Forums Inundated By Pity And Intrigue

 

 

 

"Huff... Huff... wooo! It's been some time since I sweated it with normal monsters, oh boy, so many mats." As a result from overworking himself Tongqiu had his mouth spout nonsense out loud without a care of what the emotionless system would ever think.

He walked forward a few steps as he arrived before the currently stunned Abysmal Crazed Matured Baby Beast, he raised his right-handed gladius as he stabbed right after on one of its limbs.

-7,111.

*PING*... you've successfully killed a Lord grade BOSS 'Abysmal Crazed Matured Baby Beast, as a reward, SP+500 and Fame+500.

'Yup, that was the last of them all.' Having already annihilated 5,000 of them, Tongqiu could already feel some kind of tremor, like that of a hundred or more horses galloping towards him, which made him really want to get the hell out but... how?

"Er... Mis- Mister Fiornyo? Hellooo!!!!"

"...Shit."

At this moment, he began to feel those tremors becoming more and more scary as the entire mountain range was definitely going to falter into big chunks of rubble from mountains everywhere!

Cr-cr... cr~

'Hm? Please let it be a telep-'

FWOMP

A deafening sound suddenly became to attack Tongqiu's sense as the next thing he felt was his body be disgustingly morphed in horrifying, unthinkable ways. At the moment it happened, Tongqiu's body was engulfed by another such instantaneous blink of bright strong blue color as it and Tongqiu's body disappeared from within the so-called 'Obsidian Mountain' range.

. . .

 

Azure Dragon City, central plaza, where the teleporter was located at.

 

'Yes! With this, I'll finally be able to get to LV30 before Rising Essence's first updates comes live! Haha, Matilda won't be able to reject and I can finally have her as my girlfriend. Nothing would be able to stop me then!' A young man who has just paid the crazy fee to use the teleport towards the not-so-new region could be seen walking towards the actual teleporter, slowly but surely, as his thoughts went wild and his heart itched in a little bit of lust.

It was a pity that before he could even set both his feet on the platform of the teleporter, let alone on its center, a little crack sound came to be and what happened next, would be the nightmares of countless players to be.

Wlsth-SPLASH

The player's body was first somewhat cut into two before his entire blood and even his flesh becoming liquefied into rosy liquid, splattered all over the platform that was seemingly the hope of many players...

"Ugh, happened again, HEY GUARDS! Move on already! What the hell are you all doing with both your eyes looking east and west at the same time? Clean this mess already!" Fiornyo's annoyed yelling was heard right after witnessing Tongqiu come back with the use of powder he left on him.

Sure enough, Tongqiu had his body come out of the 'blink' which so much created a horror scene just now; seeing the gory spectacle he was basked in right after he miraculously wasn't sent flying like a puppet onto the ground, Tongqiu didn't know what to think... So he just simply walked over the 'rests' of the previously cheery player and arrived before Fiornyo.

Without going beating the bush, Tongqiu immediately asked him: "What was that. Eh, how come I was able to be teleported back? Did you do that?"

Full of disdain from the ignorant, Fiornyo looked down at Tongqiu as he answered him: "Blagh! Don't you see this? It's not for show... hmm, look at that, there was still 33 minutes left before it disappeared. Well, I guess you're really not half bad, huh?!"

While Fiornyo spoke, he reached out with his hand towards Tongqiu's shoulder which had some 3 violet colored sparkling powder which Tongqiu ignored, thinking that it was merely some useless leftovers from the powder he was 'teleported' with before.

'This was how I actually managed to get out of there alive?! And... there was only 33 minutes left? You fucker! You only gave me two hours to complete this quest,? Fucker, fucker, fucker!' Thanks to his belly filled with remorse, Tongqiu failed to notice Fiornyo become really surprised and satisfied as he kept nodding over and over again as he seemed to be recycling the leftovers from Tongqiu's lightning fast speed at completing weird, tough quests.

Clearly annoyed a little by these circumstances, Tongqiu exhaled his frustrations before questioning again: "So, any other request? Anything at all?"

