As these words faintly reverberated through the silence of the Archives, a bitter smile adorned Valyr's face as he grabbed the books and documents he had grabbed before proceeding to head back to the bookshelf where he had gotten it all from. While doing so, he thought about the information he had just read earlier.
'None of the books I've picked up made any mention of the forum or the World Net whatsoever,' Valyr inwardly muttered. 'At most, the only abilities the other people have that I also have is the ability to appoint quests to NPCs and players alike, as well as the ability to add people to my friend list and gain the ability to communicate with them.'
'Does this have something to do with the fact that I have memories regarding the forum and the World Net, therefore the system gave me access to it beforehand?' Placing the books and documents back onto the shelf, Valyr stopped what he was doing for a second as the question popped up in his mind. Though he thought that it was plausible at first, that feeling quickly disappeared as more questions popped up in his mind.
'But wait a second… haven't I traveled back to a time where Greater Beyond hasn't been released to the public yet? The forum was a function that appeared during the first version, while access to the World Net only came about during the second or third version.' The more Valyr thought, the deeper the frown on his face became. 'In short, I shouldn't even have access to something like this in the first place… unless there's someone or something that's allowing me access to this beforehand.'
'But what or who would that even be?' Feeling a mix of helplessness and anger at the fact that he had more questions now even though he had gone to the Myriad Archives to seek answers in the first place, Valyr let out a long, exasperated sigh as he felt like it would be a long time before he would gain the answer to this question.
Deciding to move past the question for now, Valyr's thoughts then shifted towards the peculiarity that was the time it took for the system updates to come out. 'The alpha version of Greater Beyond only began around two years ago in this world. On the other hand, the updates the system underwent to get to that point took over a thousand.'
'From what I could recall, the company that developed and published this game said that Greater Beyond took a few years of development in order for it to get where it was today. With that, how the heck were they able to emulate the passing of a thousand years within a few years?'
Unlike the question from before where Valyr truly wanted to get an answer, the young man treated this current question as a what-if situation. As someone who used to dabble into game development from time to time, Valyr knew that there were many tricks companies could employ in order to make it seem that they had spent a lot more time making it.
In Greater Beyond's case, he thought that the developers of the game had put a painstaking amount of time to have their world building reach an incredibly high level. After all, reading through the books he had read, it felt as if he could feel the time it took for the authors of the book to collect the information they wrote down.
Nevertheless, he still couldn't shake off the slight possibility that everything in the world he was in so far had been emulated by the company to get to this point. With that, he thought about the level of technology required to achieve such a feat, thinking that the company might have employed a few top-of-the-line supercomputers to do just that.
'But would the supercomputers even be able to emulate a few thousand years and compress it down into just a few years?' Thinking about the company and how they had made a game that most, if not all people around the world played before the final battle, Valyr was reminded of the goals he had set for himself at the beginning, as well as the anger he felt towards the company for what they had done to the people.
To his teammates.
To him.
'Forget about that for now, Valyr. We still haven't established an organization yet.' Taking in a deep breath to calm himself down, Valyr then proceeded to look through the other bookshelves, deciding to answer the question that had popped up in his mind back when he had passed by the Zeihardt clan estate.
Though, with how much information he had on the Zeihardt clan and himself, this question instead felt like multiple questions to Valyr, which was why he wanted to find out its answer by reading up on the clan's history.
"Found it." After spending a few minutes looking through the various bookshelves in the floor he was on, Valyr eventually found the book he was looking for, which was a considerably thick leather-bound book that had the text on its cover page embossed in gold. Blowing and wiping off a bit of the dust that was on its surface, Valyr went ahead and returned to where he sat earlier, placing the book before him as he read its title.
"Zeihardt Clan: Its History and Its Members."
Opening up the book, Valyr thought about the various things he might read regarding the Zeihardt clan. In fact, for a brief moment, he was even expectant that he might obtain an answer to his true identity. However, just as he was a few pages into the book itself, the expression on Valyr's face slightly contorted, soon wondering whether what he was reading was even correct.
"Is this really a book on the history of the clan?" Valyr asked himself, deciding to skim through its pages for now to get a better sense of what the book contained. Fortunately, it did not take long for him to obtain his answer, his countenance now slightly grim as he let out a faint sigh.
"This… this feel more like a book on a cult than a book on a clan."
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