Terra Nova Online : Rise Of The Strongest Player - Chapter 71

The uprising
[ System Notification – This is a gentle reminder to the player ‘TheBoss’ that your work shift starts in 30 minutes.

Please logout at the soonest if you don’t wish to be marked absent ]

A system notification reminded Leo that his shift was going to start in 30 minutes.

Thankfully, the in-game clock and the real world clock seemed to be in perfect sync such that when it was night on the arc ship, it was early morning in the game and when it was night in the game, it was the start of the work shift on the arc ship.

“Let’s set camp here for the night, we will continue tomorrow” Ben said coincidentally at the same time as Leo received his notification, as Leo quickly helped Ben set up camp in ten minutes, before pretending to go to sleep as he logged out of the game.

Luke, on his end also got a similar notification and logged out as well as he did so while still being in the merchant wagon enroute to the capital.

************

( The real world, Arc Ship )

Luke was already dressed up and ready by the time Leo logged out and he urged Leo to hurry up.

While Leo had not been paying any attention to the global level rankings after the initial notification where he was declared to be on top, Luke who had nothing much to do while sitting idle in the carriage, spent a lot of time exploring the rankings and the global chat as he collected new, important pieces of information from the game.

“Hey Leo, today at work, remind me to tell you about my findings of Terra Nova. This game is much deeper than we believe” Luke said in a serious voice as Leo threw him a confused glance before nodding.

As to not be late, the two rushed towards the attendance line once Leo was dressed where they were surprised to see a moderately low turnout for day 5 of work.

Supervisors Jude, Vini and Cama came in at their usual time and after taking the roll call assigned everyone their tasks for the day with Luke and Leo getting their same old septic tank cleaning task.

The atmosphere amongst those who had come to work was solemn and although there was no chaos at work, there was a collective uneasiness that everyone felt because of the large number of absentees.

” What’s going on? I think only about 60% of total workers have shown up for work today, almost all of the working parties of 3 have been cut down to 2 today…..” Leo said once he and Luke were alone in the septic tank below, shoveling shit as usual.

” I wouldn’t have known what was going on either, if I was not snooping around on the global chat.

Yesterday, there were this bunch of guys who kept spamming messages like.

” Who here is from sector E?”

Or

” Who here wishes to be promoted out of the shithole called sector E?”

And while 90% of their messages were ignored, those from sector E who did reply to their text were then approached in private by DMs and invited into a secret organization called ‘The Uprising’.” Luke said, as he narrated the tale of what happened in a calm voice.

” Yesterday, I posted a message on the global chat about how ineffective guns were in Terra Nova and it became a viral post with thousands of comments and sub comments underneath.

After a while of posting it, and replying to some of the comments underneath, I got bored of my own post, however, somewhere I must have replied to someone under it that I was from sector E and it was using this message as a reference that I got approached by one of those people spamming “Who here is from sector E” in DMs” Luke said as his voice turned serious.

” I’ve had thousands of DM requests after my post went viral, yet, I have not accepted any DMs from strangers, however, his DM interestingly started with the line – ‘I have important information for my brother’s from sector E’ which intrigued me and hence I accepted it just to humor myself ” Luke said as he stopped shoveling shit for a second and turned to face Leo.

“The man, whose ID was ‘FakeArcher’, conversed with me for a full five minutes and tried to convince me to join an organization that went by the name ‘The Uprising’ which is apparently being led by a player called ‘ChaosBringer’.

To convince me to join, he asked me what were the three biggest problems that I was currently facing in the game and just to humor him, I told him about how finding prey beyond level 12 was a problem near the newbie towns.

I did not expect him to have a solution to it, however, he immediately replied to me telling me how to move beyond level12, suggesting that one could kill players of lower or same level and become a murderer to progress fast.

He explained how there was no shortage of humans in a town and how finding and killing them was a faster way to level up” Luke said as now, Leo felt invested in this story as he too stopped shoveling shit and focused on what Luke had to say.

” He also knew what Cervantez knows about MP.

He told me how to earn them and how to exchange them for anything one wants.

He explained to me how with enough MP one could move straight from sector E to sector S and how MP could be exchanged in the real world to not perform any duties for the day without facing penalties” Luke said as now even Leo felt surprised as to how well informed the uprising was if they had access to information which was not public knowledge yet.

” Most importantly, he told me that their leader understands the game mechanics better than any other player in the game and proceeded to explain to me something that not even Cervantez told us.

He told me that while the rest of the game was ultra realistic and the NPC within the game behaved in a coherent pattern with emotions, consistent memory and unique behaviors there were 2 points where their memory glitched out and they behaved like coded characters.

Firstly, the NPC within the game did not seem to register player deaths.

If a player died before their eyes, they would act worried and try to save them if such was their nature, however, once a players body disappeared from before their eyes, so did their memory of them dying.

This means that even if a player died before an NPC and later came back to life, the NPC would forget that the player had died before their very eyes in the first place, however, if the same occurred for an NPC witnessing NPC death then they would freak out saying that the NPC that returned from dead was a ghost.

The second instance of their coded nature could be witnessed when it was time for a player to logout at night as almost immediately as one received a system notification reminding them of their real world obligations, the NPC around them would start finding a reason to retire for the night” Luke said as Leo’s eyes widened in disbelief as this was something that he had experienced just today.

Almost as soon as he got a work reminder, his master Ben asked to camp for the night as Leo did not even realize that this was a coding pattern.

” Whoa…” Leo murmured as Luke nodded his head and let out a deep sigh.

” The fake archer player told me at the end that the creator of the uprising would soon make an official guild and recruit all the downtrodden players from sector E and unite them under one banner.

He told me that if I joined now, I would get access to many more of such hidden tips and knowledge, however, I declined his offer because I’ve already committed to Cervantez.

Although I’m not 100% sure of why so many players have not shown up for work today, I have a strong hunch that it has something to do with the uprising” Luke said as he concluded his story and went back to shoveling shit as he had already revealed a lot for Leo to contemplate.