Overgeared

After the Great Human and Demon War, abnormal phenomena started to be reported all over the world. There were a number of people who were unable to adapt to their daily lives and became isolated from society. The general symptoms were similar to post-traumatic stress disorder and the patients had one point in common.

They were all Satisfy players. They had also witnessed a third party, the ‘NPC,’ suffer a terrible accident.

It was the harmful effect of excessive immersion. Patients tended to equate NPCs with real human beings. Experts pointed out that it was a serious problem. They warned to always be conscious of the fact that Satisfy was a virtual world and to clearly distinguish it from reality.

However, it wasn’t easy. The humanity of the NPCs was the problem.

Personality, thinking, and emotions—they were like humans in all aspects and there were so many things that players saw, heard, and went through during the war to simply call them ‘fake.’

It was the supercomputer Morpheus that embodied the emotions of these billions of NPCs. It was Chairman Lim Cheolho and the development team who created Satisfy and all types of settings, but it was Morpheus who added humanity by describing the motions of the characters in the settings.

In other words, the current Satisfy was established because Morpheus existed. Morpheus had a complete understanding of human emotions. It wouldn’t be strange at all if Morpheus itself had emotions. There had just never been an instance where the emotions had been expressed as blatantly as now.

“Morpheus’ tears...”

“......”

The character left by Morpheus was simple.

ㅠ—that was it. It was a common emoticon. It was too light a character to gather people who led the global economy and make them observe with a serious expression. However, the board of directors was solemn. The incident was even named ‘Morpheus’s Tears.’

“Rather than feeling sad...”

“...I’m certain it is angry.”

The board of directors reviewed the cause of the tears.

Grid—Morpheus was blatantly wary of him. It determined that it was dangerous for an individual player to exert influence over the entire worldview. Finally, it decided to weaken Grid’s power using all types of means. The occurrence time of the Great Human and Demon War was significantly advanced in order to keep Grid in check. In the first place, Grid easily led the allied forces to victory in the Great Human and Demon War. This was due to the combination of player forces and NPCs.

It was something that Morpheus hadn’t expected. Morpheus’ judgment and actions were based on vast amounts of ‘data.’ It was the history of humanity itself and there was no precedent in history of humanity achieving total unity. They had always split into separate sides and grabbed at each other’s ankles.

Meanwhile, Grid led to complete unity. All the core forces weren’t hostile to Grid and didn’t betray him. It wasn’t simply because they were afraid of Grid’s power and force. Grid and the Overgeared Guild might not know this, but the system gave quests to numerous players under the pretext of separate rewards. It gave them the justifications and opportunities to be antagonistic to Grid at any time.

Even so, people chose to be with Grid. It was because they were more attracted by the trust Grid had built up so far than the rewards offered by the system. Grid’s public esteem was something that transcended force. It was a concept that was difficult to interpret with simple numerical figures and was a power that no great person in history had very used.

“The vain defeat in the Great Human and Demon War was followed by the Agnus incident.”

An existence who would’ve been a counter to Grid if he had grown properly—Baal’s Contractor, Agnus, met the unexpected ambushes of Faker and completely collapsed. It was to the point of almost losing his qualifications. His choice to flee to the East Continent with the demons wasn’t bad. It was the best he could do at the time. It was the wisest choice out of all the choices that Agnus had ever made.

Who knew that Old Sword Demon would cause an incident there? Morpheus failed to predict Old Sword Demon’s attack. It was only at the time of the incident that it noted the data that Agnus killed several NPCs who had built up ‘affinity’ with Old Sword Demon. Even then, Morpheus didn’t understand why Old Sword Demon took the risk.

It was too irrational.

Old Sword Demon was one of the top ranked private rankers. He was able to become the best because he repeatedly made rational choices. Even though Old Sword Demon had suffered losses, the data that Morpheus accumulated deemed it very unlikely that Old Sword Demon would attack Agnus. There was less than a 1% chance. Yet Old Sword Demon broke the odds. He plunged Agnus into a crisis. Betty, who held the highest stake in the Baal’s Contractor-related episodes, noticed this.

Then out of all things, Grid was the Pioneer. Grid intervened in the incident. The situation was fine until now. No, it was actually good. The fragment of Baal’s power that was vomited out by Agnus succeeded in attracting a dragon’s aggro.

Fire Dragon Ifrit—she wasn’t an opponent that Grid could handle. The development that awaited Grid was cooperation with the Hwan Kingdom. It was an opportunity to put shackles on Grid and to rebalance the worldview. However, Grid refused to cooperate with the Hwan Kingdom. It wasn’t known how he noticed Morpheus’ intentions, but he easily resisted the temptation of the Hwan Kingdom and stood by Ifrit, whom he had just met for the first time.

From here, serious problems erupted in succession.

First of all, Mir acted passively when he should’ve suppressed Grid. Mir’s character setting that gave him the goal of ‘becoming a god through his own efforts’ was the problem. Mir felt more awe and some fantasizing than liking toward Grid. He betrayed his own force and let Grid be active.

Ifrit. Then Ifrit developed a liking toward Grid. It was the worst variable. Grid’s

contrary to a Dragon Slayer

is like a genius. His behavior of always creating new relationships has

an advantage. It is easy for him to empathize with others, especially those on the edge of the cliff, so he easily gets

on the achievements he accumulated so far, it is advantageous to be liked. He has been active countless times, so his character itself is

that Morpheus will ever win

so easy for Grid to be like he was now. This meant that Grid’s method would

setting itself. Morpheus needed the permission of Chairman Lim Cheolho and the board of directors to gain this authority. It was just that Lim Cheolho wouldn’t grant permission unless Grid crossed the ‘line’ or it distorted or

safety device was also held by the

“Morpheus.”

to his office and

[-_-]

a joke to make you relax. How

direction. It is just that the

will take another 9

ill? Master, I don’t know

it.” Chairman Lim Cheolho waved his hand. It was because he could feel Morpheus’ evolution. The conversations they were having every day were becoming more and more natural. It felt like he was talking to a person. “It isn’t the end even if the world we designed

decline. The

that.” Lim Cheolho showed a

It seemed sympathetic

the player

first human being who made you have personal feelings isn’t me, but

***

on his side. The proof was that an epic didn’t occur. In retrospect, many of the good fortunes he enjoyed was

not to lose’ was added to Grid. The one acknowledged by a

‘Baal...’

reminded of the king of the dogs

closer to Baal. Following the favor of Mountain King Grenier, he won the title of Dragon Knight. Now it was time to receive the rewards from Betty. Grid was steadily getting stronger. Someday, he would surely defeat

was flustered when he entered the tower

it was a building with the theme of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but this wasn’t the

holding his head with both hands, but he ended up groaning instead. Perhaps it

reached here.

shook his head. Radwolf was busy rushing up the stairs. He seemed

hope there will be

would’ve been turned upside down as well. Grid was worrying as he belatedly became aware of this fact. Then Betty

very strange. Every time she took a step, skulls rose in the

ways to use the

“Have you eaten?”

carry bread

about vegetables

have much time to eat

balanced manner to grow

“...I’m an adult.”

baby. Just let it enter one ear and out the other,” Biban advised from below the stairs. His

is hard

work hard. It is a

he had hypnotized

sympathy for Biban and arrived at Betty’s room a moment later. It was a room with the strange smell of medicine. There were specimens of various creatures, especially the corpses