Although he was met with some uncertainty that put in danger his life which would've truly enraged him had he not found out about the proper use of his most beautiful, purest white essence, Tongqiu was not discontent as the quest given allowed him to move towards such an 'easy' farming zone for minerals, and not just any kind but Advanced type ones!

Right now he had many, many basic and low-graded ones and thanks to this quest, he had just as much of different advanced ones. But, right now he still lacked tons of intermediate minerals, so he still had to use some gold to get them from the Marketing zones at the Azure Dragon City. He could farm them himself but he did not wanted to do so much stuff out of nowhere, as of right now.

At this moment, Fiornyo finally responded: "Mm, no. I'd probably have something else to give you but not about the same area since the old fart of the City Lord still wants the cake all by himself. You did helped out a little in making the seizing of Obsidian Mountain easier even if just slightly but, I myself got nothing else for you, kid. Farewell."

After that, without a care for Tongqiu's thoughts and feelings, he just proceeded to robotically accept fees from players before allowing them to use the teleporter.

Shrugging it off, Tongqiu then headed towards the Marketing zone in which he 'unnecessarily' spent around 4,000 gold in total until he filled the numbers, equal to what the basic and low graded ones would amount to.

. . .

 

He then decided to go back towards another deserted hunting grounds to relax for a little as he uploaded Fiornyo's speaking his heart out with sincerity and... life.

He didn't leave the part where he talked about the digitalization coming to be, as it was a huge off feeling, after all, it wasn't easy to normalize the use of gaming settings into a world without being blunt about it and still feeling off.

The rest of the video though, the emotions Fiornyo displayed and the feelings he could evoke on people... That was what truly would make anyone feel he's alive. Which is what he was aiming for, maybe that way some players would stop being psycho pieces of shit?

In any case, Tongqiu opened the forums and before starting to upload such a video containing the most life-like videogame character design ever created, he instinctively went around various differently tagged thread to search about the Somber Tree region and the fight against the newly found enemy, the Demon Race.

He searched for a good while, he went in some threads to even check forums to see if they had any kind of information given about the 'variety' of the Demons that he so much believed had already fought to their 'fast' deaths. But there was nothing, not even the slightest mention of and, it didn't seem as if Crestfallen Industry was trying to hide the matter. He was sure this was the work of the big shots in Rising Essence or rather, of the 13 Founder Clans.

There was, however, a post that highlighted a video where some 'Elite' players were engaged in a brutal group battle where many, many Enlightened Demon Race beings were battling against 'Elite' players. Many of those such players easily died and the 15 minutes long video managed to showcase only the death of three of such Enlightened grade BOSSes, from hundreds.

It was all it showed as there was not a single video about anything that happened prior to that stupid one-sided battle. Tongqiu even realized that there were some comments questioning why some authors had deleted their threads and were instead giving poor excuses as well as obvious signs of having been either threatened or, most likely, bribed.

Anyways, it was not in Tongqiu's head to care for such drama but... The death of those younglings... he'll remember it all. It was somewhat of a close situation towards his past, and he was incensed for it, even if he was merely silently scrutinizing around the forums.

The thirteen clans... even if some of them appeared friendly, they were all driven by power, true power. They were thirsty and were powerful enough to make even an entire city disappear without no one knowing, that, even in this incredibly advanced, still progressing era. Which is strange they haven't truly done that as of yet, maybe they were still afraid of public's opinion, or maybe they feared Crestfallen Clan's wrath. It wasn't merely 13 heads of clans at the beginning of New Earth, after all.

'...'

Remaining silent for a little while, with his eyes frozen on the 'screen' in front of him, Tongqiu allowed the breeze and soft caressing wind to induce some calm into himself.

Sigh~

After a little sigh, he then proceeded to select the option to create a post himself and started by uploading the video which took less than an instant to do so, even then he took as if it was taking a bit of a time as he thought on how to name the thread. After some minutes, he finally decided for its name as his eyes brightened a little, right away, the system wrote it for him without even needing to speak out loud.

