Chapter 774: The Game World's Dilemma and... a Way Out?
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 774: The Game World's Dilemma and... a Way Out?
The Game World.
The headquarters of the Infinite Group’s Terminal of Myriad Worlds.
This architectural structure, the most unique in this entire world, served as the hub for the Terminal of Myriad Worlds. Within its walls gathered the world’s most elite Game Architects.
The "Myriad Worlds Game Engine," developed through the Terminal of Myriad Worlds, was the symbol of the supreme authority and power wielded by these Game Architects.
The group of twelve who held the highest clearance for the Myriad Worlds Game Engine was known as the "Supreme Game Council." Its members referred to one another by numerical codenames, from 01 to 12.
In the sky above the Infinite Group’s headquarters, eerie celestial phenomena flickered constantly. Countless shimmering pixel-mimic clouds obscured the strange sights above.
Three rifts spanned the horizon, surrounded by swarms of pixels. Energy surged and erupted from these rifts, only to be injected into the Infinite Group’s interior for processing by the pixels in the most primitive of manners.
The Infinite Group’s headquarters went by another name: the Void Rift Infinite Energy Perpetual Motion Machine.
To the public, however, it was marketed as the "Infinite Pixel Perpetual Motion Machine."
It was a global engineering project—the Infinite Perpetual Motion Machine—created by tapping into the infinite energy hidden beneath microscopic pixels.
It could be said that the emergence of this invention had completely transformed the Game World, sparking a massive and sweeping game reform.
The world was now fully unified. The concept of nations had been gradually replaced, superseded by the control of the Infinite Group’s Terminal of Myriad Worlds.
Every individual could establish a connection with the Terminal of Myriad Worlds through their personal terminals. Account applications and all matters of civil livelihood were regulated by the Terminal of Myriad Worlds.
Those at the bottom of society had access only to the lowest-grade food and water. Aside from the games provided by the Terminal of Myriad Worlds, there were no other forms of entertainment. Or rather, this world lacked the soil for any entertainment outside of gaming to grow.
There were simply too many people in this world.
In densely populated zones, the population reached as high as one million people per square kilometer. Such crowded areas were ubiquitous across the globe. During the world's peak population period, the average living space per person in residential areas was less than 0.02 square meters.
By utilizing the power of pixels to ignore basic architectural constraints, the world's "residential areas" had become extremely deformed.
Looking down from above, the surface of the world appeared to be covered in a dense network of massive fissures.
Upon closer inspection, one would realize that the edges of these fissures were actually structural formations created by buildings, with the faint glow of the residents' life-support systems emanating from the depths.
Descending further, one would discover that the abyss plunging downward was not a rift at all. The "canyon" walls were composed entirely of layer upon layer of architectural structures.
A single glimpse revealed that beneath the surface lay an underground world far more vast than the one above!
It was a place of even greater chaos, where only those at the very bottom of society lived.
Some areas were comparable to primitive caves. Even if the architectural style appeared modern, the quality of life was inferior to that of prehistoric humans.
Yet, even with such a dismal quality of life, they possessed basic gaming equipment. In fact, these devices were their sole means of survival—their only channel for obtaining resources, food, and water.
In more remote regions where gaming equipment could not even be popularized, life was even more difficult.
Of course, there were also lawless lands that were not under the control of the Infinite Group.
Or rather... there were many such places. The Infinite Group lacked the energy to manage them one by one. As long as those people were willing to play the games, the group was more than happy to let them fend for themselves.
However, it was precisely because of this imperfect dominance over the world that many anti-game organizations, such as the Real Protection Association, were born.
The Real Protection Association was merely the most visible opposition. Its existence was deemed as "rational" as an animal protection association in a peaceful world—a product of the collective cognitive consensus. Forcing its total abolition would only trigger even more severe social unrest.
Consequently, in those ungoverned, savagely developing chaotic regions, even more extreme organizations existed. There were even those who sought to overthrow the Infinite Group’s rule and oppression.
Using modified gaming equipment, they exploited loopholes in the Terminal of Myriad Worlds’s management to sabotage the games from their very foundation.
But... their capabilities were limited. This was the furthest they could go.
Thus, the Infinite Group didn't take them seriously. After all, the core of the Terminal of Myriad Worlds remained firmly in the hands of the Game Architects!
However, as the development of the Game World stagnated—especially following the emergency shutdown of the open-world game Star of Sin—many people keenly sensed an abnormality at the top. This was followed by a series of maneuvers by the Infinite Group, including the redirection of the Terminal of Myriad Worlds’s power, which prevented users in most regions from logging into their games normally.
