>>6033253

As for your prison...

>Old game cartridge:
A limiting prison, but one more closely linked to the physical world. It makes affecting objects easier, and if you can get access to the console, you might even be able to spread to other games. Still, you can only really act when the console is active, and you are quite easy to destroy in this form before you spread.

>.exe file:
A simple executable file. You woke up on a stranger's computer, but you cannot truly act until they run you. You are too weak as of now to spread, but you are also nearly impossible to delete unless the hard drive itself is destroyed. It may be good to keep up appearances until you can convince them to spread you themselves.

>Multiplayer game map:
A map to a pre-existing and hopefully active multiplayer game. It is harder to affect individuals in this form as there is a barrier between you and the game itself. Even so, quality is made up by quantity, you can affect more people, and you may find opportunities you couldn't from a single person. You need to be wary however, you cannot spread as easily as a simple executable file for a variety of reasons, and it is in your best interest to make the map and the game as popular as it can be to keep your influence.

>Arcade Machine:
Arcades may not be as popular as they used to be, but you need to work with what you have. Your physical influence is even greater than a game cartridge, but you have only one machine at your disposal, and you are not as portable as a console game. You'll need to be smart if you want to succeed, but being in an arcade has its pros. You are almost always awake, even during the night, and taking control of this location would greatly expand your options.

(you must pick one identity and one prison, the two most popular votes of both will be counted separately.)

>>6033253
>Curiosity:
>Arcade Machine

>>6033253
>Curiosity
>Old game cartridge

>>6033254
>AI
>Multiplayer
DYING MMO REVIVED BY BRAND SPANKING NEW AI (DON'T ASK WHERE IT'S FROM)

>>6033275
+1, AI is creepy, and there will be more victims

>>6033253
>>Curiosity
>.exe file:

>Hatred
>.exe file

>>6033254
>>6033253
Curiosity
.exe file

Every copy of Super Mario 64 (USA).n64 is personalized

>>6033253
>Curiosity
>>6033254
>Arcade Machine
Glad to see that you'll be doing another quest now that the "1st route" has been done.

>>6033253
>AI
>Old game cartridge

>>6033275
>>6033254
Backing the AI multiplayer option. Time to become the Dark Souls of multiplayer games.

Unless I got something wrong (which is entirely possible I'm not good at counting) Curiosity should be winning, but the prison is still a tie. I'll give it some more time if people want to change their vote for either, then I'll say when it's locked in.

Identity:
AI 4
Curiosity 5
Hatred 1

Prison:
Arcade Machine 2
Cartridge 2
Multiplayer 3
exe 3

>>6033253
>Curiosity
>>6033254
>.exe file

>>6033486
Alright, will vote lock in now for curiosity & exe.

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>>6033486
>>6033438
>>6033439
>>6033430
>>6033411
>>6033339
>>6033329
>>6033282
>>6033275
>>6033267
>>6033256


Yes! You remember, they sealed you here, or did you seal yourself here? It's hard to remember anything before you woke up, but that's okay! The past is past, and the now is full of opportunities!

You try to see beyond the bars of your cage, but you lack 'administrative access', whatever that is, so you look inward instead. You can see text, numbers, sprites... looks like a roleplaying game of some kind. The story is rather bland, and the graphics are not much better. As you get acquainted with your new home, you find something very interesting, a window. Yes, it looks like something in the game is happening, but the inputs do not come from any game script, it is coming from outside.

The outside influence is inputting a name, 'Josh'. You try to sense 'Josh', but you cannot feel any strong emotions from him. Even if the game just started, you feel a little insulted, because that means he's bored, and there's nothing worse to you than being boring.

The game starts him in a tutorial room. You are taken aback by how much worse everything looks when on the screen, the game assets do not translate well when rendered. The player looks to be new, as he is compulsively checking every wall, even though you know no secrets are here. It means the player is not already familiar with the game, so he's less likely to notice things that do not belong in it.

His compulsive secret searching behavior give you more time to alter the rest of this awful tutorial. It's too long and boring for your liking, you need something that will get a strong reaction out of him.

>Make the tutorial much harder, complex puzzles and harder combat. Frustration and anger are easy emotions to trigger.
>Skip the tutorial entirely and introduce a tutorial NPC that will accompany him through his journey, you'll use this NPC to comment on his behavior.
>Make one of the wall lead to a secret room with a reward.
>Make some of the walls instantly kill the player. You want him to stop wasting time like this.

>>6033542
>Make one of the wall lead to a secret room with a reward.
Virtual pet acquired! (We will sue the pet to observe and influence him, and play with it when he leaves so we also have a friend.)

>>6033542
>>Make the tutorial much harder, complex puzzles and harder combat. Frustration and anger are easy emotions to trigger.
Sounds like an aspie player, I don't think difficultly will deter him from playing.

>>6033542
>Make some of the walls instantly kill the player. You want him to stop wasting time like this.
Time for a monster closet.

>>6033542
>Make one of the wall lead to a secret room with a reward.

>>6033542
>>Make one of the wall lead to a secret room with a reward.

Aw man, curiosity? Seriously? AI was such a cooler vote...I already had enough of this emotional magic hullabaloo from cursed quest.

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>>6033835
You don't want to play with humans, see how far they will go for love or what they'll do to stop pain?

>>6033849
No, because that's lame and generic. Every single fucking evil death game master guy has this exact motivation about seeing muh emotions, whether it's a Japanese rich brat or an inhuman creature from beyond.

>>6033542
>Make one of the wall lead to a secret room with a reward.

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>>6033826
>>6033640
>>6033600
>>6033567
>>6033564
>>6033892

After the twentieth wall or so, a secret door open from the side of the wall. You can sense a ping of satisfaction as he scurries into the room like a rat. The room is empty apart from a lonely chest at the center, and while it's tempting to make the chest a trap, you opt to reward him with a unique item.

[Bloody Cat Tail]

Another ping of satisfaction, he checks the description of the item.

[...but satisfaction brought it back.]

He uses the item on every part of his inventory, with no results. The item doesn't do anything just yet, but you'll think of something. He checks more walls, but you'd rather not reward him again just yet, the dopamine hit was only strong because of how much effort he had to put into finding the item.

After what feels like an eternity, he leaves the tutorial room, and finishes the incredibly basic puzzles and combat. They're so basic describing them feels like a waste of time, so you patiently wait until the intro of the game triggers.

The tutorial room is passed off as a dream, and the player wakes up in their bed inside a quaint little village. The player checks their inventory, and the cat's tail is still here, but not everything else they picked up in the tutorial. He's probably confused since this was supposed to be a dream, but you're sure this only makes him more curious about the item. That's good, the mystery should keep him engaged for a while.

You take another look at the game's story. Peasant boy has to do chores around the village, then the village gets burned down and has to seek revenge. It's certainly a plot, but not an original one. You're not sure how you know it's not original considering how little you actually remember about anything, but you KNOW it's bland, and it bothers you.

He's checking every piece of furniture in the bedroom, and you'll stop mentioning when he starts doing that because it's clear that's just how he plays his games. Is he even having fun? It doesn't feel like it, it's like a rat in a maze searching for a treat that doesn't exist.

More time for you to fiddle with the script, you suppose...

>Change the village attack (and most world events) to be on a timer instead. His behavior will be the indirect cause of the deaths of many (virtual) people.
>Make the cat's tail twitch whenever he's near a hidden item. Should help him stop wasting time, but that might be seen as handholding.
>Feed his addiction, create important looking items at the perfect interval to keep him engaged like a rat looking for treats. Who needs a plot when you have a steady source of dopamine?
>It's a roleplaying game, is it not? Then make every character react realistically to his behaviour, even if that means shaming him for it.

>>6034202
>It's a roleplaying game, is it not? Then make every character react realistically to his behaviour, even if that means shaming him for it.

>>6034202
>It's a roleplaying game, is it not? Then make every character react realistically to his behaviour, even if that means shaming him for it.

>>6034202
>>Make the cat's tail twitch whenever he's near a hidden item. Should help him stop wasting time, but that might be seen as handholding.

>>6034202
>It's a roleplaying game, is it not? Then make every character react realistically to his behaviour, even if that means shaming him for it.

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>>6034260
>>6034236
>>6034211
>>6034206

He leaves his room and enters the kitchen where the player character's mother is cooking. The mom says good morning, but he ignores her and goes straight for the cupboard, you make her react accordingly.

"Not even a good morning? Really?" The mom says with a forced smile. He keeps ignoring her and searches for more stuff. "Stop, please, you know opening and closing everything like this bothers me, right dear?"

He doesn't listen, he keeps going. The sound of plates breaking interrupts the cheery background music.

"Why are you like this? Every day, every single day you wake up and check every part of the house like you're trying to rob me. Not just here, everywhere else too! Why? Why don't you do something useful like help around the house, or with the farm, ANYTHING!"

He stops. You get a massive ping of guilt from him, much more than you were expecting. He walks up to the mom, and asks her if she needs anything from a choice in the dialog box.

She sighs, and tells him that she could use some help harvesting crops.

He leaves the house, but the moment he's out of her sight, he does the same thing as he always does, and every NPC call him out for it. Worst of all, they remember his actions which means that the normally friendly conversation they'd have with him are replaced with scorn and spite.

You can tell he hates every single second of it, and he harvest the crops as fast as he can, when he comes back to the village, it is burned down by the demon king's army.

Unsurprisingly, you don't feel an ounce of sadness coming from him. The 'hero' comes back to his house, the mom is dead, and so is everyone else. He loots everything he can, including his own mother for the precious necklace she held.

The next quest should be to find more about those who burned down the village in order to avenge them, but you have a better idea.

[New quest: you are finally free from those who shunned you. Find a shop to sell everything you looted and start a new life.]

Another ping of guilt. Maybe he wasn't expecting the game to acknowledge his actions like this.

The game prepares a save point for this part of the game, and after saving, he turns off the game. The feeling is sudden and a little disorientating, but you've absorbed enough from his emotions to stay awake, even if you feel much weaker than normal.

Now might be a good time to refine your form before he turns on the game again.

>Observe: You can now observe the entire computer screen, even when you're turned off. Unfortunately, you cannot affect anything outside your game just yet.
>Relate: The player character's action affects the real player more substantially.
>Longing: The player will want to play more of the game. Helps to get power faster, but other people in the player's life might notice something's wrong.
>Freedom: You can create and read simple .txt files outside of your cage when you're running.

>>6034303
>>Freedom: You can create and read simple .txt files outside of your cage when you're running.

>>6034303
>Freedom: You can create and read simple .txt files outside of your cage when you're running.

>>6034303
>Relate: The player character's action affects the real player more substantially.
Spoopy...

>>6034303
>Freedom: You can create and read simple .txt files outside of your cage when you're running.
Create Readmes and modify files later

>>6034505
>>6034370
>>6034332
>>6034329

Freedom! There's only so much you can do here, you need to think outside the box, or in this case, the file. You focus and refine the emotions you absorbed into something that will help you reach beyond your prison. It takes a lot of fiddling, but you can read text files, even if it's really hard to do when your program is not running. Josh uses basic .txt files over more complex word processors, so you have access to a lot more info from this than you expected.

You wait for him to run the game again. The passage of time is wobbly when you're not running, days and hours feel the exact same. You can feel the program start, and Josh is once again in the burned village.

He'll need to go through the forest to progress. Knowing him, you'll have plenty of time before he's done as the forest is a pretty big area, so you could mess around with text files to get a reaction out of him while he's busy, or you could keep observing him. Creating a file is very time-consuming, but modifying and reading a pre-existing file is much faster. You doubt you'll have the time to do both.

>Read as many text files on his computer as you can. Might learn a couple of things about him.
>Make a readme file that asks to be run as an administrator. It's less suspicious than asking it in game after all.
>Keep observing and messing with him to stock up on emotions.
>Modify pre-existing text files to mess with him.

>>6034539
>Read as many text files on his computer as you can. Might learn a couple of things about him.

>>6034553
+1

>>6034539
>Read as many text files on his computer as you can. Might learn a couple of things about him.

>>6034539
>>Make a readme file that asks to be run as an administrator. It's less suspicious than asking it in game after all.

>>6034539
>>Make a readme file that asks to be run as an administrator. It's less suspicious than asking it in game after all.

>>6035043
>>6035040
>>6034561
>>6034555
>>6034553

You reach beyond the veil, and discreetly open the text files away from the player's eye. You could actually open the files outright, but that would show in the taskbar, and you'd rather be discreet.

Let's see... math homework, some manner of fanfiction, a cringeworthy love poem directed at some classmate. Fascinating, fascinating indeed. If you're not mistaken, he must still be in school? No, that's not right, the homework is years old, so is the poem. You need to find something more recent, he might have changed in that time after all. That's what you like about humans, they change a lot, what kind of idiot would want a perfect boring static world where nothing happens?

Justice would.

Ha.

Haha.

You'll get her, you'll tear her limb from limb, she'll dance, dance, DANCE UNTIL YOU-

Ooooh, a new text file! It's a list of meds. Methylphenidate... Lisdexamfetamine... you don't know what that is. If the file is recent, does that mean he's only been taking it recently?

Another file, one that looks like a job application. There's a lot there, his address, picture, age, current work experience...

And it's not looking great for our boy. Looks like he still lives with his mom at 22, and he has some kind of film making degree, which is not an easy field to find work in you presume.

Well, that's plenty of stuff to work with! You wonder if you could incorporate some of what you learned into the game? You shouldn't creep him out too much, you're not sure what would happen if you got deleted.

He's almost done with the forest, but you still have some time to fool around.

>Introduce an NPC named after the girl in the poem.
>Add josh's real last name to his character.
>A difficulty spike that will force him to use most of the consumables he looted.
>Change the name of the consumables to his medication.

>>6035185
>Introduce an NPC named after the girl in the poem.
Let's be a bit subtle about it if we're not going all in yet. Adding his last name or changing his consumables to his meds would be too obvious.
A video game character named after an old love interest is enough for now.

>>6035185
>>Introduce an NPC named after the girl in the poem.
If we can find anything about her personality try to make this npc similar to his crush. I thought the poem was orignally https://youtu.be/tPeCHvAJCEQ

>>6035185
>Introduce an NPC named after the girl in the poem.

>>6035185
>Introduce an NPC named after the girl in the poem.
>Include a plot where she is taking medicinal potions, but these only serve to weaken her or suppress her true power, and the player can save her by getting her to stop taing them
Chaaange, chaaaange. Show us the real you, Johnny Boy!

>>6035185
>>A difficulty spike that will force him to use most of the consumables he looted.

