Isekai Online
The most popular VRMMORPG in the world right now. Started out 5 years ago, the game is originally marketed to provide endless adventures and wonders under the vast world of Modon.
With the tagline of "Be the Hero of your own story!", players are expected to be acting as a transported hero from another realm, and are tasked with saving Tutoria, the Kingdom of Beginning, by traveling all across the world and slaying evil wherever they go. However, as the story naturally expanded, and players began to take on more and more diverse roles, the narrative, and as such the tagline gradually changed.
As the first player-based event "Hero versus Demon Lord" come to a stop, and the "Hero" player Lus and the "Demon Lord" player MaouLord69 fight to a draw, seeing the potential of a player-made storyline, and the endless possibility made by the interaction between the player and the world of Isekai Online itself, the people behind the game decided to change the tagline to "Chase your own Dream in Another World!", and began to cater to the playerbase's ambition for freedom of expression, truly introducing endless path for player to choose from.
This is all facilitated by Laplace, the all-seeing hyper-intelligent AI which monitored all aspect of the worlds of Isekai Online, which have now also been greatly expanded from the original Modon into various realms, and which personally generated the storyline, NPC, dialogue, titles, jobs,...anything in order to keep a lively, realistic and fun world for all 1 billions player to enjoy, make meaningful decision, and influence Isekai Online itself. With an impressive track record of 5 years of continuous running without emergency maintenance or bugs, this AI has been the very backbone of the game itself, praised by many. Some conspiracy nuts even said that the company itself is run by the AI nowaday, which many players jokingly accept.
Anyway, in celebration of the 5th anniversary on August 1st, Parallel Inc, the company behind Isekai Online, decided to introduce a surprise event: The War Against The Devil. As the underworld have been introduced for more than a year now, the company want to spice thing up, and as such began the event, in which the underworld direct an invasion to all the corner of Modon, and it's the player's task to aid in the effort to fight back the invasion (or so they claim, though some player have heavy skepticism about whether or not the company is even capable of planning thing out like this, or if this isn't some stroke of luck once again).
With this sudden event, the drama, the tragedy, the epics made by human's seemingly endless struggle against the endless horde of demonic creature...All of this would have mark another landmark historic event in the annal of Isekai Online's existence, and sure to be a memorable event for all.
...If it weren't for a more shocking, and sudden thing happening, that puts all that's planned into chaos.
Two characters, who came out of nowhere, suddenly dive deep into the demonic horde and wipe the slate clean with them.
It was a massacre, the scale of which makes all the struggle the playerbase feel meaningless, and the way they systematically and brutally eviscerate the body of the demonic creature, even make the players feel pity for them.
The force of the devil army got decimated so hard, the dark god of the underworld even had to show up to fight against them. Before they can even show their name though, they get mercilessly cut down and pummel to a bulb, leaving their corpse in the middle of their transformation sequence.
After that, the gods from the heaven come down and claim to restore order to the world by eliminating those two, along with the rest of the people on Modon (apparently it's for a New World Order thing), but before they can even fire their giant Testament Cannon, those two quickly go up and decimate them as well, literally turning the Heavenly Realm upside down, and dump the body of the god down, once again before they can do anything.
At least they managed to show up their name at the very least, which is based on various mythos from Christian to Nordic. The dev even managed to cram in some obscure god in there before they got sent to the chop shop.
Just as the playerbases is still trying to catch their neck back in shape with all that whiplash, suddenly from the sky, the foreign god in the shape of an alien-looking giant creature comes down to earth, taking advantage of the power vacuum left by the complete destruction of both heaven and hell.
Though, perhap not surprising to everyone by that point, before they can even touch Modon with their first tentacle, the two of them quickly go up once again, and while they're having an epic space battle that no one get to enjoy, quickly chop down all the tentacle up into calamari.
At this point, when the dragon comes and directly challenges them to a fight, before turning into roasted dinosaur meat, literally everyone becomes numb to the absurdity that's happening before them at this point. And the only single thought that crossed everybody's mind, when the event is declared over, is a single phrase:
"Yeah, no shit."
So after the event is over, and everyone clamoring up to see who the two are, the message from the system itself puts them right into an Uproar.
[True Transcendence of The World]
A never before-seen title, done only by performing an impossible feat!
Hint of a new mechanic, which allows people to transcend the world!
Possible new future content that allows all people to have a chance to obtain and become Transcendence!
The supposed revelation was so great, that when the two of them disappeared out of the blue, no one noticed them as they're too preoccupied with excitement until a while later.
Violet, a blond tall woman in a ponytail and a glamorous yet elegant dress. With her sharp violet eyes, she wields a katana and slices-and-dice everyone into cubed corpses.
