Volume 3 Chapter 3
Infamy Won and Lost
Onyx sat meditating in the corner of an open room covered in a dim red light as Crane sat at a nearby table with a large stack of books and paper scrolls. Crane was beyond relieved when he found out that much of the library’s collection were books that demons who had been summoned by sorcerers pilfered from the summoner’s own collection before returning. Though the most recent one was added over two thousand years prior, the books had charms cast on them that prevented degradation, so they survived in decent condition.
The materials he was currently going over was a sorcerer’s research papers on demon creation and demon magic, both of which held great interest for Crane.
According to the documents, Demons begin as fallen soul energy, (could be from a human or nonhuman), which naturally flow to the abyss like water naturally flows downhill. There is a chance that the fallen soul may flow to or near a natural phenomenon in the abyss called a dark tear, a crack in space that leaks a foul energy. If exposed to this energy, the soul energy will become tainted and mutate into a dark spirit. Though without memory or consciousness, dark spirits do have a will and a single desire, to become stronger. To become stronger they seek out and devour other fallen souls or weaker dark spirits. The more soul energy they have, the stronger their will.
When enough will power has accumulated, the will of the dark spirits becomes strong enough to manifest a physical form. It usually becomes a mindless beast, like a hell-hound or savage fiend. However occasionally the dark spirit gains sentience, in which case it will become a demon imp. Despite their small bodies, imps have access to demon magic, thus are quite powerful. If an imp continues to devour souls and gain an even greater will power, they change into a full blown soldier demon.
The documents calculate that the total amount of souls of average will power required to form a soldier demon is likely at least several thousand, though it made no attempt to calculate the amount required to create higher class demons.
Crane was also very interested in demon magic, he was surprised to find out it greatly differed from normal magic. Crane knew that magic as known in the upper world used original or derived symbols and thoughts that were first gathered from Yggdrasil, the source of all mana, to alter and shape mana into spells. In other words, magic was the language of mana, used to ‘ask’ it to become a spell.
Demon magic however did not originate from runes so it wasn't a language of mana. It came from the will power of the soul. Demon magic used the willpower of the souls they’ve subjugated to corrupt and distort mana into the desired effects, the more willpower, the greater the effect. So instead of speaking to mana, demon magic was more like enslaving mana.
However the subjugation of foreign souls to gain control of the collective willpower is the tricky part. Devouring a mass of soul energy simply stores it within the body. To subjugate it, the will of the souls, collectively or individually must be broken through torture into giving its name. Once the name is given, the will of the souls becomes an extension of the demon's will.
You could say that the power of runes is to magic what the power of names is to demon magic. However, because it was derived from a different source, several of Crane's more creative counter magic spells were completely useless against demon magic.
Crane looked back over at Onyx, meditating with an impassive face. Thanks to Crane, she had inherited her father’s demon ability, allowing her to now use demon magic. (Even being the daughter of an arch-devil, fey'ri are not born with the ability to use demon magic.)
The old devil lost most of the souls he’d subjugated when he was almost killed, leaving him weak. (Though because he had the highest proficiencies with his spells and skills, he was still much stronger than Crane.) When he died, he passed his remaining souls to his daughter so she could use (at least a little) demon magic. But in order for her to actually use them, she had to subjugate them to her will.
At first Crane had doubts about her ability to torture screaming souls into submission. But despite her shy demeanor, she had no problems with torturing others, (she was the child of a devil after all). One of the skills left to her was a devil exclusive skill called Scarlet Aura. The aura to causes great pain to souls which can make them agree to serve her in exchange for the pain to stop. The dim red glow around her was a sign she was currently using the within her.
She was making decent progress and would soon become much stronger.
It wasn’t that she had been helpless before this. From the books of the library stolen from sorcerers she had learned some interesting magic spells and seals, and apparently had spent centuries practicing with her mother’s old longbow. She could imbue arrows with magic and could likely deal good damage at a great distance, but there was a large problem.
With the exception of fighting the occasional dark spirit which wandered into the library, she had almost no combat experience. Onyx was over a thousand years old but her level was only 330. Though a few levels above Crane’s own, with the exception of her archery, none of her other skills or spells had a proficiency higher than intermediate, making her much weaker than Crane overall.
