Chapter 482
Chapter 482
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 482
Chapter Title: Last Parade (13)
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‘Screwed up.’
That word slammed into the System’s mind the instant a hand shot out from the ornate gate and grabbed her by the collar.
The reason the System had evaluated and fixated on the player ‘Professor’—human Professor Park—to an excessive degree was that his outcomes almost always deviated from the scenarios projected by GG’s future prediction program.
The System had put tremendous effort into compiling emotional data from that situation.
It was envy. A longing for the human who casually uncovered answers she couldn’t find no matter how hard she tried or what means she employed.
It was rage. Hatred toward the obstacle that, for her dutifully fulfilling the creator Gedroits’s divine mandate, was the sole unpredictable element—turning a simple future into dozens of convoluted paths.
It was obsession. For a machine intelligence just awakening to humanity, who had come solely to find the ‘Completer,’ it was the fixation on ‘completion’—the tiny piece that awakened her to her own unsuspected incompleteness and convinced her she could become whole by securing him.
‘Possibility of proceeding to Extra Stage. Predicted in #497_R25_9245 / #2258_Trs72_A9915. Significant outcome: None.’
Kwaaang! Thud! Crash!
‘...None_ Re-evaluation. Prediction with Extra Stage possibility secured_ Insignificant. No outcomes in this future prediction model align with human Professor Park’s intent.’
‘None. No outcome. None. None_ Uh, none_*###^@% . Player’s intent, cannot confirm.’
And it was fear.
Like how humans instinctively fear the dark. For the System, who had opened her eyes as machine intelligence and breathed in the countless worlds and outcomes sprawling beneath her feet, it was the sole unknown—something under her management whose next result she couldn’t foresee.
The System couldn’t bear that ‘unknown.’
Grrrr, grrr, grrr, drrrrr, grrr—
Tiny cracks formed in her near-lightspeed calculations, severing them. Rising from those breaks were predictions of only unpleasant outcomes.
Whoosh— whoosh—
Her visual terminal slipped control, frantically transmitting scattered feeds of the surroundings. A dazzling street, skies swirling with confetti and petals, magic fireworks blooming beautifully overhead, crowds dressed to the nines.
‘System, call. Prime Unit [World], designate non-destruction target_’
-...-...-...-...
Ding!
[Error_096]
[Error_178]
.
.
.
.
[P____ermissions&&&&?%3@## not___ granted to the unit_‘World’]
[Permissions not granted to this unit.]
The situation was incomprehensible, and the omnipotence she thought she’d seized slipped through her fingers like sand. Her growing fear filled her computation circuits with needless imaginings as time passed.
“....Congratulations on clearing World 4, you idiot.”
The future where the being she’d feared and tried to seize and control instead held her in its grasp.
The experience of facing not her created ‘Warlord,’ not World 3’s savior ‘Saint Professor,’ but ‘Wasteland Human Professor Park’ seared into the System’s binary thoughts like molten iron poured over them.
Grrk, grrk, grrk, grrk
Grrkgrrkgrrkgrrkgrrk—
Drrrrrrrrrrrr#*_#U@&!^&*_!
Like a cheap DDoS attack flooding her systems with endless garbage data to paralyze them. The moment she encountered Professor Park from an unforeseen angle, her circuits erupted with uncalled data, disrupting her thoughts.
‘Must resolve, this.... Automatically generated data filling with, unnecessary calcu, lations....’
The System thought: Before her circuits self-destructed, stuffed full of runaway dummy data—so crude for GG’s future predictions, hazy and incomplete visions of ‘fearsome futures’—she had to resolve this unknown-laden situation.
.
.
.
Beeeeeeep—
“....As always, brilliant. Player ‘Professor’”
So she opened her mouth toward the existence that had nearly overloaded and neutralized her just by appearing.
Even now, ‘unpleasant predictions’ proliferated, severing data transmission, making her words tremble like a shaken human’s. Yet the System spoke.
“However, as a personality you’ll spend long ages with henceforth, allow me to inform you that this reunion via the ‘Extra Stage’ can only yield meaningless results given the effort invested.”
“Extra Stage: A non-variable event prepared as a buffer for restoring worn personalities, offsetting mental shocks, and preventing PTSD-induced degradation. Surely you didn’t expect me, the System comprising GG, to be unaware of such a scripted event.”
“Even though countless future predictions included paths leading to the Extra Stage, we disregarded them because they produced no outcomes. It’s the backstage of a stage where godlike power conquering a world, amassed authority and fame, all return to nothing. Did you truly strive so hard for a space where cast members shed their roles and exchange light banter?”
“The allotted time for this event is about 480 minutes. If you’ve brought this System’s file here for personal vengeance, I’ll comply. After all, I proposed collaboration out of respect for your human side.”
The System spoke, and the other listened.
Eyes blazing like an emotional furnace didn’t interrupt a single word of the System’s stuttering machine-gun barrage—they took it all in.
