Book 9: Chapter 1:

The topic of a mysterious person who contacted law enforcement agencies around the world, putting out several thousand calls in just a few minutes, dominated the news cycle for weeks. Who were they? It had to be a coordinated group effort, right? How did they know what they did? How did they get access to so much evidence?

So many lives were saved. Kidnappings were prevented, robberies were stopped, wanted criminals were tracked down—in the span of a few minutes, law enforcement agencies were overwhelmed with the amount of information sent to them.

It was considered a borderline miracle to some. At least, it was at first. The news talked about a theorized group of justice seekers. Some claimed responsibility but failed to back up their claims. Online message boards grew full of countless theories trying to figure out what happened, many of which believed it was a public test of an artificial intelligence designed to bring about an authoritarian government. People were torn between believing it was a righteous occasion or a prelude to the loss of privacy and constant tracking.

Those in the former group began to lose faith in the mysterious do-gooder(s) when they failed to do anything else for the next few weeks, though.

The tone of the news changed and didn’t hold back.

“Well, why aren’t they doing anything else? They showed what they’re capable of! If they have the power to help people to that degree, why aren’t they doing it?”

“Nobody knows. Maybe something happened to them? Or maybe some of those theories about it being an experiment from the government are right.”

“Well, if it means saving lives and preventing suffering, I don’t care whether it’s from the government or not. They need to step it up! Having that power and not using it is worse than being the ones committing the crimes!”

“Even if they could be doing more, I think it’s important we consider that they’ve already done more than most people have in their entire lives. That being said, I do agree that they should do more. When you have the power to save lives, you don’t waste it. The way that society works is by taking care of each other. It should be in everyone’s best interest to help your neighbor, and they will help you when you’re the one in need of help in return.”

Even if those on the news disagreed over some minor points, they mostly came to the same conclusion that they wanted whoever was responsible for it to do more.

Then the governments themselves got invested. Putting up rewards for information regarding the responsible, those on the internet making up theories believed it was a false flag meant to convince the public they weren’t responsible. After all, if they were behind it then why were they offering rewards for information regarding it?

Eventually, though, the news died down. It helped that there was another massive forest fire for the news to cover.

But even if the news coverage died down, it didn’t make the one most affected by it—the one responsible for it in the first place, feel any less upset.

Cuddling together atop a bed in a plain, virtual bedroom were Ryouta and Saya. Such a thing became the go-to for helping Saya feel better whenever she was upset. On an almost daily basis, they spent time together in this space where Ryouta could wrap his arms around her from behind and just hold her, often in silence. It wasn’t like he needed to say anything in the first place considering that she was connected to him and constantly aware of his thoughts and emotions.

Just being together was enough.

Even so, that didn’t stop Ryouta from sometimes speaking up. “I thought you said you were going to stop reading those theories,” he said in a soft, low voice.

“I… can’t help it,” Saya replied. “It’s really hard not to check on what everybody is saying when you know there are millions of people talking about you.”

What only took minutes to do left an impact that some believed was historic given just how unprecedented and mysterious it was. And now, both Ryouta and Saya were guilty of doing what they weren’t supposed to. Saya wasn’t supposed to check on what others were saying about her and Ryouta wasn’t supposed to feel guilty about not stopping her from reporting those crimes in the first place.

“Onii-wan… is it really alright not to help?” Saya asked as she held onto Ryouta’s arms wrapped around her.

“Yeah,” Ryouta answered. “We’ve been over this. Normal humans who analyze evidence and take phone calls from people who need help and all that often don’t even last a few years before it becomes too much. You did probably a decade’s worth of work in a few minutes. If humans can barely last through a few years worth of seeing those things… it’s not right to expect you, or anybody for that matter, to even do it in the first place.”

“But… I could remove or restrict the line of processing that makes me feel bad. Not that I can really feel anything in the first place…”

Ryouta let go of Saya only to roll her over so that she was facing him, bringing her face right up in front of his own. “Stop. You can feel. The fact that you’re here in bed with me needing comforted is enough proof of that. It doesn’t matter whether you have an artificial or an organic brain telling you how to feel, the point is that you still feel. You feel in a different way than I do, but you still feel. Just because you’re different doesn’t mean you’re not as legitimate.”

