Chapter 443 Upgrade 2: Electric Boogaloo
Not everyone was happy with the recent advancements. There was one group in particr that took a page from the 19th-century Luddite movement in Ennd and actively opposed the empire’s VR technology. They preached that the simtion was actually nothing more than a temptation that was connected to hell and that Aron was the devil himself. Thus, in order to avoid having to interact with it, they grouped together and lived inmunes with each other, referring to themselves as neo-Luddites and ostensibly seeking nothing more than to live sustainably without persecution from the empire.
But the rtively small neo-Luddite movement, along with others who held beliefs along the same lines, didn’t even dent the number of people rushing to enter the simtion. By the time martialw had been lifted, the ratio was clear: nearly seven and a half billion people had adopted the VR hardware, or at least AR sses, leaving only a hundred million or so that still refused to pick it up for various reasons.
Those who chose to opt out wrote letters to the government, waiving their citizenship and all of the rights and responsibilities that came with it, so Gaia merely canceled their subsidies and gged them for low-priority monitoring by other means. If they truly rejected the empire’s technological advances, that would be fine. But if they had other thoughts in their minds and more sinister goals, they would need to be plucked as soon as possible. Still, she would give them a chance.
Either way, the empire officially dered the hardware distribution a sess, marking it as the most sessful productunch in the history of mankind.
……
Aron was in his favorite mansion in the real simtion having a small celebratory gathering of his inner circle as they watched thest few VR pods being delivered to their new owners.
[Your Majesty, it’s time to prepare to issue your first imperial orders once thest few pods are delivered...] Gaia began as she turned to Aron, but then trailed off as she saw that he seemed to havepletely frozen in ce.
Nova, who was monitoring his condition in the real world, immediately understood what was happening and used her authority over the simtion to teleport everyone else out of the room they were in. Once only the two of them remained, she activated the mana transformer and brought the two extra fusion reactors connected to his pod to full power output.
The electricity generated by the reactors ran through the overvoltage cable to the mana transformer and was converted to pure mana, which then flooded into his VR pod. It would send a signal beacon to the iing visitors—as well as anyone else who happened to be looking in their direction—but it couldn’t be helped.
The mana entering the pod was immediately sucked into Aron’s body like it was falling into a ck hole before it could even condense into a mist, let alone a liquid form.
Before Aron had frozen, Nova heard the chiming of a bell and saw a single prompt from his system before the connection she had to his continuously updated brain data was severed by a much, much higher power.
[Ding! Second requirement has been met!]
......
The moment thest willing person received and logged into VR.
[Ding!]
[You have be the sole leader of your species and sold a product to more than 90% of them. Second evolution requirement fulfilled!]
[User is deemed to be in a safe location. Undergoing second evolution in 3... 2... 1.]
[Evolution beginning.]
Those were thest things Aron saw before the system forcefully put him into aa. Once it had determined he was in a safe location, the runic inscriptions on his heart came to life and emitted a brilliant gold light that prated his pod, the room it was in, and every other obstacle in its way, announcing to all who could see it that a mage was undergoing an evolution to a higher state of being.
A few miles away, Aron’s family was having dinner in their home on Avalon Ind when Henry suddenly looked up from his te and turned his head in the direction of the Cube. His eyes shed gold and he smiled happily, having quite correctly guessed that something good must be happening to his big brother.
Rose noticed Henry’s distraction and said, “Henry, your food’s getting cold.” It was a gentle reminder for the boy to focus on eating.
“Yes, mom,” he replied and the gold hue faded from his eyes as he turned back to his meal.
Back in the secure pod vault in the Cube, Nova calmly observed Aron’s situation. Through her mana sensors, she saw an enormous mana vortex forming above the building and rxed. What muste woulde, and worrying would do nothing but cause problems; she had learned her lesson after letting Rina be attacked after Aron’s previous evolution and wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
……
“Fuck me with a rusty wooden telephone pole,” Staff Sergeant Enrico Iglesia couldn’t help but curse. He was formerly a member of the Second Ranger Battalion out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State, which was one of the test beds of all the Army and Air Force’s new toys. But nothing he’d ever seen there had even remotely prepared him for what was in the armory in front of him now.
“Thank god they showed us mercy,” he said when he recovered from his shock. Judging by the hardware in front of him, he had realized that during The Last War, ARES had actually pulled their punches.
A former Navy SEAL gave a low whistle beside him. “Damn, imagine if we had this during the bin Laden raid,” he said. As a sniper himself, he had practically wet himself when he saw the pulse rifle in front of him. Judging by the info attached to it, the range was “yes”.
“And this is just the chump gear,” Enrico added. “I wonder what the reapers use.”
His friend turned to him with a smile and asked, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Yeah, I’m wondering how they select their specfor. I want to be one... after all, I might as well aim for the top.”
“Competition’s gonna be fierce,” the SEAL replied, looking at the hundreds of thousands of campaign tents in the encampment in front of him. “I bet at least ten million of those guys are thinking exactly the same thing.”
“You miss all the shots you don’t take, my friend.” Enrico was determined to make his name as an ARES Reaper.