(Heaven's Key, Heavenly realm)
You aren't responsible for the beginning, but you can be responsible for the ending.
Complete the work that nature started.
- Loading Blurb
[https://i.imgur.com/0e9Otrd.png]
Slowly, out of the pocket of his trenchcoat, the revolver came out. To my eyes, the movement seemed impossibly smooth and ethereal. I had a sense of time and could see exactly the trail the gun followed and as he raised it, where it would go. As if to draw out the tension, the white haired guy lifted the gun straight up, paused it a bit and then swung it down until it was pointed straight at me. He had a grin on his face. In perfect slow motion, I could see him put his finger on the trigger.
I knew what would happen next.
The last time I was here I got shot to death. This time, my mind is whirring a lot faster, so even though I have a second in game time until the trigger gets squeezed, I have 27h to think about my next move in actuality. If this wasn't a game running at 10,000x speed, but the real world I'd have 30 years. Before I had started the game, the controller me did a memory merge, so I understood everything that I'd missed while I was crossing the Street. Right now I have the programming and the ML skills of the controller, and the optimized mind of the instance that beat the Street game, as well as the memories of both.
I understand what the controller wants, which is to beat this white haired dude with my newly found superintelligence.
But as I am staring down the barrel of the gun, I am really wondering what I could do here.
Make my body resistant to bullets? Make them phase through my body? Regenerate the wounds?
I am racking my brain here, but I don't know how to do this. I try to do an act of will here. I picture a rock in very vivid detail and try to manifest it in front of me. My mind is working too fast for the body to react, so I do not make any movements, but nonetheless I try to focus all of my mental abilities into making something happen.
...
As expected, nothing is happening. I do not know how the white haired dude is doing it, but there must be some other trick to it than just wanting magic to work really badly. Expanding my mind and speeding it up, didn't do much to change the situation from where I was a human. I am going to get a few new holes either way.
[Gnosis check DC 1.9 Succeeded - Sampled 2.76]
Imminent death facing me, I get a sudden burst of inspiration. I realize that if I just let things as they stand, I am just going to get shot like last time. It is inevitable. So I might as well quit the game now and go to an earlier save. There is no point in letting the events unfold. That much is obvious, but...is it really? I suspend my disbelief and seriously consider eating a few bullets. I then realized something.
Was I really killed last time?
This situation is just too weird. Last time I took it at face value, but it is strange that the game would allow one of the players to kill another. Last time, I just aborted the game due to shock once the darkness overtook me, but had I actually gotten a notification that I died from the game itself?
I do not think that happened. Did I abort the game too quickly to get that notice? Did I simply miss it in my panic? Or is there something deeper to this?
I can't help, but to loathe myself for what I am going to do, but let's eat a few bullets to make sure of what is going on.
Bang...
I put all my willpower into not escaping to an earlier state and let the lead object pierce my chest. Damn it, it hurts! Like last time, I look at the bloody wound in horror, and on cue the white haired guy empties the rest of the magazine.
Bang...bang...bang...bang...bang...
The speed at which my mind works now really drew out the horror of this moment.
I sprawl out on the table, waiting for death to come to me. Like before, I can see my blood pooling out on the table until it covered my two face down cards. And then my vision became hazy and dark. Like last time, I couldn't make out what the white haired dude was saying. It felt distant...
Like that, I slipped into unconsciousness and death.
But...since this was a game, while it can simulate many things, it can't literally simulate the absence of life. Not without killing me in the real world as well. And now that I am keeping my emotions in order, I realize that despite being dead, I can still think just fine. I can't hear anything, I can't see anything, I can't touch anything. But my mind is working.
I feel out with my senses and I realize that I still have the connection with my chip pile. I wait a while in that senseless space, and there is no change. While I can't feel anything else, my life chips are still there. And I don't get a death notification from the game itself. Meaning, the game was still on.
Experiment Success!
I save the game here and exit it.
I should have noticed this last time, but that is the weakness of the mind controlling program that I used to get rid of my fear. It is one thing to be calm, but creativity requires an active and restless mind. It is easy to notice what is there when you are calm, but hard to notice what isn't. I guess that is the difference between what you need to be a member of society and what you need to conquer it.
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(Heaven's Key, Inn room)
[https://i.imgur.com/SMukxwh.png]
I go back to one of the earlier save states. This point in time is exactly before I slipped out in secret out of my room through the window and explored the city. It was the dead of night and I wasn't tired enough to sleep, so that is why I did it. It was that time I met Mickey in the park of ghosts.
I remember what that translucent old ghost told me. That we are all holograms here. And the system is what determines what exists based on our inner state.
Right now I am sitting on my bed with the lights turned off in the room. I close the curtains and flip them on. Then I manifest a body sized mirror and sit in front of it, pondering.
I need to figure out the trick to becoming translucent. Mickey did it somehow and if I could do it as well, it would give me a hint for how to deal with bullets. I'll go about it scientifically. I don't really know how to trick the system into doing it, but it is not like I can't interface with it at all.