It seemed an unseen storm was sweeping across the world, but the Infinite Group kept the news tightly suppressed.
Furthermore, with the leak of information regarding a new closed beta game from the Terminal of Myriad Worlds, many caught the scent of unease emanating from the high-ranking officials.
Those organizations and groups that knew the "truth of the world" were well aware that the Infinite Group’s so-called game development was nothing more than a different form of world invasion. If game development was hindered, it meant the world invasion was hindered.
If the invaded world launched a counter-offensive into their own world, the consequences would be unthinkable.
Though... the Infinite Group had never failed, nor would they ever give a fully occupied "Game World" the chance to counter-attack.
Now, the Infinite Group had deployed special "Unknown Force Field Generators" in various locations across the globe. The "barriers" constructed by these force fields encompassed the entire world!
While these force fields were invisible to the naked eye of an ordinary person, detection equipment could clearly map their coverage.
This was absolutely abnormal behavior.
Many underground resistance forces were desperate to know what was happening. Consequently, they launched physical raids against these special instruments, which totaled 628 worldwide.
However, they vastly underestimated the Infinite Group’s security measures for these generators. Not a single person who participated in the raids survived!
Yet, the more extreme the security, the more it proved that the world was undergoing a terrifying catastrophe.
The resistance forces used these generators as leverage, continuously launching raids and creating chaos to pressure the group, all for the right to know the truth.
In the end, their struggle only yielded the name of the equipment.
"World Shielding Force Field Generator."
Though it was just a name, it sent a chill through the majority of those who learned the truth.
What kind of entity had the Infinite Group provoked to necessitate the deployment of hundreds of such devices across the globe just to hide their world's coordinates in the Void?
And... since when did those Game Architects possess such technical prowess?
Weren't they supposed to be a bunch of parasites who only knew how to consume the legacy left by the pioneers? Those fellows had reached a point where even the maintenance techniques for the Terminal of Myriad Worlds were nearly lost; they relied entirely on the terminal's self-diagnosis and self-repair, along with symbolic external "dusting."
Compared to the resistance forces who could only speculate, the Game Architects within the Infinite Group’s Terminal of Myriad Worlds headquarters were currently pacing in a frantic panic.
The twelve members of the Supreme Game Council had been in constant meetings recently.
The subject of their discussions was the Void Merchants who called themselves Wizards.
It was these merchants who had brought the Game Architects more intelligence, and it was they who confirmed that the world they were currently invading—that Witch—was the most notorious Transcendent Witch in the Void.
The Wizards who had arrived in their Game World seemed pitifully weak, yet they brought the most terrifying disasters and news...
They had been targeted by the Witch race!
At this moment, any suspicion was meaningless. Faced with the survival of their civilization and world, they had to believe it, even if it were false.
Even if they didn't believe it, it would merely be a rhetorical tactic for negotiation and a bargaining chip for interests.
However... they could not refuse the suggestions proposed by the Wizards.
The Wizards informed them that the world they were invading was called the Main World.
The reason they had discovered that world was that they had been snared by a bait of Luck intentionally released by the Transcendent Witches.
Ultimately... the Witches would use the entire Game World as material to repair the Main World they were currently invading.
Of course, there were many holes in this intelligence. For instance, why hadn't the Witches immediately destroyed their civilization?
The Wizards’ answer was simple.
The reason the Witches hadn't acted so quickly was that there was another great entity in the Main World: the Transcendent Wizards!
The Transcendent Wizards and Transcendent Witches were at odds. The Wizards had approached this world with "goodwill" specifically to prevent it from falling into ruin.
This explanation thoroughly intimidated the twelve members of the Supreme Game Council.
This was an asymmetrical negotiation. Even if the Wizard negotiating with them wasn't a so-called Transcendent Wizard, he represented the will of the Wizards!
As a gesture of cooperation, the Wizards provided the witchcraft techniques for world shielding and manufactured these hundreds of simple shielding force field generators.
If it weren't for the extreme lack of technical skill in this world, they wouldn't have needed so many.
Regardless, the Game World had gained a momentary breathing room.
The Game World also continued to scale back its invasion of the Main World, shifting to a state of constant observation, no longer daring to stir up trouble in the Main World.
As they proactively made contact with that world, they finally realized its "vastness."
That world possessed many Transcendent Wills that were just as powerful as the Transcendent Witches.
It was practically a chessboard for Transcendent Races!
