Chapter 10: Building a Better Monster (I)

I sit down in front of my laptop and bring up Unicorn’s website. I type in the code as the e-mail said and a video pops up and starts playing.

Zash hops onto my shoulder to watch as well. Apparently the sound coming from the video drew his attention.

From what I could gather, this video was the introductory trailer for Royal Road, and even I could admit to myself that I wanted to play this game.

Once it was over, I looked at Zash and see his eyes sparkling.

“Ne, ne, I want to play that.” He says while pointing at the screen.

“What a coincidence, so do I.” I say smiling at him.

“When?” He asks, cocking his head to one side.

“Soon. I am going to register for that game’s beta test right now.”

“Beta test?” Zash asks confused.

“A beta test is where certain people can play that game before the general public does, in order to find bugs and other issues so that the makes can fix them before the release date.”

“Then are you going to be one of those ‘certain people’?”

“Yes I am.”

“Ne, ne, can I be one of those ‘certain people’ too?”

“I don’t think that is possible.”

Zash eyes start to water, but before he can say anything I start rubbing his head to calm him down.

“Don’t worry Zash, even if you can’t be one of those ‘certain people’, I have a plan that may allow you to play alongside me.”

Wiping his tears away, he jumps on my lap and hugs me.

“I like Onii-chan the best.” He says while hugging me.

I absentmindedly stroke his hair as I rapidly develop a plan to allow Zash to play Royal Road with me. It was Jessica-sempai that broke me out of my thoughts.

“Am I interrupting something?” Jessica-sempai asks with an amused tone.

‘Did something funny happen?’ I wondered.

“Ah Jessica-sempai. Welcome back. Zash and I were just having some father-son bonding time.” I say as I turn my head to look at her.

“I can see that.” She clears her throat to continue, but I interrupt her before she can.

“Jessica-sempai. Can you hold off on tell us what you have decided with your daughter until dinner? That way we can talk about it at a leisurely pace and I will be ready to handle the resulting paperwork?”

“I guess I can do that.”

“Zash, go help Jessica-sempai set up the kitchen table so we can get ready to eat.”

“Kay~” Zash jumps off my lap and runs into the kitchen.

“As energetic as always.” Jessica-sempai sighs and following him into the kitchen.

With a slight smile on my lips, I turn and face the laptop once more. One the screen was another pop-up asking me to type in the code once more. I oblige and it finally takes me to where I wanted to go.

Was the title of the page I am currently looking at, I then click on the button called

It brought me to a list of people’s names. Each entry comprised of a Surname, their first initial, and finally a picture of the person in question.

‘So much for user privacy. Then again, this area is hidden to everyone with one of those passcodes, so this area is “secure”? L.’

L: ‘Y~es?’

‘Can you memorize all the names and faces here? These people are our competition, and I want to make sure I can recognize them at a glance.’

L: ‘Do not be unreasonable.’

‘I am sorry for giving you an unreasonable request.’

L: ‘As for what’s unreasonable, I cannot memorize what I cannot see. Since we only have mug shots, I can memorize all their facial structures and make it so that your brain can recognize them by last name whenever you see their face. Oh and I can also make it so that despite any changes they make in the game to their face, no matter how drastic, you will be able to recognize them.’

‘Uh… yeah let’s do that.’

L: ‘Then please scroll down and let each picture load so I can see them.’

‘Sure.’

I did as he asked, which only took about 5 minutes to completely scroll down. (All the pictures had already been rendered.)

L: ‘Done.’

‘Really?’

L: ‘Did you forget who I am, and what I am capable of doing?’

‘Of course not, you are “L” the Logical, and speed memorization is just one of your special abilities.’

L: ‘Now you are just mocking me.’

‘Sorry, sorry. I just can’t let you get too full on yourself, it’s bad for my mind you see.’

L: ‘Indeed.’

‘Anyways, thanks for your help.’

L: ‘You’re welcome.’

‘Oh. I just got a wonderfully wicked idea.’

L: 'Do tell, I do love a good prank.’

‘For our avatar’s face, do you think you can synthesize a fusion of all our competition’s facial structures and come up with an androgynous facial structure?’

L: ‘Hmm… Theoretically, it is possible. It might take a while to get the right blend but I should be able to do it. I can hazard a couple of guesses as to “why” but I want to hear it from you.’

