<h4>chapter 490: Virtual Virtuoso</h4>


    “What’s the matter, Dale?” Aurivy asked as I closed a conversation window. There was a faint grimace on my face, though the halfling goddess would have had no real way of knowing who I was talking to or what it was about.


    “I just got done talking to Sarah.” I exined, shaking my head. “I wanted to find out if there was anything that she knew about our next opponent.”


    “Oh! Ohhh.” Realization dawned on Aurivy, and she looked up at me from her spot on the couch opposite Terra. “It’s not good, huh?”


    “Our opponent’s codename this time is Sanction. ording to what she told me, he appears to be a member of the Virtuous Virtual guild. It’s a name she sees a lot, because he’s always buying the new games that she releases.”


    “Is there something wrong with that guild?” Naturally, Aurivy would have no knowledge of that guild at the moment. I had only heard its name once, and that was back I believe before she had even been given life.


    “They’re… they’re the type to treat this whole affair as if it were just a game, as if there were no real consequences. They kill other Keepers like you’d kill another yer in PvP.” However, that wasn’t really the bad part…


    “Okay… I get that’s bad. But, wait… you said that he’s always buying Sarah’s games? Those take a lot of points… how does a normal second rank Keeper afford that?” And there it is…


    “Exactly.” I shook my head, my grimace growing a bit stronger. “ording to what Sarah said, he should actually be a third or fourth rank Keeper. But since he’s being chosen as my opponent, that means he had to reset his world, and is simply in the process of climbing the ranks again.”


    “She warned me that, when fighting an experienced Keeper like this, I have to be prepared for things that seem like cheats. That they would know tricks that people like me wouldn’t, even though we are on the same level.”


    This was just making me feel the need to colonize more worlds even more, if I was to be totally honest with myself. Fighting a Keeper like this… busting effects would be easy for them to devise. They might even consider it standard practice. Simrly, I should expect at least one mortal god to be deployed in their invasion.


    “Well, if they’re just trying to climb the ranks, it’s possible that they won’t spend the resources to attack us?” Aurivy spoke up in a hopeful tone, trying to lighten the mood.


    “It would be really nice if that was the case, but we have to be prepared.” After saying that, I decided that it was my turn to try to change the subject. “Speaking of being prepared… how’s your Elemental Seed projecting, Rivy?”


    It had been roughly five years now in the world’s time since the ascension of nk to the role of God of Games. In that time, dozens of new sentient AI had been created, but nobody could figure out how to replicate the ascension process. Of course, that was only natural as it had been literal divine intervention.


    In that time, however, nk had released his game. He called it Binary Law, after the magic system he created for it. Although the game wasn’t ‘Keeper made’, it was still quite popr as it was created by a god. Though, not many knew it was created before he became a god.


    “Oh, it’s ready!” Aurivy smiled wide when she heard my question. “I had to get Ash to make a new server room for it, but we already have the game set up and ready tounch. Ash just wanted to run a final check on it to make sure everything was implemented properly, and… well, creating an entire game world like that…”


    Seeing Aurivy trail off, looking to the side guiltily, I raised an eyebrow. “What happened to Ashley?”


    “She passed out.” Terra answered casually, earning a pouting look from Dale. “What? It’s not like it was unexpected. She wasn’t just creating the code based on your form. Like with Vision Expanse, she was making a legitimate world within the game. It’s only natural for that to take its toll on her.”


    My eyes opened wide in rm when I heard Terra’s summary of the events. “Is she alright?”


    “Oh, she’s fine, don’t worry.” Terra smiled, putting a hand on my arm in an effort tofort me. I could see in her eyes that there didn’t seem to be anything really wrong. “After about a month of rest, she was back on her feet. Take a look.”


    After Terra said that, the screen of the television flickered, showing a new scene.


    “Let’s see… ording to the data reports… there should be a seed around here.” A demon woman spoke quietly, walking through a dark cave. Above one of her hands was a small ball of me, specks of ck mixed in with the red and orange. Her wings were draped around her body, and she had a pair of ck sunsses on.


    “Nine Shadows me, don’t let me down.” She muttered, holding the fireball ahead of herself as she walked. As a demon, she didn’t need this me to see. Rather, it was guiding her in a different sense.


    Soon the me flickered, tilting off to the left as if trying to fly out of her grasp. “Good… just like she said.” The demoness turned to the right, holding out her hand. “Open the path.”


    After she said those words, the rock wall of the cave shook, cracks spreading out from where her hand was facing. These cracks grew wider, pebbles falling before they formed a hallway. Unfortunately…


    “Wait wait wait noooo!!!” The demoness’s screams echoed through the cave before the sounds of water crashing against stone could be heard. In digging through the cave walls, she had tapped into one of the underground water channels. “A-Admin Commands! Unlock Restrain-GAH!” She coughed up a mouthful of water, iling her arms to grab onto a hanging stctite, pushing her head above the surface of the water.