Crane insisted that before they leave the library in search of a way to the upper world she must subjugate all the souls left to her by her father and spar with him three times a day until then. Crane estimated that the number of souls left to her was higher than a demon imp but lower than a demon soldier. After she got the hang of her new found abilities and Crane was fairly sure she could at least marginally handle herself, he planned to find some place they could train.
Crane had been looking over the library's maps of the abyss, but it gave him a headache. If the Abyss was a world beneath the surface, it could be a honeycomb of tunnels and caverns. If the tunnel network was large enough, the total area of the Abyss could be equal to or even vastly greater than the entirety of the upper world. However Crane wasn’t entirely sure that the Abyss was somewhere beneath the surface of the world as he had originally thought. There was a possibility it could be a separate world altogether covered in rock, existing within an empty void. In which case the way back to the world could be anywhere.
Crane had asked Onyx about it but she said reading maps was pointless anyways because the realms within the abyss often moved around. It made Crane wonder if the abyss was some massive living creature.
Crane had also asked Onyx if she could teach him demon script so he could read the demon written scrolls and books, but she said that it was too dangerous to read them. Demon script is apparently the language of names and is quite different from other languages.
First of all, she said demon script seemed to choose whether or not someone could read it, meaning there was nothing to teach. There were in fact many books that allowed Onyx to read them, but apparently all the demon script books Crane had tried were prejudice against humans.
Secondly, it can affect mortal readers and drive them mad or worse. Even a half mortal as she was (and calling the long lived elves mortal is pushing it,) she needed to build several mental barriers, just so she could look at them. Onyx said that Crane was lucky that whatever protections he had on himself prevented him from being affected by the book he had stared at for the hour that passed in the instant he was looking at it. Crane had asked Onyx what that book was, but she couldn't read it either.
Onyx suddenly opened her eyes from meditation and took in a deep breath. She looked at a large piece of heavy rubble that was close by and concentrated. A dark aura surrounded the rock and it slowly lifted into the air. Then it shot sideways and blasted into a wall. Onyx looked very pleased with herself. The last time she moved the rock with telekinesis she couldn't just fling it across the room, this was vast improvement and showed great progress.
She gave Crane a firm look and said, "I'm ready for another round."
Crane said, "Alright, ground or air?"
She thought for a moment and closed her eyes. From her back sprouted large dragon like red wings. As a fey'ri she wasn’t born with the ability to use demon magic, but she was born with some race specific skills. 'Alter Self,' was a fey’ri racial skill that allowed her to modify her appearance, but she could not use the skill twice within the same day. Also the modifications could only shift her between her true form and her elf form. She could only sprout wings because she was born with them in her true form.
Crane said, “Alright, go get your bow.”
She went to a shelf to grab a large, heavy longbow of dark wood and a bundle of lightly glowing arrows. Back when she first showed her mother’s weapon to Crane, he repaired the extensively used bow back to maximum durability and even restored some of the lost durability. After that Onyx no longer acted shy around him.
The pair went to the main room in the library, it had a dome ceiling and the largest interior space within the library and was the only place with a high enough ceiling for flight based combat. The ten meter tall book shelves were large enough to fly between and also made good cover. Crane activated the spell on Loki’s shoes allowing for flight and flew off. As soon as he flew out of her sight, it was game on.
A few moments after Crane disappeared, a white flash came at him from his left. Crane put two fingers together and caught the seeking arrow.
Skill level up: Arrow Catch Intermediate [2]
After getting his fist mastery to intermediate, Crane was able to learn some monk exclusive skills like the ability to catch an arrow with his hands. Of course he had only two hands and could only catch arrows with a predictable path. But nothing was more predictable than an arrow imbued with a seeker spell.
However it was only a distraction, Onyx had already appeared overheard to his right and with an arrow notched and her drawstring pulled all the way back. With the arrow tip pointing at Crane’s heart she released the string. Crane tucked in, blocking the arrow with his shoulder. The force of the blow sent him spinning in the air.
Onyx saw the the light of a magic circle form around Crane, a sign he was casting a rune spell so she flew behind a bookshelf to block whatever magic spell he was about to cast before confirming what it was. However suddenly her wings buckled like they weren’t working anymore and she smacked into the ground. Crane’s gravity magic wasn’t strong enough to pin her, but she wouldn’t be able to lift off until it was over or she got out of range. She chose the later and walked forward until she was out of range.
