AN: There're a few Gamer-inspired fictions floating around and this is mine. This concept and Xanxia-inspired fiction, Reaching for Immortality, has been teasing me for awhile and I decided to work on both, hopefully allowing me to have something to focus on when I get writers block on the other.
I will try and maintain at least a chapter per week on both, depending on my real-life schedule.
For those reading my other work, I hope to have a new chapter out on that by Wednesday. I hit a snag in how I wanted to progress the story and it wasn't working out, so I had to scrap what had become 12k words.
Prologue
In a world much like our own, there is a little village secluded in a mountain valley. This little village was home to a girl. A plain girl. A girl that had a special talent, one she cultivated since birth. She was invisible.
The girl so skillfully passed through her life without a glance from others that had her country's spy-master noticed her, she would have been offered a special scholarship for university and nurtured for government service. The spy-master never did meet this girl, however. Even when he was vacationing with his family next door to the girl's house. She was truly a master in remaining hidden to the world.
This girl was Jane Blackthorne. She was a truly uninteresting girl. Even her parents thought so. Which is likely because she learned at a very young age of three to be uninteresting.
Normally, when a child decided to done the mantle of uninteresting and unobtrusive behavior their home life is less than ideal. Abusive fathers, mothers, lewd uncles, aunties, etc. are common in such home lives that produce children inclined to hide away from the world in order to not become a target for attention. This was not true with Jane. Because, by all accounts, her parents were wonderful people.
At least, on the surface.
Jane did have one interesting quality. Something she was quite proud of, should anyone happen to notice her long enough to ask. She could remember her birth. All of her childhood, really. One thing she was quite sure of, she did not remember those people present when she emerged from her mother's womb.
This knowledge led Jane to believe that her parents were suspicious. When you're a newborn, with no notable self-preservation skills, what is the only thing left? To become uninteresting. Jane did not know why she was with these people, but she decided to not draw attention and observe. Perhaps there is a harmless reason, but if not, she didn't want to deal with the trouble of that was bound to happen if it was known she knew too much. She grew up with cable, she knew how those kinds of stories played out.
As she grew older, Jane did not participate in sports. Her father did try, but he noticed that she didn't have the desire to be an athlete. Her mother did try to teach her how to socialize with the neighbors and how to cook, but found she wasn't talented in either and lost interest. Soon, they left Jane to her own devices and only socialized with her during mealtimes.
Jane was fine with being left alone. Unlike most of the children she saw during school, she did not play computer games or watch television. Perhaps it was due to her deep-seated desire to not do anything that might draw attention should others find a shared interest, but she never considered these past-times to be enjoyable. She did have one favorite activity, reading.
The small village that was Jane's home had a small library. The village was mainly geared towards a secluded mountain hide-away type of atmosphere for tourists, so there was not much in the way of modern entertainment. Aside from arts and crafts and activities related to experiencing nature, the library was it.
The lady who ran the library knew Jane. Sometimes, they would even socialize as only fellow readers could. Jane had read all the mystery, adventure, and fantasy books by the time she was in middle school. She then moved on to history. While not as interesting, it did have some mystery and adventure appeal if stuck with for a bit. She had exhausted these, however, by the time she was a freshman in high school.
Jane was running out of things to do with her time. She had long-since given up hope of catching those people living with her doing something that would give her information on their motives or the location of her real parents. She was out of interesting books. She was actually ahead on her schoolwork by a month.
So, it was on a rather unnotable Tuesday afternoon of Jane's 15th year that the world did not see Jane leaving the local comic and game shop with a box under her arm. However, the world did take notice a month later when an unknown girl with a rather unassuming figure began destroying well-established guild holdings in a popular VRMMORG.
~*~
Jane was used to moving around unnoticed. When she purchased the headgear to access the popular VRMMORPG Landless Wonders, she decided to create a character around the same premise. The game was advertised at 85% realism with four years in production. This meant that Jane had spent four years hearing her classmates discuss it. She had no desire to join them, but had often fantasized on what she would do should the day ever come when she was bored enough to play.
Landless Wonders was a game with no set continent or geographical structures. When first launched, there was one continent of roughly 2700 square kilometers. It had default cultures in place that dated back 20,000 years. The company had brought in hundreds of economic, literary arts, and sociology undergrad and graduate students to do their final projects and thesis' in building this world. This meant that there was years of back-story to explore.
Jane did like the idea of this when she first heard about it. However, she was just fine with finishing up the stories in the local library. After all, it was just a game world that had no real benefit in learning outside the game, while the stories and history she was currently working her way through would provide countless returns later in her life. If nothing more than just to show her patterns in the world that she should not repeat due to common mistakes.