    “Admin Commands! Unlock Restraints!” Only after getting those four words out did she seem to calm down, allowing her body to sink beneath the water. She was no longer being pushed by the current, able to effortlessly walk against it. Her wings fluttered along her body with the water crashing against her, but she did not seem to mind.


    Soon, she had made it back to the area where she had opened the pathway, and began walking through it. Now… let’s try this again. Irona said that the Flowing Stone Seed could be found here. It was repelling my mes, so it should be close… Ah! There it is.


    As she was walking through the water channel, she kept her eyes peeled. Her sunsses had long since been lost to the tide, but she no longer needed her me to guide her. Just ahead, within the center of the channel there existed a glowing sphere the size of her fist.


    This sphere was… unique in the sense that it was unaffected by the water currents, always remaining in the same position. Its surface seemed to be stone, with deep crevices running through it that emitted a soft, blue light. This was the seed that she had been looking for. Thankfully, at this point, taking it was as simple as walking over to grab it.


    After doing so, she vanished, teleporting herself up above the surface. She appeared within a wide valley, the elemental seed still in her hand. “If the system works as designed, another seed should begin forming there after a month passes. Until then…”


    The demonic woman, Ashley’s avatar within the game, crushed the Flowing Stone Seed in her hand, its power rushing into her body. This was the final test that she had to run for this game, the possibility of merging two opposing seeds. “Admin Commands, activate restraints.” She muttered, needing a ‘normal’ body for this part.


    As soon as her ‘god mode’ was turned off, she could feel the shing energy of her two seeds. Her first one, the Nine Shadows me, was an elemental seed she obtained with great difficulty. Thebination of fire and shadow was rare, and she had only managed to obtain it within a particr volcano’s magma channel, where a special rock formation caused nine shadows to ovep from nine different directions on a single point. She had decided that this would be her primary seed while ying this game, as it both fit her domains and was incredibly rare.


    Inparison, this Flowing Stone was far moremon. The only requirement to spawn it was an underground water channel that was at least five meters wide. Whereas her Nine Shadows me could only be found in a single location, Flowing Stone could be found in hundreds, maybe even thousands of areas.


    However, that was not what was important. What was important was that the fire and water elements of these two seeds opposed one another. This could be easily seen when her fireball had tried to avoid the seed earlier, even though it was a far more powerful effect. Now, the two were shing inside her body, fighting for control of her energy channels.


    “Calm down, you two.” Ashley muttered in annoyance, feeling the pain spiking through her arms. It seemed clear at this point that the two seeds were not getting along, something she found quite disappointing. After all, she had already confirmed that people could wield two seeds that didn’t oppose one another, and that it was possible to ‘feed’ a seed with others of the same element to let it grow.


    Although she was trying to control her own energy, suppressing the struggles between the two to try to bring them together, she was finding it to quickly be beyond her ability. The power of the Nine Shadows me surged, rushing through her entire body and purging the Flowing Stone energy.


    Seeing that, Ashley was stunned, her eyes going wide. She had guessed that a situation simr to this might happen, but… in all of her estimates, it would only be the water element that is purged from the body. As Flowing Stone was a mix of water and earth, that meant that she should have been left with a pure earth element.


    Instead, however, the stronger element hadpletely expunged the weaker one. The only thing that could be considered as a relief was that she did not lose her precious me during the ordeal. “Irona?” Ashley called out into the empty air, looking upwards to the sky.


    “Yes, Ashley?” A voice spoke up, a figure shing into existence. Her body seemed to be made of golden me, her smile bright both literally and figuratively. “Did you collect enough information from your experiment? If not, I have the location of another Flowing Stone Seed prepared to assist you.”


    “No, that’s fine.” Ashley shook her head. Irona was… well, she was the Vivi of this world. Someone who had been included in Aurivy’s design. “I’ve got what I need for now. All I want to know… are there seeds that possess opposing elements on their own? For instance, one that has both fire and water, or light and dark?”


    Irona fell silent for a moment, her eyes seeming to close. “There is one seed which has both fire and water, yes. Its ssification is the Deep me Seed, and it exists in the heart of an underwater volcano, where water is constantly pouring in to douse the magma as it begins heating up. As for both light and dark… there is one. However, I do not believe that it will be acquired within the foreseeable future.”


    “Why’s that?” Ashley looked at the world spirit in curiosity. If it was simply a matter of the seed being in space, then it shouldn’t be too hard to acquire.


    “It exists as the heart of a ck hole, the Darkest Light Seed.”


    “…Yeah, that’d do it.”