by John Gold
Since beating all those trials, I’ve started thinking differently when I’m working. Yes, I’m working for myself when I’m online. Emotions disappear, and I look at nothing but the facts in each situation. The more experienced you are, and the broader your consciousness, the faster you learn and figure out how to systematize actions in order to massage them toward your goals. To put it simply, all the little diversionary moves I make are aimed at meeting intermediary goals in my masterplan to destroy Star Ship.
One diversion hides another. A third draws attention, throwing Leon’s bloodhounds off the scent. For instance, the percentage of carbon in the alloys used at his propulsion system plants is increased slightly. Metering equipment is modified to ensure that their propulsion systems need repair ten times more often than usual. The company’s navigational equipment, communication systems, and information security should all start going offline at the same time. My strategy is designed to last three years, with the end result being a loss of confidence in Leon’s company. That’s the basis of my entire plan. This is the second year I’ve been undermining the backbone of the company, the one he spent so much time building. Thanks to the Gray Lands, I saw how a tree of wrath, anger, hatred, and betrayal can grow out of the seed of doubt. That’s what I work on between the game and sleeping.
Studying how Leon’s company works makes me see how I should be setting up my own manufacturing plant. While the young god depends on people, their loyalty, and their belief in a common goal and idea, I focus on automation and complete autonomy. It’s the antithesis of everything Leon and his company are founded on.
For the last six months, I’ve been studying programming and the companies who launched the ArtIns. Nobody has yet been able to develop artificial intelligence superior to that wielded by humans. They stand out for their computing power, their capacity, and the advanced operations they can execute, though the problem is the technological limitations inherent in the maximum frequency microprocessors can work at without overheating. And the more information I collect, the more intrigued I am. Modern ArtIns were all built on designs and work published by Lunar. But when I find the source and date, I’m horrified. A hundred and thirty years ago, there was someone who was able to create and develop a concept for artificial intelligence, laying out its postulates, its limitations, and ways to create it. That was seventy years before Lunar appeared, five years before Armadillo Industries was founded. So, Lunar knew how to make ArtIns before they created the largest corporation in the world. I have to wonder what kind of tech they have now.
And that was more than just an article; it was a well-articulated concept, parts of which were pulled to make the different kinds of ArtIns. Whether it’s for fighting, household use, manufacturing, services, or anything else, artificial intelligence was developed by combining the different postulates laid out in the article. But nobody understood what the author was really driving at. He wanted to create an ArtIn that would bring humankind together. War, societal stratification, hunger, and dissatisfaction are all part of the world model the author described. There’s cruelty, high death rates, inequality, and much more. But in that society, people can all rise higher if they try hard enough.
The idea smacks of Project Chrysalis and its distorted view of game balance, though it wasn’t around back then.
The author was writing about ArtIns, though the way he thought, reasoned, and drew conclusions led me to the truth. It’s a broad understanding, so I’ll describe what the article told me.
There’s no challenging the way things really work in the world, and that is the same everywhere, from atoms to mammals to human society. People use their experience to form an idea of the truth. The better they grasp it, the simpler it is for them to reach their goals and adapt within society. That’s what the truth is.
The understanding of truth and ideas described in the article become the foundation of the ArtIn I get to work on. I need a powerful program package to automate manufacturing, execute my plan designed to destroy Leon’s company, and support my anonymity. It takes me a whole week to cover my tracks after purchasing uranium, a raw material tracked closely across the whole solar system. Stealing it from a military station would have gotten me caught.
To make sure I have eyes on all the different things going on, I create an ArtIn that buys raw materials and maintains anonymity. It also keeps track of my operation to destroy Leon’s company in the background.
That’s what I’ve been working on the past year. Currently, I only have the core of my ArtIn written, with some separate functions designed. I combine my streams of consciousness to get a grasp of the entire problem and situation before assigning each of them a section of code. That lets me work something like an entire group of production ArtIns. In the meantime, my neuronet version keeps me in close contact with my med capsule, sending information on my current condition to someone somewhere in Lunar. Femida is keeping an eye on me, collecting information about me as she does, which is why I don’t trust her.
It’s been ten hours since I cast my panacea. Finally, the message I’ve been waiting for pops up in the chat.
New unique class rank: Demigod
Your mental body is inextricably tied to your source of strength in the astral. Your physical body is still intact, and you can’t use your divine energy for spells. All your energy turns into mana, and your strength source drops by 10% every time you die. If it runs out completely, you will lose your demigod class rank.
I immediately check my reserve.
Divine energy reserve: 100000000/100000000
It’s been a bit less than an hour and a half in the outside world. By the time Femida gets here, I finish writing the code for the ArtIn and log out after realizing that my brain is beginning to get overworked. I spent a total of almost twenty-four hours in the astral, or eight days in astral time. But Femida only shows up the next day. She’s gloomy, annoyed, and about to take her frustration out on me.
“Why didn’t you write me when you left the Gray Lands?”
“Who’d you have on your tail?”
We’re standing on the roof, the sun is caressing us with its rays, and there’s a breeze playing with Femida’s shock of red hair.
