.hack//AI Buster - Volume 2 - Chapter 2.2

.: 2 :.

I couldn't get Lycoris out of my mind. She called herself a failure, lost her will to continue, and chose to become a wallflower in The World. She left a deep impression on my heart, but I couldn't afford to be distracted by her now. It was timc to go to work, and I had a new problem that needed my utmost concentration.

I logged in.

The best way to quickly learn what's going on in The World is to stand on the bridge that arches over the canal in Mac·Anu. From there, you can overhear the other players talking as they pass. As soon as I arrived, I managed to eavesdrop on this conversation:

"Did you hear that the Captain of the Crimson Knights got knocked out?"

"Did a Player Killer get him?"

"No, it wasn't a PK, he was knocked out in real life."

"In real life? What are you talking about?"

"He had it coming," someone else chimed in. "The way they go on about morals and justice is so annoying! I wish all of them would get erased from The World."

"You shouldn't complain so loud. Their headquarters is here in Mac·Anu."

"Whatever. They aren't the system administrators, so there's nothing to be afraid of."

The Crimson Knights, a self-governed organization of volunteers who mediated troubles and investigated illegal activities in The World, saved the system administrators from having to barge in all the rime for the smallest indiscretion. After all, some incidents could be resolved between the players themselves. In fact, some players hated the Crimson Knights for taking it upon themselves to act as mediators, but they were officially recognized by the CC Corp. as a valid organization, which meant they had to be taken seriously.

They took the ir name from the book the Epitaph of the Twilight, on which The World was based. However, in the original text, the Cobalt and Crimson Knights were diametrically opposed, representing the forces of light and darkness. In The World, however, the two groups had little contan with each other and conducted very different missions.

"So what happened to him?" someone else asked.

"I don't know. He got into some kind of battle with a Wavemaster who controlled a monster, and the creature kicked his butt."

"What?!"

"But how did he get knocked out in teal life?"

"I don't know, but as soon as his character was defeated, the player passed out at his termina1."

"That's ridiculous:'

"It's true."

"That's impossible! How could you pass out in real life just because you lost a batrie in the game?"

"I don't know. From shock, maybe."

"That's stupid."

"Look, all I know is, it happened.

"You can't beljeve every rumor you hear, Akira."

"If you don't believe me, look it up for yourself. It's posted all over the Internet."

Suddenly, I was confronted with yet another problem. I scanned through all the chats and BBS postings describing the incident, along with the actual e-mail being passed between the Crimson Knights. After twenty minutes of investigating and tossing out wild speculations, I was able to put together a rough composite of the events.

A Wavemaster named Tsukasa had a monster that, however ridiculous it may sound, was described as resembling a golden dumbbell. When the Captain tried to fight the monster, the creature clobbered him, and the person controlling the avatar- a reasonably healthy twenty~year-old-collapsed into a catatonic state, only to wake hours later with severe memory loss.

Past reports have desctibed similat incidents--players passing out from exhaustion, or even occasionally dying from playing for too many hours. That's why CC Corp. followed strict regulations regarding the addictive nature of online games. Ultimately, though, every player was responsible for their own actions.

Nevertheless, this situation could cause a panic among players. I needed to deal with the predicament as quickly as possible. Suddenly, T had a new mission. The cat would have to wait.

The first thing that had me confused was the fact that the player controlled the monsttr, a monster that never existed before in The World. Though some spell commands allowed creatures to be summoned, they were very specific creatures, ones that we've seen often. This led me to the second problem: the nature of the monster. Its description didn't match any characteristics of the monsters programmed into the game. It was something new, something totally unique, which could only mean one thing ... whatever it was-PC, NPC, or Vagrant AI-it was an illegal program.

Now it seemed I had an illegal player controlling an illegal program. Great. But who was the controlling player, Tsukasa or the dumbbell monster? And who or what was the bug that manipulated the game this way?

Lycoris conversed like a human, even though she wasn't human. Appearances were deceiving. Determining real identities would be difficult.

I walked toward the Chaos Gate and noticed several Crimson Knights standing guard. They were looking for Tsukasa. The Crimson Knights didn't have the same resources as the Cobalt Knights. They could only set up guard posts along the gateways and hope that Tsukasa would walk on by. I had a different plan. Instead of waiting for Tsukasa to show up, I was going to find him.