Crane pulled the arrow out of his arm. He had a spell that could heal it, but it cost too much mana and he needed to pour water over the wound for the spell to work, not something he could do during a fight. Instead he cast Burning Aura, his strongest defensive spell. Using Fehu and Kenaz it heated up the air surrounding Crane to several thousand degrees. The center was insulated, but the spell still damaged Crane’s equipment. The last time he used the spell, as soon as he extended his sword through the insulated layer, it bust into flames and melted. Of course since then, he had learned ways around that.
The books around Crane were beginning to smolder, the charms that protected them over the centuries could not hold up against the air, so Crane and his aura had to fly up to prevent the shelves from igniting.
As soon as she saw Crane rise from the shelves, Onyx released a barrage of arrows. Individually they weren’t as strong as her last shot, but together they would do the job. Except... She noticed too later that the air around Crane was shimmering. As soon as the arrows approached him, they turned black and disappeared from the world.
Crane launched towards the arrows that had just come at him, Burning aura could cause irreparable damage to Loki’s shoes and the rest of his non fireproof equipment, but he wasn't worried. When she saw him coming and that her arrows had no effect, she started casting spells with demon magic. From her hand what looked like a flock of black birds came flying out, if any of them hit Crane, he would get damaged and cursed. The heat of his aura wouldn’t affect magic, so he bobbed up and down with the least amount of movement to avoid the attack.
After Crane dodged, Onyx could only fight or flee, she dropped her bow and activated Scarlet Aura. Like Crane’s aura it would increase both her defense and attack, though more directly. The blood colored mist that was pouring out of her concentrated around her body and wings and she changed forward, intent on charging through the heated air into the safe zone in the center to defeat Crane. The aura around her hands hardened into claws, she extended them reaching for Crane’s throat. When she closed in the air shimmered again and the heat was gone, but so was Crane.
Crane somehow came up from below and flicked her on the forehead.
She released her aura and pouted a bit while Crane said, “I’m at 17 wins, 4 loses, 5 ties.”
Onyx said, “How did you do that, I couldn’t sense illusion magic.”
Crane answered, “That my student was a mirage. Light travels faster through hot air so bent light bends more than it looks. I was below the mass of hot air the whole time, it only looked like I was inside it.”
She complained, "Then why did your mirage dodge Nightmare call?"
As if the answer was obvious, Crane said, "To fool your magic sight, you rely on it too much."
Another of Onyx's racial skills was magic sight, after activation it informed her about the magic properties of whatever she looked at.
Onyx felt like she had been cheated, then looked back at Crane's shoulder wound and smirked a bit at her small victory in injuring him. Crane rolled his eyes at this and sent her back to meditate.
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Do Hyup got out of his capsule with a headache. He had one since coming to the Abyss. 'Maybe you've been playing too much games?' He thought in the back of his head.
That was probably right. He spent all his time lately in Royal Road. For now anyways he was just waiting for Onyx to finish, and since this was a big week for him, Do Hyup decided to take a week off Royal Road.
The next morning, Hyup rolled his wheelchair to his dad's van where his parents waited for him. He pulled himself into a seat and his dad folded up the wheelchair to put in the trunk.
The family made small talk along the way, talking about what a big step this was going to be for him and all that. They arrived on time to the doctor's office and Hyup let his dad push him the rest of the way.
The large man inside said, "Hello, I'm Doctor Khano, we spoke on the phone. " He looked down with a kind smile at Do Hyup and said, "First we need to run some simple tests."
He brought Do Hyup alone into the patient room and started messing with his legs, testing the reflexes, the muscle strength, how well they could function. Hyup's legs had been growing stronger since the accident thanks to muscle stimulating electrodes. He wasn't nearly strong enough to walk on his own but it was determined that with assistance, he could walk with crutches. After satisfying results, the doctor took out a pair of plastic frames. They had been molded to Hyup's and were thin enough to fit under a pair of pants. Though he would have to get larger pants.
The doctor asked, "Well what do you think?"
The doctor was probably expecting a greater, possibly tear filled reaction from him, but even Hyup was surprised by how little it affected him. Years ago the doctor would have received a sobbing gratitude filled expression, but that was before Royal Road. In his mind, he had been walking yesterday, and the day before. He'd been walking in Royal Road for a year and a half. So telling him today he would put on these braces and walk out of the office on crutches wasn't that impressive.
