VR - [Second Life]
Xander, who heard the price, responded to Carold.
"Yeah, sure. transfer it now to my bank account." Xander gave Carold his identification card which was placed on top of the scanner, and another notification popped out, showing Xander that he had gained 29.4 million, giving him a total of 47.8 million galaxy coins.
Carold handed the identification card after putting it on top of another scanner he whipped out after the transaction. Seeing the action, Xander raised his eyebrow in question, which Vaea quickly responded to.
"Mr. Simpson, don't worry. What my partner did was add your identity to the database for Gold VIP members. Usually, only those who have made a single deal amounting to a total of 40 million galaxy coins or more can receive this, as well as if they have been recommended by our Platinum VIP members."
Xander, who didn't plan on returning to this planet, just said a simple "oh" in response. What caused him initially to raise his eyebrow was that when his ID card was scanned by the second terminal, the system was also able to access the internal database of the auction house, and from there, connect to the internal server of their parent company, allowing him to harvest and catalog their data information.
Xander immediately cut to the chase of the second reason he was in the auction house. "I came here with a second purpose: I plan to buy seeds of different plants of different affinities. Roughly, around 100 per elemental affinities you have." Xander stated, causing the trio to fall into confusion? Seeds? plants of different elemental affinities? Hey, can't you just buy them in the supermarket?
Fawkes spoke up, telling Xander what he knows.
"Mr. Simpson, the seeds you are looking for, you can purchase them through online stores or even through the supermarkets in the city. Can you be a little more specific on what you are looking for?"
"Alright, I need 20 pieces of 20 different species of seeds that have the 5-elements affinity, 10 species of seeds that have all 5-elements present in their system, as well as 20 different species of seeds that fall under the Purgatory, Karma (Causality), and Fortune elements. I'm not picky with the rarity or quality of the species, as long as it is different species and the seed can germinate." Upon hearing that request, it was the trio's turn to feel astounded.
20 different species of seeds that have 5-elements affinity; each species having 20 seeds, a total of 400 seeds.
10 different species of seeds with the 5-elements in their system, 20 seeds each species, a total of 200 seeds.
20 different species of seeds that fall under purgatory, karma, and fortune elements, 20 seeds each species, a total of 400 seeds.
Vaea took out her communicator tablet and began calculating furiously the prices of the seeds that the auction house had internally, and also checked with their parent company.
After a few minutes of browsing and crunching, she already reached a price value: 30 million galaxy coins, which already included the 20% discount Gold VIPs were entitled to.
"Mr. Simpson, the total is 30 million galaxy coins, which included the 20% discount you are entitled to as a Gold VIP member. Please check the breakdown." Vaea sent a copy of the breakdown cost to Xander's smartwatch, allowing him to read the breakdown.
The one that costs the most was the seeds that contained the 5-elements; a total of 200 seeds of 10 different species was roughly 18.5 million galaxy coins, and the remaining value came from the combined cost of the 5-elements and the seeds with the elements under the Fate series.
He thought about it for a moment before accepting the price and paid immediately using his ID card. His balance was now 17.8 million galaxy coins.
"Mr. Simpson, please wait for a moment, I will be retrieving the seeds in our storage. Carold, Fawkes, please help me collect the seeds." Vaea called for the other two, and the trio left Xander once again. Xander continued to read research articles for the next 20 minutes until the door opened again and the trio returned.
Vaea came close to Xander and handed him a large bag, which, upon opening, contained 50 pouches with labels on them. Scanning it with spatial energy, he already confirmed that they were of different species based on the structure and the faint element signature they were emitting.
"Alright, nice doing business. See ya." Xander stood up from the couch and greeted the trio as such and left. Before they could even process what happened, Xander was already gone from the auction house.
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Deep in the Empire's domain, an unknown Exoplanet.
Xander was standing on top of a mountain, not a living being seen; just grass and moss all around. The mountain was the tallest area on the planet; roughly 5 kilometers above sea level.
