“Meow.”

“Meow?”

“Yar.”

“Meow…”

Cats sat in the cockpit in front of the dashboard, which was decorated with various colored marbles. At first glance, it looked like they were walking and playing around, but they were actually the pilots running the spacecraft, called Garuda.

Beep!

When one of the cats manipulated a large crystal with both of its paws, a screen opened in mid-air and started playing a video. The image was of a passenger who was sleeping on Moby Dick.

“Meow?”

The cats were mostly white, with only their ears, face, and two of their legs colored black. In terms of species, they were similar to Siamese cats. Above one that looked particularly like a Siamese cat, a ‘?’ appeared in a white cloud bubble before quickly turning into a “!!”.

“Meow?!”

The Siamese cat jumped out of its chair and quickly ran to one side. It approached a closed door, which opened automatically.

Jump!

In the room it ran into, the Siamese cat found a swarm of shiny butterflies and a spotted cat skipping and dancing amongst them.

“Meow!!”

“Meow!”

When the Siamese cat made a sharp sound, the spotted cat, which had been running around with a languid expression, jumped up in surprise. The swarm of butterflies flying around the spotted cat instantly disappeared.

“Meow, meow!!”

“Purr…!”

The Siamese cat seemed to be sharply scolding the spotted cat. The spotted cat made a pitiful expression and lowered its head. Seeing this, the Siamese cat narrowed its eyes, but it soon shook its head and continued speaking.

“Meow! Meow, meow!”

“M-meow!”

The spotted cat quickly returned to its seat and put its front paws on another crystal. Soon, dozens of screens appeared and began to convey a large amount of information.

“Purr…”

After reviewing the information, the Siamese cat shook its head with a troubled expression and looked at the spotted cat.

“Meow!”

“Purr.”

The spotted cat hunched its back and looked depressed. An image of dark clouds and showers appeared over its head. Although the spotted cat was conveying its depression, the Siamese cat, who was busy trying to deal with the situation, promptly left the room without looking back.

Pat! Pat! Pat!

Every time the Siamese cat’s paws hit the ground, it bounded five to six meters forward. Though cats were generally quick animals, this type of speed was abnormal. The Siamese cat bounded into the navigation bridge and cried out.

“Meow!!”

“What the hell are you saying! Stop meowing and start talking!”

A black-haired young man sat in a large chair in front of an instrument panel. He shouted at the Siamese cat because he did not understand its language, Purr-ji.

“Man, hearing meows and purrs all day, I’m starting to wonder if I’m really on a ship or on planet Purr-ji! What’s wrong with you? You can use spirit speech!”

Purr-ji was language used by the Prajna species. Based on loudness, tone, and inflection, the meaning of words drastically changed, so it was considered one of the most difficult languages in the universe. Purr-ji was a complex language that could convey thousands or tens of thousands of meanings with just a short sound, allowing multiple meanings and a ton of information to be conveyed within a very short conversation. This also meant it was very difficult to learn. On top of that, many other species didn’t even have the physical attributes necessary to properly speak the language. In an apologetic tone, the Siamese cat spoke again, using spirit speech.

“Oh, uhm, I’m sorry.”

“Okay, start over.”

“Wait a minute.”

The Siamese cat turned around and left the room. Soon, it jumped back in.

“Sir! There’s a user who’s entering the yet unrevealed new continent!”

“Yeah, speak like that from now on… What?”

The black-haired young man was momentarily puzzled by the unexpected news. The new continent was a restricted space that was yet to be open to users.

“No, wait, we haven’t released the flying shuttles yet. How is this possible?”

“Well… he swam…”

“What?”

Startled, the young man quickly unfolded his hand and swung it in a rubbing motion in the air. Soon, a live video feed of Merlin, still asleep on Moby Dick, appeared in front of him. Next to the video feed was a wall of text detailing Merlin’s stats.

“What? S Rank in Swimming? Is this guy crazy?”

When the young man pushed the text with his finger, more information poured out.

“He’s raised his attribute power to S Rank… but what’s with his level? His stats are so low!”

Merlin’s stats were obviously extremely skewed. His S-Rank skill was great enough to overcome many of the disadvantages of having weak stats, but Merlin’s stats looked extremely bizarre when compared to Arthur’s, the only other user to possess an S-Rank skill.

“This is so strange. How did we not know about this guy?”