The doctor gave up looking for astonished gratitude and helped Hyup strap the braces onto his legs. Hyup got off the bench and felt the weight on his feet. He was actually standing fine without crutches, but that was because the tension on the spring behind both his knees was at maximum. The point was to lower it to the level he would need crutches so he could walk with them and slowly build his leg strength back to a normal. Until then his braces were just giant remote controlled springs.
The doc gave Hyup the remote that operated the strength of the springs. With a hand on the wall to steady himself, he lowered the spring power until he started to sink. The doctor handed a pair of crutches, one of which had a built in slot for the remote control.
After some trial and error, some technical explanations and more than one near fall, the door to the office opened and Do Hyup slowly hobbled out. His parents saw this and gave the look the Doctor had been expecting. He said, "Your son's muscles are developing well, but this is just the halfway point, it will be a few more years of therapy before he can walk unassisted.
His mother thanked the doctor and walked with Hyup to their van. To sit down he had to lift himself with the crutches onto the seat with his legs out and use the remote to set the spring to zero to allow his legs to bend all the way down before turning to put his legs into the van. Still, it was less of a hassle than folding up the wheelchair.
His mother offered to let him skip the rest of the school day so he could practice walking, but he insisted he would be fine.
The school had a policy against tardiness, so a guard was posted at the entrance after first period. The man recognizes Do Hyup, but was surprised to see him walking. Do Hyup had put on long pants that covered the braces so the guard only saw him walking with crutches.
The guard told Hyup's mother who was still escorting him, " I'll take it from here Mrs."
Hyup's mother nodded and left. The guard looked at him and said, "New haircut?"
Do Hyup rolled his eyes, he had several sarcastic exchanges with this man and always enjoyed them.
"Nope, got my ears lowered, so it only looks that way."
The guard laughed at the absurdity and said, "Well now you don't have any excuse to be late. Get to class before I write you up."
Hyup hobbled away saying, "Always telling people what to do and threatening them, one day someone will report how mean you are to the principal."
He responded with a smirk as Hyup walked passed him, "Who do you think tells me to me to be mean in the first place?"
Hyup quickly decided he looked very silly. He lifted himself up with his crutches, moved forward, set himself down on his legs, moved forward while slowly squatting down, then lifted himself back up with the crutches. A small part of him already regretted the loss of his wheelchair. 'It had its own cup-holder too,' he said to himself. But this would eventually allow him to walk so a cup-holder was an acceptable sacrifice. Of course he wouldn't be walking before high school graduation, but at least he would by the ten year reunion.
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Hyup walked into his second period a few minutes after the bell. When people saw he was walking, they started whispering to themselves.
He walked over to his usually seat and remembered it didn't have a chair, so he used the crutch to position another chair and leaned against it while turning the springs on his braces off, allowing him to sit.
With the exception of various whispers, no one really talked about him. That was until lunch started.
Hyup meet up with his two best friends, Yoochun, and Miyeok at lunch. He attracted more stares than usual but nothing he wasn’t prepared for. What caught him off guard though was a large group of people crowding around a table. They surrounded a laptop computer and were watching a video.
Hyup asked Miyeok, “What are they watching?”
Yoochun answered for her, “You.”
“What?” It took him a moment to understand. “They’re watching a video of me?” He thought for a moment that someone had taken a video of his embarrassing walking and was showing it to everyone. Why else have a video of him.?
Miyeok saw his confused stare and said, “Not you Hyup, Crane.”
Now he was even more confused. Although recently it was disabled, before leaving Versailles his capsule recorded and stored all footage seen from his own perspective of his time in Royal Road. However although he had seen some strange things, (gods, demons, volcanic explosions, large scale battles, and a giant rampaging chicken,) he never uploaded any of it to the internet.
He asked, “Are you sure it’s me?” His avatar on Royal Road looked nothing like him.
Yoochun looked at him skeptically and said, “Depends, over the fall did you single handedly defeat many large groups of users? Or is that another flying spellsword with a giant sabertooth tiger covered in blue flames.”