Martia, a short young androgynous boy with short black hair in a white dougi, who with his beaming smile, a cute white dragon on his head, and a terrifying little fist, punch (and claw) all their opposition to oblivion.
Aside from knowing their name and their appearance, the playerbase have no other clue about them, and everything else about them is shrouded in complete mystery.
The playerbases have also been doing their own research, checking over every single second of the legendary massacre, and cross-referencing them with every single little detail that they collectively know. From matching obscure and hidden ranker, to matching them over the most unknown and random NPC, to even scrouging over leaked database Parrallel Inc accidentally let out due to their incompetence sometimes...
But no matter what, they couldn't find anything that would definitively match the info about the two of them that they have. Endless theory and speculation have been made over the month, but nothing came out conclusive.
For all they know, the two of them literally come out of thin air. It's like they just decided to exist that day, choose absolute violence, and leave without a trace.
Nevertheless, because of how sudden they appear, how absolutely legendary their exploits are, and more importantly: how cute and beautiful they look, the fanbase have been churning out fanart and fan content about them, both wholesome and unwholesome. Ingame, painting, statue, song, and an entire epic have been made about them, and countless work of arts have been made, and place around the famous Mound of Great Fallen, landing just outside the capital of the Kingdom of Beginning, and of which contain countless loot and treasure made from the fallen part of various god, devil, dragon and various great being.
It has been a month since their first appearance, and they haven't reappeared since. However, their popularity has only continued to soar, and their mystery deepens.
Who are they? Where do they come from, and where do they go? Why are they here, and how?
All the playerbases sought to answer these questions, and none have succeeded so far.
But if there is one thing they know for sure...
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"No way is Parallel Inc that competent." (Lus)
Lus, the player with the Hero class, chats over to MaouLord69, the player with the Demon King class, in their private friend chat.
" 'A surprise NPCs, made with the intent to promote the new upcoming mechanic, story and content that will be released with a development roadmap soon?' Phuh-lease, if they was ever that meticulous and hardworking, we would already be going to space, instead of having to wait next year for it." (Lus)
"I know right? Who can forget their legendary statement about their development time, taking 6 month just to develop a world, along with all the NPC and content in it? No way do they find the time to make that elaborate of an NPC, and then just wait for a chance to promote what's most likely an entire new world." (Maou)
"Also, remember how boneheaded they were, even claiming that "Isekai Online will only promote heroic content" when the fanbase asked for more freedom of expression ingame? We literally have to stage an entire fight back then, and stir the playerbase to sky high just to get them to begrudgingly accept that maybe they should allow the playerbase to access all of the cool toy they already made." (Lus)
"Yeah, someone who's allergic to the change of pace of a snail like them, now suddenly is willing to destroy all of their precious "content" they made for at least 5 years in advance? Fucking unlikely.
Hey @Lus, so what's your theory about them?" (Maou)
"Hm...I am following the "rogue AI" theory atm. Not like this is the first time an overpowered AI just wreck the game balance to pieces, and they have to introduce "Planned" maintenance to die it back down, or give us more buff and such to fight it back." (Lus)
"Ha, let's see what miracle they will do with their next "Planned" maintenance to fix all of this mess. lol. As for me, I'm more in the "rogue Tester" camp right now. Not like this is the first time a tester with a grudge, and/or sense of humor just decided to access hidden content of the game and release it unto the world to wreck shit up." (Maou)
"Yeah, and remember how they always said that "this is all planned content of the game", before announcing their "planned" event to let us clean up their mess." (Lus)
"Yeah, the only thing they always "planned" to do well, have always been damage control LOL." (Maou)
"...@MaouLord69, there is also a new theory that's been going on recently, wanna hear about it?" (Lus)
"Sure, what is it?" (Maou)
"There is this new theory that they are actually player that come from another world."(Lus)
"Hm? How so?" (Maou)
"Well, according to them...'They came over suddenly, they also left just as suddenly, they have unparalleled strength, and everything about them is a mystery...Doesn't all that sound like the plot of a typical Isekai nowaday? Plus, if we didn't find anything about them in this world, then they must have come from a place outside of it! My theory is that they must come from another world through a portal, directly into this world, mistaken it to be a real world because of how similar it is to their place of origin, and unknowingly fighting against the forces of evil, not knowing that this is a virtual world. Then, upon noticing their error, they immediately go out, leaving behind nothing but their name and the mess they made.' " (Lus)
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
"They must like writing fanfic, huh." (Maou)
"The actual post is like 3 pages long, so I have already shortened it... They also said 'Beside, with how otherworldly adorable Martia is, no way would he ever come from this tainted world in the first place.'. Their account's name is MartiaIsMyBaby, btw." (Lus)
"Make sense. So, why do you bring this theory up?" (Maou)
"...What do you think of this theory, in particular?" (Lus)
"It's definitely weird. Like, not the most conspiratory one out there, but it's definitely out there." (Maou)
"Yeah...but it's definitely the type of weird, that's crazy enough to be true. After all, it's the kind of shit you would expect to happen in this game." (Lus)
"...True that. There are many things you can say about this game, but it sure always brings us surprise." (Maou)
"Not to mention quality waifu and husbando." (Lus)
"True that as well...Speaking of which, how is your wife btw." (Maou)
"She's good, and we're expecting a third. How is your wife as well?" (Lus)
"As cute as a button, as always, and so is our daughter as well..." (Maou)
After that, they then begin to talk about their family business, as well as how it is as their place, along with other small talk.