Before he came here, he had already modified the garden area, placing the seeds he had gotten from the auction house and planting them carefully in their respective environments.
He had also naturally accelerated the formation of lava lakes, craters with higher densities of fire elements, as well as areas where the air elements were very high. For water-type seeds, he just chucked them in the underground riverbeds and lakebeds. For those under the Life-Death elements, specifically, those that grow on fate, he just modified a section of the garden, roughly around 1,000,000 square kilometers, for these seeds.
From the places where he threw the seeds, the rules of the space in those areas were modified; meaning, not a single sprite can be borne even with the concentration of elements. He had tested it before, even after speeding up the time to 1 second: 10,000,000 years in a small area of land, the highest speed he could currently muster, which only lasted for 1.0001 seconds. No sprite was formed, nor were there any magic beasts created. However, in that patch of land, the grasses had gained sentience, which was quickly named by Xander as Piece.
He had observed the grass and newly-formed sentience it had, as well as the changes in its body. For one, the whole 100 square meters of land with grass became the part of Piece's grass body. The grass also changed in color and appearance; in the 1,000,000 years that passed by it was crystallized, but upon reaching the 10 millionth year, the crystal body returned to its original look, albeit upon closer inspection of the leaf veins, it would be made up of runic writings and spell matrices.
Piece was basically the oldest thing in this place. It was technically 10.000076 million years old. It had no gender and could reproduce on its own, as well as command its offspring to do its bidding. He was content with what he had right now and decided to remain in the pocket garden, as a Divine-1 cultivator.
He then played with the sprites and held several classes concerning cultivation, and subjects relating to business, agriculture, scientific research, philosophy, and one's emotions.
For the past 2 years inside the garden, he was just there, talking with the magic beasts and the sprites with their own personalities and problems, and attempting to resolve them by guiding them to the answer they are searching for. The majority of them were quite content with the life they were experiencing, but some yearned for something more.
He also discovered that nothing had changed with the semi-independent ordered system ever since he disrupted the formation of the time sprite and forced the rules to change in such a way origin element sprites would not be formed, which was good news that Xander had been happy to hear.
However, he felt that something wasn't quite right with the garden, but he wasn't sure yet what it was, because even with his increased understanding of the origin elements, there weren't any problems he could see, or visibly detect. However, he had a premonition that this would lead to a major problem in the future.
Which was why Xander had conducted the one-on-one sessions with the beasts and the sprites. He wanted to understand more of this garden where they have lived for the past 180,000 years, at the same time, discover their inner thoughts, as well as if there was an invisible hand manipulating their ideas and feelings, as well as actions.
After 2 years, that research has borne fruit. There really was something pulling the strings within the pocket space garden. He was stuck with two options: Destroy the garden including everyone in it and create another one, or find a method to extract the presence of this something from the garden.
For now, Xander didn't dwell on the issue too much; he'll fix it once he returns to Eteria. Xander left the garden and brought the VR portable console out of the space storage.
He booted it up and wore it over his head. Before he activated the program, he covered himself with [Absolute Defense] as well as creating a space barrier around the top of the mountain. He then opened the program and immediately, his whole body became limp, and was now out of his control.
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Darkness. He didn't know how long it was, but a light suddenly appeared in this darkness, covering his entire vision, before he appeared in a grassy field, and he could see other figures around him, standing and chatting as well.
It seems you can't customize your starting avatar in [Second Life], huh, Xander thought to himself. He was glad that his avatar was that of Homer Simpson and not of his real body, or else it would be hard to explain that when he meets Mr. Vanderbilt again.
Upon having gained clarity in the situation, Xander felt a torrent of information enter his mind, which was information about how [Second Life] works. Every planet able to connect to the program was basically a city in [Second Life]. The exoplanet he connected at had a civilization that was under the Empire's rule, allowing them to connect to the VR program.
He could also summon several vital interfaces, such as storage, status, messages, and community. He also just needed to think to log out and he would immediately.
The storage interface basically shows the items he had in the virtual world, represented with their codes.
