The children's panicked screams immediately startled the group of elders sitting around gossiping.
"Huh?! What... what... what is that?! This brat... he actually hunted Spiked-Back Rats for real?!" The old man sitting at the far right corner bulged his eyes, dropping his pipe to the ground.
Karen nodded in confirmation: "Yes, I hunted them myself. But I only conveniently took down five of them, not that many..."
"Impossible! You're lying! How could a wet-behind-the-ears brat like you kill a Spiked-Back Rat with your own hands?! I absolutely do not believe it!" That old man jumped up, loudly interrupting Karen with a face completely unable to accept the truth: "Your father definitely interfered..."
Before the accusation could be fully uttered, he was violently pushed aside by another old man sitting in the middle.
"Five of them?!" This old man was so agitated his whole body trembled, his facial muscles twitching continuously. He leaned forward, bringing his face close to Karen, staring at the bunch of monster corpses as if seeing a God descending: "You... you really took down five of them?!"
Karen secretly gritted his teeth, trying to suppress the nausea as the tobacco-stained breath puffed right into his face. He inched further away, raising a hand to wipe away a few drops of spit that had just splashed onto his cheek: "Yes, exactly five."
The old man in the right corner still stubbornly tried to open his mouth to question further, but an old woman sitting behind irritably pushed him aside: "Get out of the way, you eccentric old fool! Tomorrow is already the village's Ancestor Worship Ceremony, in front of the Gods and Ancestors, how would little Karen have the guts to boast!"
The old men who had been clinging to their doubts immediately fell silent, sinking into a state of utter bewilderment, feeling their worldview had just been smashed to pieces.
The old woman turned to Karen, her wrinkled face relaxing into a smile as radiant as an autumn chrysanthemum:
"Karen, good boy, this is the first time you stepped onto a real battlefield! You are not only the first in this generation to succeed on your very first trial, but you also brought back spoils of war that aren't just one, but five monsters!"
The other elders sitting behind also clamored to stand up, crowding around him with eyes overflowing with admiration and awe.
"Little Karen is indeed a born warrior... a true hero! Absolutely amazing!"
"Truly worthy of being the first to dare cross the boundary! Karen, whenever you have free time, please come over and teach my useless grandson a few basic moves..."
In the blink of an eye, Karen was submerged in a storm of sky-high flattery and praise.
Meanwhile, in a hidden corner, the stubborn old men from earlier still stood rooted to the spot, their faces clearly showing terror and shock. Their lips trembled, repeatedly muttering a hopeless mantra: "Impossible... this is absolutely impossible..."
...
Capital Planet, inside the headquarters of the Number 1 Gaming Corporation, at the Testing Department's lab.
The door of the Virtual Reality Pod had just opened; the male tester stepped out, his face visibly radiant. He nodded continuously while reporting:
"Excellent! The results are beyond expectations! The random generation algorithm system has created incredibly realistic NPCs. Not only do they have diverse appearances and personalities, but they now also possess the ability to act autonomously based on those settings.
For example, some NPCs will automatically leave the village to find a magic teacher, while others will apply to join the Mercenary Guild on their own... We absolutely do not need to waste effort designing every detailed script anymore. I have the feeling they are truly alive!"
"Great!" The Head of the Design Department was so thrilled he slapped his thigh with a loud smack.
The R&D Department had truly achieved a great merit! Initially, he only hoped this algorithm could automatically assign basic traits to the NPCs such as personality, appearance, background, and a few survival skills. Who would have expected that, after being randomly generated, even the behavior chains and decisions of these characters would operate logically on their own without the intervention of the creative team!
Thus, except for a few World Bosses and key NPCs holding the main storyline, the Design Department could completely wash their hands of all the remaining background characters and leave them to the system!
However, the Head of the R&D Department standing nearby, upon hearing the glowing praises from the tester, slightly furrowed his brows in a daze.
Strange! The random distribution algorithm he created was originally just a piece of mass data sorting code, patching together available parameters from the database. How could it possess a high-level Artificial Intelligence capable of self-reasoning and self-developing behaviors like that?
"Manager Ailen, you are truly outstanding! Truly worthy of being the genius brain of the R&D Department! In my assessment, your coding level is enough to crush the programmers of all our competitor companies combined!" The Head of the Design Department laughed heartily, giving a thumbs up in endless praise.
The surrounding employees hearing this also clamored to crowd around and flatter him, their eyes unable to hide their envy. Ailen would definitely receive double, even triple the performance bonus this month! Why couldn't they come up with such a brilliant optimization tool?
Hearing the barrage of flattery, the flickers of doubt in Manager Ailen's mind were gradually blown away. He clicked his tongue and told himself that the worries just now must have definitely been because he was being too paranoid! The tester had directly experienced and reported it as such, how could it be wrong!
It seemed he truly was a hidden programming genius! Just casually pulling all-nighters coding for a month and he had created a system that completely solved the most difficult problem of the entire project!
While the people in the lab were so joyous they wished they could pop champagne to celebrate immediately, not a single person paid the slightest attention to a tiny detail: on the parameter monitoring screen located in the darkest corner of the room, a red warning light had just flashed for a beat and then went out.
At the same time, at the Brain Core central control room.
The massive energy sphere named the Brain Core - the server machine operating the entire virtual world - which normally hovered silently in the middle of the room, also suddenly flashed a brilliant red light.
"Huh? Are my eyes playing tricks on me? I think I just saw the Brain Core flash red?!" Through the thick tempered glass of the observation room, a night shift guard hurriedly rubbed his eyes: "Could it be the system is overloading or some error occurred? Do we need to put on protective gear and go inside to check directly?"
"Are you crazy?! How many years has it been since this Brain Core system was manufactured and put into operation?! The technology now is so perfected that there's no way the Brain Core could spontaneously generate a hardware error! The CEO stationed us here absolutely not because he's worried the Brain Core will break down, but to stand guard and prevent competitors' industrial spies from breaking in and stealing data! Do you understand?!"
The other employee glared at his colleague, his tone full of exasperation: "That Brain Core is an invaluable asset! If a single scratch occurs, even if we sold the organs of our entire security team, we couldn't compensate for a single microchip!"
"Inhale... you have a point! Then it's best we just stay out here to be safe! If we step in there and something suddenly short-circuits and catches fire, we'll be made the scapegoats and blamed for the error, at that time even jumping into a river wouldn't wash away our sins!"
The two clicked their tongues in agreement, then looked up through the glass once more.
Seeing the Brain Core sphere still hovering silently, radiating its usual soothing blue light, they breathed a sigh of relief and returned to their half-finished cups of coffee.
And the exact moment the two guards turned their backs, absolutely no one noticed: that massive sphere seemed to have just "sighed" in relief. A highly sophisticated red light subtly flickered again along its energy veins, and the entire sphere bounced lightly for a beat as if celebrating a secret victory.