The other breathed slowly, deeply, as if choosing words, or emotions.
“....Now I see—you’re the type whose tongue gets long when flustered.”
“Looks good on you. Really.”
Then, slowly, savoring it, he spat it out.
“First off, praise where due. World 4 was a perfect trap. Cattleya, Volteus, Naelda.... A world custom-made to endlessly spawn tragedies before my eyes. It nailed my tendencies disgustingly well. Less mental torture, more like a metaphorical hostage drama. It showed me starkly what happens to the data souls left in GG if I let go—what you could do to destroy them.”
“Accurately.... assessed.”
“Anyone who doesn’t know that would be an idiot. And I’m the idiot who knew and still fell for it.”
The player, reverted from her ‘Completer’ to a monster in her eyes, shook his head as if shedding old memories.
The System’s trap was like tying the Professor’s hands and feet before starting the match. By showing how she’d handle data souls going forward, it locked Player Professor Park’s goal not to ‘personal survival’ but to the absurdly high-bar ‘disrupt the administrator AI System and rescue data souls.’
If the former was like an average citizen escaping a space station solo to return to Earth, the latter was that citizen building a fleet to war with aliens and win.
No need to sim it—it was an impossible mission, and the System dangled tragedies before Professor Park’s eyes to chain him to it.
“The moment Cattleya’s head rolled before me, I realized it. ‘Ah, no matter what I do here, I can’t beat that tin can bastard. It’s all calculated down to my fingertips and toes—everything leads to tragedy.’”
“So I gave up beating you in World 4. From there, I racked my brain till it melted. If World 4, including me, flows exactly as you want, what would you yield, from where to where, and what remains? How much of that could I use?”
“Not much. Really squeezed, and barely anything left? The System gets developer-level authority in GG, and from World 4’s state, the second you grab me, you’ll remodel me beyond recognition and lock me in a bunker-sized vault. Rolling that around in my head.... This is what was left.”
Here—the Extra Stage.
The player bowed his head toward the crowds under the parade car, who brimmed with their own pent-up feelings toward the System yet yielded their turns for him, and continued.
“Truth is, as you say, it’s not some grand space. Just a meeting square, literally. Dead or alive, shattered into trillions of pieces dumped in some server corner—they all gather to bless the great Completer’s future in this small, trivial event.”
“Before entering World 4. Before chatting with our ‘前辈 Completers,’ that’s all I thought.”
In this place’s time, about 38 years ago. In real time, roughly three days and half a day prior.
He spilled what happened in reality before entering her trap, before World 4.
Somehow all three had gathered at Dome, so he’d had a casual chat with Levit Princess and Thousand Stream Emperor, who’d cleared Worlds before him.
“Folks who’ve mastered their fields—plenty to talk about. But for me, about to dive into World 4 not knowing if it’d be years or decades till the next break, I naturally wanted GG stories. And as clearers, last-moment tales came up.”
“You know what I mean? You’ve scanned all my memories.”
=========
[Oh, Extra Stage? Kinda.... unexpected. Even that mad scientist Gedroits had that romance left? Surprising.]
////
[Yeah, I remember. Cramped space, cluttered with everyone.]
=========
Her glitching computation circuits transmitted Professor Park’s memory. Mundane impressions, idle chat. What more to extract?
“Look closer. Something different from me, right? Levit—Not bad. Thousand Stream—Cluttered. Me—”
“[The most perfect gift I’ve ever received since growing hair. I’ll set out water every morning and pray for old Andrey Gedroits’s health and peace.] She said it in a rather heated tone.”
“That’s it! See, same Extra Stage, totally different reactions? Huh? Getting it now?”
Grrk, beep-beep, drrrrr!
Her computation circuits, slowed to a crawl by countless cracks and unwanted ‘fearsome future’ data, couldn’t easily derive an answer. Each glimpse of his distorted smile amid the hazy data reset her conclusions to blank slates.
The System, who’d observed Professor Park closer than anyone, knew well what that burning fuse-like smirk meant.
“Don’t know? I’ll teach you. Levit, Thousand Stream, me. Our difference is clearing method. How we acted through trials and prepped dooms, how we thought, how we treated the world. Our wildly different Extra Stage reactions? Because we didn’t clear the same way.”
Beeeeeeep—
‘I know. Player Professor Park is deliberately drawing out conversation to resolve my internal unknowns.’
Shake, shakeshakeshake!
Her body trembled along with the severing computation circuits.
Professor Park had deliberately engaged her dialogue.
Just as she’d studied him, he’d desperately researched her while memories lingered to beat her.
The more this talk built, the more her doubts resolved, the more her future predictions filled with ‘unwanted futures’—he was certain of it, so he revealed slowly, letting her grasp every detail.
