After Liam finished speaking, the room fell into a dead silence. Eta kept her plastic, customer-service smile frozen entirely in place, her eyes locked onto him without a single blink.
Several heavy seconds crawled by, accompanied only by the soft, mechanical hum of her floating console.
Liam stepped closer and waved a hand directly in front of her face. "Hello? Hello, hello, hello? Is anyone in there?!"
The smile of Eta didn't budge a single millimeter. "The Blue Planet is one of the item cards available within Greed Island. If players wish to obtain this particular card, they are highly encouraged to work diligently toward clearing the game after entry."
"Oh, come on," Liam sighed, dropping his hand. "If you're going to pretend to be a mindless NPC, don't just stare at me like a serial killer. It ruins the immersion."
"If you actually know Ging, you should understand that once you enter a game he has designed, obtaining what you want typically involves certain challenges," Eta replied, her tone remaining eerily pleasant and perfectly modulated. "He tends to make things difficult. On purpose. It is kind of his entire thing."
"So you're only half-pretending to be an NPC?" Liam asked, his lip curling into a smirk.
"Now then," Eta said, her business smile intensifying to an unsettling, strained level. "Would you like to hear the official game tutorial, Mr. Liam?"
Liam took a deliberate step toward her. Wisps of white aura began flowing casually from his fingertips, curling through the air like thick smoke.
The expression of Eta remained completely unchanged, but her hand blurred as she slammed a button on her console. Instantly, a thick, translucent barrier of hard light snapped into existence, encasing her floating seat in a protective dome with a sharp crackle of energy.
"I just want to know one thing." Liam stopped in his tracks, raising both hands in a gesture of mock surrender. "How do you know my name? I haven't even introduced myself yet."
He muttered quietly under his breath, piecing the puzzle together. If his memory served him right, the girl at the entrance and this reception girl were both Game Masters. They were the actual, physical designers of Greed Island itself. Judging by how smoothly and reflexively she had activated that defense mechanism, she had probably been physically threatened by arrogant players before. Multiple times, even. The name of the game was GREED ISLAND. Each letter directly corresponded to the initial of a designer. Eta and her twin sister Elena were obviously the two Es. That unremarkable bastard Ging was the first G. Razor was probably the R.
Eta glanced down at the glowing display of her console. "Your name appears automatically upon game entry. Only administrators have modification privileges. Now, Mr. Liam." She looked back up, her posture as stiff and professional as ever. "Would you like to hear the game tutorial?"
"Fine," Liam sighed, crossing his arms. "Hit me with it."
He remembered the basic plot of the game from the manga, but the specific, granular rules? Those intricate details had evaporated from his memory years ago. He figured he might as well get a proper refresher.
Eta immediately launched into her explanation, speaking in that same mechanical, NPC-like cadence.
The fundamental gist of it was simple enough. Eleven powerful Nen users, including Ging Freecss, had completely transformed this entire physical island. Every single object, every piece of material, and every blade of grass could interact with players at the game level. It was a world functioning on real-world physics, but completely overlaid with a strict card-game system.
Each player automatically received a game ring upon entry. Two default spell cards came pre-loaded with it: BOOK and GAIN.
If a player held any valid item, within seconds, it would automatically transform into a card.
If a player said the word BOOK, they could pull a heavy card album directly out of their ring and slot the collected cards safely inside.
The album was divided into two distinct sections. The first section contained designated card slots, numbered strictly from zero to ninety-nine. These were meant for one hundred specific target cards. The second section contained free card slots, providing forty-five empty spaces.
The designated slots could only ever hold their exactly matching numbered cards. The free slots, however, could hold absolutely anything, even a random rock you picked up off the dirt road, which would also conveniently turn into a card.
If a player held a card and said the word GAIN, the card would instantly revert to its physical, three-dimensional form for practical use.
But there was a massive catch to the system. Once you used GAIN to de-card an item, you could absolutely never turn that specific item back into a card again.
Therefore, every single valuable card on the island forced the player to make a difficult choice. You could either keep it safely in your binder to advance your overall collection, or you could materialize it to use as an actual, practical tool. You could choose progress toward ultimate victory, or you could choose a temporary tactical advantage. You could never have both.
