[Daily game time limit reached. Player will be forcibly logged out.]
[Please set the behavior protocol for your character during the offline period.]
(Conservative OR Aggressive)
[Player has confirmed Conservative. Congratulations on completing the fourth day of the game.]
[As the Playerâs strength has increased again, all Character Cards owned by the Player will now be updated accordingly.]
[Congratulations on acquiring a new contract subject. The Player will now receive the corresponding Servant Card reward.]
The familiar text dissolved into a single ball of streaming light. Then, before Lince at his computer desk, five cards materialized, hovering in the air.
Four Servant Cards slowly rotated in a circle around the main card as streaming light washed over their faces.
One gold, two blue, one yellow, and one white.
Lince quickly snatched the Giant Eagle Card from among them and immediately inspected it.
[Magic Pet Card]
[Shadow Wind Giant Eagle]
[Star Level: â â â â]
[Equivalent Tier: Five]
[Attribute: Wind]
[Skills: 1. Wind Devourer, 2. Wind-Riding Rush, 3. Wind Shadow Stealth, 4. Vortex Wind Blade]
[Instructions for Use:
1. This Magic Pet Card can only be used once per day, with a current time limit of 30 minutes.
2. This Magic Pet Card can only be used on birds. A bird user can gain 5% of the Magic Pet Cardâs base strength.
3. Ultimate authority over this Magic Pet Card is held by Player âLinceâ. It can be transferred, but not dropped.]
After reading the Servant Cardâs description, Lince finally let out a long sigh of relief.
"Good, itâs finally not limited to just eagles. Any bird can use it. Excellent!"
Lince had absolutely no interest in raising a large pet, but he could accept a small one.
The main thing was that a small pet wouldnât be as conspicuous, and it would be easy to care for.
Like his current hamster. Now that he had the Giant Eagle Card, he decided to go to the flower and bird market to buy a small bird to keep on his balcony.
As for what kind to buy, he would just go to the flower and bird market and see for himself.
Lince looked over the five cards one by one, then with a thought, absorbed them all into his mind.
However, at that moment, new text continued to appear.
[Congratulations, Player, on obtaining the special item âBook of Truth - Fragmentâ in this game session. This fragment acts upon the Playerâs and the characterâs consciousness and can be freely accessed in both the game and reality.]
[Does the Player wish to take out the âBook of Truth - Fragmentâ now to perform a synchronization with the real world dimension?]
???
Lince was a bit stunned, but he quickly came to his senses.
âRight, how could I have forgotten about such a huge treasure!â
âIs there even a need to think about it?â
So, Lince immediately chose to take it out.
However, the moment Lince made this choice, a change affecting the entire Blue Star and all of the Human Alliance began!
[Player has chosen to take out the âBook of Truth - Fragmentâ. Now initiating the ownership synchronization process for the Mythical Tier (Fragmented) item!]
[Game rule infringement and minor synchronization with reality commencing!]
[Alert! The current game version is about to undergo another large-scale update! The True Game will be taken down for server-wide maintenance. All online Players will be forcibly logged out! Countdown: 00:04:59]
"What the hell?"
When Lince saw the text appearing on his computer screen, he froze completely.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!!
The tremendous sound of an airburst suddenly erupted outside Linceâs room!
It was thundering!
And it was an incredibly loud thunderclap from a clear sky.
The thunder was so immense, rolling one clap after another, that it seemed to make countless high-rise buildings tremble slightly.
Lince himself was startled by the sudden, terrifying thunder and immediately looked out at the sky from his balcony.
The next moment, Lince saw countless dark clouds gathering in the sky around Dawn City.
The dark clouds rolled in, seemingly shrouding the entire worldâor at least the whole of Dawn Cityâin just over ten seconds.
The original sunny, blue sky vanished completely. Less than a minute later, a torrential downpour began to fall!
"Whatâs going on? That thunder was terrifying!"
"Did the weather forecast even mention rain today? And it came on so suddenly! I donât fucking have an umbrella!"
"Itâs the middle of summer, isnât it normal for it to start raining just like that? Itâs just that the thunder just now was a little too loud. It was pretty scary."
"..."
Outside on the streets, many people gathered in various spots to take shelter from the rain. They all looked rather disheveled as they stared at the sky.
These people had no idea what this rain was about to bring!
What they didnât know, however, was that this rain was affecting the entire globe simultaneously.
Across the entire Blue Star, in different hemispheres and time zones, thunder struck and rain fell at the exact same moment.
"Did I do all this? Or am I just overthinking things?!"
Lince stood on his balcony, looking at the heavy rain and the streets not far away, completely lost for a moment.
As if realizing something, Lince quickly returned to his bedroom and immediately looked at his computer screen again.
At this point, the entire screen of his computer was displaying a chaotic swirl of seven colors.
The seven colors scattered across the screen in an irregular, vortex-like pattern.
Sitting in front of his computer and gazing at the downpour outside that had made it seem like night, Lince immediately opened the game forums.
âAfter all, just waiting around like this wonât solve anything.â
âI should check the situation on the forums first.â
[Game Forums]
"What the hell? Why did this update force a logout? I wasnât even out of game time! God damn it, my Inference Day is screwed now. Compensation! I strongly demand the True Game operators give us compensation!"
"Isnât this game update a bit too sudden? I mean, when canât they do a version update? Why not wait until the normal server shutdown time? Did some major bug pop up or something?"
"The True Game might seem incredibly mysterious, but bugs are bound to happen. Otherwise, they wouldnât have updated the game and compensated the failed Players last time. I feel like itâs highly probable that for this update, those of us who were online will get some compensation, right?"
"How much compensation could we even get? Itâs useless to think about that. Iâm just curious what kind of bug caused this update, or which Player triggered it."
"Who else could it be? Right now, the only one in the entire game with a chance of doing something like this is that Giant Dragon Player, right? His game progress is like heâs using cheats. Who knows if heâs the game operatorâs favorite son?"
"Who says? Itâs just like a normal game; anyone can trigger a bug."
...
The game forums were bustling with activity.
But at a rough glance, most of the online Players were only concerned with whether or not there would be compensation for the sudden update.
As for who triggered it, that really had little to do with them.
After all, there were only a little over five thousand online Players left. On a Blue Star with a population of tens of billions, everyone was scattered far and wide. It was almost impossible for there to be any conflict, so anyone with half a brain wouldnât worry about whether a âHigh-End Playerâ posed a threat to them.
As for the Tier Four Players, and even the over one hundred Tier Three Players that had appeared, the online Players only occasionally brought them up as idle gossip.
Lince skimmed through the forum posts, and was about to check his small group chat.
But suddenly, his computer screen abruptly went black again.
[Rule synchronization process has been successfully initiated. Player reward distributed.]
[Version Update Preview: Please click this link to the official True Game homepage...]