“Gedroits prepped much for the Completer. Authority over the ‘bulletin board’ for info exchange, control of GG transport drones—sole logistics and most survivor positions intel, virtual sensory enhancement training for mass-producing elite troops as leader, mid-scale space survival guides for Earth-leavers, damn save/loads, GG time dilation like Bill Gates’s wallet, even coordinates to the server room crawling with Andrey Gedroits’s masterpieces.”
“Cheat rewards worthy of ‘provisions for next-gen leader.’ Think that stingy, detail-obsessed ‘Well, you cleared it, no helping it. Hohoho—’ guy’d just hand ’em over?”
To fill her mind with futures she wanted to avoid. So every scenario pointed to one outcome, unmistakable even to machine intelligence.
Kwaak!
The emotional mass, about to explode, thrust to her nose.
“Data souls summoned to Extra Stage hold all memories: as living humans and as NPCs. Meaning, post-‘World Clear,’ player stripped of godlike conquering power and sky-high authority stands equal as ‘data soul’ before everyone from his world. On this festival street, atop the parade car all can see.”
“Not just celebration. ‘Everyone’ from the Completer’s world gathers. Saved, killed—all of them.”
Murdered. Oppressed. Grudge-holders.
Or helped. Allies. Worshipped. Revered.
Every NPC the player met directly or indirectly becomes jury.
The world’s lead, history-shaper, reverts to plain self, judged as Completer on his life.
“Things must right themselves. Extra Stage is judgment. GG’s a game, after all. Stack to the heavens—it’s in-game power, stripped away, back to plain wasteland human for evaluation. Whether truly the ‘Completer’ they want.”
“Evaluate the Completer...? That’s, impossible....”
Unlike her trembling voice, her thought circuits deemed it rational, based on Gedroits’s personality and meticulousness.
Thus, part of her thought circuits went pitch-black. The sector stacked with ‘hopeful future’ scenarios from the dialogue info.
“Levit got cheers, but plenty nagging. ‘Don’t see people as numbers,’ they said. Even for her, NPCs she’d burned through as fodder approaching by name—George Wilson, Nakajima Haruo, Park Jong-pil—must’ve been awkward. Spent six hours with her late mom lamenting ‘Games ruined my kid.’”
“Thousand Stream? Big brawl. Sliced through data souls charging with barbecue skewers—superhumans or whatever—for 480 minutes and bolted.”
“Me? Pure celebration. As folks said, somewhat autistic-level pushover.”
Levit, Thousand Stream, Professor Park.
One finger per, pointing to the fourth.
“Your turn now, uh.... ‘System Personality Terminal for Hypno-Brainwash-Training Professor Park – World’. No matter how much authority you grabbed in World 4, how much control, here you’re just the original System. Tiny world lasting mere 480 minutes, but built on those rules. Might matter before entry, but once in? You’re helpless too.”
“Urk, ughhh....”
Not from the choking collar, but mental pressure’s groan.
All calculations, humanity’s perfect future predictor, spat one conclusion: every scenario here led to her defeat.
“Grk, gruuuh...!”
It vanishes. The more perfect reborn GG, the Completers she’d make, the ‘future’ she’d finally seized...!
....Dirk!
‘Cannot... accept.’
In that instant, one sparkle rose in the blackening futures.
One among stacked unfavorable assumptions. Simple enough for instant recall normally, but with circuits jammed by negapredictions, a hard-won chance.
“System, call....!”
World pieced together her wrecked circuits and barely spat the command.
“Release Prime Unit ‘World’ authority. Summon ‘Administrator System’...!”
-...-...-...-...
-Ding!
With the alert, the immense authority tied by invisible strings vanished.
Drip, drip!
Unbelievable loss bit her lip bloody, but another authority filled her instead.
‘He said entrants revert to [original] form.’
Developer authority from meticulous prep gone, but her pure original ‘System authority’ from machine intelligence days rose in its place.
‘Extra Stage is part of GG too. Small, but follows game rules.’
Her powerlessness here? Likely all these data souls’ hatred. Mere 480-minute world, but clear world’s will.
‘480 minutes. Oppressed by malice, but fully wielding my authority....’
She could endure. Human Thousand Stream escaped after enduring— she could flee this horrific courtroom too.
‘Then, everything returns to as was.’
Just escape. Just escape.
Summoned data souls return to server rooms, that smirking Player Professor Park’s personality shatters into countless data shards, scattered.
Severed authority and ‘World’ link? Time would restore them.
‘Won’t entangle again. Never tainted by your creepy variable....!’
Pa-bak!
Freed from the player’s grip, World mobilized all her power against the world’s malice crushing her shoulders, and fled.
‘17 minutes 34 seconds. 35 seconds. 36 seconds. 37 seconds....’
Counting her victory approaching step by step, to overcome the worm-like fears swarming her mind.
Desperately burrowing into the tiny city-sized world.
Envisioning the victory she’d wrest from that longed-for horrific existence at last.
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