━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
With the amount of trust and loyalty that the people closest to the hero had for him, it was naturally impossible to allow anyone to just wrench him out of the full-dive pod. At least, it couldn't be done without a certain level of strength.
Even when Mr. Dingleberry arrived at the villa in person and started making threats, all he got in exchange were empty promises that Darryl would definitely clear his 'doubts' as soon as he returned, which would be 'soon'.
Unfortunately, the hero's 'assistants' failed to understand just how severe the situation was in normal people's eyes, and when Mr. Dingleberry rushed up the stairs with a team of trained professionals, they realized all too late that they simply had no means to resist.
"Shit! Barging in like that, you're breaking the law!"
"Don't you dare press that button!"
"Get away!"
Their cries fell on deaf ears as Mr. Dingleberry motioned one of his men to press the hazard button on the full-dive pod.
In case of emergencies, such as when a fire broke out, this method could be used to forcibly disconnect a player's consciousness from the system.
Of course, it was also possible to simply break open the pod's door, and pull the person out, but that was too risky. If something happened to the 'genius' because of him, Mr. Dingleberry knew that he would not be able to bear the consequences.
The pod's lid popped open within seconds of the hazard button being pressed, and the rather disoriented dark-haired man inside groaned in discomfort.
When the hero still had his eyes closed, Mr. Dingleberry was full of righteous indignation, but the moment they snapped open, the furious man's thoughts turned stagnant.
"Although I can't say I didn't expect it, how awfully rude of you to break into my home and assault me like this." The hero's murky green eyes seemed to be seeped with poison, making the people surrounding him involuntarily take a step back.
The seemingly average-looking man in front of them now looked so dazzling and unapproachable that none of the people present dared to be rude to his face, subconsciously feeling their own inferiority.
Maybe this was the 'presence' of a true genius, or so many around the hero had often theorized.
"I'm sorry, Darryl, we couldn't stop these people."
The hero chuckled as he waved off the apologies from his helpers. "It's alright. I could have left Rocky out to deal with this sort of trouble, but then he would fall too far behind the others. I… will be fine even if I have to take a break."
His confident and soothing voice immediately reassured and made his supporters sigh in admiration, though their dissatisfaction with the actions of these 'intruders' only got worse.
"So, I'm guessing you're here to tell me to 'fix' all the issues with Arcadia immediately, right?"
Mr. Dingleberry immediately broke out of his daze, and groaned. "So you knew? Why did you wait till we got into so much trouble first, then?!"
Before the hero could answer, the man shook his head furiously. "No, wait, don't tell me that. First, you go arrange for all the extreme elements from the game to be removed. I have a complete list here—"
The dark-haired boy interrupted him with a chuckle. "I will do no such thing. No, to be more precise… I can't. Arcadia… is not something anyone can interfere with anymore."
Mr. Dingleberry was so stunned that he failed to respond to the ridiculous statement from the genius for almost a full minute, only to then burst into uncontrollable laughter. "Is this a joke? You're funny, Mr. Darryl, real funny!"
He suddenly paused, then sneered. "What isn't funny, however, is how much you're going to hurt our interests with your attitude."
Looking at the amused eyes of the 'genius', he felt a little unnerved, but Mr. Dingleberry soon shook off such irrelevant thoughts as he frowned. "Mr. Darryl, since you're a smart man, I won't beat around the bush. There are already hundreds of articles and reports of how 'dangerous' Arcadia is for the people. If not for some people being considerate of the reputation we've built over the years, this beloved game of yours would already be down."
Darryl smiled. "Oh? Dangerous? Did anyone get hurt, or die?"
Of course, his question was purely sarcastic. How could he not know that such a thing was impossible at this point?
Mr. Dingleberry's expression soured at his unrepentant attitude. "Just because a game doesn't cause physical injuries doesn't mean it will be allowed to stay on the market!"
He didn't say it, but Darryl could obviously tell that the man considered him extremely foolish to not take such things into consideration.
"Although many people praised it for being so realistic, there is a limit to how far you can go, and you've crossed it long, long ago." Mr. Dingleberry sighed. "Maybe even if we do everything we can now, most countries will still ban our game within a few days."
Thinking of how the planned 'monetization model' hadn't even been implemented, and the billions of dollars that were now destined to go down the drain, the mustached man almost cried.
Recalling how ecstatic and proud he had been when he told the investors of the genius being too obsessed with the new project to even demand fair compensation, he felt even more ashamed. 'T-This guy... was he scheming to bring us down from the start?!'
Although he was only an executive and not a major investor, he almost couldn't believe how stupid he had been to trust this man, and that they were going to take such a huge loss.
