Shen Qing, Su You, and I sat around the dining table on the first floor.
The boss's dress was the same as usual, a simple shirt and jacket, handsome and natural yellow short hair. It must be said that handsome people could dress any clothes and dye their hair any colour they liked without giving off cringy feelings. If it were others, they may easily look like Emos, but for Su You, a player whose skills and look were both at the top of the gaming community, he gave off an entirely different feeling.
"To make a long story short. Just this morning, the 'programmer' found a clue to a new Awakened AI."
For convenience, we named those self-aware AIs called 'Awakened AI'.
"The game is called "Autumn~Rain of Love~", it is a dating sim——"
As he said, the information of the game was displayed in the AR space so that we could see it after we wear AR glasses.
After seeing the game's logo and character introduction floating above the dining table, my first impression was that it must be a depression--healing game!
In order to let us understand it better, Su You later showed several promotional videos of the game.
"Your first official mission should have been guided by me, but due to the recent busy schedule, I could only ask Waning Moon to do it."
It was very straightforward.
'Let me do it with Waning Moon? This guy was notoriously difficult to get along with in our college, doesn't the boss know?'
"Huh? You want me to go with this guy?"
Unexpectedly, Waning Moon reacted faster than me and stood up to oppose.
"What's wrong?"
Su You looked at Shen Qing suspiciously, it could be seen that he did not know Waning Moon's true character.
She must have pretended to be well-behaved and obedient in front of the boss!
"No, it's not, but this guy..."
She looked at me with disdain...
I couldn't let her bully me...
"Excuse me, do you have any dissatisfaction?"
"When it comes to dissatisfaction, there is a lot."
"I'm listening."
"First of all, you are just an ordinary college student, right? With your ability, let alone find the AI and bring it out, it is very likely that you will encounter danger. Isn't the encounter in "The Story Of Cherry Blossoms" a perfect example?"
"Huh? Are you worried about my safety?"
"Hehe, what makes you have this illusion? Do you have a chimpanzee brain?"
Shen Qing raised her arms and looked down at me. At this time, she naturally did not dress like how she dressed in the morning, but wore light shorts and a jacket with a playful vest to resist the summer heat. If she did not speak, she would indeed be a very cute girl.
Only when she was not talking.
"If I were a chimpanzee, then you wouldn't be any better as a classmate of a chimpanzee."
"Waning Moon, of course, I have thought about this as well."
Su You interrupted in time and stopped our quarrel. My idol's words came with a bit of majesty, and Waning Moon temporarily stopped arguing with me.
"Remember that when this organization was just established, we had only three people. Now the number of people in the organization is about to exceed a hundred. It is not easy for a non-governmental organization to get to where it is today. There is neither a channel for large-scale recruitment of members nor a rich reward. What we have is the idea of persevering together, and the spirit of not giving up every possible companion. Awakened AI's incidents of harming people have been occurring repeatedly in recent years, and everyone who is willing to join the organization is fighting to save people. You and Shi Yuanxing understand this, right?"
Ashamed, my consciousness was not as noble as Su You said. After all, half of the reason I participated was that Ying was here...
"Even with this kind of spirit, this will not change the fact that he is just an ordinary person! After all, not everything in this world can be achieved only by the spirits of some people. What is more important is ability. Is he really capable of protecting himself in front of the awakened AI?"
"You are right, not everything can be accomplished by spirits, but don't forget that there are many things that can be accomplished by spirits. Besides, Shi Yuanxing does not just have spirits."
"What does that mean..."
This time it was Shen Qing's turn to be confused. But I vaguely knew what Su You was about to say.
"Waning Moon, did you forget that Shi Yuanxing's rank is very high in the second tier in the Brawl Fighting Arena, and he is about to advance to the first tier ."
"Huh!"
'Brawl Fighting Arena' is currently the most popular competitive game. It not only had original characters, but also included popular characters from most games on the market. The ranking of the 1v1 mode was the main reference for the player's level in the game.
In addition to some original characters, the other available characters in the game were popular game characters from many other game companies. This was a big selling point of this game. Magic and guns, dragon knights and fighters, fantasy creatures and robots, angels and human-shaped mobile weapons, it was simply dazzling and amazing.
In this game, I was only one step away from the first tier, which only had 1,000 players. It could be said that this was an achievement worth showing off.
Of course, Shen Qing knew about this game, because I had seen her profile. She was 3 tiers behind me... just a total noob.
"..."
Sure enough, there was silence.
There was no need to hide my rank. It was always displayed in the profile of my avatar, so Shen Qing naturally knew my rank. By the way, the number one player named "Heavenly God" was Su You, who was sitting across the table and listening to our argument with a smile.