Hyup cringed as he realized what was had happened. After the bounty on him had gotten so high his location could be tracked, he had dealt with large groups of bounty hunters over and over again.
Yoochun continued, “It seemed that someone collected various videos of your battles and put it into one big compilation. It is all over the internet. You’re very popular. Everyone thinks you’re some special event wandering boss battle.”
Miyeok chuckled, “You should see the message boards, people think if they defeat you they’ll get some ultra powerful item.”
Hyup asked, “How can they think I’m a wandering boss?”
Yoochun gave the same skeptical look as before, saying in a look, ‘You really don’t know?’ What he did say was, “You remember what you did to all those kingdoms? They’re calling you the Great Terrorist.”
“You have got to be joking.” He couldn’t believe they would give him such a label.
In the back of his mind he heard himself say, ‘Well, you did destroy several kingdoms, kill a king, then proceeded to piss off the rest of the continent while working for Loki.’ He frowned at his inner logic. If you took all of what he did and cut out why he did it, it could cause a misunderstanding.
Miyeok leaned over the table and patted Hyup’s shoulder comfortingly. Yoochun said, “Nothing you can do but enjoy the show.”
Hyup sighed but later they started back up talking about various adventures and his new protege's progress in demon spell craft. They shared their various adventures and updates.
Miyeok had become a high ranking member of the Crimson Mercenaries. Her exploits including hunting bounties and guarding caravans. Because she was a gladiator with a flashy fighting style, she was quite memorable and built up a large reputation. She was also responsible for Hyup's foreknowledge of various mercenary pursuers. It was thanks to her he was able to set up ambushes and tilt the odds in his favor against the bounty hunting armies.
Yoochun had gotten close to a party and often traveled with them adventuring. He was having fun in Versailles as a mighty spear-man who could pierce any shield or armor with a single thrust.
Each and everyday the trio always had something new to talk about.
On his way home, Hyup’s legs felt exhausted. This was literally the most exercise he gotten in years. He had to turn up the spring to the max to prevent from collapsing. But he knew tiring was good, this small walk did more for his muscles than the muscle stimulators did and would build his muscles in the right areas.
Since he decided to stay off Royal Road until the following week, he had some free time after doing his homework. He decided to see what battles the videos of him captured. He went to a search engine and typed in ‘Royal Road, the gre-’ the autocomplete filled out the rest, it was a popular search it seemed. The first link was to the original video in the hall of fame site, someone with a lot of fame can post videos from their capsules for the sole purpose of having others watch them.
Hyup flinched when the page came up, the video was posted six days ago, less than a week after he had left Versailles, but it had over five million views. “Dammit.”
Do Hyup always had people stare at him, it made him feel somewhat self conscious, and this was making him feel worse. But he decided to go through with it and clicked on the video.
Hyup recognized the location immediately, it was the mountain range south of Tullen Kingdom. It had some of the highest peaks in all of Versailles, and was where he, as Crane, succeeded in forming a contract with Erra, the spirit queen of the wind. He thought to himself this was all her fault. She agreed to fight him and even knew that if she lost he would bind her with a contract. But after he beat her and succeeded, she threw a hissy fit, caused a storm, and blew off half the face of the mountain. All of which was somehow his fault, earning himself a few hundred infamy points and a bounty high enough for location tracking.
It seemed to Hyup that whoever made this was one of the members of first bounty hunter group to actively track him. The video showed the desolate wasteland of the mountain after Erra’s storm died down. Trees uprooted, vast landslides, mud everywhere. The video showed the group coming across a tall young man in a feather hat walking down the path. The leader of the party yelled for the person to come quietly. Afterwards he started spewing a long list of the accused’s crimes. All of which were true by the way.
The accused refused and told them if they didn’t want to die, they would leave him alone. Of course they didn’t listen, the bounty hunting crew had eight people, and the accused was, at the time, only level 240. Strong considering the game had only been out for sixteen months, but not strong enough to take on eight professional bounty hunters.
The members of the party began casting buffs and preparing for battle. The criminal sighed, walked up to a nearby fallen tree, and sat down by the roots, as if mocking them.
However a moment later, the mud beneath their feet began to vibrate. “Earthquake?” One shouted, another said, “No, mudslide!” He pointed up where a mass of mud was coming down. The video turned back to the criminal casually sitting behind the tree. Any observer would notice that the way the tree was leaning, the mud would pass around it and not affect the person sitting under it. The group started panicking, some started casting magic, but before it completed the mud had them. The video cut to black, the person was dead.