Lus and MaouLord69...two of the most legendary players in this game, their act together, and against each other, have created waves and change within this world, and cemented them as the true veterans of this game.
They have as much love of this game, as they have their flak. They both have thing to said about the flaw of this game, and is vocal about it, but the two of them are also passionate player, and among the first people to treat it as a weird, but real and a wonderful world, and have done many thing to earn their place in this world, and protect the thing they love. They created kingdoms, have a wife in this world, and truly live and love in this wonderful game, so much that they accept everything about it.
And with the new wave of change that rushes in like a great tsunami, they will soon come to accept that as well.
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Meanwhile, back in Parallel Inc.
"...And you fucking glassheads still can't find those two, after we search them FOR A MONTH!?"
The head developer slammed the thick stack of reports into the table, scaring his employee.
"So what the fuck are those reports supposed to do then, paperweight!? What have you been doing, you fucking wasted of glasses!?"
"S-Sir, we have been trying really hard to do what you said. We have even dug through all of our past testers back in the day of development, as well as checking every inch of our source file for any loophole, but there is literally no clue sir! Those two just seem like they came out of thin air..."
"Shit...And we can't ask Laplace about it either, since they somehow register themselves as players, thus we can't get any info about where they are per the privacy clause..."
As he scrunches up his temples, he takes a big deep sigh.
"Fucking hell...the marketing department keep incessantly demand us to reveal who those two are, wanting to ask them to be models for all the merchandises they're planning to do...The board also demand us to keep introducing them as well, since stock have been rising up after their appearance."
Drinking a big cup of coffee with a single gulp, he drone out his complaint again.
"Fucking hell. If we find them, or make them in the first place, we would have already done it already...So, among all of you geniuses, that have been personally chosen to be among the top developers to run this game, none of you have any clues whatsoever?"
As he asked that, the entire team of developers fell silent, as everybody refused to say anything.
(Tsk...Should I reconsider hiring them, if they were this fucking useless...)
"Um, Sir, I might have a clue."
As he considers whether to just hire a new bunch, a voice raises up, along with a long sleeve fluttering above all of their heads. A young girl in thick glasses slowly climbed up the seat with her short body, slamming the papers in front of all of them.
"Um...Carana, isn't it?"
"Carana Wellsworn, Intern Developer Sir!"
"Ah, the young prodigy we hired recently...So, what clue do you have, young lady?"
Pushing her glass-up through her unkempt short brown hair with her tiny hand, she confidently answered.
"Sir, do you remember that we had a deal with LIGO way back then?"
"Ah...we did have a deal with them back then, in developing better algorithms to detect further gravitational signals..."
Along with developing the hyper-intelligent AI, Parallel Inc also developed quantum supercomputers to both run the AI, as well as the game engine they developed for a fully-immersive, infinitely-varied open world VR environment, which can replicated, simulated, and create any sort of environment and condition with infinitesimal degree of accuracies, both of which laid the foundation for their hit game Isekai Online, a project of passion, made to be the best immersive VRMMORPG in the world.
Thanks to their advance in the field of AI, modeling and computation, they have been asked, and make deal with nearly everyone that needed their work, from modeling stock market, to engineering more efficient and economical design, to making and running better algorithms for everything from image detection, to sentient AI for robotic field, to making better gravitational detector, like mentioned before.
It's thanks to all those deal, as well as keeping ahead of the stock market and economy trend with Laplace, that Parallel Inc become a multi-trillion dollar industry, with countless branch spanning across the globe, from commercial to industrial good, to becoming a technological pioneer, especially in the field of VR and AR technology.
Even so, they still kept to their original vision of making the best VR game ever created, as such the original team that developed the AI, along with the game and the infrastructure needed to run and sustain it, still exist to this day.
In that sense, one can't deny their passion and determination, even after countless mishaps that happened, and still happen as they run it.