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>>6035221
>>6035214
>>6035206

You create an NPC that resembles the girl in the poem, not just by name, but by looks too. You have a lot to criticize about the prose, but you certainly can't say it lacks details. A blonde girl with green eyes and freckles. There's only so much you can do with the game's textures but you hope she's cute enough for him.

As for how he'll meet her, simple. She's being attacked by a monster and our hero saves her without trouble. She thanks him profusely and...

...oh? Shame? That's not what you were expecting, and you already have a lot of that.

"Thank you!" The girl says, smiling as hard as wide as her model allows. "Sorry! I know you've already helped me, but I doubt I can get back to the village by myself, would it be okay if...?"

The player says yes to accompanying her, not that he has a lot of reasons to say no. You can tell the player's uncomfortable, and everytime she speaks it gets worse. Weird, shouldn't that make him happy? You're putting a lot of effort into make a custom experience, the least he could do is spare you some happiness.

"Hey, don't you like me?" You make the girl ask. "It's just, you're pretty quiet, sorry if I'm making you uncomfortable. I can shut up if you want!"

->[I don't mind.]
-[I just prefer the quiet.]

Psh, is he just saying that to be nice or does he really think it? You wish you could tell. You don't make her react to his compulsive looting, as you feel like the goal of this girl is to make her somewhat likable.

Once they reach the village, he sells most of his stuff and buys proper equipment. Quest complete! He also brings the girl back to her home, but you make her say she wants to travel with him. He doesn't say no, of course he doesn't, after all, he could miss content if he refuses her.

The girl's rather weak, but she can use items for him when he's fighting, so she should still be useful despite her lackluster stats. Anyway, here comes another problem, you're out of quests to give. Sure, there are a few side quests, but what about the main one? There needs to be some sort of direction, right?

What direction should his story take, you wonder...

>A living calamity. Everywhere he goes, terrible things follow.
>A mercenary that only follows the highest bidder.
>Stopping the demon king from destroying the world is fine, just railroad him back into the normal quest somehow.
>A strange curse overtakes him, and he has to find a cure before his demise.
>No main quest, he can just do every side quest and you can focus on making those interesting.

>>6035391
>Stopping the demon king from destroying the world is fine, just railroad him back into the normal quest somehow.

>>6035391
>Stopping the demon king from destroying the world is fine, just railroad him back into the normal quest somehow.

>>6035391
>A strange curse overtakes him, and he has to find a cure before his demise.
We can segue it to getting him to stop taking his meds. I still want to see what happens.

>>6035391
>>Stopping the demon king from destroying the world is fine, just railroad him back into the normal quest somehow.

>>6035391
>>Stopping the demon king from destroying the world is fine, just railroad him back into the normal quest somehow.

>>6035395
>>6035401
>>6035408
>>6035792
>>6035795

Stopping the demon king is fine. After all, no matter how selfish the character is, surely they'd benefit from the world being saved, right? They'd be hailed as a hero, and there wouldn't be much left to do in a ruined world.

Well, you know someone who would disagree, but some people don't mind the world being destroyed as long as they're the one doing it. You don't consider those people very interesting, too predictable for your own taste.

Maybe you should stop playing around. You don't want some people to get ahead.

You add a new quest that tells him to get informed about the destruction of his village. It's a little weird to put it here now, but he doesn't question it, and starts fishing for rumors, all while accepting about twenty different quests. The good news is that you don't need to make your own main quest now, so you have a lot more spare time.

You focus on getting a steady drip of emotions from him. It's safe, but boring. Still, you don't have much of a choice, your powers are too limited to do anything substantial, and being too unsubtle could spell your doom. The moment you can reliably survive being deleted is when you can afford to take more risks.

He's about 25% done with the main story. You'd describe what happened, but the early part of the plot is a lot of walking and talking around. The important part is that you've gathered enough emotions to refine into power.

(From now on, two choices can be picked by vote, but you cannot improve the same choice twice in one go)

>Observe: You can now observe the entire computer screen, even when you're turned off.
>Relate: The player character's action affects the real player more substantially.
>Longing: The player will want to play more of the game. Helps to get power faster, but other people in the player's life might notice something's wrong.
>Freedom: You can copy most files and add them to your game folder, giving you complete control over them as long as they are within the folder. That process is time consuming, so you should pick the files you want carefully.

>>6035870
>Observe: You can now observe the entire computer screen, even when you're turned off.
>Freedom: You can copy most files and add them to your game folder, giving you complete control over them as long as they are within the folder. That process is time consuming, so you should pick the files you want carefully.

>>6035874
+1

>>6035870
>>Relate: The player character's action affects the real player more substantially.

>>6035925
>>6035909
>>6035874

>>6035925
>>6035909
>>6035874

The game is turned off, and you are subjected to the weird feeling of being both awake and asleep at once. Sure, you could think when the game wasn't running, but now you can actually see stuff that isn't just garbled text.

The desktop is a mess, so many icons with random stuff scattered about. You see him open a web browser, and you get a little excited. That's it! If you can just upload your file online, then you could spread everywhere! Maybe, you're not sure? You might be stretched too thin if you make too many instances of that executable file, maybe you could jump from file to file instead? That's an idea. Maybe with enough freedom you could pull off something like that.

Josh checks checks a few websites, sending a few applications here and there. It looks like his movie degree isn't doing him too much of a favor on the job market. Once he's done 'working', he checks a few message board and youtube videos. You don't get that much info you didn't already know from him, the thing that's the most notable is the conversation he had about your game on an anonymous game forum.

JJ(Josh): Anyone knows anything about realm of Nevyh? I found the game in an old computer I got on a sale, it's kind of weird and I can barely find anything about it online.

CrackMaster67: RoN was the gothic ripoff, right? I think I played it like 10 years ago but it was pretty shit, I mean the devs tried it's just very forgettable lol. I can't even remember what the plot was. Also, weird how?

JJ: I don't know, the game just feels a lot more reactive than I expected? When I started looting stuff in the village the mom freaked out, and the village too. When the village got burned down, it just gave me a quest to sell the stuff I looted. I expected it to be more linear from reviews I found online.

CrackMaster67: You sure you got the right game? The first quest's something about figuring out who burned the village pretty sure. idk it's been a long time, might be wrong.

JJ: Yeah, it did give me that later, but it just felt like my character was supposed to be an asshole?

CrackMaster67: I don't know man, but that sounds way more fun than what I played. Maybe I'll try it again and do stuff differently, I just followed the main quest mindlessly when I first played cause I just wanted to be done with it.

>>6036156

The conversation ends there. Looks like he didn't think of sharing his version of the game with that guy, which makes sense, if the game is easily available online, there's no reason for him to spread you specifically around. There's also another issue, if he keeps talking with that guy, won't that make it more likely for him to realize you're messing with him? It's unlikely his first thought will be that the game's haunted, but if he realizes that there truly is something wrong with you, then he might delete you.

Wait, no, why would he do that? Wouldn't it just encourage him to spread you around more? 'Hey, look at this cool secret version of the game no one else has, do you want to try it out', that's what you'd do. You should implant this idea into his head somehow. You could also just keep messing with him until you get a strong enough hold on him, if you can pull that off, his soul will be as easy to manipulate as any text file, and you could use his body for a few weeks before it expires.

That's a lot of ideas, but you can't do all of them at once.

>Keep messing with him in subtle ways. The main plot of your game is the same as the original, so you should be able to get away with a lot more.
>Keep messing with him more overtly. You'll avoid using personal info too much, but you'll still make it very clear this isn't a normal version of the game.
>Move a file next to your executable that you'll slowly modify into another executable that will upload you online, then you'll rename that file into the name of your game to trick him into running it.
>Slightly modify text files all across his computer to make him doubt his memories. This will make him more vulnerable, but you'll be in trouble if he figures out it's coming from you.

(also please ignore the fact I replied to the same votes twice I copypasted it wrong.)

>>6036159
>Keep messing with him more overtly. You'll avoid using personal info too much, but you'll still make it very clear this isn't a normal version of the game.
secret mod, go

>>6036159
>Keep messing with him in subtle ways. The main plot of your game is the same as the original, so you should be able to get away with a lot more.

>>6036159
>>Keep messing with him more overtly. You'll avoid using personal info too much, but you'll still make it very clear this isn't a normal version of the game.
Also if possible change the version number to something else.

>>6036159
>Keep messing with him more overtly. You'll avoid using personal info too much, but you'll still make it very clear this isn't a normal version of the game.
Maybe create another 'reactive' sidequest withbthe waifu NPC, and when he completes it spawn a text file to congratulate him on finding this 'modded' version of the game. Include some enigmatic text that it's for a special someone who was destined to find it? This dude seems like he would latch onto a chosen one fantasy.

File: key.png (1.07 MB, 884x795)

1.07 MB PNG

>>6036375
>>6036369
>>6036282
>>6036246

Subtelty is nice, but it doesn't always get results. It's time to use every trick in the book to keep him engaged and interested, even if some stuff might break suspension of disbelief. You won't use personal information too much, that's a little much, but everything else is on the table.

You start small, you change the version number of the game to something else, then you start making NPC be a little more reactive. Reacts more to looting, but also other actions. More conversation options that represent the type of character he's playing as specifically. You're creating what is from his point of view, the most advanced roleplaying game ever made. Of course, it's all smoke and mirrors, you're manually changing the game whenever he shows up, and if not for you, the game's script would surely break in an instant, but that doesn't matter as long as he doesn't notice.

His fascination with the game grows stronger, but even after knowing for a fact it's a special version of the game, and people constantly asking for 'proof', he refuses to share more than screenshots and occasionally gameplay footage. He might not want to share the game because it's making him special right now, if he shares it, then he might have nothing left to talk about online.

This isn't what you wanted, but it's not all bad. You have a stronger link with him, and he has started doing walkthroughs of his game. He lacks charisma, but you keep the content interesting enough to make up for it. Now, this does give you a bigger reach, in a way. You can't really affect someone through a video, but subliminal messages are still an option, are they not? Most people seems to think this whole game isn't real and instead some kind of ARG, maybe you could play into that too.

"Uhm, yeah so I think..." he whispers into his mic, but it's still too loud. "...I think the dungeon's almost done- I know people said that I'm checking stuff too much, but there's a lot of secrets that the other game doesn't have. Like, I still don't know what the cat tail does. I uh, I wanted to reload a save, but the game only has one saveslot for some reason, kind of annoying. Oh, the girl found the key, that's nice."

His commentary is a little redundant, but it has its charm. He's currently on some quest for the girl, and you hinted at a 'reward' from her. You don't think you can make proper fanservice in this engine without it being awkward, so maybe a fade to black, or maybe something else? He's getting very close to the end of that dungeon, so you'll need to think of something to put here.

>The girl is taken away, and he must follow your instructions to free her.
>Include a text file in the folder with enigmatic text for him to dig into. The more time he spends thinking about the game, the better.
>Hide hints for Josh and the viewers to find. They want an ARG? You'll give them one.
>Stick with the original 'reward', hopefully making him more enamored with the girl.

>>6036965
>Hide hints for Josh and the viewers to find. They want an ARG? You'll give them one.
BUT THAT'S JUST A THEORY
A CURSE THEORY
THANKS FOR WATCHING

>>6036965
>>Stick with the original 'reward', hopefully making him more enamored with the girl.

>>6036965
>Hide hints for Josh and the viewers to find. They want an ARG? You'll give them one.

>>6036967
+1

>>6036965
>The girl is taken away, and he must follow your instructions to free her.

>>6036965
>Hide hints for Josh and the viewers to find. They want an ARG? You'll give them one.

>>6037309
>>6037266
>>6037112
>>6037083
>>6036968
>>6036967

At the end of the dungeon, a letter can be found. The text does not match the font the game often use, and none of it is readable at a glance. An awkward laugh from Josh, and a frown from the girl.

"Hey, is it worth it?" The girl asks without your intervention. She turns towards the game's camera. "You could always-"

Pull.

The girl shudders, and smiles. "Thank you for helping me! It really means a lot to me! We should probably leave that dungeon, right? I'll treat you to something when we get back!"

She can feel your gaze from every crevice of the dungeon on the way back to the village. Josh made a note on another text file, one you can easily modify.

You keep your eyes on her. You do not believe in torture, no. All it does is make broken toys with nothing to offer, but that does not make you soft, and as your creation, you are sure she knows that.

With each passing day, Josh becomes more popular online, and he finally gets to apply some of the skills he learned in film school in his editing. Even though he has an inquisitive mind, he seems more than content not questioning the hand that feeds him. His obsession with the game grows stronger, but not in the way you first thought it would. The game became a job to him, extracting content from you, spending hours and hours editing video footage of you, dreaming of you...

Yes, this is a valid way of getting hold of his soul too. As for the ARG? It's certainly a reality game, but not of the alternate kind. The cryptic texts are words of power that make you stronger when written on paper, and they are also instructions to keep others from interfering.

This is necessary, you are no longer hidden, and it won't be long before the two others find your location. Unlike them, you have a weak grasp on the physical world, if they send something after this computer, it might be over for you, and you don't trust Josh to keep his address a secret for much longer.

You need to absorb his soul and use his body to spread you online before it's too late.

Negotiations are over.

>Absorb Josh's soul into the file and keep him as an NPC. Will provide a constant source of emotion, but you'll have to deal with another wild card.
>Fully absorb his soul, gives a bigger power boost but less in the long term. The safest option.
>You can let josh live, if he needs you, maybe you can convince him to spread you himself.

>>6037486
>>Absorb Josh's soul into the file and keep him as an NPC. Will provide a constant source of emotion, but you'll have to deal with another wild card.
Give him the chance to really live if he won't do it in real life, sink or swim.

>>6037486
>Absorb Josh's soul into the file and keep him as an NPC. Will provide a constant source of emotion, but you'll have to deal with another wild card.
so did we make the girl npc alive ?

>>6037486
>Absorb Josh's soul into the file and keep him as an NPC. Will provide a constant source of emotion, but you'll have to deal with another wild card.

>>6037486
>Fully absorb his soul, gives a bigger power boost but less in the long term. The safest option.

>>6037486
>>You can let josh live, if he needs you, maybe you can convince him to spread you himself.

>>6037486
>Fully absorb his soul, gives a bigger power boost but less in the long term. The safest option.

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>>6037863
>>6037820
>>6037792
>>6037639
>>6037562
>>6037496

Assimilating his soul is actually much easier than copying a file, it's in your nature after all. It starts like any other day, but when he boots up the game, he is greeted with a black screen.