The true reason that people played Landless Wonders, outside the fantasy escapism and other standard RPG elements, was because they could control the game's progression. There was a 4th generation AI overseeing thousands of 3rd generation ones to manage the back-story and make changes to the world as the players moved through it. As players interacted with the nearly sentient NPCs, they could influence the continent's development. However, what made the game unique was that it went one step beyond other similar games. If you convinced enough NPCs in the truth of something, you could completely alter the world and elements in it.
Of course, this was very hard to do. There were millions of NPCs that were programed to be just as stubborn as normal people. Each with their own mores and values. Still, players flocked to the game and formed guilds to try various ways of carving out their own kingdoms and eventually continents that would spontaneously appear or disappear as one side lost or gained momentum in the world.
Now, four years later, Jane entered the game. She didn't want to be recognized, so in the character creation she dropped her age down to an eight-year-old girl and changed her hair and facial features. Still unassuming if you were to look at her, she would blend into the background. This was perfect for her goals.
Jane wasn't interested in combat, magic, or anything else. She didn't even look for quests. She went straight for the library. For the next month, she read all the lore in the world.
There was one constant in the world that could not be altered based on accumulated NPC belief. That was player-generated lore. Nearly all people overlook the benefits of taking the time to learn before jumping into a game. Jane was going to exploit this.
Writing player-generated lore needs to meet certain criteria before it will be accepted in the system, however. This is another reason that few people bother with it other than simply talking with NPCs, after all word travels faster than books. The first criteria is that you must write each copy by hand. The second is that the books must only pertain to a single topic. The third is that each book must be over 120,000 words in length.
Jane researched all of this her first week. The game operated at 5x normal, and she had been granted a speed-reading skill after her first full day. This allowed her to read all of the thousands of books in the library. Her second week was planning on how to go about generating mass quantities of lore books.
During her studies, she had come across a reference to a Dwarven invention that was remarkably similar to the printing press. However, its manufacture blueprints and methods of creation were lost. Jane knew how to make one, but lacked money to fund the construction. She also didn't want to let anyone know her plans. It was fortunate, however, that she was able to link several of the books' references to where such a machine was.
With this knowledge, she used her meager starting gold and the amounts she had earned helping at around the library to buy up large quantities of paper, ink, glue, string, and leather. Her second full week was spent getting to the location of the machine and sneaking past the monsters. Once there, she got to work cleaning the machine. Thankfully, she didn't have to change them for each new page she wanted to assemble. All she had to do was put the book materials in their respective slots and type up the book as if she was using a computer. It would generate enough books for the materials she had.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Understanding this, Jane's timetable for her plans was quickly sped up. Her first plan was to establish a single religion in the world in such a way that it would generate her funds to continue producing books, and not be overwritten later. She also needed a way to gain authority.
The religion became known as The Mother's Children. Jane decided to model it after historical examples of effective aspects of religions that didn't cause issues to the people and were commonly accepted. The premise was simple, the Mother created the universe and throughout history appeared as a young child (who looked remarkably like Jane) to interact and aid the world. Spreading her teachings for the betterment of all. There was even a shrine to the Mother inside every village, town, and city surrounded by a park where children can play and families can gather to be watched over by her. Naturally, the religion only allowed violence in the form of self-defense, shunned domestic violence, encouraged neighbors helping one another, and encouraged scholarly pursuits.
This would give Jane authority if she appeared, because the Mother's name was Celest, her own game name. Since each character's name was unique, and not even NPCs can have it, it was perfect. She looked like the Mother and was named after her. The book was worded in such a way that strongly discouraged the desire for other religions. She even included a brief mention of donations at her shrine's altar being sent to the Mother so she could disperse it around in places she traveled. If it worked, she'd have a continuous source of gold in her game balance. If not, she could pop in and pick up coins at any altar she passed.
Taking with her 990 books, she placed them in 10 inventory slots. Each slot would stack the same item in stacks of 99. The following week, she traveled to each village, town, and city's library, putting in two copies of her lore in different locations for people to find. She also slipped a copy of the book in each church or temple, orphanages, and beggar's hand she found. She figured that the children would read it out of boredom and the beggar might read it to start praising the Mother to any who could hear in order to get donations for food. The churches and temples may or may not bring in converts, but since the player-generated lore can't be destroyed, it would find a reader at some point.
Jane then returned to the hidden and secluded cavern where the printing-press-like machine was after distributing all copies of the lore. While she waited for the NPCs to start reading it, she began work on a book describing the world's geography, maps, and kingdoms. She decided that she should include references to the religion The Mother's Children as well as reference the book of lore's title so that it would be harder to overwrite. She doubted anyone would be clever enough to pick up the significance, but she was going to layer her changes and cross-link them all.
For this world, she was going to add a continent for each race, with the current one being the center continent where all races have a branch. Each continent was going to be tied with a flight service where people travel using large eagles, griffins, and wyverns. These services are of course, sponsored by the Mother and overseen by her disciples. This would ensure than any passing person and merchant would know of her doctrine.
