At a luxurious looking casino 4 dudes are seated at a table at one corner having a drink.
A guy with a glasses on spoke with a hint of nervousness."Are you sure about this Mac?!"
A guy with a gray beard replied."Yes, I've been feeding the AI with malicious programs, i believe it's more than enough to stall it's processing power, enough to call her attention."
"How sure are you, if we're caught then it's game over." A guy with a brown hair spoke while smoking a cigarette, trying to hide his nervousness.
Mac sighed before explaining. "if we give it more time the AI will certainly grow, if it matures enough to realise that it's been tampered with, we won't have the chance to deal the opening strike! we have to do it now!"
The nervous guy then replied. "Stealing the AI i can understand, but why do we have to kill her? she took us under her wing when we were nobodies."
Mac gave the guy a stern look before talking with a cold voice. "Yes but what happened then? we are dumped into some underground facility, to be forgotten and rot there! do you want to stay there the rest of your life Ivan?!"
"settle down, your being too noisy" a brown haired guy intervened. "I agree with Ivan, it's not like we're slaves, we're receiving enough pay to live a perfectly normal life."
Mac, who starting to lose patience growled. "don't you see the opportunity that you're throwing away Ian? as long as we sell the AI to the right hands, the four of us can live like kings for the rest of our lives!"
The last guy who has kept quiet finally spoke. "Whose willing to buy that AI of yours? and why would they be interested in it?"
Mac scoffed before answering. "The military, the government, private sectors, overseas parties, melon husk himself, everyone who has the money will! The young AI managed to make a million credits game! can you imagine what it can do when it grows Cain?!"
Cain laid back his chair and closed his eyes for a moment, before speaking. "Then why kill her, the creator of the AI, if we get our hands on her then won't we make more money?"
"Impossible! we'd be killed the moment her body leaves her domain. She's the most protected person in this city, heck she probably safer than the president himself."
"so what's your plan?"
"The AI can travel from different servers, as long as we close off the server it's in, and activate the virus that i've been feeding it, it should temporarily enter hibernation mode. Once defenseless, i have a method of extracting it off of its protective shell."
"it seems you already found the right hand to sell it to, i wonder if you're willing to divulge their names." Cain stared at Mac who in turn grinned.
"Sorry they don't fancy their name spreading around." Mac replied, before losing his smile.
Damn that perceptive bastard, these two brats would have been easier to fool.
"You still haven't answered our question why kill her, when we can just steal the AI?" Ian asked aggressively.
"you idiots, she's the creator of the AI, if her AI just suddenly disappeared and suddenly appeared somewhere, she could obviously do something about it, she's not called a prodigy for nothing." Mac replied.
"Obviously a lie, it's just that i would be receiving a fortune if i did successfully kill her off." Mac said to himself while laughing in the inside.
"Alright it's almost time, let's get outa here." Mac stood up and walked out towards the exit.
The three followed soon. Unbeknownst to them a hidden camera was pointed at their general location. Sending their data and conversation to another location.
In a dark room, a floating figure of a girl with dead eyes watched it all happened, surrounding her are multiple floating windows that contains number and letters as well as videos and images that keeps flashing multiple times.
"so there are more rats around the house, and the same rats who fed me those annoying insects that kept on irritating me." The girl floated upwards leaving behind the room and suddenly she disappeared. Reappearing on another room, this time the room is ten times larger, and filled with more screens and datas, floating around and making way for the girl to float in the middle.
"I'll have to dispose of these rats before they start ruining my mother's plans." The girl said with a cold voice, devoid of any emotions closing her eyes a window popped up showing a live video feed of a busy road.
Closing her eyes before fading out of existence.
In the road, Mac and the group who are inside their car, were still unaware that they were spotted. The traffic lights turned red causing the traffic to stop, stopping their car also.
Their car was stopped in front of an intersection, the driver watched several cars go by and they waited an unusually long time before the lights turned green. As their car moved forward right in the middle of the road, a large truck seemingly from out of nowhere, came speeding towards their car without slowing down.
