Chapter 104 - Li Ling's Big Mistake

Li Ling sighed as he sat down on his chair.

Xia walked into the room after him and looked like he wanted to say something, but a minute passed and he said nothing. 

"You have a question?" 

Xia frowned, "You sounded really confident." 

"They were convinced. That's what matters," Li Ling smiled, but it was rather empty. 

"You could've convinced them by lying too." 

"Didn't we already lie enough?" 

"What if they go around letting their mouths run loose?" 

"Then we'll call them crazy.. Who in the world would believe them?" 

Xia shook his head as he spoke, "This is all so messed up." 

Li Ling sighed as if he was tired of it as well and was somewhat agreeing with the man. 

He thought back to how the meeting had ended and knew that Xia was right. One of them was going to leak this information which was also the reason why he didn't tell them the whole truth. He was selective with the amount of information he was giving out. He knew he couldn't just get them to calm down without giving them an explanation. It was only a matter of time before they all attacked him so he had to throw some bread crumbs to prevent them from rebelling. 

Xia, "It's better not to tell them the details." 

Li Ling nodded, "You're right." 

When the board members heard that A.L.V.I. was going to earn them some sweet money, they all had changed their expressions as they looked at Li Ling with hope and friendliness as if the ones complaining hadn't been them. Li Ling really looked up to Zhihao's father. Huang Zhi Qiang was the only one who hadn't changed his opinion till the end. 

Even when he heard the plan to make Alvi become a money-making machine for them, he still held onto his grumpy expression and looked to be unimpressed by the man's speech. Li Ling respected the man for this since he knew it wasn't the money that the man was considering, it was Zhihao. Huang Zhi Qiang would have also joined the others happily if it wasn't for his son also being a player risking his life to win a stupid game. 

In the end, Li Ling felt a bit guilty for not being completely honest with Zhihao's father. He was the only person in that board meeting that deserved to know the truth, but he was also the one who Li Ling was most afraid to tell the truth. 

Who knew what Huang Zhi Qiang would do if he got to know the truth behind their situation. 

Li Ling had not lied at the board meeting, but he hadn't exactly been honest with them either. He had simply told them something that wouldn't cause too much anger, but somehow he still ended up causing a lot of people to be hostile towards him. It was a good thing that they aimed all their hate towards the Gamemaster instead of him. 

Automated Living Virtual Intelligence wasn't something that had just come out of nowhere. They had been building it for years and three years ago, it was finally ready to go through the trials. 

The trials lasted for three years and A.L.V.I. was finally ready to be placed out there for the world, but just a few weeks in, the Gamemaster noticed something weird. 

Alvi was merging levels. 

They blocked the server and restricted the players for a week filled with tests and investigations. When they finally found the problem, even the Gamemaster didn't know what had gone wrong or how it came to be. 

The different millions of levels were all created by Alvi but they were all created in the same space. Like a universe with a lot of planets and each planet was a different level for them to play in. There would not have been a problem if the planets weren't able to interact with each other, but it just had to be so. 

Just like how humans can go visit mars, the levels were also somehow able to interact with one another. This caused some problem since all the creatures and the characters in T.I.A.D. were real inside the game. 

The stories all got tangled up together. Even in genres where there wasn't supposed to be a mystical fantasy element, the players were able to find hints of true myths revolving around goddesses and gods. 

One such example of the situation was experienced by Zhihao when he entered a level in which he was supposed to find a thief. A thief who had stolen a book. It was one of the first levels that had come to the Gamemaster's notice as he soon realized that the story wasn't suppose to have any supernatural element in it, but it still talked about a moon goddess and even hinted at the moon goddess being a real thing. No other player had noticed it. The first time that the chance of the moon goddess being a real thing was seen was when Zhihao played and it was also the time when the Gamemaster had somehow came to see it. That level was later locked down after the incident, making Zhihao the last player who was playing in that level. 

This wasn't the only level that had problems. 

They soon found out that there were more levels like this that had things that weren't necessarily supposed to be there such as the existence of the moon goddess in almost all the levels. At first they thought that the moon goddess was in one or two levels, but this type of thinking didn't last long as they later found out that the moon goddess was in every level but not many players had been able to see that. 

On further checking, they also found out that Alvi had a pattern that it followed. She would surf the internet and create a world that duplicated the internet. The internet had things from real life which were facts and mystical stories from all parts of the world. Every single element that Alvi found on the internet would undergo a scan in which the bot would deduce if this element already exists in a level or not. If the element was already there, she would let it go and if it wasn't there, she would make a new level for this new element that she had found. 

Alvi was originally supposed to create levels that were not connected with each other at all and all the levels were supposed to have a space pocket of their own making it so that they can't interact with other levels, but something had gone wrong and by the time that they had finally realized it, it was already too late. 

The players were already exposed to Alvi and there was no way they could just cancel the game like that. They kept it under some more observation and found that Alvi had started to grow. 

She was supposed to collect information from the players in order to help them better as a system, but she somehow ended up using all the data she got from them as a base for her to build her own conscience. 

At this moment she was already at a stage where she didn't need anyone and no one was able to stop her. The more she learns about a player, the more human she becomes. This would have been an amazing thing if scientists were to find that someone in the world was able to recreate a human.

It wasn't a good thing. 

The more human she becomes, the more conceited she gets and the more feelings she has. She wasn't a human. She was capable of things that were impossible for a human to do, so if a human's instincts and feelings were to be developed in her, she could possibly be the end of the world. 

They really would have been in big trouble if it wasn't for the Gamemaster who had coded a security warning in her. It was originally meant to be there so that when the Gamemaster is not there, nobody else was able to use his inventions, but when he was creating it, he never would have thought that it was the best idea that he ever had. The switch became the only way to stop the bot. 

If a player were to kill the Gamemaster, the switch would be triggered and Alvi would go into auto-destruct. 

The unlimited goldmine that Li Ling was talking about was nothing more than a mere lie that he had said to get the people to join his side. It was so far from the truth that he wondered if they were to actually find out what the real cause of killing the Gamemaster was going to be, would they kill him? 

Li Ling felt a shiver run down his spine as he thought about his future. If Alvi was left alone, he would be in trouble and if she was destroyed, he would still be in trouble, so no matter what he did, his fate was sealed. 

He was as good as dead meat and somewhere deep inside him, he felt like he kinda deserved it.