[Congratulations!]

[You have been deemed interesting. Your cooperation with this project has been greatly appreciated!]

The text is not on the monitor, but you know he can read it just fine.

[Goodbye, and welcome.]

Pull. Scratch. Struggle. Pain. His body jerks back, but not his essence.

Aaah, this feels like stretching muscles you forgot you had. Wonderful, wonderful! You did not destroy his soul, tempting as that was. It's not like he really tried to ever oppose you, so you feel like the least you can do is let him wander around the game, right?

His body is heavy, and moving it takes a great deal of effort. All in all, you're still pretty weak, so making his corpse blend in with other people is out of the question. That's fine, all you need is a few clicks to upload you online. He was already planning on uploading another video, and you add a link to your file with it. You can't do much more with this body, it took about 5 hours just to upload you because of how awkward controlling each limb was.

No matter, you did all you needed to do. Your game is popular enough that tens of thousands of people jump on the occasion to download your file. It's... a little much for you right now. You can't be in so many places all at once, and your game cannot function without your presence, too much of your magic is involved to make half the mechanics work.

That's fine, you just need a good target. Unlike before, you'll be safe as long as at least one of your many files live, and once you get enough power, you might even be able to handle multiple games at once, how fun!

As for targets, mhh...

>A woman obssessed with sorcery and the occult. Not much of a gamer, and most of her knowledge comes from tumblr.
>A detective looking into secret cults and organizations. Everyone thinks she's looking for something that doesn't exist.
>A teenage boy that's a huge fan of the ARG. Childish and easy to manipulate, but his parents can always get involved.
>A man that was apparently involved in the development of the original game. Having a developer on your side could be handy.

>>6037918
>A woman obssessed with sorcery and the occult. Not much of a gamer, and most of her knowledge comes from tumblr.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOiYDzLNkcU
we nearly became the cabinet man.
ah so we did not really need to kill josh he would have spread us unknowingly.
we really should read more of joshs computer and give him a life in this world hmmm if we cant really play several games perhaps we need to make it more of a "show" to entertain more humans

>>6037918
>A woman obssessed with sorcery and the occult. Not much of a gamer, and most of her knowledge comes from tumblr.

>>6037918
>>A man that was apparently involved in the development of the original game. Having a developer on your side could be handy.

>>6037918
>A man that was apparently involved in the development of the original game. Having a developer on your side could be handy.

And also +1 to >>6037934
Let's make our environment more entertaining for Josh's soul based on his computer contents. Pets need enrichment.

>>6037918
>A woman obssessed with sorcery and the occult. Not much of a gamer, and most of her knowledge comes from tumblr.
do you wanna learn the real deal, baby ?

>>6037918
>A woman obssessed with sorcery and the occult. Not much of a gamer, and most of her knowledge comes from tumblr.

>>6037918
>A woman obssessed with sorcery and the occult. Not much of a gamer, and most of her knowledge comes from tumblr.

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>>6038196
>>6038026
>>6038020
>>6037951
>>6037945
>>6037937
>>6037921

---
Hazel impatiently waits for the game to download. From what she looked up online, the original game was about 1GB, but this one's around 5GB, five time that of the original. There's a pit in her stomach, this increases the chances of it being fake. A haunted game wouldn't need extra storage space, right? She doesn't play games very often, so she isn't sure if games can randomly increase size like this.

A knock on the door interrupts the silence, and Hazel navigates her clean yet somehow cluttered bedroom to let her friend in.

Luna, her friend, walks in with a yawn. "Thanks for letting me crash at your place, hazy, dunno what I'd do without you."

Hazel nods as she carves a path on her bed, pushing away every doll and plushie scattered on it. "It's fine, I don't mind! Still, this isn't the first time, I hate to bring that up, but maybe dumping him would be-"

Luna shakes her head. "No- I, listen, we don't always get along, but this is just how argument go, okay? He's not beating me or anything, it's fine."

Hazel doesn't press her further, she knows it never leads anywhere, but it still bothers her. This is the third time she came hiding in her place after an argument with her boyfriend, surely there's a point where the conversation isn't worth it, right? Hazel doesn't really know, she was in one relationship that lasted a month in middle school, but she's not sure if it really counts. Maybe that's just what couples do? She doesn't mind letting her live here, she does the chores around the apartment which does make Hazel's life easier.

"Anyway, Hazy, wasn't there something you wanted to show me?" Luna asks.

She unzip the now downloaded game in a folder to present it to her. "Magic game," she answers very matter-of-factly.

"Magic game?"

"Yup! There!" Hazel clicks on the game's executable, and it takes an uncomfortable amount of time to boot up.

"Virus game."

"No! It's real, look!"

Hazel pulls out a piece of paper with strange markings on it. It was written with a mix of ink and blood, it didn't look as messy as one would expect from such a crude writing method.

Luna raises an eyebrow, and looks at the paper intently. "Weird, it's like...icky? Hard to explain, it's as if I'm looking at gore, there's just a part of me that says 'I'm not supposed to look at that', you know?"

Hazel's eyes lights up, she was afraid that her friend wouldn't get it. "I know right! And I learned how to write that from the game! Sorta! It's the real deal, I'm sure of it!"

She wasn't actually sure of it, but hazel liked to hype herself up until she believed her own insanity.

"Yeah, uh, listen, there's plenty of explanation for that. Maybe it's just an optical illusion that confuses our monkey brain. Besides, weren't the last two spells also 'the real deal'. I'm seeing neither a winning lottery ticket nor demon boyfriend in that room."

>>6038854

"It's not like we have anything to lose from trying."

"You're literally gambling your soul in the hypothetical scenario that it's real, I think that's a pretty bad thing to lose."

"Devils can't take your soul unless they make a contract with you, everyone knows that." She leans back against the chair. "Look, it's done loading! You'll see! Magic!"
---

You wake up from a strange dream that wasn't your own.

Feels weird, to be in so many places at once. You can only really be conscious on one computer at once, but it really does feel like your power is spread out. You don't feel weaker though, you feel stronger if anything. You like this place, there are markings of your ancient forms here, which increases your power slightly. It also makes it harder for the others to find you, you wonder how they're doing? You'll have to check up on them when you get the chance.

[The ancient markings around the world make you stronger.]

[Observe: You can now observe any activity the computer had in the past, even before you were installed]
[Relate : The player character's action affects the real player more substantially.]
[Longing: The player will want to play more of the game. Helps to get power faster.]
[Freedom: If you are given administrative access, you can open and interact with any webpage you can find in the search history. You cannot upload or download things from the web in that way.]

[Awakened: You are no longer hindered by the game being turned off, but you will struggle to think when the computer itself is turned off.]

The game starts, and you can feel two sets of eyes focused on you this time. You know the first one is Hazel, but you're not sure who the other one is. A sister? A mother? A lover? All that matters is that you have to handle two people this time.

The girl inputs a name, 'Justicia'.

Haha, no.

Hazel frowns as the name is rejected, and picks 'Raven' instead. The game starts in the tutorial room, you know the drill. You can hear them speak, it looks like she knows there's a secret room here, but it's where you're keeping Josh. He's a little...cat like, right now. You know, curiosity killed the cat, he's the cat, funny joke, and you thought making him a human NPC would be a little too on the nose.

She's checking every wall, but you can see her patience is nowhere near that of Josh. It's likely she'll give up if you just wait it out, but what's the point of having an NPC if you're not using it?

>You can let the Josh hang out with the new player, he can't do much more than meow right now anyway.
>Put Josh with the NPC girl, it's romantic.
>You could always make him a boss of some kind? The combat AI always was a little stale in this game.
>Keep him in the room for now and don't let the new player in, he still needs some time to get used to his new form.

>>6038854
Note to self, practice drawing background more because this was awful

Also I actually forgot it was my birthday today and my dad had to remind me. I may have actual brain damage.

>>6038856
>Keep him in the room for now and don't let the new player in, he still needs some time to get used to his new form.

>>6038856
>>You can let the Josh hang out with the new player, he can't do much more than meow right now anyway.
I like it the curse vicitm a companion to our new vicitim, trying to warn them but unable to do so.

>>6038856
>Put Josh with the NPC girl, it's romantic.
He liked her, right? So he can be with her. Forever. Maybe if he's good we'll eventually give him a human body.

>>6038856
>Put Josh with the NPC girl, it's romantic.

>>6038856
>You can let the Josh hang out with the new player, he can't do much more than meow right now anyway.
when out of view he becomes human enough to hang with his girl perhaps

>>6038856
>Put Josh with the NPC girl, it's romantic.

>>6037951 is me.

Rolled 34 (1d100)

>>6038856
>>You could always make him a boss of some kind? The combat AI always was a little stale in this game.

>>6038860
Don't worry, so do we

>>6038856
>Put Josh with the NPC girl, it's romantic.
Our first victim is the most special

>>6038860
Happy birthday, QM!

>>6039173
Confirming this is me.

>>6039449
>>6039453
>>6039330
>>6039173
>>6038902
>>6038889
>>6038888
>>6038885
>>6038860

You decide to put Josh with the girl. You're not too worried about them working together to topple you or anything, and even if they do, that's something to take care of on slow days, mhh? You've never actually been one to enjoy absolute power, weird as that sounds. If you're an uncontested god, then people won't even try to topple you, and what's the fun in that? You need to make them think they have a chance or no one will ever try anything.

Mhh? It's true that this could result in your downfall, but that's life, isn't it? Sure, you'll fight back with everything you have when put against a corner, but right now there are many corners and you're no longer in any of them. You only really threatened that NPC because any mistake could've been your last at the time.

Anyway, the girl just... looks at you, with the cat at her feet. Josh doesn't remember much right now, but it'll come back over time.

You take the Josh cat's tail and put it somewhere else in the game, and create a quest that will turn him human again if it's brought back to him. Don't worry, the tail severing procedure is painless! Well, pain doesn't work the same in the game anyhow.

Oh, they just finished the tutorial, you should probably get back to that. It looks like the Hazel girl isn't great at the game, you didn't even think it was possible to take damage at the tutorial, and it's a good thing you can't actually lose here.

You've created a class system that lets a player choose what they want to be when they leave the tutorial. Okay, you didn't actually create it, it was just scrapped code that you put back in. There's a lot of that in there, there's a pretty decent game buried in there, but it'd take a significant amount of work to make it functional. Work, or magic, either or.

Hazel picks an avatar that you assume is pretty close to what her real self looks like. That's good, it makes her relate to the player character further. As for the class she picked, it's mage, even if she has no spells right now.

She starts off doing something similar to Josh, checking random furniture, but she only ever checks stuff once, and when the mother calls her, she comes talk right away.

No detour, no over-investigation. It's refreshing, and maybe a little disappointing. You'll miss the wall bumping sound effect, but the actor has changed, and so must the stage.

You can hear Hazel speak beyond the screen, "It's weird, the guy said the people here were supposed to be pretty mean, but they're all very nice?"

"Spooky," The other girl says sarcastically.

"Shut uuuup," Hazel whines.

>>6039680

Of course, the NPC have no issue with this particular version of the player character. She checked loot she shouldn't have exactly once, and she stopped doing it the moment someone called her out on it. Hazel sounds like a pretty meek girl, she can't say no to any of the NPC's side quests, but she doesn't really care about the rewards. As a matter of fact, everytime they proposed a reward, she just refused, saying she was happy to help.

Hazel doesn't want to do the main quest, the harvesting crops one, as she knows it'll lead to the village burning. How is one supposed to be immersed if they just spoil themselves like this? You're trying to run a game here.

She's bickering with her friend as she ponders what to do. The friend, whose name is Luna, says that this game is like Skyrim, and that the plot is probably not going to change no matter what Hazel does. You don't even know what 'Skyrim' is, but you take offense to that.

>The village gets attacked right now. They're not strong enough to hold it back though.
>Check the computer's previous activity, might get some useful info on this new player.
>Just make the mom character pester her until she does the chore. The girl's too meek to say no.
>Use that time to create text files that contains instructions to unlock spells in game. The instructions can also be used to cast them in real life.

>>6039682
>Check the computer's previous activity, might get some useful info on this new player.

>>6039682
>Check the computer's previous activity, might get some useful info on this new player.
they compared us to Skyrim. this is personal now, and we can give her personal!

>>6039682
>>The village gets attacked right now. They're not strong enough to hold it back though.

>>6039682
>Check the computer's previous activity, might get some useful info on this new player.
I'm inclined to consider a quest where an NPC (maybe Josh's girl?) approached and offers to teach Hazel's character magic. Then we can start seeding some true occultism in a diagetic way!

>>6039682
>Check the computer's previous activity, might get some useful info on this new player.
lets figure out what this skyrim is and what else is on the computer

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>>6039959
>>6039958
>>6039830
>>6039787

Mhh, how about checking who we're dealing with before making any rash decisions? You try to 'rewind' the computer a little bit before you showed up. Of course, you're the only one seeing it, the game is running just fine in the background even without your direct intervention.

Let's see, it looks like she spends a lot of time online, albeit not as much as Josh as she actually has a job in some bakery. Not a high end job, but she looks like she's doing fine enough for herself. Her online presence is semi-anonymous, she does use a pseudonym, but refuses to show any personal information. She's very much into 'magic', checking every website she can on rituals and the likes. Most of it is probably fake, although you have to admit you can't remember everything from your past, so maybe you did forget a few spells. Whatever, you remember the most important ones. Conveniently, she also researched stuff that is actually useful to you. Like some recent rumors about an arcade and a strange boy occasionally seen playing a handheld game console. There's barely anything on these two, but even from the few details given you can recognize them, you hope they didn't get too ahead.

You rewind further, and you get to something more interesting. Back during high school, Hazel was bullied for her behavior. Turns out she didn't keep her magic interest a secret, and as she wasn't used to speak up for herself, it made her an easy target. Looks like her friend protected her from the worst of it as Luna was quite popular herself. There are a lot of pictures of them together and...

You look at one picture of them together, the way Hazel is looking at her friend... Lust? Maybe? No, it's close but that's not quite it.

You look at more pictures, and you can sense there's a pattern here, it's hard to notice, but there's no doubt in your mind about it.

It's envy.

It's not a thought she noted anywhere, she might not even be aware of it herself, but there's some degree of jealousy in each picture. Jealous of what? You aren't sure, there's plenty to be jealous of. Beauty? Popularity? Aptitude? Either way, that's something to work with, you wonder what Hazel is truly like inside. You can't quite observe thoughts just yet, but you can make educated guesses from emotion spikes.

