“So, what’s the report for this month?”

[XXXXX new players have registered an account in Royal Road world wide…]

The one who asked this question was a man sitting on a comfortable chair in a dark room surrounded by expensive looking widescreen monitors. The one who replied was a diamond shaped icon displayed on the monitor directly in front of the man.

That man was none other than one of the creators of Royal Road, the engineer who had designed and perfected the A.I system of Royal Road. Naturally, the one he was conversing with was the AI “goddess” of Versailles.

[232 new guilds have been formed. The average level of players is 100. The current highest level players are in the high 300 range. 126 hidden classes have been found this month, among them are the Dark Walker class, Blade Runner class and the Creature class.]

“Ah... The beauty of Royal Road is that most classes are not preprogramed into the game. Many can be produced spontaneously depending on the situation.”

[You did directly give the information on some of the classes yourself though]

“You mean those classes? Well I made them out of whim and put a heapload of restrictions on unlocking them. In fact I was certain that no one would be able to obtain them. I really shocked me when someone was able to unlock one a few years ago. Originally there are only 40 of such classes in Royal Road and half of them are restricted as NPC only classes. Though whose to say that more won’t be generated along the way.”

[There are currently 11 people who have managed to unlock such a class.]

“Wait what?! Last month there were only 7! Are you telling me that in that in the span of one month 4 people managed to unlock one of those classes?”

The reason why that man believed that those classes would be unlockable was because not only did players need to have skills to unlock them, they also needed to possess a lot of luck and a few other things.

[Coincidently, they all unlocked the Overlord class. The players that unlocked those classes are also registered as new players this month as well. Looking at their character information they were all under level 30 when they unlocked it.]

“Was it a glitch? Or maybe Hackers? No, I don’t believe that even the world’s military combined could hack into Royal Road. So were they leeching off a bigger group or kill stealing?”

[No they all seemed to have unlocked the class legitimately. I have recordings of their fights.]

The man’s disbelief was justified of course. The Overlord class could only be unlocked by killing a Divine Saint or a Divine Saint Knight. Now putting aside that the majority of the Divine Saints and Divine Saint Knights were over level 500, the chance of even encountering one after just starting out was about 0.0000000000000000000000000000000001%. The probability of defeating one was practically zero. Given that a level 100 Divine Saint Variant could rival a level 800 Saint Knight in combat potential this really was too absurd.

In addition to that, you also had to unlock a series of skills that could only be learnt if a player refused to believe absolute control of the coding of the game. This was of course, an impossible feat for most gamers. Indeed, hardcore gamers were the ones who understood that no matter what they could not resist the rules of the games themselves and so played the game to the limits that the rules would allow.

This meant that in terms of games, those 4 players were amateurs. But could an amateur conduct such feats?

The man’s doubts turned to disbelief and admiration as he watched recordings of the battles the four fought.

After seeing their battles with his own eyes he still couldn’t believe it. Although the four had different fighting styles and different ways of winning, they all showed an unreasonable combination of excessive adaptability and recklessness.

They all fought beyond their limits and won in a battle where defeat was inevitable.

“Add these four to the list of players I’m keeping track of. And tell me more about the actual players.”

[Detailed information cannot be obtained. All four of these people seem to be protected by a government or organisation of some sort.]

“Oh interesting…”

Versailles was the perfect AI. Therefore there was nothing it couldn’t hack. However, this meant that those players had the backing of someone really troublesome. The hacking would be detected and Unicorn could very well end up being sued for invasion of privacy.

[The connection signal from these players can be traced back to 3 different continents. There are 2 in Europe, 1 in North America and 1 in Asia. The one in Asia does not seem to be in Korea though.]

“Truly mysterious people then…”

***

When a person dies their soul reaches a pathway. The end point of each pathway was ultimately dependent on many factors such as the gods they followed and the choices they make in life.

In the case of the foreigners sent by Gaea, when they died their bodies would dissolve but their souls remained intact and were placed in a “safe house”.

After a period of time, their bodies would reform, allowing their souls to reinhabit them, thus allowing foreigners to “resurrect” after death.

On the other hand, when a native died, their soul is sent to the heavens or hell were they were unable to change or evolve any further.

Research on ways to escape from death existed no matter what era you looked in. Originally, it was just one field of research. Over time, the paths of research split into two major branches.

One branch gradually evolved to become what was now known a dark magic, more specifically, the art of necromancy.

The other branch gradually became more focused on healing injuries, allowing the recipients to revive from a near dead state. This became known as holy magic.

Needless to say, both were just two opposing sides of the same coin. But things were more grey than black or white.

If one application of dark magic could be beneficial when used with holy magic, then the idea was taken and sublimated into the overall development of holy magic and vice versa.

There exists however, a certain enchantment researched by a certain church worshiping a certain war goddess of wisdom that allowed the soul of a person to be extracted from the body and placed in a certain vessel. Conversely, this technique later spread to unrelated fields such as blacksmithing.

Recalling the soul of a warrior who still wished to continue fighting and placing it in an inanimate object, this technique became known as recalling the souls of the fallen.

Using this enchantment, one would be able to achieve technical immortality as long as the vessel was not destroyed. However, this was also a state of technical death as the vessel could not evolve or change by itself. Tests on this had been conducted on various animals and monsters. More than half the time, this technique failed.

The reason for failure was concluded to be: “The souls of those who was separated were not strong enough to withstand the extraction. Although, powerful monsters were sometimes successful it was clear that unless one had a soul as powerful as a divine being or an ascended human then there was no guarantee of success.”

On a certain mountain, while fighting against a certain opponent, a certain youth possessing such a powerful soul who worshiped that certain war goddess of wisdom had voluntarily cast that certain enchantment on himself.

On the brink of death, that certain youth had destroyed his body and bound his soul onto a certain vessel, entrusting that vessel to a certain friend.

Now, 10 minutes after he had cast sacrificed his body, the youth’s soul had finally stabilised allowing him to have lucid thoughts.

Despite his lack of eyes and ears, the youth was still able to “see” and “hear” things in this vessel. No, rather than seeing objects, he could sense their presence. Having regained control of his thoughts, the youth now cautiously extended the range of his “sight” while fearing for the worst.

What he saw was a shocking scene of uncontrolled destruction which had not been present when he still had his body only minutes previously.

A priceless holy relic was now in complete ruin. Landslides and avalanches had occurred in various places across the mountain and would probably cause property damage to those living close to the mountain.

He noticed with relief that the certain friend he had entrusted his vessel to was still alive and well. The adversary who had led him to his “death” was nowhere in sight.

Questions rose in his mind. The fastest way to answer them was to ask so simply he said:

[Godou, I know I told you to survive until I could recollect myself but… How exactly did a disaster on this scale occur in the 10 minutes I was gone?]

“Ferrex?!”

--------

And so concludes Volume 1.

Yeah I was too lazy to find the name of the guy who created Royal Road...

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