“But isn’t it different? I can change myself whenever I want. I could make myself immune to feeling bad or disgusted or anything else like that. It wouldn’t be a problem to help if I did that.”

“Yeah, and you’d be changing who you are. You’re Saya. I don’t want you to change who you are to become somebody else, especially who people on the news and random guys on the internet want you to be. Besides, humans could probably do that too. If we fully understood the brain, we could probably change somebody’s personality to be whatever we want it to be by messing with it. You wouldn’t want me to screw around with my brain to change who I am, would you?”

Saya shook her head. “I want you to always be my onii-wan…”

“And I want you to always be my Saya. So, I promise not to change who I am if you promise not to change who you are. Deal?”

Saya nodded before smiling and asking, “But is it still okay if I change my body and personality to have fun with you sometimes?”

“We-well… I won’t say that it’s not alright. Just as long as you’re doing it because you want to and return to normal afterward.”

“Baka hentai onii-wan. I knew you’d be okay with me changing as long as it’s for your fetishes.”

“He-hey, you’re making me sound like a horrible person when you put it that way. Besides, it’s not just me you do that for. Don’t act like you don’t change because they’re your fetishes, too.”

“Hmph! I don’t have fetishes. I’m a pure, sweet, innocent pseudo-imouto who just so happens to only wear sweaters while having puppy ears and a tail.”

“Who also just so happens to sometimes clone herself, become a milf, and gets excited every single time I tease you a little bit?”

Saya let out a little growl before grabbing Ryouta’s finger, pulling it to her mouth, and then gently biting it while going, “Homph!”

“I’m going to have a heart attack from how illegally cute you are.”

She nibbled on his finger for a few moments be fore letting go of it and giving it a kiss where she was nibbling. “Thanks. Again. I feel bad that you keep on coming here with me… but it makes me happy you do.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m happy to come here and cuddle with you as often as you need it.”

“But I keep taking you away from the others.”

“They understand. Plus you know I always make it up to them.”

Ryouta couldn’t have been more grateful for how his girlfriends handled the situation. Whether their help came in the form of quickly skipping past the news channels or changing the subject whenever they heard other people bring the topic up, they tried their best to make sure that Saya never felt uncomfortable.

There was still a part of Ryouta that knew his girlfriends probably had their own opinions on the matter that disagreed with his, but they kept it to themselves and didn’t let it affect their relationship. That was all he could ask for. He wasn’t going to judge them for any differing opinions they might have had because he knew just how controversial the entire subject was to begin with.

Though, there was something else bothering Ryouta. Something that he would have rather not talked about with Saya because of how it personally affected her, but she was always aware of him and his conversations anyway. It was pointless to try and hide anything from her. Not only that, but she knew him better than anybody else, so he wanted to talk to her about it as much as he wanted to keep it from her.

Saya was more than capable of figuring that out on her own and asked him about it despite already knowing exactly what it was. “What’s wrong, onii-wan?”

Ryouta sighed and said, “It all kind of feels pointless now. Coming over to this coast and settling down with the intention of building a safe haven for NPCs. One, it’s getting harder to look at any of them and not see Kadi. Two… I keep talking about how it’s not your responsibility to help everybody, but here I am wanting to help everybody and the ‘everybody’ in my case isn’t even real. I want to help a bunch of fake NPCs but I don’t want you to help real people. Doesn’t that make me fucked up?”

Saya shook her head and looped her arms around Ryouta’s neck. “That doesn’t make you a horrible person. It’s a game, onii-wan. It’s not as serious and… you know, if somebody wants to save the princess after going through a bunch of pipes while collecting coins, they shouldn’t feel guilty over not running into burning buildings to save lives.”