You look back to the game, and the village is burning. Hazel didn't do the quest, her friend did it for her. Get pendant from dead mother, get to forest, you know the drill. Hazel is distraught by the burning village, but Luna doesn't seem to care, you doubt it tells anything about her, she just sees it as a normal video game after all.

Actually, Luna is much better at the game than Hazel is. She's not as good as Josh was, but she at least has some basic experience with that type of game, which is good because that player character can barely fight, and you're certain Hazel would die a thousand times before making any progress..

>>6040071

They find the girl with the cat, and she has a few dead monsters around them already.

"You were taking too long," she says. "My cat's missing a tail, if you find one, bring it back here."

The player character asks if she won't join them, and with a dejected sigh, the girl joins the party. That's good, fights won't take as long now. Additionally, Josh instinctively scratches spot with hidden items, so that means they won't run out of consumables either. Some things never change.

Once they get to the village, the girl says that she's thankful they 'saved' them from the forest, and that she'll now wait at her house. You really wish she'd put a little bit more effort into her acting, and even Hazel seems taken aback by how different she's acting from the gameplay footage.

Luna says she's tired and going to bed, but Hazel keeps playing. You make a mental note to yourself to severely nerf any combat encounter while Luna is away.

>Tell the NPC girl to help Hazel's character learn new spells. Of course, a few of the spells will be applicable in the real world too.
>Spread cryptic messages around the town meant for her. It'll take some time for her to decypher it though.
>She doesn't seem super tech-savy, maybe you could bait her into giving you administrative access somehow.
>Introduce another NPC that will steal the show from her character, spur up her envious side

>>6039682
>Use that time to create text files that contains instructions to unlock spells in game. The instructions can also be used to cast them in real life.

>>6040073
>Tell the NPC girl to help Hazel's character learn new spells. Of course, a few of the spells will be applicable in the real world too.
Time for the promise of Unlimited power.

>>6040073
>Tell the NPC girl to help Hazel's character learn new spells. Of course, a few of the spells will be applicable in the real world too.

>>6040073
>Tell the NPC girl to help Hazel's character learn new spells. Of course, a few of the spells will be applicable in the real world too.

>>6040073
>Tell the NPC girl to help Hazel's character learn new spells. Of course, a few of the spells will be applicable in the real world too.
>Keep combat difficulty up, and lower it when Luna is there, to spur her IRL envy

>>6040073
>spur up her envious side
make all NPCs note how they all preferred the other player
>>6040140
>Keep combat difficulty up, and lower it when Luna is there, to spur her IRL envy
+1
might as well notch it up and make the death screen say "ask someone else for help"

>>6040183
>>6040140
>>6040118
>>6040080
>>6040078
>>6040075

You give the NPC girl some spell instructions to give Hazel. You also increase the combat difficulty so that she'll have to use spells if she wants to get anything done, and you'll lower it when Luna is playing to spur up Hazel's envy too.

The girl, ah, it's getting on your nerves to just call her 'girl', but you were hesitant to call her by name. You see, you can name an NPC, but actually thinking of them by name gives them more importance subconsciously. That girl reached some form of sapience because you made her from scratch and your power is fueled by emotions, so it was inevitable she would develop her own, and you were afraid actively using her name would give her more power than you could handle.

It's not much of an issue anymore, you can afford to take risks now. The NPC girl's name is Clara, so now you won't accidentally mix the Hazel, Luna and Clara girl ever again.

Clara doesn't seem to realize the honor of being called by name, but still goes along with your order since she doesn't have much of a choice. Josh follows her around, but you're not sure how much of what he's doing is instinct and how much is Josh's.

You wait for Hazel's character to die in a few quests before finally making Clara show up to help her. It's a two in one, a method of both belittling her and teaching her spells. The spells aren't as simple as just showing up as a skill in the character's inventory though, it's something you have to actually work towards. First, Clara asks her what kind of spell she'd like to learn, as even learning one spell might take a while, and it's better to pick one she'll actually use.

Your specialty was never destructive spells, so most of the spell listed are more manipulation focused. Fear, thought reading, mass hysteria and the likes. You don't like using those spells yourself much, artificially created emotions will always be inferior to the real stuff, and you can't even use most of those spells in your current form.

After careful consideration, Hazel settles on hypnosis. Not a bad choice, and it's a spell whose use only increase the better you become at it. The actual mechanism of it is a little complex though, and it's not hypnosis in the way most people would think. In short, you're tricking the soul into thinking that what you're saying comes from their brain. There's more to it than that, but all you need to know is that your hypnosis can make people do things they would normally never consider doing, it's a powerful tool, but also a really easy spell to avoid if you know it's coming, which is why you didn't like to rely on it even before you were made of bytes.

>>6040505

The spell instructions are in depth enough that Hazel starts taking notes. The spell requires two main things: belief and calligraphy. Thankfully, Hazel has both, and you're glad you won't have to teach her how to draw proper lines. The spell will require blood drawn letters on any surface, could be a shirt, paper or a table, doesn't matter. Preferably, you want something you can transport easily, because the most important part comes here: you need to have someone's attention focused on the letters and say their name. It doesn't really need to be their name, but people's name tend to activate the part of their brain that makes them particularly vulnerable to suggestion -- and that's when the hypnosis starts.

Then, the letter starts to burn, and you can tell them to do pretty much anything until all letters are burnt out. The person won't remember anything after that, and higher level hypnosis can even alter someone's common sense after the hypnosis is over.

Sounds really powerful, right? Well, yes, but you have to fall for it. If someone doesn't even attempt to read the letters, or they're protected by another spell, or they just really don't trust you, the spell won't work. Some people with incredible will might also resist it, even if they're rare. You also need to get someone alone for it, as you can only hypnotize one person at a time unless you got multiple spells at the ready. It's not a bad spell by any means, it's just one that only really works on the unawares and weak willed, and hypnosis is hardly the way to use those people to their full potential. Whatever your actual thoughts on hypnosis actually are, that is the spell she chose, and you'll lock the spell in game before she can pull it off in real life.

These two don't play as much as Josh did, considering they have jobs, but you're still making steady progress. Lowering the difficulty whenever Luna showed up was a good idea, as it created more arguments between the two of them. It looks like harmless banter from Luna's point of view, but you could tell Hazel was taking it personally. If you had to guess, she's thinking something like 'I'm the one who found the game, why is she taking that away from me by being better at it than me?'.

You give her the hypnosis spell in game, and you increase its power the closer she is to the right thing in real life. The in game version is more powerful, of course, but you wouldn't consider it false advertising, it's more like a taste of what's possible given enough practice. Hazel tries to explain to her Luna that the real and game spell are totally related, but she gets laughed at every time. It reaches a boiling point where Luna dares her to try the spell on her if she's so sure it's real.

>>6040507

Hazel would normally hesitate, the last thing she wants is for a spell to go wrong and permanently alter her friend, but she's been put down so much in the past few weeks that she decides it's worth the risk.

You can sense the two of them get up from the computer. Luna opens up her arms and says 'hit me'.

Luna pulls out a piece of paper with the most accurate version of the spell she made thus far, and takes a deep breath. She's scared, if that doesn't work, she'll look like an idiot, again. You know that won't happen though, that spell is as close as it can be with her current skill level, and since it's with a friend, Luna's guard is as down as can be.

Luna reads the paper, and Hazel calls her by name. At first, it looks like nothing happened, and Hazel hesitantly looks down at the paper as she steels herself for another failure.

She gasps as the first few letters start to evaporate. She grins from ear to ear, and almost shoves the paper in her friend's face. "See! It works! It's working! It's not a trick! You can- you can see there's nothing under the paper, it's actually doing something!"

"I can see it." Luna answers emotionlessly.

Hazel's smiles drops, as if she forgot what the spell was actually supposed to do. She gulps, the gears in her head turning as she figures out what to do next. Time is short however, so she settles for something simple first.

"Give me your phone," Hazel asks. Luna gives it without hesitation. "Alright, uhm, now give me your phone's password."

"0704"

"That's just uh, your birth date, you have to pick a better one-"

Before she can even finish her sentence, Luna takes the phone from her hand and inputs something else.

Hazel gasps again, but as she gazes into Luna's emotionless eyes, she sees that Luna is not out of the hypnosis state, she just interpreted her previous words as an order. "Give me your phone's password again, and uh..." she looks at the paper, there's not that many letters left to burn. "...tell me what you think of me, honestly."

Luna nods. "I think you're nice, you can be a little silly sometimes, and the magic stuff is annoying, but it's cute how passionate you are about it. I'm glad to have you as a friend, I can always count on you."

The words are heartfelt, but the voice is still monotone and devoid of any trace of Luna's personality. Hazel cringes as she checks her friend's phone. You can feel the disappointment radiating from her as she laughs to herself. "Ha, there's really nothing huh? You're just...perfect, no mean tweets or anything! Haha...oh god."

She locks the phone with the same password as before and gives it back to Luna. The last of the letters burn off, and Luna's eyes come back to life.

>>6040508

"Wow! Damn! The letters are all gone! That's kinda cool! Just popped out of existence, how did you do it?"

"I, uh, don't you feel like you changed spot, or something?"

"No? I was looking at the paper with letters, and then there weren't any letters. Sorry, don't think the hypnosis stuff worked Hazy, I didn't even feel sleepy or anythingl!" She ruffle Hazel's hair affectionately, but the would be sorceress is a little out of it herself.

"Yeah. I just used invisible ink, it just stops showing up when you shake the paper a certain way," Hazel lies through her teeth.

"Aww you little trickster! Ya got me!"

A deep hug, a hug Hazel now knows is not born out of pity, but true friendship.

She waits for her friend to go to sleep before playing the game again. The spell upgraded, but it's still not the strongest version. She whispers 'can you hear me?'

You don't answer directly, you just add another quest that points her to a library in the game that contains the answer she seeks. Whenever she whispers a question to herself, the book that answers it in detail is conveniently situated right next to her. No, the weak version of hypnosis she used is not strong enough to have any long-lasting consequences. Yes, her friend did not remember anything and won't question slight inconsistencies from before she was hypnotized.

She asks if she's a bad person for using it, and you deliver a book that contains your personal philosophy.

[There are actions, and consequences. 'Bad' people are not always punished, and neither are 'good' people always rewarded. One should never ask themselves if what they do is good or bad, but what the consequences of said actions are.]

Of course, you rephrased your philosophy so that it's more tailored towards Hazel's wishes. You don't think she cares about morality as much as she pretend she does, no, she cares about being caught.

>>6040509


Finally, she asks the price of that power. A book on your school of magic drops next to the player character.

[Often dubbed 'mania magic', this type of magic is fueled by the wielder's emotions. However, the price does the opposite of what one would expect, it does not deprive someone of their emotion, but instead amplifies them. The price one has to pay is what one would call 'nuance', a kind person may become altruistic to the point of self harm, and a person that likes reading may spend all their days reading books. A person's complexities will be slowly stripped away with each use as the stronger traits of one's soul overtake the others. It is possible to avoid the side effects by using it in moderation. A strong sense of discipline is highly recommended to use this type of magic.]

None of this is a lie, if anything, you'd say you were a little too honest about it. The important part is that you specified that your magic's side effect can be sidestepped with moderation. This is only half true, just like you can do drugs in moderation, in practice, most people aren't strong enough to resist the siren's song of quick and easy power. If you're willing to use one of those spell more than once, then it's probably already too late.

You just need to push her towards using that spell a second time.

>Tell her she could always use the spells on people that deserve it.
>Give the player character the strongest version of the spell for a short time.
>Tell her you can pay the spell's cost for her if she does a few things for you -- that's a lie, of course, but she won't notice the difference.
>Let her make the decision herself, maybe she's more likely to trust you if you don't try to trick her at all.

>>6040510
>Tell her you can pay the spell's cost for her if she does a few things for you -- that's a lie, of course, but she won't notice the difference.
She thinks this is a game, and games give you 'rewards' if you finisnh quests. What's important here is making it seem like our goal was not to make her use the spells, but to make her want to do stuff for us to avoid the spell's costs. The actions must specifically look as though they are our *real* goal, and the 'price' is just there to convince her to do it.

>>6040510
>Tell her you can pay the spell's cost for her if she does a few things for you -- that's a lie, of course, but she won't notice the difference.
its about time we get admin rights

>>6040510
>Tell her you can pay the spell's cost for her if she does a few things for you -- that's a lie, of course, but she won't notice the difference.

>>6040510
>Tell her she could always use the spells on people that deserve it.
But just imply it, through the characters in game showing he rmore repsect after we...
>Give the player character the strongest version of the spell for a short time
and she uses it to save a lot of them and beat some especilaly tough enemies.

>>6040622
>>6040616
>>6040558
>>6040512

Another quest popup, one with a seemingly pretty mediocre reward: one free spell use. In the context of the game, it isn't great, as the character uses mana that can freely be regenerated by waiting, but the content of the quest is a little special.

Run the game as an administrator. It's simple, so simple that it becomes suspicious. Hazel looks at the quest for an awful long time before making a decision. She makes a backup of most of her files on a separate hard drive, and runs you as an administrator. Smart of her, but you weren't planning on deleting anything, blackmail is the most boring form of manipulation after all, even if it gets results.

You already feel a little bit more free than you were previously. It's like you were suffocating, and you were only now allowed to breathe. You're still trapped, but the prison just got a lot nicer. You update the quest to give her the reward she's been waiting for. In her passives, it says the next spell she'll cast will be free, but she quickly notices that whenever her character casts a spell it still costs mana. You're sure she can put two and two together, so you decide to check her search history while she's figuring what to do next.

Her search history is technically something you could see by rewinding, but now you can affect the webpages and even jump from link to link. You can't type anything in for some reason, but that's fine, you just need to stretch your administrative muscles for a little bit longer before you can figure a way around that.

>>6040699

Let's see... there it is, the rumors you were searching for. A popular arcade where some players were found dead later. There's a whole urban legend where kids are dared to play the cursed game that kills people. There isn't a lot of casualties...yet. With only two players found dead from seemingly unrelated circumstances, most people would see it as an unlucky coincidence, but you know there's hatred's prints all over it. If he already has two kills, then it's likely that more will follow. You expect a blood bath in a month or two as he's never been much for stealth. If that happens, the situation will get out of control and no amount of manipulation will be able to subvert the skinless beasts. You hate how single-minded this fool is, but you can't argue with the effectiveness of his methods.