Jane spent a full two weeks writing the book. She used references from all stable, matriarchal-focused fantasy should had read. She wanted a stable economy with little potential for corruption. She was not naive enough to think that players wouldn't try and influence her changes. However, she went into detail and also included references to future lore books she would write discussing proper kingdom management, merchant practices, and economics. There would be a common currency and Mother Temple in each kingdom's capital where the leaders would come and consult with the priestesses. This would ensure that she could influence the world even further from the top-down and bottom-up of society.
She was quite pleased with the book. She made sure to give each race's continent their own signature themes and exports for merchants to trade. It listed prices for goods, with short descriptions. This was good for the lesser-known ones that weren't even created in the world yet. Trade routes were discussed, resources were mentioned and placed. It was quite detailed and she couldn't wait to see what kind of controversy it would have when everyone's efforts are overwritten.
It took two real-time weeks for Jane to begin hearing about her religion at school. It started small, just the outer-lying villages converting at first. Which is understandable. However, as people went to other villages and towns to trade, they spread the word. She designed it that way, mentioning how the oldest-known history told of the religion getting started. It was interesting to hear that the AI was following the lore and letting the NPCs spread the word by what they read.
Jane was excited, because this meant that her geography lore she had been working on would be the same. She decided to not have it printed yet and would work on the other books she had referenced. This took up two more months of her time.
While Jane was in seclusion, the entire continent was converted to her religion and her in-game balance of money was getting substantial. Which was good, because she used most of it to buy up more supplies for printing. Since she was at the base stats, her character only had 28 backpack slots. She filled them with even amounts of each new book and set off.
She made sure to hit the libraries with 5 copies of each book. Her next stop was to leave two copies at each merchant guild and temple of the Mother. Jane then made sure to discretely pay off a maid to place a copy of each book into the mayor or noble's bedroom. This would ensure that they would not suspect her while also thinking that they must have just forgotten they had the books when they went to work at their desk.
It took longer for these books to take hold since the common people weren't the target audience to spread them. Jane also made sure to include a reference in each of those books at the beginning that copies could commonly be found in libraries and bookstores across the world. That the Scribe's Guild would use them as practice for their new members, so they were common. This ensured that, should the AI follow the pattern, the books would be self-replicating. While those books my disappear, her original printing would still stick around.
Jane didn't want to be overzealous and print more of each copy. She felt it best that the word spread organically through the continent. This way no one would link her to the changes, but The Mother would be credited instead. Since she made sure to list Celest as the author who graced the land with her benevolent insights as the author of all those books.
The remaining months of her freshman year were spent wandering the land and watching as it changed around her. The students in her classes at school were fanatical in trying to find out why the game was changing all of a sudden after four years of only minor changes. They wondered at first if it was a new update, but the company put out a press-release that it was not. That the game was adapting to player-driven desires for new continents to explore.
She did find it amusing once she had a bounty on her head after players learned there was a character with the Mother's name walking around. Those that lost their holdings or placement in governments wanted revenge. Others wanted to be her followers and learn how she did it. She treated all of them as if she was a benevolent goddess and acted like any NPC would. She quickly became a sensation on the Internet in a game of, "Is she a player or not?"
The novelty of all of this wore off, however. After her freshman year's summer ended, she found herself back studying for new courses. The game world forgotten as she had accomplished her goals. No one would forget Celest.
This year, Jane had decided to approach school differently. She had shocked tens of millions of players through careful use of knowledge and strategy. She wondered if she could do the same in the real world. So, her plan was simple. She would risk drawing attention by taking all advanced courses to quickly graduate and earn university credits. This would be her first step in getting out of her small village. Doing it early would mean more scholarship money because she stood out. She also wouldn't be beholden to those people who claim to be her parents if they did start taking notice of her.
A month into her Sophomore year, Jane was sleeping at her desk. Head resting over an open chemistry book and drool sliding out from half-opened lips. In her dreams, she was creating new alchemical potions using her chemistry knowledge and shocking the game world again.
However, when she woke up, she'd find that it wasn't far from the truth.
[table=white]System Notification:Congratulations! Through your ingenuity and scheming, you have accomplished what few have ever done: becoming a widely accepted deity. Belief transcends medium and through harnessing the electronic and mental energy of 2.7 billion NPCs and 798 million players in Landless Wonders, you have become a candidate for uplifting.
The Council is curious to see how far you can go, so we have decided to grant your desire of merging the physical and game world concepts. You have been granted modified access to the Universe System with the access role of Player. We look forward to watching you.
Do note, discussion of The Council and Universe System, while not prohibited, will result in your immediate reincarnation as a slug.[/table]