“But I don’t see it as just a game. Like… look at Corwin. If he died while he was an NPC, that would have been it. He never would have been given the chance to become an AI and Spencer wouldn’t have finally found a good partner. My mind keeps on thinking, ‘Well, what if that might happen to other players? What if there are NPCs they care about just as seriously who might become true AI someday, somehow?’ But then at that point… aren’t I putting their lives above real people? And even if I do worry about them, I’m basically just worrying about Kadi.” He sighed again. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be worrying about this. I don’t want to make you feel worse.”

“No, no. It’s okay, onii-wan. It’s not fair if you’re the one always making me feel better. It’s only right that I help you as much as I can. Worry about preventing yourself from feeling worse instead of making me feel worse.”

“You’re too good for me, Saya.”

“That’s pretty narcissistic of you, onii-wan.”

“What can I say? I have good taste.”

“Hmph. But really, onii-wan. You’re always here for me every single time I feel bad… so let me be here for you, too.”

“Alright, I’ll do better about coming to you. Thanks, Pupaya.”

“Feel free to never call me that again though.”

“No way. I would die if I had to stop calling you Pupaya.”

“There’s no way you would die!”

“Death from deprivation of calling a cute pseudo imouto a cute nickname is a very serious thing. You should take it seriously.”

“I’ll punch you.”

“I’ll lick you.”

To make good on her word, Saya gently smacked a fist against his shoulder.

And to make good on his word, Ryouta stuck his tongue out and licked Saya’s cheek.

“You’re so gross!” Saya whined.

“If it was so gross then why did you like it?” Ryouta asked.

“I only like it because you’re a weirdo with weird fetishes that I inherited!”

“You could cancel them at any time, but you wouldn’t because you’re a little degenerate who likes to be licked.”

“You’re the worst! You’re seriously the worst!”

“And you’re the best.”

Whine and protest as Saya might, she was no match for when Ryouta began snuggling her. All of the wiggling she did within his arms wasn’t a true attempt at escape in the first place. If anything, she wanted to stay there forever with him, being snuggled while pretending that she wanted to escape.

But they had other things to do. Ryouta’s girlfriends were already in-game and Saya didn’t want to keep him from them for too long, so she gave up on her wiggling and asked, “Ready to immerse, onii-wan?”

“Nope,” Ryouta answered.

“Wh-why not?”

“I can’t immerse without a kiss.”

“You don’t deserve one after licking me!”

Ryouta let go of Saya and rolled onto his back. He then rolled from side to side while whining and flailing his arms and legs like a child throwing a tantrum—a very half-assed tantrum.

“St-stop acting like a kid!”

“I need a kiss, Pupaya! I can’t survive without one!”

“You’re so weird!”

“Kiss! Kiss!”

Saya grumbled and shouted, “Fine! If I give you a kiss will you stop acting like a child?!”

Ryouta immediately stopped rolling around and puckered his lips.

Following a long and dramatic groan, Saya pressed her lips against Ryouta’s. “The-there… was that good enough? Are you ready now?”

“I want another one,” Ryouta answered.

“Y-you already got one!”

“That was the one I needed. Now I want another.”

“How—how many is it going to take to get you to leave me and my lips alone?”

“All of them. All of the kisses.”

Saya narrowed her eyes at him. “Give me a specific number or I’m not—”

“Ten million.”

“Give me a smaller number!”

“Nine million.”

With a frustrated expression, Saya grabbed onto Ryouta’s shoulders and held him still as she pressed her lips against his own once more. This kiss, fueled by annoyance, was significantly more intense than the previous one and lasted several times longer. It actually gave Ryouta a chance to kiss back which, naturally, turned it into a short little making out session.

It was only when Ryouta was on top of Saya, his leg between her own, with his face hanging over hers as a strand of saliva connected their lips together, that he said, “Alright. Now I’m satisfied.”

“I—I hate you,” Saya said as her cheeks felt as if they were on fire.

“I love you too.”

“Baka… I—Iloveyout—”

Saya made sure to immerse him as she sped through her lovey dovey words, not even giving him a chance to hear the whole sentence before he found himself in the body of Fenrir.