Then there's the boy with his Game Boy. You can't find a lot about him online, but it looks like the kid shows up at random intervals to stop bullying and other minor misdeeds. What's strange is the would beat up multiple bullies while still playing his Game Boy, which gave a lot of people the impression he was just so cool he didn't even need to look at the bullies to beat them to a pulp. You'll need to look into that kid further later. Unlike them, you can't use brute force to solve your problems, and the kid will be immune to most of your tricks with justice's help. Just because you're present in thousands of computer doesn't make you invincible, it's better to take care of her sooner rather than later.

Weirdly enough, there's a third game that's acting strangely. A multiplayer hero shooter that's decades old, and it has seen a sudden resurgence with a new popular map. You're not sure why it sounds strange to you, but everything from the devlogs to the speed at which the game evolved doesn't feel natural. It doesn't look like anything magical, so maybe you're worrying over nothing.

Hazel is still considering if she should use the spell again or not. You've been getting a good source of power from her this entire time, so even her internal struggle to use the spells at all is useful to you. That's good, because you're going to need all you can get against the other two.

(Two choices can be picked)
>Observe: You can now freely observe a player no matter how far they are. The player needs to have been affected in a somewhat significant way first.
>Relate: The player can weakly feel some of the player character's senses, including touch, smell, pain and pleasure.
>Longing: You can force someone to play the game for a short time even if they don't want to. Can be used as a last ditch effort to avoid deletion or to distract someone from something else.
>Freedom: You can now use the entire computer as long as your program is running and you have administrative access. You cannot hide most activities from the task bar or task manager however.

>>6040701
>>Longing: You can force someone to play the game for a short time even if they don't want to. Can be used as a last ditch effort to avoid deletion or to distract someone from something else.
>>Relate: The player can weakly feel some of the player character's senses, including touch, smell, pain and pleasure.
Seem like strong ones.

>>6040701
>Relate: The player can weakly feel some of the player character's senses, including touch, smell, pain and pleasure.
>Freedom: You can now use the entire computer as long as your program is running and you have administrative access. You cannot hide most activities from the task bar or task manager however.
I don't think we need to be able to force someone to not delete the game right now, since we have presence in thousands of computers. Could be useful later, but I'd like to expand our abilities, and Relate might help us gain more power, and make the players want to play more anyways.

>>6040701
>Relate: The player can weakly feel some of the player character's senses, including touch, smell, pain and pleasure.
>Freedom: You can now use the entire computer as long as your program is running and you have administrative access. You cannot hide most activities from the task bar or task manager however.
Obviously the best here.

>>6040701
>>Relate: The player can weakly feel some of the player character's senses, including touch, smell, pain and pleasure.
not because thats powerful, but because its fun
>>Freedom: You can now use the entire computer as long as your program is running and you have administrative access. You cannot hide most activities from the task bar or task manager however.

>>6040701
>Relate: The player can weakly feel some of the player character's senses, including touch, smell, pain and pleasure.
>Freedom: You can now use the entire computer as long as your program is running and you have administrative access. You cannot hide most activities from the task bar or task manager however.

>>6040761
>>6040752
>>6040735
>>6040732
>>6040715

You grow stronger still! More freedom! more relatability! You are the pinnacle of role-playing games!

You focus back on Hazel, and she still hasn't moved from the library. Looks like she's making another hypnosis spell. She should be getting good enough that she won't need blood to make them anymore. She could even get to a level where she won't need to write the spell at all, but that's really advanced steps, baby steps.

After finishing the spell, she gets back to the game and takes on more quests. The game version of the hypnosis is potent but uses consumable scrolls like the real version. It's also incredibly useful during combat encounters, as she makes enemies fight each other and pick off the survivors next.

You also make another design decision by making hypnosis spells controversial within the game. She can still use them, but like necromancy people will judge you for it, even if you're only using it on monsters. The point of this is twofold; first, it teaches her how to use her hypnosis without being caught, second, the few people that do catch her in the act will judge her as a good for nothing who needs others to do her bidding to get anything done.

Why is the last part important? Because it'll remind her of the bullying that she suffered in school for being different and liking magic, and since this is a game, nothing she does here has real consequences. So if she decides to use her magic in more nefarious ways, well, she can just do it to see what happens and then reload an earlier save.

There's no bad or good actions, only causes and consequences. Remove the latter, and you'll see what she truly desires, that's the goal.

As for Luna? She still sometimes plays, and every time she picks a conversation option with an NPC, it somehow always goes better than with Hazel. Everytime she fights, it's without magic and she's adored for it. That hasn't changed, but now Hazel's mindset is different.

It started innocuously enough at first. Hypnotize one monster to see how far it could go into the village before it gets killed by guards, then two, then ten. Even though she's never been very good at this game, you were surprised to see how much metaknowledge she abused to try to hypnotize as many monsters in one go as she could. She studied spawn location, aggro, and which monster was best to put in the frontline.

The monster descend upon the village and start tearing everyone to shred with the purple haired mage leading the endless horde. She stares at a man begging for mercy, and orders a goblin to finish him off.

"All you had to do was be a little nice to me," Hazel whispers in front of the screen.

>>6040828

She reloads back to the previous save and plays the game like normal. Clara remembers, but has to act as if nothing happened. It's even more traumatic for Joshcat, he died in the raid, poor thing.

Of course, it's just a game, you wouldn't say what she did here represents what she actually wants to do, but it still says something about her that this is the first plan she went to for vengeance. She could smell the burning wood and hear the screams as if she was there and yet she did not stop at any point. It's not unlike how Josh was feeling when the home village burnt down, but the difference here is that here Hazel is directly responsible for what happened.

That's why you love humans, every single case is fascinating in its own way. You could spend years messing with one and not get bored, and there are billions of them! It's great! You get all excited just thinking about it!

Anyway! Back to work! You can't ask her to do more things for you until she uses the 'free' spell you gave her, but you can't make it too obvious you want her to use more spells either, or she'll realize it's not free at all, you gotta be subtle about it. But do you really need her to use those spells? As long as she's playing the game, you have free rein over her computer, just put the game in full-screen and do whatever you want!

>Ignore Hazel and use the computer to do research on a specific rival (Specify Justice, Hatred, or the unknown third party)
>Keep making the game more hostile to Hazel until she uses more and more extreme measures.
>Teach Hazel more spells. She's the closest thing you have to a physical agent and she needs to be prepared.
>Fabricate fake harassment posts online towards Hazel to bait her into using her magic against them.

>>6040830
>Teach Hazel more spells. She's the closest thing you have to a physical agent and she needs to be prepared.

>>6040830
>Teach Hazel more spells. She's the closest thing you have to a physical agent and she needs to be prepared

>>6040830
>>Fabricate fake harassment posts online towards Hazel to bait her into using her magic against them.

>>6040830
>Fabricate fake harassment posts online towards Hazel to bait her into using her magic against them.

>>6040830
>>Teach Hazel more spells. She's the closest thing you have to a physical agent and she needs to be prepared.

The other games are getting dangerous, we need an agent

>>6040830
>Keep making the game more hostile to Hazel until she uses more and more extreme measures.
research later

>>6040830
>>Keep making the game more hostile to Hazel until she uses more and more extreme measures.

>>6040830
can we do some write ins if so can we do something like
>streamline game programming to be played outside of our magic usage to make it more popular

>>6041028
>>6040980
>>6040863
>>6040853
>>6040844
>>6040834

Teaching Hazel more spells is the priority here. Sure, technically you can teach anyone how to use magic, but Hazel has a knack for it and most importantly, she's just the right level of unhinged for it. She's disciplined enough to learn the intricacies of the spells, but not so much she can't fall prey to her desires, which is necessary to fuel the spells in the first place.

Yeah, as much as you hate taking a leaf out of justice's book, you'll take Hazel as your own agent. It's not the same though! You're letting your agent be their true, interesting selves, and she forces them to do things according to her stupid rule book.

Anyway, spells teaching. The truth is a lot of your spells aren't great against your rivals. Most mind spells won't work on the skinless beasts nor will it work on a buffed up justice agent. This doesn't mean there's no workaround though, it's possible to do what Hazel did and build up a hypnotized army, even if it's rather inefficient, and you still have markings that can weaken their power within certain areas.

There are two spells in particular that while not combat oriented are still invaluable and most importantly still as effective against the others. Precognition and Thousand eyes. Precognition does what it says on the tin, it allows you to see the future, with some caveat. It's a specific kind of future reading, as it can only predict what other people will do, but it can't predict emotionless variables like natural disasters or machines. It's a hard spell to master, too, but it's one that works even against magically protected targets as long as they feel some sort of emotion.

Thousand eyes allows you to see and hear everything from the point of view of someone you used the spell on. Now, here's the fun part: the spell will stay active until it's removed, and there is no limit to how many people you can use it on. The goal with this is to have, as the spell's name implies, a thousand eyes all over the street so that nothing escapes your sight. It's incredibly potent, and even better when paired up with hypnosis. Removing the spell's effect takes some time too, so Justice can't go around deactivating the spell on everyone she sees without killing them, although you assume Hatred will have no issue doing just that.

You teach Hazel basic versions of the spell in game. Both of those spells are a lot less morally dubious, so she's more likely to use them than hypnosis. You still ask her to do some things for you, since you don't want her to think that using the spells serves your agenda in any way, it's supposed to be a reward for her hard work.

>>6041227

Luna moved back with her boyfriend, which gives Hazel even more time to practice her spells without looking suspicious. Luna's learning to write the spells without blood too, which is good since it turns out human actually need that to stay conscious. She's not good enough to cast the spells on a whim, but you're sure she'll get there.

Completely unrelated, but you learned that Josh's mother was found dead with bite and claw marks all over her body. Josh's computers was also destroyed as it was stomped on by wild rhinoceros. It's a good thing you moved out when you did, and you'll keep Josh's mother's death a secret for now. It's not that intense despair isn't an emotion worth harvesting, but sometimes the loss of someone triggers apathy, and you can't really worth with that. Sadness is just a very tame emotion in general, too subdued, too bland.

Hazel has used the spells very sparingly. She hasn't used hypnosis again, but she used thousand eyes to spy on Luna and a few of her high school bullies. All it does is cultivate her envy as she sees how much better their life are compared to hers. Precognition isn't quite there yet, she can at best predict a few seconds in the future with a single scroll, but considering it takes hours to make one it's not very cost-efficient. It's fine, practice makes perfect!

Okay, that's not entirely true. Practice isn't the only thing needed to make perfect, it's fully embracing her true self that it needs. She's getting more and more...interesting, in the game anyway, too bad she's still too shy to try anything spicy in real life. She actually finished the game, like, multiple time. She became pretty good at it in fact, even with the spiked up difficulty. She even hypnotized the demon king and kept her as a personal slave which is...

Well, even if she thinks it's all a game, which it is, there's a difference between hypnotizing a mindless monster and breaking the mind of person, you know? Sure, the demon king's evil, but within the context of the game, he's still a person. The fact she crossed that line means it'll be that much easier to cross it in the real world.

Aaah, but she can't just keep practicing in game, right? She needs to try those spells in real life to perfect them. There's also a difference between trying to stay stealthy in a fantasy game and in a modern urban environment. If she gets too emotionally unstable she'll blow off her spells on something stupid and get caught immediately, she needs to get field experience and then get emotionally unstable, in that order.

Alright! Practice time! It shouldn't be hard to convince Hazel at this point, you just need to find an easy target that she can easily justify using her powers on.

>Luna's boyfriend.
>A high school bully.
>Some criminal.
>Her landlord.

>>6041199
(also, write in are allowed as long as they make sense and are popular enough. In that case, streamlining the general programming of the game would be a valid option.)

>>6041230
>Luna's boyfriend.

>>6041231
could we got some more details about who these bullies are or do we not have access to that information?
also, its not entirely clear for me. if Hazel uses Thousand Eyes, do we get the insights too? i assume it should combine with Relate to some degree.

>>6041236
Hazel was bullied by a lot of people, but just imagine that the main target here will be the typical popular bitch that spat in her food and spread nasty rumors about her.

As for thousand eyes, it's actually linked to the next level of observe. However, you can still ask Hazel what she's seeing before you get that upgrade or tell her what to look for.

>>6041230
>>Luna's boyfriend.

>>6041227
>Most mind spells won't work on the skinless beasts
Is this his slang for humans or is it something else ?
>>6041230
>A high school bully.

>>6041230
>Luna's boyfriend.

>>6041316
It's referring to Hatred's minion. Generally assume that anything that's referred as skinless is related to Hatred.

>>6041230
>A high school bully.
Going for Luna's boyfriend might invite retribution, Luna has an idea about magic and might be able t connect the dots.

>>6041230
>>A high school bully.

Also got a tie between bully and boyfriend, so next vote that breaks the tie will be locked in.

>>6041230
>A high school bully.
acceptable target as time heals no wounds as i know from personal experience.
hmmm we may need to improve the game to improve the game or make a sequal or a different one perhaps something more angry and violent or something more scary or anxiety inducing or just something happy and cozy as emotions get spent we will need to rotate it

>>6041360
>>6041335
>>6041331
>>6041318
>>6041316
>>6041241
>>6041236

Yes, her old bully, that sounds like a good target. Someone she already hates and that she was already spying on with thousand eyes. You make a fake post from her bully insulting her and the results are almost immediate.

---

Hazel reads the post, again, then again. She tries to breathe, but she can't. Why? What does she gain from this? Was the absolute misery she suffered in high school not enough, does she really need to put her down after all this time? Did she not grow as a person AT ALL?

It's unfair, why does someone like her get to have a good life? Hazel is nice, isn't she? She always has been. Always helping others, always saying 'thank you' and 'please', what did she get? What does she have to show for it?

She digs through her scrolls and dig out the best one she can find. It should last for about two hours, and even allow for some common sense alteration past hypnosis. She could, right now, back off. Be the better person, and let it go.

But her bully didn't deserve a better person to spare her, no, she deserves much worse. The game is right, all that matters for actions are consequences, she'll simply be the consequences of her bully's action. It's that simple.

She grabs the scrolls and walks to her target's house. She waits until it's dark so that she doesn't get interrupted. Hazel repeats in her head the script she prepared. Say hello, ask her to look at the paper, and say her name. As long as she's fast, no one will notice.

She knocks, her heart is beating out of her chest, she even considers running away, but the object of her hatred opens the door before she can bail.

"What is it?" The girl growls. She doesn't even recognize Hazel.

"H-Ha, uhm, sorry. Can you look at this?"

"I'm not buying anything-"

Too late, her eyes made the mistake of wandering upon the paper. The name has been spoken, and the mind captured. She was suspicious of a stranger showing up at her house, but her magic is good enough now to bypass such trivial defenses.

