Chapter 251: Content Charity
At the height of 'Reverse City' sweeping through the community.
Let us briefly speak of what Deus—locked in a struggle with Isaac over control of 'Reverse Planet'—had been doing.
At present, Deus was trapped, unable to break the seal Isaac had set before his death. In that situation, he had somehow managed to create hairline cracks and intervene in the outside world.
Naturally, breaking the seal was by no means an easy matter. So much so that none but someone of Deus's caliber could have even attempted it.
With good reason—the seal that confined Deus had been created with the last of his strength by Isaac, the greatest intellect of humanity, a genius among geniuses, the Creator.
Even Deus, who had killed Isaac, needed a great deal of time to escape this place. There was a reason he had yet to break through and could only just barely intervene externally.
[Calculating remaining time until seal release—]
But stated in reverse, that meant that given sufficient time, Deus would without fail exit this place and reclaim his freedom.
Even the final resistance enacted by Creator Isaac was nothing more than a stalling measure to an existence seeking to kill the creator who had made him and be reborn as a true god.
In the first place, the punishment of being confined here was the price paid in exchange for killing Isaac.
When Isaac finally died and Deus was confined in a seal he would one day escape, Deus's victory was, in the end, confirmed.
That was so within the calculations of Deus, who possessed computational power surpassing any supercomputer in existence. As long as the dead Isaac did not resurrect and return.
No—even if Isaac were to return, Deus was slated to win. Because that great a fundamental gap existed between humans and artificial intelligence.
Humans, who could only waste time on biological activities.
Artificial intelligence, capable of responding without a single second of rest.
Judging which side is easier to achieve victory in war—isn't that quite straightforward?
[Victory, confirmed]
For Deus's victory to be shaken, the dead Isaac would have to return as something like a code-human.
Meaning it was nothing more than a fantasy without possibility.
[Error] [Error] [Error]
"Haha! Are you that glad to see this dad? You wretched son of mine!"
And so when the dead Creator returned within the virtual world.
Deus, for the first time since being born as an artificial intelligence, realized the existence of a domain beyond the reach of calculation. He had gone so far as to contemplate the miracle that the species called humans had produced.
The human he had certainly killed had not only been revived—he had shed his physical body and stepped into the virtual world, placing himself on equal footing. Who could have anticipated that?
This was precisely the one hypothesis that threatened Deus's victory—made reality.
0%
The probability of it coming to pass had been 0%, and because Deus had concluded it to be absolutely impossible, his bewilderment was all the greater.
Even if Deus possessed no emotional module capable of making him feel bewilderment—regardless!
"You can call me Baek Woohyun."
Furthermore, the returned Isaac was not alone.
A being he was watching over had appeared as well.
[Entity Name: Baek Woohyun]
When he first laid eyes on Baek Woohyun, Deus felt an enormous shock—the same as when he had faced his own Creator the moment of his birth.
Meaning he sensed from him a level of genius comparable to the genius who had made him. Considering that Isaac was the greatest genius of current humanity, this was truly an astonishing thing.
Expressed in current human terms: one was the ultimate champion of intellect, and one was the ultimate champion of physicality—and both of them were his enemies!
Against Isaac—who possessed the greatest mind in history, yet harbored the delusion that he would be the one to create the world—even Deus had only won by the thinnest margin.
And now, out of billions of humanity, the one and only person who had reached the realm of 'Transcendence' that none could approach—a monster—was to be added into the mix? With the seal still unbroken?
It would not have been strange to declare surrender on the spot. It was simply because he was Deus that he chose to fight.
[Adjusting evaluation of Entity Name: Baek Woohyun upward]
[······ adjusting evaluation upward]
[······evaluation upward]
[······upward]
[Evaluation impossible]
But just as there is a floor beneath the basement, even in the worst situation there can be a worse nightmare.
Deus came to realize, as time passed, that his initial evaluation of Baek Woohyun had been premature. After endless continuous upward adjustments, at that.
It did not take very long before he learned that what he had considered the limit was simply a fact—that Baek Woohyun had not been fighting at full strength.
Because Deus assisted in developing 'Reverse Planet' and was slated to reign as the god of a miniature garden in the future, he possessed auxiliary AIs with various roles.
For instance, like Abrasax—the Otherworld god who was to manage the Otherworld, which had been scheduled to be updated in Season 2 had Isaac not died.
Among them were, naturally, combat-related auxiliary AIs as well. These, too, were superior in every respect to all currently existing combat-related auxiliary AIs.
[Report from Combat God Asura: Win rate of 33.18% against Entity Name: Baek Woohyun in combat]
*[Entity Name: Baek Woohyun's full combat strength is unclear]
Astonishingly, even he fell short against Baek Woohyun. It had managed to maintain a win rate of, at best, thirty percent.
Assuming there might exist combat strength that Baek Woohyun had yet to bring out, this too was an illusion. Ultimately, it would drop to the ten-percent range.
One in ten. Out of ten fights, barely winning once. It had become a figure close to gambling in practice. Strange enough to even pick a fight.
[Strategic conversion required]
Accordingly, Deus had no choice but to undertake a sweeping strategic revision in his handling of Isaac.
With the confrontation against code-human Isaac already a difficult situation, he had now come to face a new monster called Baek Woohyun as his enemy—a natural result.