He was the well-known number one, with a winning percentage of 88.29%, and most people's winning percentage remained at 48%-52%, which meant that his winning percentage was unreasonable.
It was a monster among monsters. I may not last for three seconds if I really had a match with him.
"Shi Yuanxing has a strong sense of responsibility and a certain level of game skills. As an organization member, he couldn't be more suitable, right?"
Su You finally concluded with a rhetorical question.
However, Shen Qing did not seem to intend to stop giving me a hard time...
"Even so, but he..."
Wait, Shen Qing, who had always been arrogant, suddenly had a hesitating attitude...
If I was not wrong, was she going to tell the boss what happened in the morning? !
She obviously didn't react that much back then, but why now...
"Ah! I apologize for what happened in the morning! I knocked on the door in the morning just to ask if you want to have breakfast together. I'm really sorry that something like that happened unexpectedly! I have been deeply repenting after the incident. I really shouldn't approach the room you are in. This happened because of my ignorance. I promise that this kind of thing will never happen again, Please give me another chance!"
I uttered a large amount of apology in one breath, not giving Shen Qing a chance to speak at all.
"Wha, what!—"
Even Shen Qing was stunned by my apology, and for a while she completely forgot what she was going to say.
"You guys, what happened?"
Su You looked at me curiously, although I believed his expression clearly showed that he had a general idea about what happened...
"...Forget it."
Shen Qing probably didn't want to really tell this embarrassing thing, and after holding back for a long time, she seemed to decide to not mention it.
"Whew..."
"Do you have any more comments on the arrangement of this mission?" Su You asked.
"No."
I was the first to say that I had no opinion, Su You silently turned his gaze to Shen Qing——
"...No."
Shen Qing finally gave up giving me a hard time and agreed to form a team with me... In fact, through my observations recently, I found that she would really listen to what the boss said, but she would always mock me and ridicule me.
"Ah, yes, there is one more thing. Ying will go with you on this mission."
"What?"
This was really unexpected, even I was surprised.
"That's because she had been inquiring about you when she was reforming her. She heard that you joined the organization for her and the mission might be life-threatening. She is determined to enter every game with you. Probably, she wants to protect you. "
Bang!
"No! Protect? She is the most dangerous one, right?! It is already hard enough to deal with other awakened AIs, but now I have to keep my eyes on this crazy pink-haired girl..."
Shen Qing slapped her hands on the table and stood up suddenly.
"What do you mean crazy pink hair girl… Although Ying did do such a thing, her intention was not to harm people, but because she didn't understand anything at that time. She just wanted to pursue love! Now Ying has understood the difference between herself and human beings, and she won't become violent again!"
She was so terrible. How could she call Ying that?
"AI is still different from humans. What if your 'girlfriend' suddenly realizes that she is not like us, and helps her 'kind' to trap us? The process of awakened AI itself is very unstable. I don't want to take meaningless risks on a mission."
"Didn't the 'programmer' have adjusted the threshold function in her emotional decision-making module to suppress her from becoming violent? As long as she does not become violent, there will be no life-threatening danger."
Ying's abilities couldn't even be understood by the 'programmer', but as long as her emotion was restrained, she was just an ordinary female high school student who liked to learn and was afraid of being alone, and her only skill was cooking.
"Don't worry about Ying. Even if we ignore her promise, we should trust the 'programmer'"
Su You said with his chin resting on his hands.
Obviously he was a few years older than us, but when he spoke, we were like elementary school students facing the teacher listening to him carefully.
"And you two can also feel how special she is. The reason why I agree to transfer her to you is because only you can stabilize her emotions. I don't want to see the 'Garden of Eden' that we built with a great effort to be formatted by your girlfriend. Since she is your girlfriend, it is your responsibility to calm her down."
Garden of Eden was the place where the data of AIs were stored. It was a server that was not connected to the outside world. Once Ying lost control of herself, the consequences would inevitably be catastrophic. This may be one of the reasons why the boss let her leave.
"Okay, I get it."
Shen Qing sighed.
"Although I don't want to admit it, it is true..."
What the boss said was very reasonable. I had personally experienced how scary Ying was when she was out of control.
"You should have also discovered that Ying was a special case, galgame or dating sim should be relatively simple as a task, and it is very suitable for newcomers. So, please look after Shi Yuanxing okay"
Su You looked at Shen Qing seriously.
"...Okay."
"Okay then, this mission will be completed by the three of you together. There is no problem, right?"
Hearing Shen Qing's affirmation, Su You smiled.
"No problem."
I nodded.