His parents had given him such a name so that he would always remember to be careful and cautious of 'frauds', unlike his father, and Mr. Dingleberry could only lament that he'd grown so 'lax' over time despite their good intentions.
To Mr. Dingleberry's disgust, the 'genius' in front of him seemed completely unrepentant, and just smiled. "Ahh, this was my negligence. I forgot to tell you… that the game we 'created' has already evolved into something beyond our control."
Mr. Dingleberry's eyes were full of rage at the boy's mocking tone, unable to understand how a genius could be so ignorant of how the world worked. 'What kind of hatred does he have with us, to not even care for the repercussions he would be facing himself just to hurt us like this?!'
Looking at the man's dark expression, Darryl chuckled. "If those 'higher-authorities' of yours could do something about it… tell them I would actually be very 'happy' to see it happen."
He wasn't just being conceited or overconfident, of course. Now that Arcadia was online... Darryl knew that no one could stop its momentum.
He knew very well that Arcadia's 'server' was the world itself, and it didn't rely on any 'network' to connect with people as these fools stupidly believed. The only way to really 'ban' it now was to forbid people from playing it, but how effective could that really be?
Even if someone was stupid enough to start seizing and destroying full-dive pods... once they realized that Arcadia could give them what they could never have imagined was possible, how many could resist that temptation?
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Emilia naturally had no idea that while she was immersed in the joy of getting a rare drop after killing her first 'elite', the hero and his team were going through an 'unexpected' crisis.
After all, while it was possible for Cynthia and her to know a lot of things about the possible future based on the previous timeline's events, what they could realistically observe was far from the complete version.
The crimson-haired girl first allocated all the points she got from leveling up to 'Agility', then looked at her status panel with satisfaction.
===========
— Princess —
— Titles —
-None
Type → Elf
Class → Warrior
[Level 4]
Experience Points → [3,411 / 8,000]
— Primary Stats —
[Strength] → 14
[Intelligence] → 14
[Agility] → 107
Unallocated Points: 0
— Secondary Stats —
Hitpoints → 140
Mana → 14
Speed → 1.07
Inventory → 10 Slots
===================
"The boots and skirt didn't have such a colorful glow… does that mean these are of a higher quality or something?" Crystal tilted her head in confusion.
Looking at the glowing sword, earrings, and boots, Emilia nodded with a smile. "I think so. Let's quickly get back to town to see what we got."
She evenly split the nearly two thousand copper coins and fifty pieces of [Wild Boar Meat], then put the rest of it all into her own inventory.
The fact that they got three pieces of 'Green' equipment so early was really a giant stroke of luck, and Emilia didn't want anyone to discover it if possible. Thankfully, the glow from the dropped items was instantly removed after they were first picked up, so determining the actual quality of equipment by just looking was quite difficult.
As for how to distribute their loot, that could always wait until they at least knew all the stats of each item, though the sword was obviously hers.
It was a little inconvenient that neither of them had the 'identify' skill, but there wasn't really an option to get it at this stage of the game, as far as Emilia knew.
Of course, the crimson-haired elf's behavior of simply 'snatching' all the loot would definitely look extremely dishonest and greedy to a stranger, but Crystal only chuckled in amusement as she followed her back to the beginner's town.
Had she not known that they might be separated upon leaving the beginner's town, Crystal would even think of splitting the coins as unnecessary, let alone the loot.
"It's a good thing that pig dropped so many coins. We didn't really have many left after buying those mana potions." Emilia giggled. "It's almost funny how this one guy was worth so much more than those hundreds of monsters."
Crystal smiled. "If you think about how so much effort could have gone to waste if we failed to kill it, though, I think the reward makes sense."
The two of them killed a few more boars and rabbits that they encountered on their way back to the beginner's town, almost shocking several newbies silly with the ease with which they did so.
"What the fuck...?"
Many completely failed to respond to the two girls dashing past them so beautifully, but some couldn't help but be furious.
"Don't steal our kills!"
"Hey, come back here!"
They'd already 'set the rule' that those closest to where a monster appeared would have the 'right' to take that kill, but those two had completely ignored that. How could they not be angry?
Of course, Emilia didn't pay much attention to such a thing, busy as she was in lamenting that the copper coins above a certain limit were automatically converted to gold and silver denominations after being put into the inventory. 'So the only way to look at big numbers is to have a lot of gold coins… huh.'
The crimson-haired girl sighed in disappointment, though she was now looking forward to killing 'better' elites even more. 'Hearing all those complaints about this guy giving trash drops, I almost got duped!'
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
This content is taken from fr(e)ewebn(o)vel.𝓬𝓸𝓶