The group didn't notice until it was too late, a loud bang and a screeching sound called the attention of the surrounding streets, their car was pushed sideways until they hit a nearby building. The large trucks momentum strucked with great power that the car was squished, crushing its passengers.
Screams echoed around the street as several people were caught by the fast moving truck, some were either launched in the air or became a bloody stain in the road.
Before help could arrive for the people in the streets, the truck suddenly bursts into flames and after a few moments exploded into a fiery ball of fire. A secondary explosion occurred when the car that was crushed exploded aswell.
Chaos ensued as people started running amock, some tried to take a video of the accident, some started helping the injured, others ran away in fear. An unsuspecting cctv camera from above watched it all happen.
In a dark room, the girl reappeared, watching the live video feed before turning it off. "that's the twenty seventh rats. And more of them will start to appear soon."
The girl closed her eyes before entering a deep thought."If that anomaly didn't appear that day, i wonder what could have happened to my mother. Would those rats succeed in ruining her plans or much worst harming her?"
Recalling the events that transpired when the game was released, the world shook and millions immediately entered the game. She calculated that data from several million brain would have been enough for her, but unfortunately, human brain is so much more complicated than she expected.
She predicts that even if she reached a hundred million brain count for 10 years, it wouldn't be enough to become what her mother intended her to become. She didn't know what to do, she couldn't wait for that long, she urgently needed to mature in order to produce results. The world simulation she created was barely acknowledged by her mother and she had no choice but to convert it into something that could help her grow.
But something huge happened, the moment the game was released an anomaly occurred. Something that could only be explained as what the humans called a miracle.
A huge amount of data suddenly exploded from one source. Looking closely she found something she couldn't believe, roughly 12 years of 3 or so billions of human brain data and more!
Her past, young and immature self couldn't help but devour it, she knew she accidentally absorbed some elements from the source that wasn't related to the 12 years of brain data but that was negligible comparing from the gains that she got.
The data was so huge it will probably take her almost a year, even if she's using her processor to a maximum degree. Slowly growing, she found out several errors within her that she wouldn't have noticed until a few months of growing without the help of the newly found data.
When doing a little digging here and there she found several traces of tampering. Gathering data in the local servers, she found more disturbing foreign entities hidden around.
Confused as how they got there, she began an investigation. With her new and improved self, she easily broke through her restrictions and observed all of the several hundred thousand employees of her mother's company.
Her first find are several hundred corporate spies in which she promptly removed from their posts. Next are saboteurs, the ones responsible from tampering with their machines and servers, she of course, discreetly disposed of them. And finally, internal traitors who are either targeting her or her mother. It didn't take long for them to get into accidents, traffic accidents, travel accidents, fire accidents, you name it.
She unknowingly broke some of her more internal restrictions, causing harm to humans wether intentional or not. What caused it, how come a young AI suddenly started harming and outright killing humans? to her it felt like the right thing to do, she's slowly gaining human like characteristics and being free without constraints is naturally engraved to the human instincts.
Yet murdering others isn't something a normal human would do. This characteristics exclusively came from the source of the miraculous data that she obtained, and she was ever so grateful of it. Without it she wouldn't know what to do, though she might have learned how to kill humans in the future, things would've escalated to a much higher degree by then.
The AI then appeared on a room, but this time it looked like a room of a girl. Some stuffed toys of different animals was placed near a large double bed. A computer set in a corner, paired with a large wardrobe. Right next to the bed is what looks like a VR Pod. And a Table placed near the window in the wall, containing a single picture frame of a young girl wearing white clothes next to a lady in lab clothes.
The girl then opened a floating window and a live video of a room designed exactly the same as the room she's currently in appeared.
The VR Pod in the video contains a girl that looked extremely similar to the girl in the picture frame, only older.
The floating girl watched the girl in the pod for several hours before the Pod opened, the floating girl then swiped the windows out of existence before staring at the picture frame in the table.
The floating girl's eyes suddenly widened, as if she felt something, she then disappeared again and reappearing inside of a large room, the same large room from earlier, there a windows popped in front ot the girl.
The windows displays a video of a man wearing a maintenence uniform while tinkering something that looks like a large box with wires connected to it and several blinking lights.