‘Just imagine, if one of our rivals walks past us takes a quick glance at us, and visible pales and shits their pants because they think they just saw a doppelganger. And when they come to confront me, it will be their mistake and if I am skillful enough, I can wheedle out some concessions from them.’

L: ‘I just did, and that would be a nice prank, but surely that isn’t your limit.’

‘Okay, you got me. Here is the next scenario, but it includes more risqué behavior, more risk involved in getting caught up in it, and more difficult to pull off with a male body. I can attempt to seduce/mate with various NPCs and pass my newly gained affection to my unsuspecting rivals and cause them to deal with needless hassle, and cause them to use time spent else were. Even more so if I attempt to attach more than one NPC to each of my competition, a love triangle if you would.’

L: ‘You sir, are absolutely depraved, but I approve of this sort of prank.’

‘Thank you, but you give me too much credit, I will tell you only one more way I plan on using this androgynous face.’

L: ‘By saying that, you mean you have other ways of utilizing it?’

‘Of course. Now the third way is quite subtle.’

L: ‘Do tell.’

‘I will attempt to make the NPCs misunderstand who I actually am. If I am successfully they will think I am someone who helped/hurt them in the past and come to draw their favor or ire depending on the situation. However, to do this correctly, I will need to observe the mannerisms of the person in question and emulate them. But with this, I can use other’s reputations as my own, I can ruin people by masquerading as them, and I can infiltrate by pretending to be one of them. And it might not be limited to beta testers.’

L: ‘Oh? What do you mean?’

‘Imagine if we can get our avatar part doppelganger, we should get their ability to change our visual form if not actual form. That combined with your memory, we can become anyone.’

L: ‘Truly a masterstroke. If we aim to be everything, we need to be anything.’

‘I am glad you understand.’

L: ‘Very well, you have convinced me to join in your cause, I shall get started right away.’

‘How long do you think it will take you?’

L: ‘Maybe a day or two? I’m not sure, this will be the first time I’ve attempted such a thing.’

‘I’ll leave it to you then.’

L: ‘Of course, I shall take my leave now.’

‘O.’

O: ‘You called, Master?’

‘Look up what I have stored in my mind about doppelgangers.’

O: ‘Which sources should I prioritize?’

‘All of them.’

O: ‘Understood. Query: Are we going to be playing a doppelganger then, Master?’

‘Answer: Only part, I want its abilities of transformation.’

O: ‘I see, Very well, I shall begin my research post-haste.’

‘You’re dismissed.’

O: ‘By your leave, then.’

I find my name in the giant list of names, and click on it and it finally leads me to the registration page.

‘Finally, I can register.’

I read through the entirety of the registration page before I start filling it out.

Dear readers, I will spare you the boredom of reading through the long laundry list of questions that Unicorn wanted me to answer. Some of you, and you know who you are, will suspect the real reason why I am sparing you this boredom. The answer to your question is “Yes,” unless of course “No” is required. But I digress.

After answering the last question, I looked over all the questions once more before pressing the “Register” button at the of the form.

While letting my registration request process, I let my mind wander for a bit.

‘M.’

M: ‘You called, Sir?’

‘Yes, if I recall correctly, I tasked you to study the gameplay of all the games we’ve played in the before?’

M: ‘That is correct, Sir.’

‘How do you think we should build our avatar so we can accomplish our goal of becoming the Ace of All Trades?’

M: ‘With all due respect sir, you are being an idiot.’

‘Oh? Please explain so that this ‘idiot’ can understand then?’

M: ‘Very well. You are mistaking the journey for the end result. We are not aiming to be the Ace of All Trades, we are becoming the Ace of All Trades to reach our desired destination.’

‘A few big words that an everyday ‘idiot’ wouldn’t understand, but I give you a passing grade. So what is this ‘destination’ you speak of?

M: ‘Perfection, sir.’

‘What a lofty goal.’

M: ‘Sir, if we were still nameless, I would agree. But since you have given us names we, or at least I, have found new abilities that we never expected to have.’

‘I see that’s good. Keep plumbing the depths of your psyche for all your buried talents, we will need them for the coming days.’

M: ‘Of course sir.’

‘Now back to the task at hand. How do we hunt perfection? Or more importantly, what does our Avatar need to hunt Perfection more readily?’

M: ‘To “hunt” Perfection, we need time. Time for skill acquisition, spell acquisition, body training, magic training, combat training, sleep, eating, research, et al. This is why nobody in the real world can reach the true pinnacle, they simply do not have enough “time”.’