The ultimate win condition of the island was brutally straightforward. A player simply had to collect all one hundred designated cards, numbered zero through ninety-nine, and successfully fill the designated slots in their album. Once that was done, congratulations, you win the game.
What an ancient, last-century game concept. Liam mentally groaned as he listened. He had never possessed much patience for tedious, collection-based card games. They always just felt like a second job disguised as fun.
Eta continued explaining various card-specific mechanics and intricate spell interactions. Liam forced himself to stand still and actually pay attention, rather than letting the stream of information slide smoothly right through his brain like water.
Finally, she concluded her long speech. "That briefly covers the minimum required rules for survival. For more detailed information, please explore naturally during your gameplay." She extended one gloved hand politely toward a narrow spiral staircase descending into the darkness from the far side of the room. "Welcome to Greed Island. Please proceed directly down those stairs. Best of luck."
"Right." Liam shoved his hands into his pockets and headed for the staircase. He took one step down, then suddenly paused and turned back around.
Eta, who had been halfway through finally relaxing her stiff posture, immediately sat rigidly straight again. Her bright business smile clicked right back into place as if a mechanical switch had been flipped.
"You know," Liam said, leaning against the doorframe, "going through all this immense, magical effort to create a real, fully functioning game world, and the actual gameplay is just... collecting cards? That's it? It's boring as hell. This really doesn't feel like something a guy like Ging would make."
The smile of Eta tightened by a fraction of an inch.
"And there's actually a clear the game ending?" Liam continued, gesturing vaguely with his hand. "Like, the story's over, the game's completely done, everyone pack up and go home now? What kind of garbage game design is that? The players who actually get deeply immersed in this world are going to be completely devastated when it abruptly ends. A massive game like this should be about open-world exploration. Endless play. Constant new discoveries. Hidden mechanics. Secret Easter eggs scattered everywhere. You have to keep the players hooked forever, always letting them find something new."
"Stories," Eta said, her tone suddenly clipped and defensive, "should always have proper endings."
"Not necessarily," Liam argued with a shrug. "I've seen plenty of authors who just abandon their work halfway through and never look back."
The customer-service smile of Eta finally cracked completely. She made a sharp noise somewhere between a bitter scoff and an angry snarl. "If the game has absolutely no ending, are we designers supposed to just stay trapped working on this island for the rest of our natural lives? What kind of ridiculous, selfish idea is that?"
She rolled her eyes aggressively and jabbed a glowing button on her console with unnecessary force. The heavy stairway access door slammed violently shut right in his face.
Liam had already safely hopped down the first few steps. He looked up at the sealed passage and grinned broadly. "Wow. So anxious. Tsk!"
He bounced the rest of the way down the long spiral staircase, humming a tuneless, upbeat melody to himself.
The structure he was inside was actually a massive, hollowed-out tree house, towering high up toward the forest canopy. The wooden stairs wound endlessly down along the thick trunk until they finally reached ground level. Liam hit the bottom quickly and stepped outside onto the soft earth.
He stopped in his tracks, looking around the landscape.
The entire open grassland stretched endlessly under the pale moonlight. A thick layer of silver frost coated every single blade of grass, sparkling in the dark. A cool, biting night breeze rolled across the vast plain like an invisible wave, making the field of grass shimmer and rustle softly.
"Damn it," Liam muttered, absently checking his empty pockets. "I really should've just slept in the comfortable castle for a night first. I completely forgot it'd be nighttime in here too."
He glanced around the dark clearing, his senses expanding. He immediately sensed the familiar auras of Shizuku and Bisky waiting nearby.
He spotted them a short distance away. Bisky was perched elegantly on the back of a large, docile Nen construct that usually aggressively rejected the touch of anyone else. Sitting there in her pink dress, she looked exactly like a demure little princess pulled straight out of a fairytale.
The moment she spotted Liam approaching through the tall grass, she frowned and shouted, "What took you so incredibly long?"
"What took me so long?" Liam shot back, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the dark tree line behind them. "There's someone actively watching us right now. Why haven't you dealt with it yet?"
Bisky snorted, blinking her big, innocent eyes in exaggerated confusion. "What are you talking about? Look at me, I'm completely harmless."
Standing quietly nearby in the frosted grass, Shizuku raised a hand and pointed a pale finger directly in the direction of the hidden observer. "Want me to handle it?"
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