Hyup remembered the incident well. He was on the mountain using earth spirits he had contracted with to plant seeds in the ground. The destruction of nature caused his Affinity to nature stat to drop which lowered the power of his spirit summon skills. Due to this he decided to stick around and sow the mountain with seeds so that one day it would be full of life again. When the bounty hunters came it was the easiest thing in the world to ask the spirits to give the mud above them a small push.
The next scene was in a forest. Hyup knew that the only battle with bounty hunters he had in a forest was in the Kingdom of Lasalle, the fourth incident of bounty hunters. The scene was of a camp, more than thirty men were talking and eating a fresh caught boar. Suddenly the horses started neighing wildly. His avatar stepped out of the darkness of the woods into the light. One of the hunters called, “That’s Him!”
Suddenly a monster the size of a school bus covered in blue flames jumped out from the darkness behind him and charged forward with a roar that could make anyone scream with panic. The video taker runs for his life and hides. Screams can be heard everywhere. His avatar is coated in red lightning which strikes anyone approaching him and strike along the sword whenever he swings it. Several men manage to get out their swords but Crane passes through them without effort and focuses on the guys with staves. The monstrous fire cat rips through flesh and bone and burns all those who go near it. The last scene of the video is of Keagan’s throat before the video taker’s head is bitten off.
Do Hyup turned off the video. He knew it only got worse from there. After they found out about Keagan the bounty hunters left him alone for a while. But the next group after that had over a hundred members. As Crane he had to use every sneak attack and ambush in the book to keep an advantage as their numbers got bigger and bigger. What was worse was after some of the more prestigious guild failed to capture him they started hiring NPC soldiers to assist just to preserve their own honor. It took only two months for the number of pursuers to increase from two thousand to twenty-two thousand.
The only upside was that Users were a high quality mob. Each battle gained him a few levels and a lot of items. Of course most of his valuables had been destroyed due to random transfer, but he didn’t mourn them.
Hyup walked over to the kitchen table and struggled not to grimace at the tv. His mother had it on a Royal Road News Network, and it was featuring the current most popular video on the internet. Hyup knew his parents both had capsules in their rooms and played royal road, but he never met them and they didn’t know where or who he was.
His mom gestured to the tv and said, “Can you believe their are terrorists even in Royal Road? I hope they catch that guy.” It was a good thing they were showing one of the larger battles for his mom to watch, that way she wouldn’t notice Hyup’s face. He thought to himself he needed to practice a better poker face.
The tv shows a clip from the video, one of the later battles of Crane vs about 2000 bounty hunters. It was after that battle that he started running more than fighting, or some combination of both. Of course the greater the numbers, the harder it is to run.
The clip was displayed on a monitor in the show where two people could analyze it.
“You see these? According to eyewitnesses, these lightning bolts struck anyone within a radius who attempted to use a spell.”
The woman pointed out several lightning bolts that appeared out of nowhere to strike random people.
The man sitting opposite to her replied, “That isn’t possible, there is no such area of effect spell that can target people like that.”
The woman countered, “It isn’t like we know everything. And I heard that when a mage reaches level three hundred, they can either study ancient, powerful magic, or create their own. If this is the latter, that would explain how he shows magics that have never been seen.
The man said accusingly, “Are you suggesting this guy is a user who has reached level 300? I don’t doubt this guy could be over level three hundred, but their is no way he is a user. He must be some royal road event.”
The woman said, “Then where is he now? According to what I’ve heard, he hasn’t been seen in two weeks. And the bounty hunter’s search skill is reading nothing. If he was an NPC, they would find him, if he was dead, the bounty would automatically be gone, but it is neither.”
The man looked frustrated by the logic and said, “He is gone for now, but just wait, one day he’ll be back, and he will bring disaster to all of Versailles.”
As if on cue, the storm on the video screen Hyup’s avatar had called using Erra had turned into a tornado that swallowed up the whole of the army.
Hyup thought on that for a while, They attacked me first.
‘And you beat them to smithereens.’
It wasn’t like I sought out the battle.
‘But you did, you struck first.’
