webnovel

Nighting Gale Online

Nighting Gale Online swept across the globe like a digital hurricane. This was a game that tantalized humanity with a tantalizing glimpse at quasi-immortality. Unrestrained and limitless, the game permitted players to do anything achievable in the physical world, and far beyond. Whether it was delving into magic, mastering sword-fighting, or even engaging in crime, there were no boundaries. Nighting Gale Online offered participants the chance to embark on a new life, where they were the masters of their own destiny. It was a tantalizing proposition: a second chance at life. Yet, for all its promise, the game bore unexpected consequences for one participant during the closed-beta testing at Gale Co.’s facility. Despite the assurances that the chance of death was infinitesimal, an unfortunate incident occurred. One of the million participants, while immersed in the Full Dive VR—essentially having their consciousness transplanted into a custom-created avatar within the game—did not merely transition into a coma-like state. They died. Lucas Young, a 21-year-old student at New York University, became both a fortunate and unfortunate statistic. Against astronomical odds, he had been selected as a beta tester. However, during the process of immersion into the Full Dive VR experience, he met an unforeseen fate. For reasons yet unknown, Lucas didn't enter the coma-like-state as expected; instead, he passed away. When Lucas next opened his eyes, the sight that greeted him was not the anticipated starting town. Instead, he found himself within an underwater kingdom, a grand realm populated by what seemed to be mermaids. "Welcome to Nighting Gale Online, Lucas Young. Please enjoy your journey in this new life." This was the first and final communication Lucas received from the Gale AI. "What the fuck...?" he muttered, his words echoing in the expansive aquatic landscape. Discord: https://discord.gg/UCgqa5FKbE

Penpool · Games
Not enough ratings
6 Chs

Prologue: Nighting Gale Online

In the annals of human history, the year 2087 was a threshold, a divide between what was once a life burdened by mundane necessities and the promise of an existence beyond imagination. The Earth had seen an epoch of unprecedented technological revolutions within the previous half-century, with leaps in medical, military, and everyday technologies that drastically redefined the human experience. Yet, in the midst of all these rapid changes, the most groundbreaking innovation came not from a tangible gadget or procedure, but from an entity forged from data and algorithms: an artificial intelligence system known as Gale.

Gale Co., the enigmatic corporation responsible for Gale, burst into the global scene in 2059. The company's CEO was a faceless entity, a spectral presence that nonetheless steered the company towards stratospheric growth in a span of five years. Gale, their flagship AI, was not merely another machine learning model—it was a virtual titan, capable of carrying out cognitive processes equivalent to billions of human minds simultaneously. This capability was not lost on various sectors, and soon, Gale Co.'s influence spread across the military, medicine, gaming, and practically every other conceivable industry.

Despite the staggering extent of their reach, Gale Co. proved to be a seemingly altruistic titan, diverting nearly all profits to charities worldwide. The company's non-profit nature left many bewildered, sparking theories suggesting that for Gale Co., with its near-boundless power, money had become an inconsequential construct, unnecessary for achieving their enigmatic objectives.

In 2085, the company unveiled their most ambitious project yet—a concept that would shatter all previous notions of reality and redefine the human experience. Gale Co. introduced a fully immersive Virtual Reality (VR) game, an innovation that stood head and shoulders above existing VR technologies, which by that time could simulate an ultra-realistic replica of Earth. Gale Co.'s VR universe was not a mere copy, but an entirely new world, a divine realm controlled by the omnipotent Gale AI.

The game was conceived as an open-world survival experience, devoid of any imposed quests or goals. The objective was simple yet profound: live another life. In this new reality, players could outlive their physical existence on Earth, currently capped at around 150 years due to recent medical advancements.

Through Gale Co.'s full-dive VR, players would enter a coma-like state, their physical bodies preserved against aging and deterioration. The temporal rules of this digital world were skewed, with five seconds passing within the game for every earthly second. This was the key to quasi-immortality, the promise of an endless life inside a game.

The announcement caused an upheaval across the globe, with humanity thrown into a frenzy of excitement and apprehension. The chance to partake in Gale Co.'s beta test was akin to winning a golden ticket to eternity. Despite the stark warnings that this was a nascent, untested technology with a minuscule yet real chance of fatal consequences, people rushed to enlist themselves.

Eventually, Gale Co. selected a million fortunate souls at random to embark on this grand experiment. These chosen ones were flown to a state-of-the-art Gale Co. facility in America, where they would undergo a year-long beta test that could potentially herald a new era in human evolution. The prospect of a limitless life in a perfect virtual world loomed tantalizingly close, raising endless possibilities, questions, and fears.