My Ultimate Sign-in System Made Me Invincible

Chapter 655: Waiting In Bated Breath For Another Nova Night

Across the globe, the air felt charged with a rare, collective electricity. It was a day of stark, undeniable transitions.

On the streets of major cities, the heavy atmosphere of political gridlock and bureaucratic worry seemed to melt away under a wave of public celebration.

Millions of people had spent the morning watching the live, unedited footage of the eighteen returned volunteers.

They had watched Diego’s first balanced steps on the concrete, Maya’s effortless skip past the airport perimeter, and the silent, imposing presence of the Nova Technologies synths.

To the general population, the debate over sovereignty and state regulations was nothing more than background noise.

The only reality that mattered was the one displayed on their screens: eighteen people who had been written off by the old medical institutions were now whole. The boundary of what human beings could heal from had been shattered forever.

And by a stroke of perfect timing, this massive, historic return landed precisely on the day of the seventh Nova Night.

As the sun began to dip below the horizon, casting long shadows across crowded plazas, coastal boardwalks, and living rooms, the celebratory mood shifted into a state of high-energy anticipation.

This was not just another night. It was the seventh monthly pre-order event for the Lucid devices, the seventh transparency report, and the first official look at the concrete metrics of LucidNet Studio and LucidNet Music since their global launch.

Inside a lively, packed sports bar in downtown Chicago, the massive projector screens that usually broadcasted regional football games had been tuned entirely to the LucidNet.

"Think we’ll get a real announcement about the nanite rollout tonight?" a young man at a corner table asked, his eyes locked on the countdown clock ticking down on the main screen. He held his smartphone tightly, his finger hovering over the pre-order portal.

"They have to," his friend replied, leaning forward. "After seeing what those nanites did to Diego and Maya, there’s no going back. Every family with a sick relative is going to demand a timeline. If Nova opens the registration queue tonight, the servers are going to face a literal tidal wave."

"I’m just waiting to see the creator payouts from the new Studio," a woman sitting at the bar chimed in, turning her stool to face them. "My brother’s been using the Studio since day one to render his animated series. He says the processing speed is insane, and he’s already made more through viewer gifting this month than he did in three years on the old video platforms."

"It’s not just the money," another patron added, raising his glass. "It’s the fact that the old rules don’t apply anymore. The governments wanted to lock Maya and Diego in a lab to study them like properties, and Nova just shut them down with a single announcement. Today is the first day the world actually feels... new."

A murmur of agreement rippled through the bar, a sentiment mirrored in millions of similar gatherings across every time zone.

***

On LucidNet, the digital traffic was reaching unprecedented, staggering peaks. The six billion daily active users were not merely scrolling; they were actively debating, analyzing, and sharing their own regional reactions to the clinical trial update.

Under the trending topic `#TheFirstEighteen`, the feed was a continuous, blurring cascade of posts, videos, and live reactions.

*That Nova Technologies’ announcement did something to me! I can literally imagine the exact moment government officials realized that their state authority meant absolutely nothing to a child who was cured on the moon.*

*Exactly. The era of state dependency is over. If the government can’t protect us, cure us, or provide a stable economy, why are we even listening to their regulatory briefs? All they just give us is their constant "we are doing our best" bullshit. Nova Technologies is doing more for human progress in a single afternoon than our congress has done in fifty years.*

*My mother has Parkinson’s. Watching the elderly volunteer from Germany stand perfectly still without a single tremor made me cry. I don’t care about the market stability or the geopolitical friction the newspapers are whining about. Just open the nanite registration. Let us sign up.*

*The seventh transparency report is going to be biblical. Remember, this is the first full month of data since Lucid Studio and LucidNet Music went live. The recording labels and Hollywood production houses have been silent for weeks because their entire business models are being systematically crushed. Let’s see the actual numbers.*

*The countdown is at ten minutes. I’ve tried six times and the inventory always sells out in under a second. I need that twelve-hour REM sleep integration in my life.*

*Today is literally a holiday. We watched eighteen people get their lives back, we’re waiting for the biggest tech drop of the year, and the financial countdown is still ticking. If you told me eight months ago that a nineteen-year-old would be running the planet, I’d have called you crazy. Now? I’m just waiting for his next livestream.*

***

While the public celebrated, the corporate and institutional sectors were watching the ticking clock with a quiet, icy dread.

In the executive suites of major Hollywood studios and the headquarters of global music conglomerates, senior vice presidents and board members sat in darkened conference rooms, their eyes fixed on the LucidNet Music charts.

They had spent the last month watching their top-tier talent quietly exit their contracts, migrating their entire catalogs directly to the LucidNet ecosystem.

The allure of a flat, one-cent-per-stream rate—double to triple the industry standard—combined with a seventy-percent share of direct viewer gifting and absolute ownership of their masters had rendered the traditional distribution networks entirely obsolete.

"If the transparency report confirms the early revenue projections," a prominent music executive muttered, rubbing his temples as he stared at the screen, "our catalog value drops by seventy percent by tomorrow morning. We can’t compete with a platform that offers unlimited, free storage, lossless rendering, and direct integration into the users’ sleep cycles."

"We can’t compete because we are middle-men," his colleague said, her voice flat and entirely devoid of hope. "The artists don’t need our marketing teams when the LucidNet algorithm surfaces momentum instead of budget. And the filmmakers don’t need our distribution networks when they can render a full-length, sixty-four-K feature film in thirty minutes using a standard Creator Plus subscription."

She pointed to the countdown clock. "The public doesn’t care about our survival. They are too busy waiting to see how many billions of dollars were paid out directly to independent creators tonight."

Just like the executive said, the public didn’t give a damn about them.

Five minutes before midnight, everyone had their finger hovering over their phone, waiting for the pre-order link to drop.

The clock finally reached the zero mark, the link dropped and hundreds of million of fingers tapped their phones at once.