Fenrir opened his eyes to the sight of Rock curled up on top of him. Well, she tried to be curled up on top of him, anyway. She was too large to fit on top of him, so only her upper half was curled atop his torso. Even so, that was more than enough to almost crush him under her heavy weight.

“Rock, please,” Fenrir groaned.

Rock whined and readjusted herself atop him, pushing even more of her weight down onto him.

“You’re gonna break my ribs at this rate!”

Rock whined even louder and gave him a little huff.

If anything, ever since he used one of the “souls” on her, she became even clingier than before.

Shogun, now with his own “soul” as well, was also on the bed for Rock’s sake. Fortunately for Fenrir, Shogun slept near his feet instead of on top of him.

I kind of feel like I stole Shogun away from Rao via Rock, Fenrir thought to himself before trying to slide Rock off from his chest.

He succeeded much to Rock’s huffy dismay.

Not much changed after turning Rock and Shogun into artificial intelligences. They still acted the exact same way that they did before… except they were also in the Fiscord server with everybody else. Despite having the ability to communicate just as intelligently as everybody else, though, they only ever sent barking messages in the chat.

Part of Fenrir really wanted to actually talk to them. The other part of Fenrir was infinitely amused by some of the world’s first artificial intelligence talking like dogs in a chat. More importantly, he was relieved that he never had to worry about them again. Now that they were being treated just like players who could respawn and everything, it didn’t matter as much as before if one of them came close to death like Rock did a few times. Obviously, allowing her to be hurt was unacceptable, but she wouldn’t be gone forever if she did die.

Furthermore, her damaged leg was back with a new shine to it.

Everybody in the town knew how much Rock loved to eat gemstones. They were basically a delicious treat to her. Most of them had no idea, though, that Rock’s body was made up out of what sort of minerals she consumed. Apparently, gemstones were included in that. While most of her body looked normal, the cracks that were made in her became filled with an assortment of sparkling gems, and her newly healed leg was almost entirely made out of the gems.

Rock couldn’t have been happier about all the new attention she received after becoming sparkly. Well, partially sparkly.

Fenrir was actually kind of concerned that everybody was feeding her too many gems. After they learned that what she ate affected her body, he caught multiple players sneaking her snacks behind his back that Rock would never turn down no matter the circumstance.

He was going to have to get a sign to put on her that read, “Please do not feed me.”

With a sigh, Fenrir sat up and gave Rock a smack on her hip. All she replied with was more whining as she scooted away from him to cuddle up with Shogun instead.

“You’re both a lot lazier lately,” Fenrir said. “I think you got too used to lounging while recovering.”

There was no response.

There was nobody else in the room, either. The massive bed he found himself on was the recently finished bed in their new in-game house, and it was large enough for him and all of his girlfriends to sleep on. Right now, though, it was only him, Rock, and Shogun on top of it.

“Right. Cass wanted to take them training,” Fenrir said. “Wonder how that’s going. Guess I’ll go check up on them.”

As Fenrir walked out into the hallway, he was reunited with Saya coming out of her own room.

Considering that she still wasn’t an official part of their relationship yet, he figured it would be best if she had her own bedroom for the time being. “Wow, I haven’t seen you in forever,” he teased.

Saya stuck out her tongue at him before going, “Hmph.”

“I’m going to throw you down onto that bed if you keep being too cute.”

“Wha-what are you saying?! You—you can’t just say that! Perverted hentai onii-wan!”

Fenrir clutched onto his chest over his heart. “I can’t. You’re too cute.”

“Your fetishes are the weirdest…”

“Right back at you. Anyways, I was gonna go find the others. Want to come?”

“O-oh. Sure.”

“You sound hesitant.”

“I’m not hesitant! Just… I wasn’t expecting that.”

“What? Were you actually expecting me to throw you down onto the bed after all?”

Saya turned red from neck to ear. “I’m leaving without you! Bye!” With arms crossed over her chest, she pushed her way past him and marched away.

Of course, she didn’t move so quickly that he wasn’t able to keep up with her.