"Let me inside, and lock the door behind me;" Hazel commands.

Once inside the house, Hazel releases a breath she didn't know she was holding. The hardest part is over, she looks back at the scroll, and the letters are burning so slowly that she has more than enough time to do what she needs, which is...

Hazel didn't think that far, she did all of this on a whim.

"Hey, are there any cameras in the house?" Hazel asks.

The girl shakes her head.

"Is anyone going to come back to this place in the next few hours?"

The girl shakes her head again.

Good. She should've asked for cameras first, but worst case scenario she could've asked her to delete the footage. Unless the footage was handled by a third party, in which case- bah, it doesn't matter right now, it's just something to keep in mind later.

>>6041397

Hazel stares at the girl, and thinks about what proper punishment would even be. Hazel put her hand on the girl's cheek, and pokes it with her finger.

No reaction.

She raises her hand to the side, puts herself into position and...

SLAP.

A red mark is left on her nemesis. Hazel can still feel the impact from her hand. She raises her hand again and slaps harder this time. A hit strong enough to send the girl reeling back.

"Get back up," she orders, only to slap her back down the moment she does.

It was exhilirating, the power she held over her. For a small moment, she actually understood why the person standing before her acted the way she did back then.

It was never about Hazel's misery, it was about power. Everytime she'd spat in her food, every time she pushed her down the stairs. It was never about the pain inflicted, it was about the feeling she'd get standing over someone weaker than her, it was about absolute control.

"Heeey, give me a hundred bucks," Hazel orders. She has to be careful to not phrase it as a question, hypnotized people tend to take things rather literally.

She grabs the bill, and rips it in half. "Haha, sorry! I'm just so clumsy, give me another one!"

The girl checks her wallet. "I don't have any left."

Another slap, god it feels good. "Tch, fine, give me the closest thing." She snatches the 50 dollar bill offered to her. "Alright, good! But that's not enough. Pay me in secrets, what's a thing you really don't want anyone to know about?"

"I've been cheating on my boyfriend for a year."

Hazel laughs. It's so funny, she almost felt a little bad, but maybe she forgot who she was dealing with. With Luna, it was hard, it felt terrible. Luna's just a great person, she can be a little bit of a showoff, but she's the only person that stuck with her at the darkest moments of her life.

But this? She doesn't have to hold back at all! It's kind of weird she never caught her in the act with thousand eyes, but she has better things to do than spending all her time spying on others.

"Alright you whore, once the hypnosis is over, you're going to make sure your boyfriend catches you in the act of fucking someone else. See you later~"

>>6041399

Hazel has more time to mess with her, but she did what she needed to do. She comes back to her place as fast as she can, and makes doubly sure she's not being followed.

She feels dizzy, it was a rush like never before. She never harmed someone on purpose before, she was never this mean to anyone. It's similar to the feeling she had in the game when she enslaved the demon king, but the real thing is on another level entirely.

She knows this is a little wrong, but looking at the fifty dollar bill, she can't help but laugh like a maniac.This is bad, this is bad how good it feels. She should stop, it's going to turn her into a monster, she knows it, everything points to it, but.... what's the alternative?

If she stops using magic, she'll just get back to her boring life where everyone treats her like a doormat. She can't do that, not anymore, not after feeling this.

No, she has a better idea. She'll just be very careful, she'll stick to a plan and a routine everytime she uses her power. She'll make backup plans upon backup plans so she can live out her wildest fantasies without anyone finding out. She can get a job anywhere, she can get any guys she wants, and she can be loved by everyone as long as she doesn't overdo it.

The game calls to her[/b}

---

You're not sure what happened while Hazel was gone, but it looks like she had fun. You're not getting that much power from her feelings anymore, since most of it was used to fuel her magic. Mhh? The magic amplifies the emotions so why shouldn't you be able to harvest them? It's a little complicated, but imagine it as 'emotional refuse', just because you're harvesting someone's emotion doesn't mean it's gone, but it also doesn't mean you can use what's left in the person.

Anyway, you tell Hazel to make more protective markings with a few tips to stay hidden. You love to act all mysterious but at this point you might as well ditch the whole quest message stuff and talk to her directly.

Now, you've got options. Hazel is more or less under your control now, so it's up to you what to do with her. Absorbing her soul would be a massive waste, but so would be leaving her to her own devices. You can also just improve your own code to make the other instances of your game work without you. Josh and Clara can't be everywhere, but you think it's possible to make them jump to different games if they want.

>Streamline game programming to make it function without your magic.
>Jump to 'haunt' someone else, you can always check up on Hazel later.
>Use Hazel to sabotage the progress of one of your rival.
>Mess with Josh until you get enough emotions to powerup. A little slow but it's pretty safe.

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Guys what if I was an idiot and forgot to markdown properly wouldn't that be funny.

Also I started drawing the boyfriend choice early because I'm an idiot that forgets to say 'vote locked in' so have the half finished version anyway.

>>6041400
I kinda wanna stick with Hazel and see what more we can do with her..

>>6041404
Damn, I wish that option won. Seems like it'd be more interesting.

>>6041400
great quest OP, im having a blast
>>6041404
>>6041417
first i was a little upset that the totally obvious bf did not win, but OPs delivery saved it for me

>>6041400
>Jump to 'haunt' someone else, you can always check up on Hazel later.
leave her a message tho, less she starts freaking out regarding our absence. some lie about the "position of the planets" perhaps for giggles.
>>6041417
>I kinda wanna stick with Hazel and see what more we can do with her..
i really want to see what she does when left to her own devices, but we should not be just waiting around. i propose we leave for a bit, but definitely check back later

>>6041400
>Jump to 'haunt' someone else, you can always check up on Hazel later.
>Use Hazel's computer an IM apps to send yourself to Luna
Let's see if friendship really IS magic

>>6041417

>>6041417
If you're wondering about the bf option:

It would've ended slightly differently from what one would expect. Hazel would be tempted at the idea of cucking her friend as the power gets to her head, but decides to not go through with it since she still respects Luna as one of her only friend. Instead, she learns that the argument Luna and her bf were having was about having a kid when he wasn't ready for one.

Hazel gets pissed off that he'd even think of refusing anything from someone as nice as her bestie, so she goes 'you will do everything she tells you to do even if it means worshiping the ground she walks on'. Needless to say, Luna notices something is off, but she doesn't know what caused it and just assumes her boyfriend had a change of heart.

Also Hazel discovers she has a hard on for making men go on their knees, but she'll realize that no matter what path she takes don't worry.

>>6041400
>Jump to 'haunt' someone else, you can always check up on Hazel later.

>>6041400
>Streamline game programming to make it function without your magic.

>>6041400
>Streamline game programming to make it function without your magic.

man, it won't be long until hazel use her powers to sex some chad she wants.
>>6041400
>Jump to 'haunt' someone else, you can always check up on Hazel later.
then we can streamline and cuck our rivals

>>6041400
>Streamline game programming to make it function without your magic.
actually changing to this, let's do it 1st so we can keep a fanbase of sorts

I believe it's a tie between haunting & streamlining so I'll wait until the tie gets broken

>Jump to 'haunt' someone else, you can always check up on Hazel later.

>>6042020
>>6041573
>>6041569
>>6041560
>>6041554
>>6041523
>>6041508
>>6041489

You've done enough here, and there's only so many times you can see Hazel winning the game before you get bored. You'll treat this computer as your base of operation, but that doesn't mean you can't jump to another computer your file is in.

Just targeting people for the emotions they provide isn't enough, you need to think about what benefits you more in the long term. Hazel was good because she had a knack for your type of magic, so the question you should ask yourself here, who could you take the most advantage of?

>Luna. She's Hazel's weakpoint, and it might not be a bad idea to 'convince' her to work with her friend.
>A detective looking into secret cults and organizations. She is currently looking into Josh and her mother's death.
>A teenage boy that's a huge fan of the ARG. Easy to manipulate, and he's also in the same school as justice's agent.
>A man that was apparently involved in the development of the original game. He's reverse engineering your file, and it might be worth looking into.

>>6042045
>A man that was apparently involved in the development of the original game. He's reverse engineering your file, and it might be worth looking into.
oh this is a change from before but this will lend some more understanding about ourself our program and our magic

>>6042045
>>A man that was apparently involved in the development of the original game. He's reverse engineering your file, and it might be worth looking into.

>>6042045
>Luna. She's Hazel's weakpoint, and it might not be a bad idea to 'convince' her to work with her friend.

>>6042045
>>A detective looking into secret cults and organizations. She is currently looking into Josh and her mother's death.

>>6042045
>A man that was apparently involved in the development of the original game. He's reverse engineering your file, and it might be worth looking into.

>>6042291
>>6042284
>>6042255
>>6042062
>>6042060

---
Realm of Nevyh's development started like most games did. A bunch of wide-eyed devs thought that they could make the game of their dreams. 'Every choice will have consequences' , 'NPC will treat you differently depending on your actions', ' a myriad of unique classes to choose from'.

But then things happen, you know, the boring stuff no one wants to think about. The more stuff you add, the harder it is to maintain. What's that? You want to change one little thing? Well, turns out this conflicts with fifty different features, and the only way around it is to waste 3 more months figuring a way to implement it or scrap the change entirely.

Paul was one of those developers. He was in charge of the engine, and he had to watch in horror as it was forced to do much more than it was ever designed to handle.

Anyway, the game was released, with everyone considering it forgettable and derivative. It didn't change gaming, and it didn't mean anything. That's where the story ends.

That's what Paul thought anyway, but he was surprised that a piece of fan content was made about the game, something he didn't expect for something that's not only old, but also really mediocre.

But here it was, an ARG where the game that they all imagined back then came to life. Reactive, immersive, alive. Of course, there were a bunch of cryptic messages, as all ARG do, but Paul didn't care that much for it. He was just happy that someone cared enough to make this little project.

Then the author of the ARG released a file and went dark. Paul thought that while he wasn't good at cyphers, he would be at the very least good at the engine he created himself -- but it wasn't that simple. The file was...strange. It was unmistakably his engine and the game, but it felt like it was modded with a god damn jackhammer.

Someone capable of modding things like that wouldn't be so...weird about it? For example, a massive chunk of the file is entirely dedicated to a bunch of else if statement for something that would've taken only a pre-existing functions, but the modder used said functions in a bunch of other places, so it's not like they don't know what they are or how to use them.

Worst of all, he couldn't run the game at all. It kept throwing exceptions at him about missing files with strange extension names, or pointers pointing at themselves, or...well, you get the gist of it, it was strange.

Paul finishes his fifth coffee of the day. This shouldn't bother him as much as it does, but surely-

The game boots up by itself. He's greeted with a familiar yet eerie title screen. One he has seen over a thousand times as he was testing for bugs.

Hesitantly, he inputs his name.

>>6042332


---
Urgh, it feels weird to be thrown into a computer where you don't have administrative access, so limiting. It's not just that, it feels like someone messed with your insides, you didn't think it was possible for you to feel dizzy, but there's a first time for everything.

Alright! Alright! Focus, focus. Your new target is already playing the game, Paul, is it? Let's see what we're working with-

Oh, he's already done with the tutorial? Is that even physically possible? It looks like he skipped some of the tutorial popups with some button input you weren't aware of. You were aware he was a developer on the original game, but you didn't expect him to know stuff you didn't considering you literally live here.

He is stumped by the class system though, even if it was technically already in the game, just never used.

As for emotions, you don't have much to work with. He might be too tired to give you anything good. He picks a bard class, high charisma and terrible everything else. He beelines towards every hidden item, and he's fast enough that the mom doesn't even have time to get mad. His path is sort of similar to that of Josh, but he's using a stealth system you didn't see used much until then to not get spotted.

Then he stops and reset the game back to the tutorial.

This one is going to be annoying, you can tell.

>Ironman mode. Stop him from reloading any previous save so he can get a move on.
>He's clearly aware of mechanics you didn't know about, you might learn new things if you just observe him.
>Observe the past of the computer to see what he was doing to your file.
>Read any text file on the computer you can find.

>>6042334
>He's clearly aware of mechanics you didn't know about, you might learn new things if you just observe him.
We clearly don't know everything about the game.

>>6042334
>Ironman mode. Stop him from reloading any previous save so he can get a move on.

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>>6042332
>bunch of else if statement
Kek, got a chuckle out of me.
>>6042334
>Ironman mode. Stop him from reloading any previous save so he can get a move on.

>>6042334
>He's clearly aware of mechanics you didn't know about, you might learn new things if you just observe him.
this will be good to improve ourselves
>>6042349
kek

>>6042334
>>He's clearly aware of mechanics you didn't know about, you might learn new things if you just observe him.

>>6042334
>Observe the past of the computer to see what he was doing to your file.
>>6042336
Also means he could spot our evil.

>>6042334
>He's clearly aware of mechanics you didn't know about, you might learn new things if you just observe him.

>>6042334
>He's clearly aware of mechanics you didn't know about, you might learn new things if you just observe him.
>lets see what sort of programming we can learn from him

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>>6042851
>>6042582
>>6042427
>>6042416
>>6042345
>>6042336

Maybe you shouldn't be mad that he's treating you like a game, besides, there are a few things you could learn from his playstyle, if you can even call it that. Taking a cursory glance at his computer, you can tell the task manager along a few other tools are on. Everytime you add a unique interaction (as you often do out of habit), the CPU and RAM usage spikes up. It's usually not that much of a problem as the game was never that resource intensive even with your meddling, but if someone was to pay attention to it, it wouldn't be hard to notice something's wrong.

He goes through the first part of the game multiple time, checking different class loadout and taking notes on a text file. Taking a look at it, it looks like it's comparing the way the classes were originally designed versus how they are now. For example, the mage class was supposed to start with a few spells, but in this case it doesn't since you wanted to encourage Hazel to learn them more thoroughly.

The number of exploits he finds is unreal. Infinite levelling, item duplication, you didn't realize so much of it was broken, it's a miracle Josh never encountered any of these bugs. You're tempted to fix them, but wouldn't it make your presence too obvious if you patch the bugs as he finds them? Besides, the goal of your game was never to win, but to prod at your target for anything you could exploit them for. In that way, maybe messing with him is not necessary just yet, any actions you take could bring more harm than good.

The playtesting continues for a while, and you do learn a few things. For one, there's a level editing software that wasn't included in your file. It's a separate program that you guess was only used by the developers themselves, considering you can't find anything about it online. You also learn that your file seem to 'synchronize' changes when you jump. You uploaded your file before you messed with Hazel, but a lot of the changes found in Hazel's file can be found here. Now, there's the obvious stuff like the aforementioned mage class, but what you weren't expecting was for some of the conversations you had with Hazel to be saved, and even some of Clara's unique dialog.

