The Almighty Ring

Jiang Fei was experiencing a roller coaster of emotions. On one hand, he felt guilty, ashamed, and regretful towards Akatziris. On the other hand, the loss of Miluya and her last words had shaken Jiang Fei to his core. He had been there for her since she was only a little girl when she looked no older than 6 years old, all the way until she was a fully-grown woman. Although he did not know it, he was there as well, when Miluya was an old woman. Even though she was merciless in her killings, and did not justify the reason why she had killed all the NPCs, including Jiang Fei’s own master, Ou Yezi and his “father-in-law”, the Demon King, Jiang Fei had no anger or resentment towards Miluya.

Even after the day she had disappeared, Jiang Fei mobilized the entire guild, and yet no one had returned with a shred of information regarding Miluya.

Right now, a piece of message, the last words of Miluya was waiting for him to be played.

His fingers trembled at the sight of Miluya’s face as he pressed the hovering “play” button.

“Big brother. It’s me. Miluya. I guess… it’s been a while and I hope that big brother would still remember me,” said the little girl. The innocent, sad voice of Miluya immediately made Jiang Fei choke on his emotions.

“Please forgive me… for all that I’ve ever done… all the sins that I have committed… was for your sake. My father… My father had created me to help you kill all the Celestial tier NPCs in the game,” Miluya explained. She started off stuttering as if she was struggling to suppress her sadness. This made Jiang Fei shed a tear in seeing her like that. However, after she regained her composure, she began to explain things, like an old man, reciting an old tale. Ironically, she was explaining in a young, innocent voice of a little girl.

The girl did not originate from the game but was created by none other than 0541. Unbeknownst to Jiang Fei, 0541 had preemptively created a program and injected it into the game before he was sealed away for violating the A.I support system protocol.

That was why Miluya was so powerful, so overwhelming, like a program BUG that could never be purged from the system. Her true nature was a virus program, created to sabotage the system codes.

0541 did this because he understood Jiang Fei too well. Jiang Fei could never be a perfect warrior as he was too emotional to engage with things that should not have affected his combat prowess. Most importantly, Jiang Fei was human, an emphatic being. Even though they were stronger, if you asked him to kill the Primordials, Jiang Fei would find a way to accomplish that goal. However, Jiang Fei could never harm those that were his allies, those that had formed a bond with him. Hence, as Jiang Fei’s assistant, 0541 had concluded that Jiang Fei should not plunge himself into the abyss just to accomplish some goal. A night before he was sealed away, 0541 created a masterpiece—a powerful Artificial Intelligence Worm-Program called Miluya.

Before he could become the strongest A.I support system, 0541 had “lived” a long life, assisting many other captains and had gained intelligence evolution that was almost human-like. His programming was so strong that no firewall, even the likes of those Unknowns could stop him from breaching into the “Dawn Break” system core. All of this was not accomplished discreetly, the true leader of the Unknown, Veiga knew all about it yet they were powerless to stop 0541 from injecting a virus.

The product of the making of the strongest A.I support system, Miluya, was too, invincible against all of Veiga’s attempts to purge her out of their system. When they finally understood what she was and what she was supposed to do, Veiga quickly pushed forward their plans to extract in-game NPCs to prevent them from being truly deleted by Miluya.

When Veiga pushed his plans forward, Miluya had only just activated. She was still in her infancy state and was too weak to do anything then. In the spur of the moment, Miluya had decided to speed things up on her side, by accelerating her growth. That was the reason why Miluya was growing older at an accelerated speed.

As a Worm program, her task, bestowed by 0541, was to find and delete all Celestial tier NPCs, the same task that was given to Jiang Fei. 0541’s original plan was not to have Jiang Fei to be the main force. That role was given to Miluya. She was meant to spearhead that while Jiang Fei was only the assistant. Her role, aside from killing the NPCs, was to reduce and if possible, cut off the supply of soldiers for the Unknowns. When she realized that the Unknowns had influenced and gathered hundreds of NPCs to be extracted, it was her chance to strike.

It was during the time when Jiang Fei was out of the game, creating weapons and armor for the war against the Unknown when Miluya held nothing back and unleashed her full potential, burning the last of her life force to finish her mission.

On the day Jiang Fei had launched his attack, Miluya had reached the limit of her potential. However, her mission was still not done. At that moment, she unlocked the limiter that was placed by 0541, temporary granting her a plethora of abilities, making her an exact copy of 0541. With that power, Miluya swam across the internet, finding and destroying data that was linked to the Unknowns. She had even managed to trace their physical location and destroyed their mainframe. It was an instant, the power similar to 0541 himself was unstoppable. Before the Unknowns could do anything to salvage their losses, Miluya went ahead and destroy the Unknowns’ own A.I support system.

If it wasn’t for that, 0543 could never hack into their defense system and disable all their defenses. The Unknown’s own support system was, much like 0543, a newborn program.

Throughout the entire playback, Jiang Fei was struggling with having a meltdown. The others were still able to hold themselves together, albeit not too well. Miluya was a stranger to everyone but Jiang Fei, yet they could still understand what had happened. They knew that a self-aware program had sacrificed her own life to protect Jiang Fei.

Miluya was just a newborn. Being able to achieve the same level of computing power as 0541 was commendable, to begin with. Even so, she was, in the end, not 0541. The immense data flow and processing power had taken a toll on her. In the instant her mission was accomplished, her entire system core was damaged.

Isabella and Sylphy was solemnly mourning while Nina and Ariel were already crying a river. Even though everyone then were more than willing to put their lives on the line for Jiang Fei, Miluya’s act of self-sacrificing was still able to inspire people.

When 0541 created Miluya, the only mission he gave her was to eliminate all Celestial tier NPCs, Miluya went out of her way to accomplish even more. There was no time limit, no method of restriction, no preordained path that she was meant to take. Knowing that sacrificing herself would benefit Jiang Fei more, she had gladly went on the darker path.

Everyone was shedding a tear for the poor Miluya, except Isabella. She was touched but there was one other feeling that no one else had then. It was the feeling of anguish. She understood that if all Celestial tier NPCs were dead, that would only mean that her own parents were killed.

Even though she knew that her parents were just fictional characters created by humans, the memories that were imprinted inside her were still there.

Isabella could not hate Miluya since she had only accomplish her mission and even sacrifice herself for Jiang Fei’s sake. However, Miluya was dead, Isabella could no longer avenge her dead parents. It was also impossible for her to direct her vengeance towards Jiang Fei.