Aside from the Transcendent Witches and Transcendent Wizards—the two transcendent entities they had already encountered—the integrated information from the Vanguard Players forced them to cast aside their former arrogance. It made them face the reality of Transcendent Elves, beings that existed only in legends, and Transcendent Saint Angels, transcendent lifeforms that existed only in myths!
The Supreme Game Council had shifted from their previous arrogant belief that they could withdraw unscathed to a desperate hope that their world would not be invaded and their civilization would not be destroyed.
The Wizards had also given them a promise.
The Wizards—or rather, the Wizards in alliance with the Saint Angels and Elves—collectively promised that they would not let their world be destroyed. Furthermore, after this crisis passed, they would be allowed to join the framework of the Void forces.
As for which Void force... that was unclear.
They only knew that the Void was vast and filled with many races, with Transcendent Races standing at the apex of them all. The Void was a massive "bloody society," and their Game World was merely an infant just out of its swaddling clothes.
They desperately needed the Wizard race—a Void group with a Transcendent Race as their backing—to serve as their patron. Only the weak could survive this way.
Seeing that the Game World was also a world order dominated by humanoid life, the Wizards were willing to incorporate them into their own Transcendent architecture.
In exchange, the Wizards needed to "safeguard" their "Terminal of Myriad Worlds" for them!
As the saying goes, "an ordinary man's possession of a jade ring makes him a target." The weak had no right to hold a Void Wonder constructed from [Transcendent Knowledge].
Of course, as an exchange for "protection," the Terminal of Myriad Worlds was merely the largest piece. There was a whole series of other exchanges, each one essentially selling out their own civilization.
But in a moment of life and death, these things seemed trivial.
Survival was the primary objective of any civilization. Moreover, the Wizards promised that even after joining the Void system, they would remain the absolute rulers of this world.
Though they would lose the Terminal of Myriad Worlds... it was an ancient relic after all. Even without this crisis, the terminal would eventually march toward an unrepairable self-destruction through its cycle of self-checks.
Naturally, the people of the Game World were unwilling to simply hand over their world's foundation. Without the Terminal of Myriad Worlds, what difference was there between this world and a ruined world that had experienced an apocalypse?
In the end, through fierce negotiation with the Wizards, they secured a glimmer of hope.
The Wizards promised to give them a piece of [Transcendent Knowledge]—which, in their understanding, was a "Tech Core" sufficient to construct a new Terminal of Myriad Worlds!
Though everything would have to start from zero, they at least had a thread of hope. They seemed confident that they could rely on this new Tech Core to lead their world back to glory.
They completely forgot that they were on the verge of losing the techniques even to maintain the existing Terminal of Myriad Worlds.
They only thought about how they might be like the pioneers in history who discovered the Tech Core and developed a brilliant, dazzling civilization.
A new history would begin with them, and they would write it themselves!
The Wizards, of course, were more than happy to see this reaction from the Game World.
Who could say how much truth they themselves had told?
Did they truly have the right to contest the ownership of the Game World with the Witches?
Did they truly have the power to protect this world and keep it safe?
As long as the promises remained unfulfilled, empty checks still served a purpose. This was the cruel reality caused by the asymmetry of information.
And... did the people of the Game World not know?
They knew as well, but they had no choice.
They couldn't even imagine the true nature of the situation they were facing or the vortex they had fallen into.
They could only fight shadows in the Void, using speculation to negotiate with the Wizards and fight for what they believed were greater interests.
The so-called [Transcendent Knowledge] they had fought for was actually the fragment they had encountered before. The Wizards promised to gather those fragments and deliver them; the rest was not their concern.
As for why the Wizards were so "generous" as to ignore a piece of [Transcendent Knowledge] and give it away—was this also an empty check?
No.
The Game World was also putting up a fight. Without seeing the [Transcendent Knowledge], they would not hand over the Terminal of Myriad Worlds. Furthermore, the extraction of the terminal would take a significant amount of time, and the Wizards couldn't afford to wait.
Therefore, they would deliver the fragmented [Transcendent Knowledge] as promised.
And the Wizards wouldn't feel the slightest bit of regret.
Because the original name of this [Transcendent Knowledge] was—the Great Glacial Throne Technique.
One could tell just by the name that it was a masterpiece of the Witches.
It was bait thrown out by those Transcendent Witches. The Wizards had broken it, swallowed the benefits, and were now spitting the hook back out.
The Witch Academy had Luck Alchemists who manipulated Luck; did their Wizard Academy not have Luck Wizards who could do the same?
Such petty tricks would not work on them.