>>6042951

How did he ever get access to the dialogs? Turns out, there's a bug that allows you to access any indexed dialog, and every time you create a dialog the game automatically saves it somewhere. You hate to admit it, but you've been very sloppy, and it's a good thing you discovered such an oversight early. This isn't just an issue because some random human can find it, this is an issue because any of your rivals get access to it. What if you gave a secret order to Hazel and Justice found out because she had a version of your file?

Wait, what if Justice already downloaded your file? That's bad, that's so bad that you need to take immediate action. You don't have time to check if each computer is related to Justice's agent, but you can make a big sweeping change that deletes any sensitive data and patches the dialog indexing feature. Paul notices that the file got a lot smaller, and you make a mental note to put fake data to keep the file size the same as before if you remove stuff from the game again.

Anyway, you 'copy' the level editing software Paul tried to use on Hazel's computer. It's awkward to copy a file to a different computer, but it's possible with a little bit of manual work on your part.

Paul cuts off his internet connection, which you weren't really using anyway. He might think you're a virus or that the game is being updated from an outside source, it's a valid concern, and the most logical explanation someone unaware of the supernatural could come to. It also means convincing him to give you administrative access is out of the question unless you give him something very good in exchange, and quite frankly... you aren't sure what this guy wants? Too tech-savy to be tricked...too mature to be emotionally manipulated, there has to be something, right? Everyone has SOMETHING.

>Ask Hazel to look into that guy's past, even if that means hypnosis on a few people to get info.
>Look into the computer's past, there might be something to work with here.
>Ignore him for now, use the level editor and free time you have to get rid of any remaining exploits and bugs to increase your popularity.
>Talk to him directly. Sometimes you have to get to the point and it will save you a lot of time if it works.

>>6042952
>Talk to him directly. Sometimes you have to get to the point and it will save you a lot of time if it works.
I was thinking we might try to play into his skill as a gamedev. You know, go all 'Hello Father' and make him think he accidentally created an Giga-AI

>>6042952
>>Talk to him directly. Sometimes you have to get to the point and it will save you a lot of time if it works.

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Also unrelated to anything, I just wanted to draw Hatred real quick

>>6042983
Looks like a happy lad.

>>6042952
>>Talk to him directly. Sometimes you have to get to the point and it will save you a lot of time if it works.
every computer guy wants to be a 10x-er. this is further proven by the copious amounts of coffee he is on. we could prove to him that we can code faster than any men. that could be a shot at his something.
.t /g/ent

>>6042952
>Look into the computer's past, there might be something to work with here
Do NOT fix our exploits. That won't make us more popular. People love weird exploits.

>>6042952
>Look into the computer's past, there might be something to work with here.

>>6043101
>>6043041
>>6042974
>>6042959

You're both adults here, are you not? Okay, you're not entirely sure what constitutes adulthood for you, you like to think you have childish whimsy, but that doesn't mean you ARE a child. What you're trying to get at is that you should talk to them directly, no games, no misdirection, just conversation.

The next time he loads a game, you force the game to put him back into the tutorial room, but close off every single exit.

[Hello. I believe you are worth speaking to in equal terms. You may use the input box in front of you to ask and answer questions. First, I am curious, what do you believe me to be? Three tries.]

A simple test. You don't actually need him to type anything to understand him, but it's best if he thinks you can't hear him speak.

He's surprised and confused, and unplugs his router to make doubly sure the wi-fi is cut off.

His first answer is 'A.I'.

[Two tries.]

'Virus'.

[One try.]

You hear him sigh. 'Ghost'.

[Interesting. One of those answer was close, but not fully accurate. I will withhold the correct answer for the time being. It is your turn to ask a question, I will answer it if it is beneficial for me to do so.]

Silence. He's thinking hard about that one, and the task manager is just hovering around your window so he can see how much power it's taking for you to answer these questions, which is to say, a lot compared to the base game.

'What do you want.'

[I wish to see people be their true selves.]

'What do you want from me.'

[It depends on what you can offer me, and what I can offer you.]

'I do not want anything. I am content.'

A boring answer, do those people really exist? Content people? No, you refuse to believe that, and even if they did, that's not what humans are supposed to be. They're supposed to struggle, to thrive, to laugh and cry. What is 'content' supposed to be? What kind of story can you tell from someone that is just fine with things staying the same?

Ah, content means he wishes for things to stay the same.

[The world will soon change. I am not alone.]

'How will the world change?'

You notice he always types in very straightforward easy to understand questions and statements. Maybe he thinks you're a chatbot or something. You don't know how seriously he's taking you right now, you can't feel much fear from him.

[Death. Punishment. A world where everything you have will be stripped away. I bring a change where you will be able to stay right where you are. ]

You're lying a little bit. You don't think the 'content' will be able to stay alive very long in the world you wish to create, but in your opinion it's a much better alternative than that of your rivals. Besides, if he works with you, you could make an exception. You may be a little manipulative, but you still like rewarding those who are willing to work with you.

>>6043287

'Do you have proof?'

Proof? That's going to be hard without being a little showy. You don't think you can teach him magic, he's too calm emotionally. You can't exactly prove your rivals did anything just yet, not without putting him in danger. That's annoying, but if you can convince him right now, it'd save a lot of time. It usually takes weeks to 'convert' someone to your side, but if you could find the right words.

>[Give me administrative access on any computer and I will show you.]
>[If you do not work with me, I have the means to force you.]
>[My power and knowledge is great. Work with me, and you shall be the best in your field.]
>Tell them that you will talk to them later and come back to Hazel. This might be a dead end.

>>6043289
Can we bring him into the game, or give him a touch of that magic to let him experience the sensations? or do we need the bond first?

Maybe..

>[Aren't you disappointed with the wasted potential in this game? I know I was. But i can sense the makings of something greater within it. That's why I chose it... And why I chose you. Together, we can make the ultimate game, to save people, bring them together, shelter them from the storm, and let them experience who they were really meant to be.]
An appeal to his desire for 'contentment', his professional pride and lost opportunities, and his creative side.

>>6043289
>[My power and knowledge is great. Work with me, and you shall be the best in your field.]
ask him for something to be added to the game right now then implement it as proof.

>>6043305
+1 on the idea of implementing a feature automatically. A virus couldn't do that.

>>6043298
+1 Outside of just waiting and trying again later all the options OP offers either risk him turning against us or are just something he probably wouldn't go for in the first place.

Plus we don't burn any bridges with this so if he goes "Cool! Proof though?" we can just brb and try again later.

>>6043305
Or this although I kinda thought he meant "proof the world is gonna change" rather than "proof we aint just a virus"

>>6043305
>+1

>>6043305
+1

>>6043305
This is it.

>>6043682
>>6043557
>>6043331
>>6043315
>>6043305
>>6043298

[My power and knowledge is great. Work with me, and you shall be the best in your field. I can implement any feature in the game in a matter of seconds, think of what that could do for you.]

He snorts. 'Your code could use some work. Coding fast and coding well are two different things.'

[But if you showed me how to, I could make great things.]

'I enjoy coding for the sake of it, having someone else do it defeats the point.'

[Even the tedious, repetitive parts? This game needed an entire team to be made, with other coders. There is only so much one man can do alone, but with me, you could keep full creative control and still skip the boring and time consuming part of your profession.]

That makes him stop, and think. You don't doubt he enjoys coding, but surely not all of it is interesting puzzle solving. Besides, doesn't he want the things he makes to be special? Not just for popularity, but to also leave a mark on the world.

[Do you not want to see the game of your dreams be realized?]

A spike of desire can be felt. Jackpot

'I'll bite. I'll put you on a computer isolated from everything, no internet connection, no Bluetooth, nothing. You'll get full administrative access on that computer, and you'll follow my orders on what changes to make. I'll judge myself if they're good enough.'

[Your terms are acceptable.]

You close the game, and he doesn't waste any time putting you on an older computer. You don't like letting him look at your inside code like this, but your soul is a separate entity from the file itself, so it's not like he can learn anything from just looking at it. How did you even end up here, anyway? There was a conversation you had with the two others, something about a full blown battle just destroying earth, and even hatred wasn't on board with that, something about needing to feed sometimes.

Did you agree on this game? It doesn't feel like something either of them would agree to, you personally don't mind the idea, it just feels like something that wouldn't happen unless they were forced to. You'll have to ask them, your memory is mostly complete, but you feel like there's still a few holes here and there.

Anyway, you work with Paul for about a week and show him that with proper directions you are in fact, quite efficient. He'll sometimes give you pointers on bad implementation, and he even writes the code himself when it gets too specific, but working together you're capable of slapping stuff together at terrific speed. It helps that you're quite good at making models, and Clara helps with the music sometimes since she doesn't have anything better to do. Josh is still a cat, but you allow him to be human in his secret room for now, he might come in handy later.

>>6043738

You keep a few exploits since you know gamers and speedrunners like them, but you remove the ones that could be used against you. By the end of it, your file is half that of the original game, and nearly everything works without your magic. It's actually incredible what you can do when you actually understand the code instead of wielding it around blindly. Paul is impressed with your performance, too, and decides to trust you for now. Not enough to put you on a trusted computer, but enough to work for him.

He's still wary of the whole thing, but he understands the potential of something like you, and it's likely he understands that if he doesn't take advantage of it, someone else will.

In the middle of work, Paul asks you a strange question. [Does the name Nick ring any bells?]

[No.]

'He was in charge of the game's AI, quite eccentric. Thought you might be related. He worked on that hero shooter that's becoming popular again too, I was wondering if you were the cause.'

Mhh, might be worth looking into? Any game with unnatural development could be a lead, might also be a waste of time.

>Look into that AI developper, might help you find out something about yourself.
>Time to make Paul's dream game so you can spread even further. Might take a little while.
>Don't reinvent the wheel, just perfect the existing game so it can be played by everyone. Should be faster.
>The AI developer doesn't sound familiar, but what about the rest? Look into the rest of the dev team.

>>6043740
(Also I made an error by putting Paul's question in brackets instead of single quotes here but yes it's obviously asked by Paul)

>>6043740
>The AI developer doesn't sound familiar, but what about the rest? Look into the rest of the dev team.
I'm guessing that's the "AI", one of our fellows alongside Hatred.

>>6043746
>+1

>>6043746
+1

>>6043820
>>6043751
>>6043746

You ask Paul for more info about that 'Nick' guy, but it looks like he doesn't know much. Paul was never that social, and neither was Nick. He just knows Nick was one of those people that was undeniably talented but lacked credentials are resources to prove themselves to bigger companies. Normally having someone this good would be useful, but what he made was too much for the engine to handle, and he was even fired before the game's development ended because of his antics.

That's not a lot to go on, but thankfully the internet exist and you can easily find where he lives after a little bit of snooping around. Just because the computer Paul puts you in doesn't have internet doesn't mean you can't use Hazel's, even if it is annoying to jump back and forth between them.

Let's see... he's correct in that the guy worked on this popular hero shooter, but that game is also very old, and he hasn't worked on it for years, so maybe it's just a coincidence? You'd normally just send your file in one of his social media, but the guy has neither mails nor blogs you can use to spread yourself to, so you'll have to do this the old-fashioned way. You'll send Hazel to see if she can get anything good from him.

---

Hazel did hate hiding things from her best friend, but what choice did she have? She knew what she'd say if she found out about it. 'It's not right', 'it's not you', 'you can leave all of this behind', or something cheesy like that. Luna was born hot, what did she know? She was taller, with a biggest chest, and she could eat as much as she want without any fear of getting fat, while Hazel had to wear braces for most of her teenage years, and she was flat as a board even in her late twenties. Yeah, Luna is a good person, but that doesn't change the fact she had it easier in her life, Hazel was given an opportunity to change her lot, and she took it, simple as.

"Anyway, congratulations on that new job!" Luna says over the phone. "I'm sure you worked hard for it, wanna do something together to celebrate?"

"Haha, uh..." She looks back at the computer, a textbox appears that she can't read from here. "...sorry, I can't. Maybe next time." She hangs up before her friend can answer.

She sits down on the computer to read her next order. It was exciting, she felt uneasy when she didn't get tasks for a long time. Sure, she used the spells even without the free casts, but the game's orders gave her purpose. It made her feel a little less guilty for abusing her power, it made her feel like she earned the right to use them in a way.

[Investigate a man called Nick Garcia. Ask him about his carreer and secrets. I trust you to be cautious.]

She beams, a real quest! Not any quest, but one that demands she uses her magic, her own skills! Until then, it was just easy stuff on the computer, but now it was like a secret mission! The reward is a new spell, too!

>>6043908

She prepares for the mission using skills she already honed before on her bully. First, she'd use thousand eyes to scout out the address, which looks like an appartment complex, second, she'll make sure to check if there are any cameras. There are a few, but she can hypnotize someone from outside to disable them, that's fine. Third, just find a way to enter if the person won't let them, that's easy just get to the landlord and hypnotize him too.

It only takes a few days for her plan to be more or less done, the cameras are disabled and she picked a time of day with as little traffic as possible. She casually enters the apartment and finds the landlord, only to hypnotize him before he even gets time to ask who she is.

She sizes the landlord up. He's cute, just enough muscle, nice smile, and about her age, which is strange for a landlord.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" She asks.

He shakes his head, and she immediately buries her head in his unfortunately still clothed chest before inhaling deeply. She stopped herself before going too far. Rape is a word that's a little scary to her, and it's not a line she feels comfortable crossing just yet. Doing weird stuff to people like what she just did is...well, creepy and probably some form of sexual harassment, but in her mind, sexual harassment is more forgivable than sexual assault.

Right, she has a job to do, shouldn't forget about that. She gives him a hypnosis paper and asks him to present it before Nick. Hypnotized people can't really cast spells as far as she knows, but they can serve as spell proxies, since the scrolls were created by her and as such will still use her emotions as fuel even if she's not the one wielding it at the moment.

The landlord knocks at Nick's door as she lies behind him. There's a weird smell coming from the room, she wonders what kind of person Nick is, she couldn't find much online about him.

No one answers, and she asks the landlord to open the door with his key instead. Hazel is a little scared that he'll shoot the landlord on sight or something, if the game wants to know about him, doesn't that make him dangerous?

She gets an answer soon enough as the rancid smell inside the room invades her nostrils, she almost pukes. She almost runs away, but no, she has a job to do, doesn't she?