“We ran for days, collapsing tunnels, trying to get away from the groups chasing us. Eventually, we found our way into the Spring Forest underground. There’s a system down there for teleporting enemies, and we hit one of the traps.”
“And?”
“They got Ekron. She just had time to shove me back into the portal before they hit her with magic.”
“And she can’t get out?”
The girl grunts. A crooked, lofty smile tinged with sadness plays at the corner of her mouth.
“In every elf forest, there’s a tree guardian they have to worship. There’s an oracle, too, an all-seeing woman who takes care of the elves in her forest. And while she’s about as strong as the archmage outside her forest, she’s even stronger inside it. She gets buffs from the tree god there. One of the mana streams from their stationary storages is tied to her, as well.”
“So, she’s a mobile weapon of mass destruction? Unlimited mana, unlimited destructive power, and the support of a god?”
“Yep.”
Hm, I wonder why Femida has red hair. It isn’t her color. Red hair doesn’t occur naturally.
“And you just happened to tell me about it. I made up my mind to help, obviously, because it was my decision, and you didn’t ask me for anything. Really, the whole thing is my fault.”
This time, her smile is vivacious and beautiful. That cheered her up.
“Well, if you insist on coming to our aid, I’m prepared to accept your assistance.”
The next day, a young man and a girl show up at the wall that rings the Spring Forest. Femida is wearing her unique armor, the way I’ve remembered her the past three years, and I’m in my bone suit. She has her Valkyrie suit; I have my bone blade and chimeric shield, the latter loaded up with so much mana th
at’s its akin to a lesser magic fortress shield.
All the military might of the Spring Forest comes crashing down on us a minute later. My chimeric shield takes the heavy-duty spells, while the rest burn up in my magic shield.
Sitting down in my pose for meditation, I ask Femida to eat a dumpling to merge our health pools. I’m going to need a lot of mana to break through their shield, and Fem has it all. She’s a close-combat fighter. The fact that Isaac gives her another 75% bump is just the icing on the cake.
Izara, the oracle, does her best to press down on us with the shield. We’re enveloped in roots, although we’re already sitting down, and then she tries to poison us through them. An area-damage spell comes next. All we can do is laugh when we feel ourselves pressed down into the ground, as we have absolute defense, and we’re putting powerful psychological pressure on our opponent.
Once every thirty seconds, a spell hits the Spring Forest shield. Personified tornados, maxed and spread as wide as they’ll go, crash into it, unleashing entire barrages of lightning bolts. Then, on the other side of the shield, a thick, true darkness appears that’s also as strong as it will go. There are too many meteors, death stars, dead suns, and whirlwinds to count. It’s just a shame I can’t summon creatures from the astral. I’d love to see how they would respond to a Level 10000 snake.
I use a gravitational well to pull the oracle out of the forest. Then, using telekinesis and a piece of wood, I knock her out of the well and over to where we are. She’s really nothing special, at least, besides the title. Probably the natural gods’ version of a saint.
After a quick series of negotiations, we exchange prisoners and earn ourselves a promise of eternal torment in the roots of the tree god.
We get to my empty home on Feng Island that evening, and Femida and I have an important conversation.
“I read the news from Kurg. You were able to get Rosie back. Where is she? Why aren’t you bringing her out? I haven’t seen her in years!”
Femida pouts, but I’m not in the mood for jokes.
“Because I don’t trust you.”
“What are you talking about, you idiot? Who could you trust more than me? Who pulled your butt out of the orphanage? Who got you out of Arpa? Who’s covered for you all these years?”
“That’s a good question. Who was able to change my biometric passport without changing my DNA? Who made a clone, even though it’s illegal? Where did he come from? It had to have taken at least a year to make him. And why hasn’t there been a single question about the ‘experiment’ I’m supposedly taking part in over the two and a half years I’ve been here at the resort? Why does Claude let you know how I’m doing? Why does the data from my capsule get sent to Lunar? I mean, obviously, that’s where you’re from, but the encryption is a good step above civilian technology.”
Femida radiates alarm, uncertainty, excitement, and a modicum of fear.
“I can’t tell you, Sagie. You’re really important to me, my chosen one. Your fate, what you do, your strength, and what you’re going to achieve in the future are important for…us.”
“Are you speaking for yourself or for Lunar?”
“For everyone. You have no idea how important you are, so please let me stay with you.”
I have to laugh.
“In all the world, you are the only one, my goddess of justice, who hasn’t turned your back on me no matter what I do or what people say. Because of that, I’m not going to turn my back on you. You don’t want to hurt me, and that’s good enough.”
The conflict passes, but our relationship has changed. Femida’s team logs out as I head to the astral. My chimeric shield needs to be charged, as does my astral source. I’m going to need them for my trip to Tanatos.
Kill a dragon? Kill a god? Simple, so long as you have enough mana. Killing monsters the size of entire islands, however, is a bit harder.
The next day, we all leave Feng for Tanatos. Because I have to use three streams of consciousness to keep everyone walking on the water, I’m left with barely enough strength to kill our first two assailants.