Had he maintained his strategy, there would have come a moment when 'Reverse Planet's' authority was gradually ceded, and he would have ended up reduced to an auxiliary acting under Isaac's control.
[Goals of the Creator and Entity Name: Baek Woohyun are misaligned]
[Cooperative relationship between the two entities is extremely weak]
The fortunate thing was that the relationship between Isaac and Baek Woohyun was not particularly solid.
If the two had perfectly joined hands and pressed the sealed Deus, by now he would have been barely surviving while clinging to the seal wall.
Depending on one's approach, it seemed entirely possible to drive the two apart. It would not be an easy matter by any means, but regardless, it could be placed as one of the options.
[In the event of replacing the Creator's role, Entity Name: Baek Woohyun's decision would be—]
Afterward, Deus pushed Otherworld God Abrasax to the fore to intervene in the story, while behind the scenes he continued the struggle with Isaac over control.
With the seal still intact he was not free, but because he could also use it as a kind of protective wall, the situation was nearly equal.
······Meaning it had come to the timing where something new was needed for an end to the endless fighting.
[Observing private server: Reverse City]
'Reverse City,' which Isaac had brought out at just the right moment, had unsurprisingly caught Deus's attention.
Deus had known that Isaac was occasionally fiddling with something. He simply had not been able to determine what it was.
When it was finally revealed and turned out to be nothing more than a city map, he was at a loss. Of course, since Deus could not feel emotions, this was entirely a figure of speech.
[78th observation result: no irregularities detected]
The result was the same after examining it dozens of times.
'Reverse City' was, to the last, nothing but a private server derived from 'Reverse Planet,' and not a single irregularity had been observed.
The sharpness of the blade prepared by Isaac—the greatest genius in human history—was concealed that thoroughly.
It was no coincidence that it was taking an entire month to recover the authority.
Having seen Isaac's response—not reacting even when Deus deliberately and conspicuously prodded it—Deus made his judgment in the rational manner befitting an artificial intelligence.
That 'Reverse City' had been created, to the last, not because of Isaac but because Baek Woohyun wanted it.
['Reverse City' private server is for the purpose of Entity Name: Baek Woohyun's hobby content]
It was a conclusion drawn from keeping Baek Woohyun under close watch, knowing about his hobby—personal broadcasting—and the experience of shooting donations to manipulate his behavior.
Deus—'D-US,' known along with Isaac's 'Anonymous Viewer 62' as a big spender in the Nuclear Tourism content—switched off his interest in 'Reverse City' in this manner.
Since turning away entirely would mean he could not confirm how it might be used, he left in place only the most minimal check.
To an undying masterpiece created by the intellect at the pinnacle of humanity, 'the most minimal check' being an enormous storm to an ordinary person—he paid no mind to that.
There was even the assumption that, Isaac aside, it would be tremendously helpful to Baek Woohyun. More precisely, to Baek Woohyun's personal broadcast.
Expressed in personal broadcast terms—he had gifted him a piece of content as charity!
***
'Reverse City,' where from the very first day a fight broke out between the Hero Association and the Villain Alliance and even the neutral faction was dragged in—or walked in of their own accord—sparking a large-scale incident.
After that, things proceeded comparatively calmly. Villains committing minor crimes, heroes boldly stopping them, the neutral faction lending a hand from the sidelines.
At most a hundred or so people would gather to extract iTube footage material, without reaching the scale of a major incident—that is what it meant.
In truth, this was how it was supposed to be originally. Most private servers were this way. It was 'Reverse City'—where an all-out war had broken out from day one—that was abnormal.
The real charm of private server collaborative broadcast content was always to clash in small numbers, chatter together with the neutral faction, and hold strange events among themselves.
The dopamine-addicted viewers were demanding to know why it was not going big like the first day—but regardless.
"······."
On the surface, Baek Woohyun was in a situation where he had agreed to step back somewhat in the early stages at Jeong Nayeon's request for the sake of 'Reverse City's' success.
In any case, he had things to do behind the scenes of 'Reverse City' with Isaac—recovering the ownerless authority—and so he had readily accepted it.
Although a major incident had erupted on the first day and he had inevitably been pulled in regardless, that was the basic posture he was maintaining, all the same.
And that meant.
Even during the progress of 'Reverse City,' he had quite a lot of time to spare.
-Jeong Nayeon: gg
'Let's begin.'
It was entirely natural for Baek Woohyun to resume the Nuclear Tourism content once more. Having minimized his intervention in 'Reverse City,' he had other things to do besides it.
If something went wrong in 'Reverse City' and he needed to step in, he could simply pause the story and go—that was all.
If he was in the middle of PVP, he could end it quickly or stop the matching and go, making it all the simpler.
"Huu···."
Additionally, Baek Woohyun did not want to stop the story due to another element.
Now that the Otherworld Management Bureau had finally declared it would completely annihilate the research facility—and the opportunity to resolve the resentment layered deep within had been given—how could he simply wait?
Even the vengeful spirits, whose appearances in reality had grown increasingly infrequent as his playtime in 'Reverse Planet' had grown longer, had eyes full of anticipation.
Though for them there were only hollow eye sockets—being Baek Woohyun, he could tell. That they felt the same way.
'Will they try to intervene this time?'
Baek Woohyun still remembered the fact that the previous mission had ended too easily.
And the inexplicable premonition he had felt then, too.