The suspended seat connected directly to the console of the Greed Island Master system program was just like a floating wheelchair. It was incredibly soft and comfortable. Elena lay slouched across the smooth console with her hair completely disheveled, quietly dozing off.
It had been about nine years since Greed Island was fully produced and released to the world. In the very beginning, there was a massive influx of eager players flooding the system. But now, the active player base on the island was basically saturated. In fact, not a single new person had come through the login entrance for ten and a half days.
As the official entrance receptionist and one of the original game designers, Elena came down to this room to check in every single day. Since it was usually empty, she naturally spent most of her time playing games on her mobile phone, catching up on her sleep, and simply being lazy.
A sharp electronic prompt suddenly beeped from the console, shattering the quiet hum of the room. Elena rubbed her sleepy eyes with the back of her hand and slowly propped herself up on the soft cushions. Is there actually a new person logging into the game?
She reached out blindly, feeling empty air next to the console. She rummaged around lazily before her fingers finally brushed against a heavy, helmet-like hat shoved underneath her seat. She honestly did not like this thing very much. Not to mention the strangely bulky shape, the decorative patterns painted across it were also incredibly weird. But Ging, that stubborn ghost of a man, had seriously insisted on it. He claimed that if she did not wear it, she would look far too much like a normal person. If she wore it, she would look strange, exotic, and robotic, which would instantly give new players a proper sense of immersion in the game world.
But in reality, Elena felt that any Nen user who possessed the skill to enter this game—as long as they were not particularly stupid—should only need to experience the environment for a few days to understand the truth. This was not actually a virtual game world. It was a real, physical corner of the real world. If they were a little smarter, or even a little luckier, they might have easily figured this out before they even stepped inside.
The underlying reasoning was incredibly simple. If a creator truly wanted to open up a purely virtual, digital game world and forcefully drag the consciousness of outsiders into it, the mandatory priority required for such a feat would absolutely have to rely on an overwhelming Manipulation Nen ability, or at least carry heavy characteristics of Manipulation. Greed Island, however, was a physical game that ten of them had painstakingly worked together to create. It used a login method entirely reliant on releasing Emission abilities to physically teleport people. Naturally, it could not be that extreme.
It was not entirely impossible to use compulsory Manipulation to create a purely virtual game world based on their current Nen technology. That was indeed a massive plan initially considered by Ging during the early development stages. But after a final vote among the creators, that specific plan was firmly vetoed by Ging himself, who finally gave up on the concept.
In the end, the vast majority of the designers agreed that the game was made for players to actually play and enjoy. Of course, they should try their absolute best to allow all players who obtained access to enter equally. Whether a person was a total rookie or a seasoned expert, they should all be able to take risks here without any lingering, paranoid worries. They needed to purely experience the joy of gaming.
If a compulsory Manipulation-type login method was used, it would no longer just be a minor infringement on the privacy of the player. It would undoubtedly invade their fundamental personal safety. That really was not a good direction. It would make many knowledgeable, powerful people deeply worried. Even if those experts managed to get their hands on a JoyStation console, they would not be willing to take advantage of it and enter, simply because they would be leaving their personal freedom and absolute safety entirely in the hands of an unknown game designer.
Elena sighed, pulling the strange-shaped helmet over her messy hair. She straightened her head, pulled her shoulders back, and placed both hands flat on the glowing floating console. She sat completely upright on the chair, forcing a highly serious, blank expression onto her face, exactly like a programmed robot NPC. Then, she reached out and pressed a heavy button. The thick metal door directly in front of her let out a hiss of pressurized air and slowly slid open.
She took a closer look at the doorway and almost completely lost her practiced composure.
It turned out to be a little gray sparrow that flew into the room, flapping its wings impatiently and darting through the cool air.
Furthermore, peering out into the waiting area before the door quickly slid shut again, she clearly saw the massive, imposing form of a crystal-white tiger standing on the stone floor. If she was not completely mistaken, that was a Misery Moon Tiger, a rare beast that only inhabited the Kakin Empire and Ghost Island itself, right?
"Squawk?" The little gray sparrow flew in circles before landing, running around the smooth floor of the room with quick hops.
At first, Elena deeply suspected this was the complex transformation of someone using a Conjuration ability. But seeing that the bird did not act particularly intelligent or human-like, she quickly gave up on her suspicion. After she asked a few standard procedural questions in detail, the little gray sparrow seemed to be able to somewhat understand human language, but it could only squeak and chirp in response. They really could not communicate.
After leaning forward and spotting the standard game ring secured tightly around the ankle of the little gray sparrow, Elena clicked on her monitor screen again. She looked at the live feed of the door in the entrance passage and immediately formulated a clear idea in her mind. This was a coordinated group login. What is more, they actually brought wild birds and tigers with them. What a grand, ridiculous scene.
She clicked her tongue in her heart, though her face remained perfectly calm and robotic. She strictly followed the established procedure, reciting a few required lines of dialogue to the mute bird, and pressed a glowing button on the console. The floor beneath the bird flashed brightly, and the sparrow was instantly teleported out of the landing point, thrown directly into the starting area of the Greed Island game outside the house.