With that, he closed the forum's interface and directly disconnected from Rising Essence.

. . .

 

Azure Dragon Main City, east side of the city.

 

"Haha, I'm already LV27! Can you believe that? Pwahahahaha, maybe that 'Tongu' whatever wasn't that bad after all, heh heh heh." Player 1 said.

"Hm hm hm, there's some truth to that. Look at my skills, already fully maxed! Am I not incredible? Harhar~." Player 2 said.

"Eh? Oh wow..."

While a couple of players were having a blast by bragging among each other, the voice of a 3 meters or so far away slim and younger player sitting on a bench came to be as their heads turned towards him, clearly somewhat upset at his 'rude' interference on their hearty laughing conversation.

They merely looked at that 'smaller'-than-them player as if they were waiting for him to notice their stares and apologize without them needing to say shit. However, after three minutes, they only saw the younger player cover his mouth with his hand as his eyes turned somewhat lost in focus and even reddened slightly.

'What the hell is it with this one?' and 'could he had just gotten a bad notice?' murmurs resounded between player 1 and 2 as they saw the younger player finally look at them.

No longer with the annoyed glaring from before, they looked rather confused and curious as the younger player looked at them too; seeing their faces show some curiosity towards his own antics, the younger player got close to them before speaking in a trembling and excited voice, as if he's found something incredible!

"Hey guys, oh! Sorry for earlier, is just- h-have you seen this post? It's just so incredible!" The younger player tried to 'show' them his personal screen as if it was a phone only to foolishly and embarrassingly take it back since only himself could see it.

Player 1 said: "Oh! So you were looking at the forums, eh? What-what were you looking at? It seemed rather important... uh, how is it... called?"

As the younger player felt the a little bit awkward of an atmosphere he immediately exchanged IDs with player 1 before directly messaging him with the link of the forums after adding him to his friendlist, then he waited for them to react to it as he watched them intently, unbeknownst to himself.

For the sake of getting out of this increasingly embarrassing moment, they both went ahead to watch it without interest. After a minute or two, however, their expression changed as they kept on looking at their 'screens'. After another minute or two, they both looked at each other before engaging on a heated talk with the younger player, out of nowhere.

The Azure Dragon City was almost 'full' with the arrival of so many players, thus, such a scene was witnessed by many who's only expectant thought was that of the younger player submitting to those two players before leaving in cowardice. Such a turn of events left them bewildered instead, and even for some reason, had their legs walk by themselves towards the three of them. Clearly with the intention of finding out what was so 'good'.

"Wow, and it's just... his facial features are just too much. Not even I can pull off half of what this old man expressed even if I tried acting as if my life depended on it." Player 2 said.

Shaking his head, player 1 though for  a while before also speaking out right after player 2: "No man, this is incredible! It is beyond taking a normal person's acting, didn't you read the articles posted by Crestfallen Industry? They explain how an AI is capable of all this, but... witnessing it is too much! Not even suicidal prevention AIs work like this you know..."

As the conversation became more and more distant from what some onlooking players initially thought, they couldn't maintain themselves from asking out loud before even arriving before them.

There was an elegantly dressed 34-36 years old man that looked quite young still, as he politely asked the trio: "Excuse me, gentlemen? Would you mind informing me of what matter is taking your full attention? I just couldn't help but be drawn to it after hearing you talk just a little about it."

Younger players was the most ecstatic right now, he was young and thus, was also pretty much hot-bloodied than these 'elder bros'. He answered with a face full of a bright smile: "Yes, sir! Thing is, there is this post over here, that..."

The situation became heavily crowded and even the NPC guards were starting to get nervous, should a full 'mutiny' occur and with their actual City Lord, they'll be the first cannon fodder of this massacre!

Nevertheless, after half an hour or so, some bona fide players got 'coincidentally' close to some guard NPC and talked about the subject. Which stirred up the guards' curiosity.

Once the guards understood that it was all about something that happened inside these 'Journeyers' method of communication, they calmed a little before sending a squire to inform of the matter to some captain or even knight, in case it repeated itself somewhere else.