For example...I take out one of the chips, place it on the floor in front of me and using it as a focus, manifest a bottle of water.
Rather than asking how I should change my body, why not instead start by asking how I did this obvious bit of magic?
This gives me a lot of information about the system. It is commonly believed that VR works by hijacking your senses, but if it was just that, then how would movement work? Obviously it has to capture a lot more from the brain in order to be able to do those. But why stop there?
That I could manifest this bottle as I'd imagined it is proof that the system understands my desires... and in the dueling realms, it rejects them. Well, Mickey told me as much, but I am thinking things through and confirming them as I go along.
Then the next step would be, rather than just my desires, my true beliefs...
I spend a few minutes thinking about it from various angles.
Honestly, I have no idea how I'd do this if I were a human. If I were a human it'd literally be like trying to develop psychic powers. I'd have to try out all sorts of drugs in order to get something going, messing myself up in the process. Maybe get into the occult mindset. It is dumb.
But as I am now, the various perspectives are all converging to one conclusion. If I am right, it should actually be pretty easy.
I have access to the entirety of my mind, and thought is merely the transfer of high dimensional vectors throughout the system. A small part of that data describes whether for example I am looking at a water bottle or just imagining a water bottle. It makes sense, otherwise I wouldn't be able to tell my own imagination and reality apart. This is a very good thing, since in the real world, perception does not affect reality, but here the system is literally basing a part of it on what it sees in my mind.
So if I mess with those thought vectors and conveniently erase the part of the data that tells me what the imagination is, I should make my first step on becoming a reality warper.
Doing this unhindered is dangerous as I'd completely lose track of what is real and isn't.
I understand where things are going with this though. If I could make it safe, I would receive a strong power. Right now even though I've increased my intelligence significantly, my emotional system is still that of a human. When I lost to the white haired guy the first time, I swore that I'd challenge him as a player, not as a character in a game.
This capability of tricking myself to think my imagination is reality should not be in my own hands, but the player's. But there is no reason why I couldn't automate the process eventually. It is like how computer programs become a part of you once you get rid of the interface obstructions, one day the player and the character might be one. Furthermore, now that I've moved from the human model of cognition to my own streamlined one, the tool I was using to regulate my emotions before has become unusable. I need to recover its capabilities by making my own version of it.
I am still a beginner, my capability is nowhere near close enough to the person who made this game. The game is here to teach me.
Anyway, what I have to do is straightforward now that I've planned it out. The first thing I have to get out of the way is the player. The one who is currently supervising me is no good. I need him to have at least my level of capability otherwise he won't be able to keep up.
I really need the controller to help me in this because my own measure of what is sane and isn't will become distorted once I start relying on this power, and I don't mean that in the based, anti-normie way.
I need to account for any and all risks.
Having made my decision, I open up a text editor and compose a message to the controller. After that I save the game, and as a show of will, I terminate my own process.
(Helix Studio, Regent Suite, Bedroom)
[https://i.imgur.com/o6v9LFM.png]
I was using the emotion controlling tool to keep my focus up, so I was in fact paying attention to what was going on. Still, it is not like I can read my other self's thoughts. So far, I saw him get shot by the white haired guy, reload back a week ago, and then spend a few minutes staring at himself in the mirror. Then he terminated himself, which shocked me enough to curse. I was really perplexed as to what was going on and started thinking that something might have gone wrong in the optimization process to make him mentally unstable. My thoughts went in that direction for a few seconds and then I realized I got a message from him.
> Subject: Self-Improvement Step Request
What followed is a report by him that went into great detail regarding his thinking since he started the game. It hadn't even occurred to me to think about whether he deliberated to load back right away or get shot purposely. It went on for a couple of pages and by the end I got the gist of what he wanted to develop and why he wanted to replace me with somebody more fitting.
> You won't be able to keep up, I need somebody more fitting for the role.
He literally said as much directly to me. Sigh. I didn't think my turn would come so quickly. I've been expecting him to challenge Lily's group without relying on saveloading and was looking forward to seeing how he does it, but it seems a lot of action has happened in his head that I've been unaware of.
...It is just too soon, so let me compromise. The report he wrote demonstrated his intelligence to me, so I no longer have any doubts about him being broken in some way. But nonetheless, I want to see him in action before I just hand him the reins to everything. If something goes wrong, who is going to take the responsibility of explaining that to the main me who is currently sleeping in the real world?
Maybe the role of the controller is too much, but I need to spend a while observing. So I'll do that.
I copy his paused process and do a memory merge. Then I make the necessary setup and start him in a different Helix Studio limbo. Now he should have what he needs to act as a controller. He'll be able to fork himself and start the game.
If this was a real self-improvement step, I'd erase myself here, but I am not going to do that, not yet. He is asking me to literally kill myself for him, so it is fair that I take some time to observe before deciding if I want to go forth with it. The report he sent me was pretty interesting. I'll have him do a writeup at the end of every day. At his speed of thought it shouldn't take him more than a few seconds, and it really gives me an insight into what is going on.