"Yes...I have been looking through their data recently for a personal project of mine, and found something peculiar...One month ago, LIGO, Virgo, and 10 others gravitational detectors simultaneously picking up a signal, and after I triangulate the position, found out that the signal come precisely on one of our underground server bank. Server Bank 7, to be exact."
"!! That's where we concentrated our resources to run the event! What else did you find?"
"Well, after I ran through the server log, trying to find what happened at that time, I found that there was a massive data surge, which nearly destabilized our entire system. Thankfully the system quickly restored, but the data surge still remained around and messed with our registry..."
"...And directly register themselves to be Players! Fucking hell, why does literally no one else here making notice of that !?"
"Sir, our entire server has to constantly monitor 1 billions players, as well as countless AI, environmental variables, and many other things. It's simply too large for us all to search it all in such a short amount of time..."
"Excuses, Excuses! Did you all seriously just let an intern go past you like that, you useless pieces of..."
"Please, don't get angry at them, sir. After all, Laplace was intentionally hiding this data from them."
"Wait, why-Ah right, the Privacy Clause. So how did you manage to get it then?"
"With a little bit of fiddling and finding the right question to ask, sir! It took a lot of time to finally be able to pull this data out, hence why it takes me this long to confirm all of this."
"Still, to be able to pry out info from our famously retentive Laplace...as expected of our Young Prodigy, who won multiple Nobel Prizes at the age of 7, and working here at the age of 12."
"Thanks you sir."
"So, any idea what causes it-Or more likely, if my suspicion is correct, who caused it?"
"Ah...After running countless simulation, based on the gravitational data that I have collected earlier, I have found sign of a hyperbolic-"
"Keep it short, young lady"
"Sir, it was the formation of a wormhole. And after calculating the potential size and stability of it, it's possible that this very wormhole cause-or more likely delivers an electromagnetic packet big enough to correspond with the data surge that happens just later on. I failed to mention it earlier, but the same wormhole signature also occurs just moments after those two are gone sir, along with the data surge."
After hearing her analysis, the entire team falls silent, seemingly stunned at the possible revelation. Only the head developer is calm, keeping his look straight at her.
"So? What's your verdict?"
"U-Um, this sounds a bit crazy, so I don't know if I should talk about it..."
"Oh forget it, I will say it then...In other words, those two are visitors from another world, who directly cause this wormhole to travel directly into our world right?"
"!!! Yes, among all the possible hypotheses, this is the one most likely to be true, Sir!"
"..."
"..."
Silence fall after a while.
After that, the entire room is overwhelmed with the sound of an uproar. All the developers, especially the veterans, all jump around in joy and excitement, as they all incoherently scream in jubilation.
"!? W-What's going on, and why does everybody here believe what I said?"
Shocked by all this celebration, Carana asked the head developer in surprise. The head developer, who even wears a smile right now, answers in kind.
"Young lady, do you know why we named our game Isekai Online?"
"Um, it's because they all want to create "another world" to go in?"
"You're half-right...It's because all of these nerds here are Isekai nerd, who wanted to build another world of their own to fulfill their Isekai fantasy."
"!!!"
"As such, those guys here are jumping around like crazy, knowing that they find an actual case of Isekai finally happening on Earth. It's like having their birthday celebrated in the Comicon."
"Sir, it still doesn't explain why they believed me..."
"Who do you think we are? We're also all geniuses of our field, and all of whom have done their own rigorous research about Isekai itself...speaking of which, what is your project right now?"
"Um, it's 'Possibility of an Isekai into a virtual world', thanks to that I managed to find out about this..."
"See? You're also one of us here. That's part of the reason we hired you in the first place...So, to repeat, it's all true right?"
"...T-To the best of my knowledge, Sir!"
Hearing the confirmation again, all of them raised their uproar to another level. Some of them even brought out their giant bottles of soda and shook them around, spraying it toward everyone.
"Then we all believe you, since we know you would be excited as well knowing this is true!...As expected, you also have further information to confirm your case right?"
"Yessir! Approximately 24 hour later after the first signal, another wormhole signal have been detected right around Japan. It's even bigger than before, enough to actually transport a person, by all theoretical calculations! I even checked it through Laplace, and it also confirmed my theory with 99.9999% likelihood."
"Good job there! That means they have been mingling around Earth for a month now! Carana, from now on you're also a full-time developer like us, and you will get a raise, plus triple the resource for your project."
"!Thank you Sir! I won't let you down, Sir!"
"As for the rest of you guys, quickly search around Japan, see if any weird pair of individuals appear there! Remember to search every nook and cranny!"
"Sir, Yes Sir!"
After that, all of them began pouring through all their surveillance data they have in Japan, in renewed vigor.