engine. To upgrade to level 60, you need 200 “Sound Engine Energy Modules” and destroy dozens of components. I was sweating profusely, and even wanted to recharge some money at one point, but after thinking about it, I still felt that it was more realistic to accompany her to become stronger slowly.
Sometimes, we think that life should be vigorous, interesting, flamboyant, and sparky, but in fact, there is one thing that you can keep doing, it can become your confidence and your spiritual anchor.
Pokona is my anchor.
In this summer, she went from a character that no one trained to the mainstay of my entire team. She is not the “strongest”, but she is the one I trust the most. It’s not because she has the highest damage, but because she is a character that I have cultivated bit by bit with my heart, just like those people or things in our lives that you have helped to build up, unique.
I always like to talk about her in front of my friends, just like talking about the girls I met on the road, the cat I met when I opened a youth hostel in Lijiang, and the guitar-playing boy sitting by the bonfire on the beach in Dali that year.
Pokona doesn’t have these romantic stories, but she gives me a special sense of companionship.
She is the “girl” in my gaming life.
I will never forget the scene when her full-level skills were lit up for the first time, nor will I forget my stupid look when I stayed up all night to drop a scarlet engine when I was brushing the dungeon in the early morning. I don’t know if she will be “weakened” in the game in the future, or if there will be stronger characters to replace her.
But that doesn’t matter.
She is the girl I carefully cultivated in “Zone Zero”. She existed, and I took her seriously.
That’s it.