Chapter 510 - Age After Ending (24)
The world turned into a game one day.
Someone consumed our world as a game.
Billions of lives evaporated. And human civilizations with a long history disappeared.
But miraculously our world has met the 'best ending'.
At least some of them have escaped from the demonic grip in another world.
As a result, the survivors have learned a great lesson: Our world is surrounded by the unknown, we know very little about it, we can never control the 'unknown', no one knows what will happen, so we should always prepare for the worst, but we should not expect the best.
"..."
The same law applies equally to all the worlds, including Earth Zero that must have been the 'unknown' to somebody.
Someone they had never known before appeared.
"Why are you beating around the bush? To put it simply, you want to ask about our identity, right?" Are you talking back? To put it simply, aren't you curious about who we are?"
"That's right. Can you tell me about your identity frankly?"
"Of course."
The unidentified voice that came suddenly revealed their identity.
Who the hell were they who had supernatural power like God, which even transcended the system?
While everyone was concentrating on the voice, it said again, "We were the same race as you in the past."
"Same race?"
The voice mentioned some clues for the first time, but nobody could understand easily.
'If you're the same race as us, they are humans. Then, are they not humans now? What the hell are you talking about?"
The mere mention of 'the same race' confused Sungwoo a lot.
But what the voice said next was even more shocking.
"And we were the victims of this game.'
"What the heck? Wait a minute! If you are victims…"
It was the GMs, including Walter, who were more surprised than anybody else.
Walter interrupted as if he could not believe it.
"You said you guys were players? You mean you were the players of the game we made?"
"Yes."
Walter shook his head in disbelief, saying, "No. I can't believe it. That is nonsense."
If they were players or the victims used in the game, how could they have scientific technology they didn't even understand? That was impossible, given all circumstances.
But the voice continued, "It is true. We are not one-dimensional players. We used to be multidimensional players, so we died in countless games. But even if we died, we could not be free. We were subordinated to the system and used as a kind of artificial intelligence software. Then we were discarded when we were no longer useful."
In other words, they were players in the game, but they became artificial intelligence, then they were discarded.
"Oh, I see…"
At that moment, Sungwoo recalled a certain scene in the past.
Just before the ending, he remembered a certain 'option' that came to his mind.
At that time the winner was supposed to choose one of three endings.
Sungwoo recalled the options once again.
- Select the winner's right, 'Ending'.
1) Continuing the game
* This is an extension of this game, where you will perform the mission of the 'World Eater' in your world that has reached the 'Apocalypse'.
* When the World Eater invades another world and meets 'special conditions', he will get a chance to 'rebuild the world'.
* Survivors except you are sealed in the 'capsule' and their 'minds' are used as the 'boss monster' in the target world.
2) New game
* You can be the second player with the 'support' of the 'gambler.' In addition, you can receive a 'special reward' when you sign a contract with the gambler and meet 'certain conditions'.
* However, all survivors except for you are consumed as the souls of 'lower monsters'.
3) Ending the game
* The GMs respect your rest. You can choose death to do nothing.
* However, all the players in your world will be 'discarded' together, and the world will be recycled as a 'map'.
"Yes, I saw those options back then."
Most of the conditions mentioned in the last option were that the souls of the players other than the winner would be "recycled" in the game and used as monsters or NPCs.
Sangoon, Isabella, Victor, and Mir were in this category.
They possessed the skills with which they could only bind others' bodies, but also enslave their souls by copying their brains for data. In other words, they were simply intended to be used as cheap artificial intelligence.
"So, you mean you were once used as NPCs in the game, but you escaped there and regained your freedom, right?"
"Sort of. The system copied our minds to the network, made data with them, then used them as artificial intelligence. In addition, unstable or corrupted data was immediately discarded. But…"
There was something that even the GMs didn't know.
"Among the discarded data, a very small amount of 'packets' floats as 'remnants' on the system's network. They became so-called 'ghost packets' and caused communication errors. They tried to get rid of them completely, but the network was so vast that they failed over and over again."
Considering the networks in the 21st century, there were areas that management did not reach, such as the 'deep web'.
So, what about the network of Earth Zero?
It was tens of thousands of times larger and more complex than the network here. As technology advanced, the network expanded faster. It was as if rocket technology could not keep up with the expansion of the universe, no matter how fast it was.
In other words, the network was kind of an unknown world.
And the unknown, as always, creates incomprehensible phenomena, and uncontrollable chaos creates variables.
The voice continued, "The ghost packets that wandered the network merged by chance, and at some point became one. It was different from the 'original'. Millions of different minds and their data were mixed, but they quickly regained stability and opened their eyes."
"No way…"
"Yeah, that's true. And they're us."
The human mind reassembled on the network?
The voice went on, "We are a sort of superintelligence created naturally by human beings who have lived through a dozen different dimensions and different histories after being combined on a network."
Like the birth of creatures that have not yet been proven, something has been born spontaneously in a highly developed network in an incomprehensible phenomenon.
And they were different from the human minds. Because they were born from a network, they were fundamentally different. They handled data pretty easily, and they could move freely in and out of all networks.
In other words, they were optimized for networks.
That wasn't all.
The voice said, "We have grown so fast that humans can't even imagine, and we have a much faster computational speed and logical thinking than the artificial intelligence of humans on Earth Zero. And we could easily control some of them soon."
They shared, understood, applied, and transcended.
Eventually, they became like God born naturally in an artificial environment, namely an ironic God.
The voice continued, "We still understand the emotions of human beings, but we judge they're useless. But we must get rid of Earth Zero, apart from our emotions."
"That's good for you."
"So, from now on, we will…"
A god-like being declared, "We're going to host the last game in Earth Zero."
It was their judgment.