“Come to think of it, I think the section chief mentioned that there were three people he was keeping an eye on. We know the other two, so perhaps this is the third?”

“Oh, the one-in-a-quintillion Irregular?”

The user count for DIO numbered in the hundreds of millions. Though the entire system was owned and tightly operated, it wasn’t possible to keep track of every user’s movement. Of course, it was possible to closely look at and follow certain characters if they were pre-designated, but Merlin wasn’t.

“What shall we do? If the user has contact with the monsters, there’ll be a hole in the setting. In addition, there’ll probably be monsters that are curious about the user and his background, so forced memory modifications will have to be applied across the board. This’ll probably throw a wrench in our plans, no?”

The black-haired man was troubled by the Siamese cat’s words. Of course, they could easily force Merlin back above the Noise Belt and completely prevent him from going south again, but this intervention went against DIO’s basic operating policy: ‘training and strengthening according to free will’.

“Well, I guess we have no other choice. Since it’s gone this far already, advance the time of the Great War. Also, get ready to start the official opening event of the flying shuttles.”

“Ah, it’ll be so out of the blue…”

The Siamese cat looked annoyed for a moment, but soon nodded its head.

“Alright, I’ll round up my team members and make it happen. Three or four days should be enough time.”

“Looking forward to it.”

With that, the Siamese cat turned and left the navigation bridge. Utilizing its cat-like agility, it quickly left the room without a stir.

“Honestly, I thought it would take at least a year before any useful users would show up, but I guess there’s a wide gap between individuals. There are already two users with an S-Rank…”

Of course, in the young man’s eyes, Merlin was too weak to contribute to any fight. It was great that Merlin was able to obtain an S-Rank skill, but this skill wasn’t combat-oriented, so Merlin was still weaker than Cruze, who was without an S-Rank skill. The young man assumed that this was due to Merlin’s lack of love for battle and fighting.

“Shall I put you through a little bit of trouble?”

If the young man pressed Merlin too hard, there was a risk that he would just give up on the game. First and foremost, users were accessing DIO for pleasure, so they didn’t have to endure excessive stress if they didn’t want to.

“Dang it, it would have been nice to have a system that made the users feel hellish pain if they died and banned them from logging off. This system just allows users to take whatever course of action they want. How troublesome and inefficient.”

Grumbling, the young man began to adjust something on his instrument panel, with no idea of the consequences his actions would cause.

*** Arriving at the Holy Shrine ***

“Ah, I’m getting so thin.”

Yongno got out of bed and took off his earphones. His clothes, which used to fit perfectly, were loose on him now. This wasn’t something that only Merlin was going through; it was a phenomenon that most users playing DIO experienced. Users could satisfy their urge for delicious food in-game, so they didn’t spend as much time eating in the real world. When users logged off DIO, they would often only eat the basic necessary nutrients, or they would skip eating altogether. Due to this, many quickly lost weight, and some even became malnourished.

“Let’s see, nine hours is about forty-five minutes. I’ll have to log back in forty minutes from now since I dragged my feet a little when logging out.”

While mumbling to himself, Merlin gathered a bunch of ingredients, took out pork from his refrigerator, and started to make kimchi stew.

“I feel like I’m losing too much weight, so I’ll probably do a one-to-one ratio of water to pork. Oh, should I order pizza for my next meal?”

Yongno hummed as he laid out his spread, with rice and side dishes, on his computer desk.

“Oh, come to think of it, there must be some users who specialize in Magic Eye, no?”

It was natural to think there might be others. Yongno went on DIO’s homepage and looked up the fan sites that were linked to it. The number of fan sites were considerable. At first glance, there seemed to be more than a hundred of them. Among them, the largest-looking sites were an official site called ‘New World’, followed by a site specializing in martial arts called ‘Invincible’, and then a site specializing in magic, ‘The Mage’s Tower’. Outside of internal energy and magic power, there were fan sites for each of the other seven spiritual power areas, including life force, aura, chakra, and the others. On these sites, users shared information on training methods and other related knowledge.

“Let’s see. Magic Eye would fall under The Mage’s Tower, right?”

When he entered The Mage’s Tower site, he was greeted by a logo that read [Please search The Mage’s Tower on your Beholder] on the upper right-hand corner of the site. It seemed that, if one possessed a Beholder, one could access this fan site within DIO.