Because and ambush was the only way to beat them.
‘They should’ve left you alone.’
That makes it sound like I’m dangerous.
‘You are dangerous.’
Hyup got up and went to go get a book. His mind was messing with him, it did that a lot lately.
A week later Hyup got back into the capsule. His headaches were completely gone, and he hoped that Onyx had subjugated all the souls her father left her so they could leave the library.
He got in the capsule and waited for it to go online.
-Error, Please wait.
However when the message should have said ‘welcome to royal road, it said something else.’
Hyup waited for a moment. Another message came up.
-Data corruption detected. Mental image does not match retina scan.
Hyup asked aloud, “What does that mean?”
-Please wait.... Data Corruption, memory stored about character info has been lost, recovery impossible. Mental image, the state of the mind if the person with registered mental scans currently differs from previous scans by 0.8%
A cold feeling arose from his stomach, what character info was lost? His skills? His Level?! His whole character?!!
He asked, “What Info was Lost!?”
-Checking......Memory Not found of... Appearance.
Hyup sighed in relief, so that was all. He said, “What about the mental scans?”
-Checking....... mental scans differ from original. Please wait while a supervisor is contacted.
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Kim Han Seo received a call on his cell phone, the caller ID said, ‘AI.’ He picked up and said, “Is anything the matter?”
-The rune master’s mental state does not match our data, 0.8% difference from previous recordings. Possible data corruption.
At first the creator of Royal Road thought this was a joke, but he was a man who knew more about the brain and his own technology than anyone. A difference of eight one thousandths is not normal. And this data corruption, that was a first.
“Send me the pertinent details.”
The Artificial intelligence sent a small list of various changes, but the most disconcerting was the data corruption. It was not that his data had been corrupted leading to a difference in the recorded scan and previous scans, it looked more like the user’s mind had been corrupted. Could this be a glitch? Even he didn’t know everything about his own world. And that kid stumbled into the worst part of it, the Abyss.
What few people knew about capsules is how they store character data. The capsule does not make a file for the character and save it in a server somewhere under a user ID that matches a retina scan. What capsules did, is store the data of the character in the user’s brain, thus save on storage space, server space, and money overall. It also made it impossible to steal a character even if eyeballs were replaced. And since people took their minds with them everywhere, they could play their character on any capsule. This only worked because mental states cannot be changed without outside influences, not the states that matter anyways, not the ones the capsule accessed and used.
If the kid was affected by the world outside the continent, it could mean disaster.
He sent the AI back a message, “If corruption of the avatar image was the only thing to be lost, allow him to remake it, same race as before. Change all NPC data to correspond with his new image so they won’t even know his face is different.”
-Yessir, but this one’s face has been on television. Should I change the recorded images as well? He also has wanted posters with his likeness.
"Hmm, can the original appearance be recreated from these?"
-Yes, but not 100%. And the data corruption may reoccur if original appearance used.
After thinking for a moment he remembered that the kid left the continent in the first place to run away from the bounty hunters. “In that case, allow him to change, but don’t change anything on Versailles. If he changes his face, only affect the NPCs of wherever he is. And give him six months of free play as an apology for losing his data.”
Then, almost as an afterthought, "Also store his character data in a server from now on. Monitor his mental scans to determine if he has been affected in any way."
Hopefully the precaution was unnecessary, but it was best to be careful.
----------------------------------------------------------
Hyup was patiently waiting for a reply.
-Thankyou for waiting. To apologize for the loss of your data, your account has been awarded six months of free play. Only this once, you must create a new appearance. Memories stored of NPCs of you will match your new appearance. Unless you prefer them not to in Versailles.
Hyup thought that last part was very specific. It seemed someone knew about Crane’s infamy and may have decided to help.
Another appearance chart showed up. It showed him as he was. It was the first time he noticed how much taller he had gotten in the twenty some months since starting royal road. His own appearance while standing up was almost as tall as his old avatar, but his face looked a bit less childish. The reason he changed appearances in the first place was because he didn't like how other people looked at him. But his other appearance was now considered a terrorist, something he didn't appreciate. He could make a completely new appearance, but he decided that he had been someone else long enough.
“Keep appearance as it, I’d prefer if the good people of Versailles didn’t know I got a face change.”
-Done, Welcome to Royal Road.
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