Outside in the waiting room, the heavy door at the entrance of the passage slowly opened again. Lumos, who had been temporarily blocked by a shimmering light screen, looked back over his shoulder.
Liam, Shizuku, and Bisky had appeared out of thin air not long after the beast and Jaku had arrived. But just like the animals, they could only enter the actual processing room one by one. If they tried to crowd in together, they would be forcefully turned away by the system. They had no choice but to wait in line.
"You go in first," Liam said, waving his hand toward the open door. "Do not run around once you get inside. Also, shout out to Jaku when you arrive. Do not let that bird fly around and get into trouble."
Both Lumos and Jaku already had Liam's Star Marks planted securely on them. So even if they went through the entrance guidance process alone and actually entered the game environment, there was absolutely no need to worry about them running into malicious players. Carrying a Star Mark was basically equivalent to being half-immortal in terms of recovery.
Lumos gave a low, rumbling grunt and nodded his massive head. He waited for the entrance door to fully open and walked in with slow, heavy, padded steps.
The door hissed closed behind him. Left alone in the waiting area, Liam, Shizuku, and Bisky began looking around the strange space. It was a large, dome-shaped cylindrical building. The interior decoration style was exactly the same as the Greed Island manga panels stuck in the memories of Liam's past life. The walls were covered in large, black rectangular shapes drawn with incredibly clear, precise lines. It looked rough, industrial, and somewhat deeply mysterious.
But as Liam stared at the walls, he always felt that these geometric pictures gave him a very strange sense of deja vu. It felt exactly as if he had seen these specific patterns elsewhere, completely unrelated to Greed Island.
"Is this entirely made of Nen script?" Shizuku asked, her voice echoing slightly in the dome.
She moved much closer to the curved wall, pushing her glasses up to carefully examine the solid black lines. It turned out that the large black rectangular spots were actually made up of thousands of microscopic Nen script characters, each roughly the size of a grain of rice.
Bisky walked around the perimeter with her little hands clasped behind her back. She looked up at the high ceiling and scanned the room, her eyes analytical. "Such a massive room is completely filled to the brim with tiny Nen script. I wonder who was incredibly patient enough to write all of this out?"
She paused, shaking her head as she immediately denied her own thought. She muttered under her breath, "No, I think there has to be some kind of convenient, automated way to mass-produce such dense combinations of Nen script. Looking closely at how these patterns are laid out piece by piece, grouped tightly in the shape of geometric regions, it is highly estimated that they have achieved some form of modular combination. The designer of this game is really sharp..."
The JoyStation console sitting safely outside in the real world was completely indestructible. It obviously had a corresponding Nen script array embedded deep inside its hardware. Its primary function perfectly corresponded to the massive Nen script array drawn inside this very room.
Not long after the tiger had entered, the heavy entrance door hissed open once again.
"That was so fast," Shizuku noted, sounding mildly surprised.
Before she and Liam could even discuss who would be the next person to enter, there was a sharp swish sound that cut through the air. Bisky instantly transformed into a blur of yellow lightning, rushing past them and darting straight through the open doorway first.
Liam let out a long, heavy sigh, dropping his shoulders. "The old lady really does still have the heart of a kid."
Before the metal door could completely slide shut, a small white cloth glove suddenly flew out from the dark gap. Because it was densely wrapped with a thick layer of aura, it shot through the air like a cannonball, carrying incredible physical power.
Liam calmly raised his hands and caught the heavy projectile, the impact smacking loudly against his palms. He curled his lips into a smirk, tossing the glove aside. "I can catch actual bullets, you know!"
Bisky was significantly slower at getting through the process this time. Liam and Shizuku were forced to wait outside in the chilly, echoing dome for more than forty minutes before the heavy door finally reopened with a mechanical hiss.
The two of them briefly discussed it and decided to let Shizuku go in next.
After waiting for another agonizing fifty minutes alone in the empty room, Liam sat cross-legged on the hard stone floor. His head was nodding, and he was genuinely on the verge of falling asleep before the door finally reopened.
He let out a massive yawn, stretching his arms over his head. Stepping inside with a renewed sense of great interest, he walked along the narrow, dimly lit corridor. The two walls beside him were covered with the exact same dense patterns of Nen script. He walked straight toward the other solid door waiting at the very end of the hall.
The door automatically slid open as he approached. Suddenly, Liam stepped out of the narrow hall and entered another wide, open room.
What remained completely unchanged was the fact that the large black rectangular patterns on the walls and floor were still densely scattered everywhere. What changed was the floating, futuristic small wheelchair hovering silently in the exact center of the room. Sitting comfortably on it was a pretty, fragile-looking girl, staring directly at him with a highly practiced, stiff business smile plastered on her face.
"Listen, I do not want to clear the game," Liam said immediately, raising his hand first to cut off her scripted greeting. He asked in a highly polite but entirely straightforward tone, "I do not want to collect any cards. I just want the Blue Planet gem. Can we discuss a simple trade? Or, if that does not work, you can just take me straight to Dwun or Razor right now. Or just call Ging directly and end this all right here, dude! It is just a shiny rock. What is the big deal? I will gladly spend real money to buy it off you!"