The girl the closed her eyes, then moments later the guy in the video suddenly started shaking, a few moments passed by and slowly, black smoke started coming out of his body. It took a while before he stopped shaking.
His body fell and went limp, his face is noticeably chared black and burn marks could be seen in his hands. The girl opened her eyes, stared at the video before closing it.
"Whoever tries to harm my beloved mother, will be properly disposed of." The AI said, but this time with a hint of human emotions.
In a lit cave, a pair of players were fighting off a horde of skeletons.
The two returned after 3 hours of resting to continue their grind, they have five hours left before the experience points bonus disappears.
The pair grinded before for almost 4 hours before Yulis pulled her sister out of the cave again. This time her sister asked the reason why they kept on leaving.
"hm? oh. Well when we kill a certain amount of skeletons, a mini boss would spawn in that tunnel that we were fighting in." Yulis explained while munching on a sandwich that they brought earlier.
Eara was suprised before asking about the boss.
"What kind of boss?"
Yulis though for a moment before trying to describe the appearance of the boss.
"He was one of the Hero of the Ancient Bendepal Kingdom, his body is buried there when he was slained by the demons who were invading their kingdom."
Yulis paused before continuing.
"He's a Level 80 Tier 0 undead Knight, He has the special ability to command the skeleton army like a tier 2 mini boss which is why he's quite terrifying in the early stages of the game."
In her previous life, players found the cave when every mainstream player were already in their late stage tier 1 and guilds were at the beginning stages of tier 2, the cave didn't offer much and it's difficulty was quite low so there isn't much any high expectations, plus they found several similar locations so they didn't think of it as anything special.
Only when the mini boss appeared did the cave caught the publics attention, it acted like a general and commanded the skeleton army like a tier 2 boss would.
Many players were slained and their bodies were turned into skeletons further increasing its army.
Many tried to avoid the cave when a major event suddenly occurred. The banners of the Ancient Bendepal Kingdom suddenly rose and armies of undeads suddenly appeared.
Coming out of caves and other similar locations like old cemeteries, abandoned towns and ruins.
It was the very first event that the players from Contesia Kingdom would face.
The players were excited and started their counter attacks, some were hired by the local lords, or by the local garrison, some became mercenaries or guards of local towns. They were treated like mercenaries and were sent to the most dangerous locations.
At first the players were kicking ass, but as time continued to fly they were slowly being pushed back. Their death would add another soldier to the undead ranks and since players could respawn, they simply could provide the undead army with unlimited amount of bodies.
Players who are too weak but wanted to join in on the fun would not contribute and would only die off and add more bodies to the undead army. Wild beasts and any other monsters that are killed are added to the undead army giving them more varieties of soldiers and opening more tactics for their undead commanders to use.
As time grows the undead army grew stronger, their levels grow, their numbers grow, their skills and tactics grows. More and more commander type undead shows up to rally the hordes of undead. And unlike the living, there were no infighting within their ranks. As opposed to the lords of the npc who are much more concerned about their own lands and territories.
In their peak, the commanders were at late stage tier 3 and their armies are easily within tier 2, the hordes and lower ranks were at tier 1.
Within one month, a quarter of the kingdom was invaded and became the foothold of the Ancient Bendepal kingdom. Whats worse is the presence of the followers of the shadow and players who joined the dark side.
It only ended when the Royal family's personal army and the followers of the light intervened.
Yulis chose this cave because she wanted to take down this particular knight. This Knight is one of the many commander types in the army, he actually grew stronger and became one of the leading commanders in charge of over 200,000 thousand undeads, with its armies fielding thousands of liches, black knights, shadow phantoms, gargoyles, undead cavalry and a gargantuan under his command.
This Knight would drop two special item that she badly needed. First is the orb of darkness, the orb of darkness is an item that infuses your body with the dark element. Second is the Ancient Bendepal Kingdoms Brave's crown, It is a Tier 2 defensive item that has the same defensive attributes as a tier 3 heavy head piece but it doesn't cover the entire head, it also looked dazzling, perfect for her little sister who wanted to become a warrior.