And oh boy, did it happened...

***

 

Carmesí Vermilion Bird Main City, central square of the entire, huge and heated city.

 

"Holy fuck, have you seen it too?!" Male player 1.

"Yup, yup, YUP!! Isn't fucking crazy though? It was just another NPC but we still got as if hit by a spell the moment he started talking." Female player 1.

"Excuse me, what is it that you're speaking of?" A sudden melodic, clear and adorable voice traveled to their ears as they both felt their legs go weak.

"Eh? Oh, how pretty! Little Sister, have you seen this post? It's called 'Players need to wake up, NPCs are not lifeless toys', it sounds hella cringy, right~? But that's what made us wanna read it, we thought it'll be a laughing stock soon but... look at it yourself, there is no description whatsoever, only a video!" Said female player 1 after seeing how this beautifully dressed and cute younger girl with a mask that was of a full white, ceramic color with only some lines working as the eyes and mouth; she felt incredibly responsible for 'educating' this nice little lady looking maiden as she spilled out the beans like her life depended on it. All while the male player, her boyfriend, was doing his best to maintain a deadpan expression and think of fat, older ladies.

"Hmm? Oh, mn. Thanks." The little lady then said her goodbyes as she disappeared from their sight right after, making the female player be taken aback with her eyes growing wide in confusion.

"Waah, how pretty... hmph! Don't think I don't notice your tent, retard! We're going to an inn right now! You need proper taming, hmph hmph!" With that, the female player dragged the now happily smiling male player, who couldn't help but respect that little lady and grow extremely thankful for.

. . .

 

Perpetual Black Turtle Main City, at the south side of the city.

 

"Holy shiiiiiiit!! It's true! How did you fin this?"

"Pft, baby I can show you many more things, but look, it already has 3 billion upvotes. It is basically about to get all 7 or even 8 billion so, what did you expect?"

At the south side of the Black Turtle city, there was a river of players being all talky and cheery about one damn sole thing... Things were definitely getting crowded.

. . .

 

Celestial White Tiger Main City, west side of the city.

 

Player 2 said: "Look boss, I think this... is true! You won't be ridiculed anymore and be instead be envied by everyone!"

Player 1 said: "Hmm, hmm. But of course! My beautiful woman is but an angel in disguise!!"

Player 3 then murmured: "Eh, isn't boss's wifey a previously known waitress? How did you meet, please tell us! I myself am single in real life, at least give me some advice, boss!"

"Heheheh, you see... I once saw her be almost smacked in the butt by a fucking NPC, I brutalized that fucker until guards came for me, but that beauty vouched for me as the guards took compassion of the situation being worse and worse around, which I learned from our bed talks hehehehe. So, they let me go and the beauty was in my arms next thing I know, heh! Oh right, she was virgin too! Brother, women in here really put much more emphasis on 'true love', so... you better hurry the fuck up before others gets some, hahaha!"

Player 3 spoke again: "No waaaaay! Was it really that novel-like? Dafuq? And I'm here wasting my time getting drunk in a game... FUCK!"

Player 1 felt elated as he spoke, hence he allowed some small talk be added to his words: "Heh~, and that's not all! She's going to introduce me to her younger sister. You know what that means? Well, just so you know, there is a thing called harem..."

Player 1, 3 and those eavesdropping around: "..."

Soon, it was time for Celestial White Tiger City to become crowded all over, starting from the west side of the city.

. . .

Precious Emerald Main City...

Precious Citrine Main City...

Hidden Black Shadow Main City...

All around the world, a brand new sensation started. Not only that of Main Kingdom's, but also of New Earth. Crestfallen Industry beating the fuck down any other Clan or company in search of AI making and technology, they once again rose with a single video of a single old man, just talking.

***

 

As for the guilty party? About to go on a date while having a little beauty in his arms as he was watching TV on a one-seater sofa, waiting for his date to be properly prepared, as she told him right before entering the shower.

 

...