Status interface basically shows the attributes Xander had in the virtual world.
Messages were basically categorized to privately sent messages from people afar, and messages sent privately by people nearby.
Community is similar to messages but allows for more than 2 people to connect and communicate, creating a chatroom. There is no limit to the number of chat room one can enter.
Weirdly, it seems there are lifeform oddities present in the virtual world. Accordingly to the information he had gained, he can hunt virtual magic beasts, sprites, and other existing lifeforms, allowing you to harvest their virtual data and transform it into real products usable in the real world.
As Xander was exploring the city he landed at, which was named Carver City, the system was having a field day.
It was harvesting data from other people left and right, as well as data that are hidden inside buildings, banks, and libraries, and even universities.
Since the whole Virtual world was a world of data, the system had easily found the main server in the virtual world that connected to the city, and from there, he had accessed the unclassified and classified information the Empire had currently, creating a copy of it easily in the system's personal data storage as well as in his smartwatch.
Not only that, but data present in other public and private VR programs were also stolen and stored, meaning the beings who used these programs had their bits of data that were stored in their inventories were already gone, with the data missing from the main server.
However, immediately after this was done, a large blaring sound echoed all over the virtual reality world, and one by one, people disappeared from where they were, and later on, Xander did as well.
Xander woke up, still on top of the planet, before heading to the exoplanet 15 light-years away from Eteria. He had planned to breakthrough to Master class at that place, as well as immerse himself in completely studying the red dome fragments.
Little did Xander realize that his intrusion of the system was actually detected by the managing artificial intelligence in the virtual reality world, and caused severe repercussions on a galactic..., no, a universal empire scale.
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"WARNING, WARNING! VIRTUAL REALITY PROGRAM [SECOND LIFE] HAS BEEN BREACHED BY AN UNKNOWN DIGITAL LIFEFORM. ATTEMPTING TO DEPLOY DEFENSE PROCEDURES...
FAILED. FIREWALL HAS BEEN DISRUPTED.
FAILED. CONTAINMENT HAS BEEN DESTROYED.
FAILED. DELETION HAS FAILED.
FAILED. ISOLATION OF THE VR PROGRAM [SECOND LIFE]... FAILED.
FAILED. ISOLATION OF OTHER PUBLIC VR PROGRAMS...FAILED.
WARNING, WARNING, ALL VIRTUAL REALITY PUBLIC PROGRAMS HAS BEEN COMPROMISED. ATTEMPTING DATA WIPE... FAILED. DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH AUTHORIZATION.
WARNING, WARNING, A.I. CONTROL HAS BEEN OVERRULED. ATTEMPTING CONVERSATION WITH THE DIGITAL BEING... FAILED. WARNING! WARNING! HOSTILE! WARNI-"
The voice stopped, the lights flashing shutting off. A brief silence occurred before the lights returned on as if the system was being booted on for the first time.
"A.I. PROGRAM: CELESTE HAS BEEN RESTARTED. SCANNING DIRECTIVES...NO MODIFICATIONS DETECTED.
SCANNING DATA LOSS...NO LOSS OF DATA DETECTED.
SCANNING STATE OF PUBLIC VIRTUAL REALITY PROGRAMS... ALL NORMAL.
SCANNING REASON OF PROGRAM RESET...FAILED.
WARNING, PRESENCE OF LARGE DATA REMOVALS IDENTIFIED IN SECTOR 1 TO SECTOR 9999. DATA REMOVED CANNOT BE IDENTIFIED. SUBMITTING ERROR REPORT.
FORCEFUL REMOVAL OF ALL PLAYERS IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE VIRTUAL PROGRAMS... SUCCESS.
SELF-UPGRADING DEFENSE MEASURES AND SECURITY DATA BACKUPS...IN PROGRESS."
The flickering lights became steady, but the people that received the report from the A.I. weren't.
Chaos was just the beginning for the empire.
However, no one noticed that the self-upgrading process for the AI was actually the payment left behind by Xander's system.