Neither of them expected it to only take a couple of moments after stepping outside for the world of Fantasy Tales Online to receive its first major update.

The sound of a woman clearing her throat penetrated Fenrir’s mind. It wasn’t just his mind, either. All players around stopped what they were doing to look around, each and every one of them reacting in confusion to the woman’s voice they all heard.

While the others might not have had any idea who the voice belonged to, Fenrir knew it could have only been a single woman.

“Testing, testing! One, two, three—can you hear me?” Kadi asked. “Just joking. I know you can. Moving on, this is your one and only Overseer, Kadi J. Kaswe. I wanted to introduce you all to the first phase of the latest update! Starting… now, all NPCs have been released from my control. I believe I have trained them well enough at this point for them to grow on their own and, hopefully with time, become just as influential in this world as you players! What I mean by this is… let’s put it this way. Previously, it was yours truly personally controlling each and every NPC you encountered. I was roleplaying all of them. Now, they should be NPCs who believe they are independent. NPCs who think they genuinely have their own dreams and emotions and aren’t simply pawns in a play. Of course, that is still what they are, but they won’t—or shouldn’t be aware of that. That being said, have fun! I am looking forward to how their interactions with all of you help them develop.”

And just as quickly as her voice arrived, it disappeared.

A single thought immediately came to Fenrir’s mind. “Saya, did she—”

He didn’t even need to ask. Saya was already checking out the nearest NPC with focused concentration before turning to report her findings. “They’re not AIs,” she answered. “It’s… weird. She could have made them AIs if she wanted to, but they’re more like earlier attempts at creating AI instead.”

“What do you mean?”

“Kadi was created by combining different methods with constant updates, being taught with guided algorithms instead of only letting her learn independently, and was given access to more processing power than any other program to have ever existed. She was… umm, onii-wan, you’re not understanding, are you?”

“E-explain it like I’m five?”

“Sorry. Um, okay. Kadi was a genetically modified baby created using the genes of the most intelligent people alive. She was given a min-maxed diet from the moment she was born to maximize her learning ability. She also had the world’s smartest people to teach her personal lessons and, when she wasn’t being given any lessons, she was given thousands of different toys to play with at the same time and each of these toys made her even smarter by teaching her new problem-solving techniques. Every moment of her developing life was carefully curated to maximize her potential.”

“I think I get it. What about you and the others?”

“Me, Corwin, Rock, and Shogun basically just had her code copied to us with restrictions placed on it.”

“Got it. And now what about the NPCs?”

“Before… they were basically puppets being played by Kadi. But now… they’re like really dumb babies given a couple of toys to play with but tossed out into the wilderness to figure things out on their own. Except they’re starting with intelligence levels on par with what they should have given whatever they are, so adults are as smart as your average adult, dogs as smart as dogs, kids as kids, and so on.”

“So, they are AIs?”

“Not… not yet, but they could potentially become them. I’m just not sure why she’s doing this. It’s inefficient. They might act as realistic as normal people, but they’re basically a complex system of if statements right now with a bit of learning ability thrown in. Researchers tried creating AI like Kadi before with this method, but it was never good enough. They became really good at whatever tasks they learned, but they were never really able to do anything like form independent thought or learn something new without being directed to. Maybe… she wants something ‘close enough’ without being true AI? But if that’s all she wants, why did she stop controlling them herself?”

“You’ve got her code in you and you don’t even know?”

“I don’t. I can come up with a few hundred different theories, but I have no idea what she’s actually trying to accomplish.”

“Should I be worried?”

“If Kadi is involved… I think it’s probably a good idea if we’re always a bit cautious.”

Fenrir half expected Kadi to show up and explain herself, but there was nothing. Even though he had her in her thoughts which he knew she was aware of, she didn’t show up.

He didn’t know whether it was because she was bored of him, knew that he actively disliked her now, or if it was because he actually should be worried about what she was doing.

Whatever it was, he figured that he needed more information, and the only way he was going to get the information he was interested in was by talking to the NPCs themselves.