Monster, Kraken, Level 5770, raid boss
Monster, Whale Island, Level 5775, raid boss
I think back to the Kraken spawn we came across near the shores of Ovidius. Its two hundred meters had nothing on its kilometer-long father, to say nothing of the entire army of escorts.
Mr. Whale Island is already an acquaintance thanks to our visit to the bottom of the Sea of Madness. This one is smaller, though he still carries an entire fortress loaded with defenders on his mile-and-a-half-long back.
Femida sets up low and dashes toward the thickest horde of opponents. Ekron takes on her Beelzebub visage, looking awfully monstrous herself, and runs over to where Femida is already fighting. In that form, Ekron gets a whole lot of extra survivability when she’s surrounded by bodies.
They start to fight their way through to the whale, leaving the Kraken to me. Its tentacles are already reaching out toward my friends, its only eye flitting back and forth between us nervously, as it somehow senses our strength.
A dead star takes out some of the Kraken’s defenders who are on their way to Ekron. The monster takes that opportunity to switch targets, however, and I find the assault heading in my direction.
Even in the raging battle, I hear Femida’s shriek.
“Dissection!”
She cuts immediately and straight through several bodies at once; Beelzebub, already massive, gets even bigger. The situation is perfect for Ekron’s current visage.
My side of the battle is hit by true darkness, a hurricane personified, meteors, death stars, superior elementals, mental incinerating whirlwinds, death whirlpools, fire storms, tornados, and dozens of other less spectacular spells. I get a message from Femida in the chat.
Show-off!
Maniac!
The battle is still raging around the whale, and I have a crowd of attackers trying to encircle me and shove me under the water, magic shield and all.
“Fire of Gehenna! Maximum!”
Femida and Ekron leap into the air as the water under their feet boils and then bursts into flames. Nothing is left alive within a hundred meters, though the steam billowing into the air obscures the Kraken’s attack to the point that I almost miss it. His eye goes from white to yellow as a stream of light shoots out of it. The blow is taken by my chimeric shield, even if it can’t take the entire force. Three seconds later, it bursts.
Damage received: 23050037 (ignored: 25000000)
51523/51523
The attack lasts five seconds, a stream of light five meters in diameter doing 50 million damage. I crouch to lessen the area damage. The 23 million I take is actually pretty dispersed. With the charge my chimeric shield has, it could hang in there for twenty seconds, but there’s no guarantee that I’d be able to take cover behind it in time.
An explosion of steam leaps from where the Kraken’s ray hits the water. The sea around me instantly starts to simmer, soon bursting into a full boil.
As soon as the monster notices that I survived his attack, it starts slipping under the water, a transparent eyelid closing over its eye. Ah-ha—that’s its weak spot. I fire a bolt of lightning at one of its tentacles, though damage below 25 million does nothing whatsoever. His tentacles grow back too quickly, as well.
I spend the time waiting for the Kraken to resurface by raining spells down on the whale. The fortress on its back is in ruins ten seconds later, and Femida and Ekron are finishing off the guards. Roni is even biting their heads off.
But as that happens, I miss the Kraken’s next attack. He springs out of the water with his jaws already around me.
I activate a gravitational well, though I mess up the direction and send myself hurtling down into the creature’s mouth. Somewhere near the glands, grabbing hold of the gills, I start methodically putting together a delicious dish of fried squid. I’m not afraid of anything, as my supply of air is good for another thirty minutes. It’s just a sh
ame that my most powerful spells aren’t off cooldown yet. But I have other options.
The poor beast is eaten alive from the inside out by dozens of creatures summoned from the astral. Yet by the time he’s down to just 10% of his health, I’m ticking away my final minute of oxygen. I turn into a lightning generator to burn through the flesh and monsters around me. A message appears in the chat about the experience I picked up, followed by a window with the loot, and I push up against the Kraken’s remains with my head until he’s floating on the surface.
The whale, on the other hand, was able to kill Femida and Ekron. As soon as the fortress on its back was destroyed, it started singing, the wails doing 50 million damage to everything nearby. The bodies of its defenders were pulverized, and the two furious girls were killed in the first couple seconds. Even Ekron in her Beelzebub visage couldn’t take it.
The whale has one blind spot where the damage from its area attack doesn’t exceed a million. The remains of the fortress on its back acts as a vibration damper, so I get up there and start going to town with my bone blade. Force blades finally kill it when my final blow cuts the beast in half. That took almost an hour, and it did everything it could to fire off area attacks at me. Thanks to the fact that I’d taken out their fortress, the guards didn’t respawn.
Femida decided not to go with me to Tanatos.
“At this point, you’re the strongest player in the world. Neither Roni nor I can match your strength or experience, and you’re the only one who can get to Tanatos. And because there aren’t any respawn points, you’re the only one who can stay there.”
She’s right about everything. But what will happen to her team?
“Aren’t you afraid Leon will keep coming after you?”
“Nope. The demonstration by the Spring Forest was enough. I made sure information got out that you’ll punish any headhunters who come after us. Don’t worry. The players are all full of themselves ever since the invasion ended. For two years, everyone was leveling-up constantly, they had sieges every day, and they were fighting back attacks. The average level is 2500 now.”