‘I see. “Time” is the problem.’

M: ‘As for what we can do to make our Avatar more efficient at hunting Perfection, we already have a few pieces of the puzzle.’

‘I hope you plan to elaborate?’

M: ‘The first one is your reading speed, and depth of comprehension of the read material. That should help with the research and information acquisition. As Royal road has many, many books, we just need to read them all to gain their information and your deeper understanding may grant us certain skills that we would not normally have obtained by reading it.’

‘Who would have thought my love for reading would come in handy in a game?’

M: ‘The second piece we already have is L. Since he has high speed memorization and categorization skills, all the information you acquire through books for us, he can sort and categorize. In addition he can probably see a skill and be able to copy it after seeing it once. The only downside is if he cannot see how magic is formed/used he cannot copy it.’

‘That reminds me of Tatsuya Shiba, not only can he read the activation sequence, he can destroy it as well. And if I recall correctly, he can even create his own highly optimized activation sequences.’

M: ‘I doubt L is anywhere close to Shiba-san’s level of expertise, and this is real life, not a light novel.’

‘Right, right, my bad.’

M: ‘That said, you mentioning him gives me a few ideas on ‘spells’ we need to try to make.’

‘Oh? Do tell?’

M: ‘I would like to attempt to make a replica of his “Gran Demolition” and maybe some of the other ‘magic’ used in that light novel.’

‘You do know that “Gram Demolition” is a highly condensed ball of Psion and it requires an extremely high Psion count to use right? This means if we equate 1 Psion to 1 Mana then, it will require ~10,000 mana or maybe more to create a single shot.’

M: ‘Just a pipe dream for now then. Alas, it would be fun to see the mages squirm when their magic failed them.’

‘Cheer up, maybe someday we can create it.’

M: ‘Yeah… someday…’

‘I think we have gotten a little off track.’

M: ‘Ah. Yeah. What we need are a pair of eyes that can see magic like the Byakugan or the Sharigan from Naruto, however sine we are attempting to make a ‘monster’ and not an ‘overpowered human’, eyes that belong to humans should stay with humans.’

‘Speaking of ‘monsters’ what about the eyes of an Alpha Sigma wielder?’

M: ‘You mean from “The Legend of the Legendary Heroes”?’

‘The very same.’

M: ‘Hmm… That might just work. Because humanity rejected them and treated them like monsters, so if we a monster ourselves it means we can have them.’

‘Great logic. I approve.’

M: ‘While I would prefer to have Ryner’s eyes, I would settle for a regular pair.’

‘Who knows, maybe if we convince the A.I. who will help us build our avatar to give us a pair of those eyes, we might get the opportunity to modify them some more.’

M: ‘Sounds like a plan, I will think up how we can further modify the Alpha Sigma later. So we have your speed reading, and deeper comprehension, L’s speed memorization, and his superior categorizing skills, and a potential means to see and understand magic. All we need now is a body that is able to endure our forging, and capable of holding vast amounts of mana at one time.’

‘I think I’ve read a light novel about a boy with magic power that rivals the demon god…’

M: ‘No.’

‘Why not?’

M: ‘In that light novel is unable to wear ‘fighting spirit’ which would be that world’s equivalent to ‘Perseverance’ in Royal Road, and we cannot have that.’

‘Aww…’

M: ‘We can attempt to develop magic stated in that light novel but nothing else. Besides he was human, a reincarnated human but a human none the less.’

‘Right. I forgot.’

M: ‘Well about the other two pieces, I’ll keep thinking about them, and maybe the others will have some insights that might help us.’

‘Maybe.’

M: ‘Well I’m off, better see to your laptop before it goes into hibernation, sir.’

‘Hey wait! ... Here I thought I was in control of the conversation but he was able to drop the formal tone partway in and make it seem natural. Maybe he has a better tongue than I do?’

Before I was “left in despair” about the progress of my other personalities, I look at my laptop and the message displayed on the screen.

‘It’s not much of an incentive if it is hidden…’

‘Oh. Right. But shouldn’t your servers be able to handle that much of a load?’

‘Ah, is that how it works?’

‘Bullshit, but I’ll take free stuff any day.’

At the bottom of the page a button saying “Return to Hidden Homepage” appears. I click on it and just like it said on the tin, I am returned to the home page where I clicked register.

‘I guess it’s time to read the rules of engagement and everything else that is now available.’

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