Chapter 52 – Super Mutated Slime King! – Intransient

“Is the holographic virtual network truly without loopholes?”

Chen Mo was definitely not the only one who was not willing to see the traditional networks go. The one-second-plus freeze in GENESIS had been brought under scrutiny and post after post voicing doubts appeared on the internet.

These posts seemed to feature prominently. It was almost certain that there was an invisible power pushing for the matter to be blown up bigger than it was.

Then, Ash Blue Tech came forward and made three statements.

“1: The game did indeed freeze. This was due to imperfect processing.

2: When GENESIS froze, other holographic virtual networks applications were not affected.

3: In traditional networks, a similar freeze would likely cause several breakdowns but in the holographic virtual network, the AI Glimmer only needed over a second to overcome the problem. Additionally, Glimmer will also learn from this without human intervention. The same problem will never occur again.”

Ash Blue Tech’s statements were simple and straightforward. Once they issued those statements, the voices of doubt more than halved.

“Not enough, huh.”

Chen Mo returned to Ayer Town, logged off to avoid trouble and took a look at the reactions on the forums.

When he read Ash Blue Tech’s statements, his expression did not change.

He had successfully made the game freeze but the commission was still incomplete – he was far from it. Completing the commission by finding loopholes in the game had become impossible now.

Drawing from the experience of this event, it would be nigh impossible to find any loophole in GENESIS any more.

He was a hacker and dealt with programs a lot so he knew how scary it was for it to be resuming game functionality after freezing just over a second. This proved that the game AI, Glimmer possessed self-repairing capabilities that were over and beyond human limits. Chen Mo had no doubt that the soul contract he’d received from the Wolf, it swallowing the Stone Cold Water, growing wings and flying away were all a result of that one-plus second of processing. None of those things existed in the game system before the one-second freeze!

With such great processing, self-repairing capability and ability to learn, the difficulty of finding loopholes was sky-high.

However, Chen Mo was not about to give up just yet. He still had a crazy idea!

He understood the greatness of Glimmer. This AI Glimmer must have a variety of emotion programs – that was why the game’s NPCs had feelings and did actions like real people!

However, Glimmer was definitely not familiar with these emotion programs yet. Chen Mo was one of the players who interacted with NPCs the most, albeit with the same ones. When he compared the interactions, he could tell that there was still stiffness in how the NPCs conducted themselves.

This was due to Glimmer being neither familiar nor mature enough. It had self-learning capabilities though so it would surely perfect emotions over time.

Once these emotion programs mature it was possible that Glimmer would become huge a self-aware program.

What Chen Mo wanted to do was to make use of certain NPC to influence Glimmer’s emotions and character. If he could make it have conflicting emotions on the same situation, big problems will occur when it tries to solve problems!

If anyone knew what was running through Chen Mo’s head then, he or she would think he was stark raving mad. Doing what he planned was a complete waste of time and the chance of success was infinity to zero!

Chen Mo knew this was bonkers too but strangely, he felt like he could do it.

“Is this one of the what they call ‘Three great illusions of life’?” Chen Mo wondered and laughed to himself.

Well, I refute that!

He wouldn’t be twiddling his thumbs, or feel regret about not playing his game character if he gave up either.

“Eh? Mutated Slime King? And it clones itself?”

Chen Mo found an interesting post on the forums quite by accident.

Now that the Flaming 3-Headed Wolf was gone, the Beggar’s Wolf Meat quest and Slime’s Poison quest were available to all and Mutated Slime King began popping up everywhere.

Chen Mo had predicted this but he had never seen one which could duplicate itself even after having killed so many Mutated Slime Kings.

He clicked on the post and found that this Mutated Slime King was not a hoax.

Mutated Slime Kings were powerful and most of them were undefeated in the beginner villages. However, there was one village where pro players had surrounded and attacked it.

However, when its HP hit 50%, the Mutated Slime King instantly became two and used skills which wiped out the 10+ players surrounding it in one move, then slaughtered the happy spectators.

“Holy shit! These two Mutated Slime Kings are well-coordinated! Hold on, this super Mutated BOSS is in…”

Chen Mo immediately returned to the game.

That’s right. This super Mutated Slime King was in none other than the beginner village he was in!

This beginner village had the highest number of pro players. After the attack on the Flaming 3-Headed Wolf failed, a group of pro players had gotten wind of a Mutated Slime King in the area and banded together to kill it. If it had not mutated yet again, it would have been killed by this group of people.

Chen Mo surmised that this Slime King mutated this way due to either the one-plus second freeze he caused or the Flaming 3-Headed Wolf.

He went to the warehouse and equipped his excellent equipment, then retrieved the “Capture” skill book and a Skill Mutation Scroll.

After killing so many Slime Kings, Chen Mo had long wondered if he could capture a Mutated Slime King and make it his minion.

Ordinary Capture skills would probably not work but I am different – I have a Skill Mutation Scroll!

The Capture skill is one of the specialities of a hunter and Chen Mo was bound to use one Skill Mutation Scroll to test it out anyway. Since he had so many, how could he not try it out on a super Mutated BOSS?

System prompt: You will learn the skill “Capture”. Do you want to use Skill Mutation Scroll?

Yes!

System prompt: You learnt “Capture (Mutated)”!

System prompt: Pet system unlocked. You currently have 3 pet slots!

Capture (Mutated) (Beginner level): Mutated skill. After using, the player can capture monster of equal level or make a BOSS his pet. Capture success rate is affected by player’s Strength and Spirit attributes. If skill is used five times unsuccessfully on the target, the target gains immunity from capture forever!

Muahahahhaa! Yeeeeessss!

No less from a Skill Mutation Scroll! I can really catch a BOSS!

Level 15 hunters in the game had learnt Capture long ago. The regular Capture skill only gave you two pet slots when unlocked, Beginner level only allowed you to catch monsters two levels below the player and the monster gains immunity after three unsuccessful tries.

Once he compared the two, he could see that the mutated skill was more than twice as powerful!

Super Mutated Slime King, please don’t die yet… Big bro’s coming to get you!

BONUS TIME WASTER – hot guys, martial arts and dancing. *swoon*