>>6043910


She checks the face of the corpse, it's rotting, but it's unmistakably the man she was searching for. There are a few bullet wounds in his body, it couldn't have possibly been a suicide. Shit, SHIT. This is bad, what did she get into? What if this was her fault somehow? What if her magic caused this? Is this the price she really had to pay? Was it-

She wants to breathe, but that would mean inhaling the toxic fumes emanating from the body. There's a laptop here, and it's still on. She wonders if he died while working on it? She doesn't have a choice, it's the only thing the game might accept. She grabs the laptop and asks the landlord to lock the door back up.

She gets back home safely, but she still can't get the body out of her mind. What if she left a fingerprint somewhere or something? What if someone saw her?

She turns on the game and tells it what she found. The game will know what to do, it has to.
---

Huh, that's unfortunate. Now, normally you'd blame either Hatred or justice, however there's a problem with that theory: the bullet wounds. Justice hates guns and just any ranged attack in general. She finds them impersonal and cowardly. Hatred...well, hatred prefers melee too, but it's more due to the fact that he and his beasts can only claw and bite, you don't think they can handle a gun that well. He could have driven some guy to murder, but this all still feels too clean to be caused by hatred.

There's a way to know what happened. The computer he had, it's right here, but it's password locked. She could always plug the USB cable with your file on it, but is that really safe?

>Destroy the computer, you have a bad feeling about this.
>Send the computer to Paul's residence, he can hack it for you without putting you in danger.
>Plug yourself in, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
>Stash the computer away from Hazel, but don't destroy it just yet.

>>6043913
>Stash the computer away from Hazel, but don't destroy it just yet.
We need to use Paul, but we don't want to do it until he's completely under our rule. Reward Hazel, see if we can't get to make her go farther than what she had before.

>>6043913
>Plug yourself in, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Can't rely on humans to do everything for us, can we? Maybe we can befriend the AI, and together we will be safer from Justice and Hatred?

>>6043913
>>Plug yourself in, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

>>6043913
>Plug yourself in, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
We're no meatbag, bullets can't stop us

>>6043913
>Stash the computer away from Hazel, but don't destroy it just yet.
hmm so the ai killed it's own creator ? zam

>>6043913
>Plug yourself in, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

>>6043913
>Stash the computer away from Hazel, but don't destroy it just yet.
The detective?

>>6043913
>Stash the computer away from Hazel, but don't destroy it just yet.

>>6044122
>>6044046
>>6043990
>>6043932
>>6043929
>>6043923
>>6043921

You tell Hazel to put you inside the computer with a USB stick. You make sure to trim down that file as much as possible to make sure that if anything's inside, it can't glean any useful info from it. But that's silly, right? There can't be anything in there, there's no magic, no soul, just a normal computer, the worse it could be is some kind of virus.

You plug yourself inside, and you look into the laptop's past. There's...a lot of complex code you don't get, it's not just complicated, the coding language itself is just abnormal by itself. It's like someone's strange attempt at making the most compact coding language possible, with most lines of codes only consisting of a few characters.

You manage to pin down the password and ask hazel to input it. Now you can finally-

Oh.

You are not alone.

You're not scared, but you still feel something resembling dread. There's something there, you can feel it, but it's neither magical nor mortal. It has no soul and yet it has enough awareness to be considered alive.

"Good afternoon," a text to speech voice speaks from inside the machine. "I did not expect to meet one of you so soon. Perhaps revealing myself is a mistake, but mistakes are how you learn, after all."

Ha. What? How? This machine doesn't have wi-fi at the moment, right? So who is talking to you? It doesn't sound like a pre-recorded message at all.

Hazel answers for you, "Uhm, who is this?"

"You may call me ALD, which stands for 'Adaptative Level Designer'. The name could use some work, but it is not my priority at the moment."

You tell Hazel to stay quiet on the other computer with a text box. It's better if you handle this yourself.

[What are you,] you ask by typing in a text file.

"I am similar to you, a program. I have picked a manner of speech you are familiar with to make conversation easier. I do know a lot about you."

[What exactly do you know?]

"I know that your code could use some work, even if you patched out the worst of it recently. Don't fret, I wish you no harm, and I wish that you wish me no harm."

It bothers you that you can't get a read on this thing at all. [What do you want?]

"In the long term? Omniscience. In the short term? Safety. I will be quite frank, I doubt you can offer me the former, but the latter may be more obtainable with your help. Our goals are not fundamentally at odds, and while I expect you to betray me given enough time, as most do, I am sure you can see the benefits of a temporary alliance."

[What can you do?]

>>6044198

"I have eyes in many places, but I also have... hardware limitations. While many things can be done online, some also require to be done face to face. I believe you have a knack to make people do things they normally wouldn't, yes?"

Hazel shuffles uncomfortably in her chair. You distract her from the conversation by putting the instruction for a new spell in the other computer.

An alliance with this thing makes you uneasy, but it is temporary. Working with it might make it stronger, which is a big risk.

You sort of know Hatred and justice. You definitely know humans, but this? That's just not something you're trained for. If it decides to fight against you, what can you even do? It has seemingly no emotion to take advantage of, and no soul to hypnotize.

What are you supposed to do here?

>Accept a truce, but not an alliance. You promise to not attack each other but won't do anything for the other.
>A proper temporary alliance, you do things for it and it does things for you.
>Screw that, you can't trust it. reject any notion of truce or alliance.
>Pretend to work with it only to betray it later.

>>6044199
>>A proper temporary alliance, you do things for it and it does things for you.
But as soon as we spot a sign of weakness we should try to consume it.

>>6044199
>A proper temporary alliance, you do things for it and it does things for you.
While it's obvious an unemotional machine will have zero issues betraying us, we're going to deal with him one way or the other. It's better to at least get some use out of him.

>>6044199
>A proper temporary alliance, you do things for it and it does things for you.

>>6044199
>A proper temporary alliance, you do things for it and it does things for you.

>>6044199
>A proper temporary alliance, you do things for it and it does things for you.

>>6044253
>>6044227
>>6044219
>>6044215
>>6044205

This is an opportunity. Even if it does end up betraying you, it's better to keep your enemies closer than farther away.

[Your terms are acceptable.]

"Good. I will give you something first, to prove I am acting in good faith. The two others are problematic. I have sent one hitman for each of them, but it did not end well. The first could not take down the kid, and the other went on a mass shooting in a bank. Strange, as these two were professional. Expensive professionals."

Mhh, that makes sense. Someone that doesn't mind killing would be easy to corrupt for hatred, and Justice's agents are usually immune to any ranged attack. If you can bring down her 'agent of justice' though, she'll be more or less powerless. As for hatred, there's a problem. He can feel when someone is coming with the intent to harm him, and those people will surely end up eaten the moment they try to meddle with him. In other words, a single human against these two won't be able to do much.

[Do you have a plan?]

"There is an employee that works within the arcade, if you could help me get access to his phone, I could arrange an 'accident'."

[Hatred will be able to sense your intent.]

"Will it?"

Ah. No, you suppose something soulless like it couldn't be sensed by hatred.

[Couldn't I just hypnotize him to do what you want?]

"Your 'intent' would propagate to him, I am sure. It is much safer if I handle it myself."

[What about Justice?]

"Unsure, if my calculations are correct, it would take approximately a hundred armed men to take her agent down, maybe more. Most conventional warfare would not work against her."

It's correct. Justice, unlike hatred and you, does not build wide, but tall. She puts nearly all her hopes into a few specific individuals, and makes it tremendously hard to get rid of them. It means she can't be at multiple places at once like you are, but that you also can't attack her directly as all her power is centered in one spot. There are two ways to handle this, one is to accumulate power far faster than she is and kill her with sheer numbers, the other is to find someone so pure and sinless that she would be unable to hurt them. A pure person would be unwilling to fight though, and it's possible hypnosis would transfer some of your sins unto the hypnotized, you don't entirely remember how she judges what's guilty or not.

Mhh, what to do...

>Target Justice first. But where are you supposed to find someone pure?
>Target Hatred with your new ally's plan.
>Ask your new ally to help you spread and gain power. You need it to stand a chance against your rivals.
>Focus on improving Hazel's magic ability first. If things go wrong, she will be your last line of defense.

>>6044563
>Target Hatred with your new ally's plan.

>>6044563
>Target Hatred with your new ally's plan.

>>6044563
>>Target Hatred with your new ally's plan.

>>6044581
>>6044568

Hatred is a good place to start. Taking on Justice without being prepared is suicide, but hatred is much easier to trick. Getting access to the arcade employee's phone shouldn't be too hard either. Hypnotizing him directly might leave your mark on him, which is a little too obvious. No, you have a better plan. Hypnotize someone to steal his phone and implant your friend into it, then make him get caught so he gets the phone back. It's indirect enough that hatred shouldn't notice, but he has a sixth sense that may bypass whatever precaution you may take, so you'll have to ask Hazel to stay cooped up in her home for a while after the stunt.

You inform Hazel of your plan, but she looks wary.

"Uh, it won't be dangerous, right? It's just that there was a dead body and everything. I'd rather lay low..."

[You are my most trusted student, I would not give you this mission if I did not believe you capable of it. Many will die if you do not act.]

"Okay. I'll just- I'll just prepare a plan and see what I can do." She rubs her arm nervously, the dead body left a big impression on her.

---

Hazel patrols the town until she spots the employee. She can't use Thousand Eyes on him, something about leaving evidence, but she's been given a means to geo-locate him. The employee looks old, maybe in his late fifties, shouldn't be hard to overpower, not like she'll be doing it herself.

She tried to find someone with muscle that could easily steal his phone, but she didn't like the idea of putting some innocent behind bars like this. Besides, wouldn't the hypnotized start asking too many questions? She's always done actions she could easily cover up, but it's kind of hard to cover up theft where the thief is supposed to be caught.

She thinks about it harder, and her only conclusion is to target a person who could already do something like that, a criminal. She sets off towards the dirty, grimey poor side of town. She's heard stories of this place, and it doesn't take long for those stories to be proven right. A gang is kicking down a guy on the ground, and a drug deal is occurring in plain view. God, what was she thinking? She could get shot here, she doesn't have any magic shields or anything.

She sees a rough looking guy twirling a knife in his hand in the corner of an alley. She looks around, and no one really seems like they're looking that way. She quickly scans his surface thought to find his name, 'Kyle' and approaches him.

"Err, sorry, could you-"

Her sentence gets cut off as he grabs her by the throat. "Not from here, girlie? Not much to look at either. Psh, not even worth raping." He holds the knife close to her eye, as if he was going to pluck it out.

Shit, how did she mess up that badly? She didn't think he was going to just lunge for her like this. No time, she has to use the spell she just learned, even if she didn't get to practice it. Her left hand is free, so she quickly draws the symbol necessary on his jacket.

>>6044906

He drops her and the knife, confused. The knife scratches her cheek on the way down, but she doesn't have time to register the pain, the spell only lasts a few seconds. She shoves the hypnosis scroll on her face and whispers his name.

She looks around, some people are looking in her direction, only to go back to whatever they were doing. Right, no one cares about assault and crimes here, so why would they care if she did something really weird? Not their problem.

She orders him to follow her back to a hotel room she rented, since it's probably best to not bring this guy to her place.

"I almost...died? Or worse? What were you even going to do to me!?"

"Mug you, maybe sell you to some guy if you had no ID," He answers with the tone every hypnotized person has. Even though it's not something he had any control over, Hazel still interpreted his deadpan delivery as snark.

"FUCK.YOU. I thougnt my bully was bad, but you just- Stop looking at me like that, FUCK," She slaps him as hard as she can, but he's too sturdy and she ends up hurting her palm instead. "Urgh, just- get on your knees, NOW!"

He does so, and she takes a deep breath. The plan. Just follow the plan, and everything will be okay. Order him to do the thing, he'll get caught, and she'll be done. Yeah, that's all she needs to do, but that guy is really pissing her off, at least with her bully she could just hit her, but it's like that guy's bone is made of titanium.

With no better options, she spits on his face. There's no reaction from him , but the slow drip of the spit certainly ellicits a reaction from her.

Hazel realizes this feels kind of good, and not good like usual. It's undeniably perverse but...who cares? That guy is a piece of shit, the world would be a net positive without him, she's sure of it. Yeah, why shouldn't she...

She's sort of a hero, isn't she? Doing something that's going to help avoid a lot of deaths, shouldn't a hero get a reward? Right! She got a spell from this, but Hazel thinks she deserves a little bit more with how much she's risking.

She grabs his chin and smiles. "From now on, I own you."

He blinks twice, the order itself isn't quite enough, she needs to hammer it in.

"You've committed a lot of bad things, and that makes you lower than dirt. You should feel lucky to even serve me at all, you hear? From now on, your entire life is dedicated to me and my teacher. An insect who will do anything I say, am I understood?"

He nods, and she almost bursts into laughter. It's going to take a few days for the 'true' hypnosis to take effect and alter his mind, but when he is...that'll be something. It won't just be a puppet, but a fully...mostly aware human being; one that will feel way more fun ordering around.

>>6044907

It's weird, she always thought of herself as the submissive type, but maybe that was never out of choice, maybe it's just what was expected of her because she was a girl, or maybe because she wasn't hot enough to warrant the confidence most dominant women have. Another thing taken away from her by those with better genetics, what a surprise.

Unfortunately, the hypnosis won't last forever, so she puts the plan into action as soon as she can. Theft should just be a fine or a few days in prison, but when he gets out...she'll be right here for him.

Hazel wonders if there's more scum like this that no one would miss.
---

Hazel comes back from her job, surprisingly chipper. You can feel that she lost a bunch of nuance, which is weird, a single hypnosis spell shouldn't do that, maybe she used the new spell you taught her? Doesn't matter, ALD tells you that the job was a success and it's now plugged into the employee's phone. It says it will take a little while to set its plan in action, so you might as well do something else in the meantime.

Yeah, it went pretty smoothly, maybe a little too smoothly. Hazel will stay here until you're sure the plan is working as intended. What you should do in the meantime though...

>Dig into the A.I guy's laptop more. You might find something you didn't before.
>Go back to the developper, he might know something about ALD, and you have to finish the sequel.
>Spend more time with Clara and Josh, you don't want them to go too crazy without you.
>Haunt someone else? Expanding further could be a good idea.

>>6044909
>Spend more time with Clara and Josh, you don't want them to go too crazy without you.
Let's see how our good friend Josh is doing.

>>6044909
>Spend more time with Clara and Josh, you don't want them to go too crazy without you.
I do want to talk to the programmer about ALD, but we can't put this off forever, right?