[CONTINUE + 3] Week 1 || Act: mingle

[foundationmods]

Monday comes onto the snowy town once more, though it still looks as if it's 'night' as ever.

Then again, you are underground. That's just to be expected, considering no natural light can get down here in the first place. The Monsters around you are just as friendly as ever, despite this being your fourth 'time' trying this monday.

There doesn't seem to be many Monsters here...or at least, you think there was more before? Huh.

Well, whatever.

You still have a mission - And with three trials under your belt, you're now a little closer to figuring things out.

...How much longer will this repeat?

FUN VALUE: 7
Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday
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Comments

[improbablenotimpossible]

Yes - there would be a difference between reloading a save, doing a soft reset, and a hard reset...

[dereban]

The thing that doesn't make sense to me though is that... we maintain our memories between reloads.

Why?

[sageking]

This creature is hardly omnipotent. An easy answer would be simply because it can't easily override everyone's memories.

[improbablenotimpossible]

Solomon rules out an immunity due to being 6350, perhaps if this is a "game" - that -

As horrible as it sounds. We're treated like "PCs" - player characters, while everyone else is a 'Non-player character'.

[dereban]

So basically...

It's a setup where "only the PCs remember things from previous save files"? Rather than the entity being unable to... things are made so that we can't forget.

[improbablenotimpossible]

That is possible, but it's not a perfect system. I believe I suggested to Amamiya that we might be dealing with a "Hacked" game with the entity using glitches in the system.

[dereban]

Glitches, huh...

It makes me wonder if we should start glitch hunting now.

[sageking]

An attempted setup of that, perhaps.

Though, it's not perfect, given that a certain monster seems to recall this as well. It's unsurprising that even that creature has limits.

[dereban]

If the entity is a 'player'... I suppose it makes sense that they'd have limits.

[improbablenotimpossible]

Even with exploiting things, a player is still within the parameters of the game - you can't suddenly turn a beat 'em up into a visual novel no matter how hard someone exploits an error in the programming.

[dereban]

Exactly.

Which means that like, the game's programming - if we're talking in this context, is more than likely, a mixed genre. There are plenty of visual novels with RPG elements and vice versa.

But even then, there are limitations to the programming itself... especially since we don't know how skilled the person is at trying to mess with the game's coding, or whatever. If that's what's going on here.

Since - you remember one of those textboxes from the trial, right? The first one that showed up when we used CHECK looked mostly like a garbled mess, but at the end of it... was a closed bold tag, like you'd see in HTML.

[improbablenotimpossible]

Good catch, it's possible if we know where to look we may get access to the 'code' so to speak.

[dereban]

The UI might be a good place to start...

[...]

But wait - if we're "reloading", and there's a "player", and it's the same place everytime -

RPGs tend to have save points, don't they? Usually in the form of some sort of object. I know some newer games don't have them and are just in the menu themselves, but...

[improbablenotimpossible]

It might be something we're not aware of - some games have autosaving, right?

And older games have checkpoints... now then, where did we end up every time we reset?

[dereban]

That's a long period of time for an autosave, if I'm going to be honest.

[Like, a week? Really?]

The... flower field?

[sageking]

Hmph, a cowardly player at that. They still haven't shown their faces to us despite how overconfident it seems.

[oceanicbutterfly]

Do you often show your face to characters in video games?

[sageking]

...no. But I am no mere 'character'. I am King Gilgamesh, mankind's first hero, and the King of Heroes at that.

They already know it is a great insult to dare hide away their despicable form in the darkness, asserting themselves so far above us that they view myself along with the rest of you as simple 'characters'. I will hardly tolerate this any longer than I have to, and once we've the chance to reveal this enemy, I will end them right when they stand at the best opportunity available to us.

[ he's fukken salty like everybody else. just royally salty ]

[oceanicbutterfly]

[Karen just makes a mental note not to start playing Fate/Grand Order and moves on like she didn't hear anything past "no."]

In any case, if they really are a "player," it seems strange that they're addressing us at all. I wouldn't expect them to have that kind of direct influence over this world.

[sageking]

[ It'll be wise to move on past that, yes. ]

That is not only likely because they fancy themselves in such a role, but I am certain they believe themselves to be akin to a god-like or omniscient being; so powerful that responding to us is more a form of amusement than anything. Otherwise they would've done well to keep their insolent mouth shut instead of laughing consistently in our faces.

[oceanicbutterfly]

That... makes me wonder if our "player" is really a player at all.

[dereban]

It's possible that the player isn't exactly cowardly - or rather...

It's not that they don't want to show their face. It's that they can't.

[oceanicbutterfly]

...because even a "player" who has the ability to modify the game is still working under limitations. To use an overly literal example, even if I could make the characters in Octopath Traveler aware of myself, I couldn't actually show them my face, because the Switch doesn't have a camera.

[sageking]

[ ... hm. ]

Oh? Perhaps it could be something like that. Though maybe a little more complicated all the same; even something like this entity should be able to have a body that can be located, after all.

And it using it's 'ability' to keep itself hidden from the 'characters' seems to be an explanation as to why no one would be able to find it at this time.

[dereban]

Allow me to raise a hypothetical, though.

Assuming that they do have a physical body, the next question is this: would we be able to locate it and would we even be able to actually access where they are?

Because it's possible that they aren't in this world - but they are using some sort of conduit because from our perspective, there is some sort of entity trying to destroy this world. Yet - there's something... 'off', too.