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  As Heracles revealed all the information he knew about Ausberth, suddenly, Gofumina talked about something else as well, something only she saw and something not even Heracles knew.

  “I do know something… Ausberth, that guy. He has got some strange friends,” said Gofumina. “It was a strahing I saw a while ago.”

  “Strange friend?” Vd asked.

  “Wait, when did this happen?” Heracles wondered, joining the versation.

  “Ah yeah, well you weren’t there, chief; I saw him talking with him… or her some time ago,” said Gofumina. “I think they didn’t see me, but… Well, that person looked like they were straight out of a sci-fi game or movie. Like some Master Chief type of guy, it was hiriously ridiculous. I hought this game went so hard for the whole cross-geype of stuff.”

  “What?” Vd wondered.

  “Huh? Master Chief?” Asked Heracles. “Is there a chief of higher authority than me?!”

  “Yeah, I mean it was definitely fug weird, but if you want to know I tell you, it was certainly not someone from this Realm… or any other Realm that is out for the public I think,” Gofumina said. “And don’t worry about it, chief. It’s just Pyer talk.”

  “Huh…” Heracles crossed his arms, listening attentively.

  “Anyway, it was a huge person… woman or man, I don’t know. But they were like three meters tall, wearing futuristic-looking armor, like some sort of full-body meical spacesuit. They also held a huge ser gun thingy on their bad had a long blue cape with a floating above their heads. It was the weirdest shit I’ve ever seen in this game ever!” Said Gofumina.

  Paul quickly began to imagihe person iion, and he simply couldn’t uand how someone like that existed in this game.

  It felt more like they came from a whole different game altogether!

  Fantasy Story Online wasn’t the only VRMMO game out there, and there were several others on the market.

  However, this game ecial due to its incredible and iive gamepy and A.I.

  Paul could easily remember a lot of Sci-fi games for VR though, and they were all over the pce.

  Some were great, others plete garbage.

  As the proud owner of a VR Capsule, he of course made it worth its huge price, so he tried and pyed multiple games.

  But nothing has e closer to the incredible feeling of pying Fantasy Story Online and how great and real it all felt.

  “Tell me more about this guy,” Vd said. “Anything else you know?”

  “I don’t know who he was or what they wanted, but Ausberth talked to them as if they were allies…” The goblin girl said, crossing her legs as she sat down by Vd’s side. “The astronaut-looking fellow talked about bringing the “products” he had requested in exge for “magic fuel” or something…”

  Vd fell into silence for a moment as he had a realization. If this was truly happening, then…

  “Could it be? Are they from another Realm? Or maybe… if they had a spacesuit, it could evehe damn outer space between Realms?!”

  Out of nowhere, Paul learned about a pletely unknown game’s tent, something that could enpass an update much farther into the future.

  Perhaps “updates” by themselves, and the tent they brought, always existed within the game world, and it simply unlocked itself as pyers explored it?

  This was something always within his mind, as he thought about how the invasion from the past era events were triggered, and all those annoying Boss Raids.

  Strangely enough, though, that huge green slime didn’t t as a Raid, so he didn’t get any special reward from it, aside from the strange, cursed armor that was broken into pieces.

  And a huge green jewel that seemed to possess powerful acid and poison within, which he was going to i a bit ter.

  Whatever the case, Paul couldn’t help but wonder how sci-fi teology could even fit in this fantasy setting.

  “Well, it’s not like it hasn’t happehere are also a lot of MMOs that just merge all geogether: fantasy, urban fantasy, robots, sci-fi, aliens, mythical monsters, gods, and so on… Anything is possible for MMOs that o be stantly creating endless tent anyway. In a way, it’s the perfect outlet for creativity.”

  But at the end of the day, with so many different realms everywhere, perhaps it was intended from the beginning for this game to be multi-genre.

  He couldn’t help but imagine himself piloting a huge spaceship and traveliween Realms through it, having battles in outer space, quering poids, arag resources from asteroids while fighting aliens.

  But at the same time, he quickly imagined a giant green slime, a massive mass of burning rubies, and a cloud of dark shadows, and then he felt pletely scared.

  “Wait a sed, isn’t Outer Space where those bastards are?! How anybody travel through it?”

  He suddenly ended saying his thoughts out loud, making everyohere stare at him awkwardly.

  “A-Ah, my bad, I didn’t mean to say that…”

  He felt slightly embarrassed, but…

  “There’s nothing to apologize for, my son; you’re right. It’s strange, right?” Teressa wondered. “Either those ods in space don’t attack just anybody, or they ighose strange people pletely. Do they have an alliance of sorts? Maybe even with the other Cultists. There’s the Temprs of the Desecrated Shadow and then the Knights of the Emerald Maiden to worry about now after all, but could there be a corretion?”

  “Based on what Gofumina said, I think there might not be one,” said Chris, interrupting Teressa’s train of thoughts. “She said they were purely doing business with that vampire dude because they wanted something in exge. They weren’t sharing is or were evil, vilinous allies either. Just an exge of products. It’s dangerous, yeah, Ausberth probably has a ser gun or something now, another dumb thing to worry about, but… I think we should scratch the idea they’re allied with the cults.”

  “Great point,” Vd nodded. “For now, let’s go bae; we o do a lot to prepare for what’s ing.”

  -----

  Pach