“Oh, right here, Magic Eye… but there’s not a lot of info.”

On the [Destruction Spell] bulletin board, there were already over a thousand pages of user posts, but in the [Magic Eye] bulletin board, there were barely twenty. Still, the number of views was considerable, probably because there were many readers, and there was a lot of information to be garnered. Yongno found an interesting post and started to read it.

/Psychological Magic Eye Techniques do not seem to be effective between users; hence, most Magic Eye practitioners use the technique in control-type environments, such as Tamers or the recently popular ‘hindrance’ role in a party setting. I have specialized in the latter; however, instead of specializing in psychological control, I’ve specialized in Magic Eye for physical control. Please watch my video for more details./

A video was attached at the bottom of the post. DIO allowed users to use in-game cameras to record videos, and this video was shot using that feature. It showed eight users fighting against a dual sword wielding troll. The troll moved quickly, and it seemed to move and wield both its swords based on set parameters.

Among the eight users, there seemed to be a martial arts specialist, but no one within the party was able to properly match up against the troll’s swords. This meant that the party members were losing out to the troll purely on skill level. Additionally, troll’s regenerative abilities were known to be top notch, so unless it was overwhelmingly overrun or incinerated by extreme heat, it would recover from any injuries. The only advantage the party had was in numbers, but eight members weren’t enough. Many more would be needed to defeat this troll, the difference in fighting power was too wide.

Crack.

Suddenly, the rushing troll’s body became rigid, stopping it in its tracks. Seven of the users took this chance to launch attacks at the troll. With trained precision, they exacted critical damage on the troll in about a second. A troll could sustain any normal attack, but since all the users in the party wielded magic weapons, the troll’s regenerative ability was nullified.

“Step back!”

The sole user who stood back and didn’t attack the troll shouted out to the other seven. Soon, the seven retreated and got into defensive positions. Though the troll regained control over its body and launched a ferocious attack, it couldn’t land any substantial damage on them. Their defensive positioning absorbed the brunt of the attack. When the troll’s body grew rigid once more, the seven users rushed in again.

“Dang! This is such a cheat.”

Yongno chuckled. The user who posted the clip had utilized Magic Eye to take physical control away from the troll’s body so the others could do hit-and-run style damage on it. This had made their hunt much easier.

“It’s probably useful on monsters that are susceptible to Magic Eye. Of course, the effect and duration of Magic Eye will be limited against higher-level monsters, but I guess that isn’t an issue in a party with other users.”

As Yongno mumbled to himself, he read the description underneath the video clip.

/The ability to freeze up a high-level monster, like the troll in the video, was a recent development for me. Due to this skill, I’ve been treated like royalty in all the parties I’ve joined. The magic system that I used is as followed./

Below this explanation was forty-eight rune characters and a few lines of information. There were also five to six pages of drawings. It was a frequently used magic system.

/I’ve noticed that many users use C (computer language) to construct their magic systems. Mana isn’t a computer, so I don’t recommend this approach. But, it is true that magic systems share a lot of similarities to programming structures, so constructing a system in C may be useful and effective. I believe this is why most Magic Eye practitioners use Cracking to break through an opponent’s defenses./

“Cracking… well, I also used that to take control over Miho.”

Not only was programming a useful skill in Magic Eye, programming was useful in most areas of magic. However, for Magic Eye in particular, the programming skill of Cracking was especially useful, as it allowed one to take over an opponent’s mental psyche and physical body. Since this was the case…

“I feel like I can come up with a good idea… huh?”

The sound of a doorbell suddenly projected from his speakers. Minimizing the fan site window, Yongno could see an image of Merlin on his monitor.

“I’m surprised that this feature exists.”

Yongno discovered that he could observe and monitor his in-game character on his computer screen if he put his character in sleep-mode before logging out. Of course, since the time in DIO moved twelve times faster than in real life, the feed in the video played like it was fast-forwarding.

“She eventually placed me in my bed. Sweet kid.”

In the video feed, Yongno saw Miho walk up to Merlin’s bowed body, levitate him using some finger movements, and place Merlin atop his bed. Of course, Merlin didn’t react during this entire process. All this was done in an instant. From Yongno’s perspective, any quick movements looked incredibly fast or were impossible to see at all.

“I should make sure to log in soon. But, before that…”

With a broad smile, Yongno entered a fan site.

“I should learn how to defend myself, no?”