Carlo finally understood his situation completely.
"So I've really become an electronic lifeform now?"
"And the most absurd part is… we game characters actually have revenue targets tied to players?"
His gaze shifted from the real-world webpage interface to the Paradise Academy student handbook in his hands.
In this handbook, the players who would soon arrive were referred to as Saviors.
Aside from Carlo, most of the other NPCs likely had no idea they were characters inside a game.
And the students chosen within Paradise Academy…
In other words, the characters placed into the gacha pool, were required to do everything they could to win the Savior's favor.
Whether it was arranging a romantic encounter and softly whispering, "Darling, stay the night,"
Or fighting side by side and shouting, "Comrade! You've set my blood on fire!"
In short, they had to use every trick imaginable to please the player and then trick them into spending their precious Bond Stones on them.
When Carlo read this part, he genuinely didn't know whether to laugh or get angry.
It felt exactly like a game designer leaning over a character's shoulder and saying, "Quick, tell the player you love them. Make him swipe another two thousand."
Besides Bond Stones, another major key performance indicator was the "effective time spent with the player."
Put simply, the more money a player spent on you, the higher your popularity became, and the longer players were willing to stay with you.
And the higher those numbers were, the better the commission and rewards a game character received.
"So… what exactly are these rewards?"
Carlo flipped a few more pages of the handbook.
The rewards came in many forms. First and foremost, Bond Stones were considered high-tier currency in this world.
The Bond Stones earned from players could be used by characters to purchase all kinds of things.
Of course… it wasn't a one-to-one exchange.
Just like a car salesman doesn't pocket the full price of a two-hundred-thousand car, a character only received a portion as commission.
"Then it looks like all those chests and map rewards scattered around the world are for players only."
After confirming that Bond Stones were a valuable currency, Carlo continued reading.
Most of the remaining rewards were unimportant, except for one.
The most critical one of all.
The final reward being contested by the eight strongest students of Paradise Academy, the eight five-star characters.
"The student with the highest popularity among Saviors will be the first whose nation the Savior visits at the end of the semester, saving it from the impending natural disaster."
"So… the next region unlocked is determined by whichever character is most popular with players?"
By this point, Carlo had fully grasped how terrifying Paradise truly was.
Because this artificial intelligence wasn't supporting only Oath.
It simultaneously provided NPC computational support for multiple large-scale MMO games on the market.
Put bluntly, including Carlo himself…
Every character in Paradise Academy wasn't simply created by designers drawing art, building models, and writing a profile.
Take Carlo as an example.
Carlo, or rather the original owner of this body, was nineteen years old.
That wasn't a setting written on a character sheet.
Carlo had actually lived nineteen years in the world of Paradise.
From infancy, through childhood, growing into adulthood, and finally enrolling in Paradise Academy.
Carlo was certain that time in the virtual world had been accelerated and nowhere near a full nineteen real years.
But the lived experience of those nineteen years was enough to prove one thing.
He was a real, living person.
Just one made of data.
Humans in the real world couldn't directly interfere with how Paradise operated. At best, they could negotiate with it.
As for the handsome or beautiful limited characters in Oath…
Some were native inhabitants selected directly from Paradise by the official Oath team. Carlo belonged to this group.
The rest were created by designers who input their background, personality, appearance, life experiences, and even concept art and models into Paradise.
Once Paradise approved them, the character would be born into the virtual world as an infant.
From there, they would grow up from zero, following the preset background, personality, and life story.
Until they matured and entered Paradise Academy.
Thus beginning the prologue of Oath.
So the characters in Paradise Academy weren't just students.
They also carried the mission of winning the favor of the Savior, the player.
And then saving their own nations, families, and people within the world of Paradise.
"Was the original owner's background some kind of unbeatable loner?"
Carlo reviewed the memories and found that the original owner was truly cursed.
Although born into a minor noble family, his father, mother, and siblings had all died in a disaster.
The people of his territory had fled to larger nations.
No family.
No friends.
No lover.
No assets.
A textbook invincible loner.
The only person Carlo could even loosely call close in the academy was an old family maid passed down through generations.
"Wait. If high popularity gets rewards, does low popularity come with punishment?"
Carlo flipped further through the handbook, looking for penalties for ranking at the bottom during the Paradise Academy version.
"Warning: Do not allow the Savior to ignore you. According to prophecy, a disaster will soon strike the academy, and your life may be at risk."
"This… isn't it? Killing off low-popularity characters as sacrifices?"
Carlo instantly understood.
Low-popularity characters were likely meant to die to milk player tears.
A roadside nobody like him would absolutely be first on the chopping block.
Players might even say, "Who was that? Died pretty miserably, but I don't remember him at all."
If Carlo was killed, could he continue existing in this world?
The answer was no.
Players could still encounter and use "Carlo" in the game.
But Carlo's own consciousness would be erased.
He was certain that his soul and awareness had nothing to do with Paradise.
He was himself, a soul from Earth.
And because of that, he absolutely could not die in this virtual world.
At least not die for real in the official storyline.
It suddenly felt a lot like Sword Art Online.
This might be a game, but for Carlo, it was no joke.
"So my next objective is to compete with those popular five-star limited characters for player attention, just to survive into future main story arcs?"
In truth, Carlo only needed players to like him.
As long as players loved a character, if the designers dared to randomly kill them off, players would riot.
But that still wasn't enough.
Carlo didn't want his fate dictated by Oath's official team and those unreliable-looking designers.
Once he accumulated enough popularity, he would kick Oath's official team aside and form a brand-new Oath development group himself.
That was a long-term goal.
"So the real question is… how does a three-star trash unit that players hate pulling even get their affection?"
Countless ideas flashed through Carlo's mind.
Become a powerful main carry?
An overpowered support?
A massively popular cute girl?
No. None of that.
The simplest answer was obvious.
Why not just make a fun game?
Players played games for fun in the first place.
So why not make a game that was actually fun for them?
Who said you couldn't make a game inside a game?
"It's time to let the players of this world finally eat something good."
Carlo was ready to take in all those heartbroken players crushed by excessive grinding, absurdly long progression, hollow gameplay, painfully dull downtime, endless gacha losses, and money thrown straight into the void.
He would give them a mini-game overflowing with positive feedback.
And soothe their battered hearts.