"Patchi, do you know how many ways there are to flip a book with one hand?"
"?"
"You don't? I'll teach you~"
"...—!"
"...."
"Patchi, what are you thinking about?"
Zeroy had borrowed the Azure Box of Revolution and the Ultimate Karmic Wheel from Patchouli and, at this moment, was preparing to enter Little Hell and begin simulating worlds. Just then, she noticed Patchouli staring absentmindedly at her book and her own hand.
"Ahem... it's nothing." Patchouli held back the urge for her cheeks to flush red.
It was already the next day. Yesterday, they had confessed their feelings to one another, then shared a bit more of their emotions, and after resting, they had arrived at today. The reason Patchouli was distracted was that she was recalling some knowledge Zeroy had passed on during their emotional exchange yesterday—things Patchouli herself had never known.
For example—how to flip a book with one hand.
She was going over the details of one-handed page flipping, wanting to master and internalize this new knowledge so she could put it to use next time. Unfortunately, Zeroy was terrible at teaching. She only demonstrated, never explained. And her demonstration had been applied directly on Patchouli herself.
As a result, Patchouli hadn't even seen how Zeroy flipped the book with one hand. All she could do was rely on memory and sensation, reconstructing the posture Zeroy had used. She only remembered the first few methods.
For the later ones, because of how deeply their emotional exchange had gone, she'd been completely unable to split her attention to record or learn them. So her impression of the latter methods was extremely faint—just one thought remained: she's really good.
Regardless, it was fine. Zeroy was good, yet not that good. Since Patchouli herself had been involved firsthand, she could easily tell: Zeroy had lots of theoretical knowledge, but no practice—Patchouli was the very first practice subject.
So even if she had been utterly overwhelmed by one-handed page flipping, with her learning speed and knowledge base, she'd be able to counter Zeroy easily before long.
Zeroy, eager to get on with the world simulations, didn't notice Patchouli's little thoughts. If she had, she definitely would have snorted in pride—because besides one-handed page flipping, she also knew something even greater: peeling an orange.
......
"Wait! Don't go!"
"Oh no! Without you all, I—!"
"...."
"Saki—Saki Saki Saki Saki Saki Saki Saki!"
"..."
Watching the shocking prostration and desperate crawling of the idol girl inside the simulated world, Zeroy sighed helplessly.
"This isn't going to work, is it?"
The random scene she glimpsed in the simulation left her with a pounding headache. So far, the simulated world hadn't collapsed, not even shown signs of it, yet even the lighthearted girl band inside was falling apart like this. Zeroy was already losing hope for this world's future.
Within the simulated world, several years passed, and sure enough, collapse arrived. Chaos erupted, order crumbled, violence and hatred ruled most people. And then the simulated world came to an end.
Almost simultaneously, the other two simulated worlds also collapsed.
In one of them—
People were thriving, though there were plenty of problems and hidden dangers, nothing yet at the point of outbreak. However, while climbing the tech tree, they had chosen a wrong technology—advanced artificial intelligence. That technology corrupted the master control AI Zeroy had designed.
In the end, a super AI emerged in the simulation, one bent on exterminating all humanity—Noah. Against the super AI Noah, humans were utterly defeated, until Zeroy herself intervened to format it.
In another world—
Zeroy's design for a resource-equal society was still incomplete. Over decades of development, people kept finding loopholes to exploit, until one person discovered a critical flaw.
Exploiting it, that person and their group gradually seized control of a form of advanced educational resource. Using this as a trigger, the group controlled more and more resources, social inequality worsened, and eventually the framework of the resource-equal society was completely shattered.
In the end, though the world hadn't collapsed yet, Zeroy personally ended it. Because whether the order remained no longer mattered—people had lost happiness, living only in suffering. And they themselves no longer acknowledged such a world. So there was no point in continuing its simulation.
In the end, after all these simulations, the lifespan of worlds had been raised to the 100–150 year range. Still, the road was long and difficult.
At first, Zeroy was pleased by this result. Yet after sitting and thinking, she realized her current simulations weren't fundamentally different from the very first ones. She still hadn't built a stable order, one that everyone acknowledged and could live happily within. It was still nothing more than endlessly patching the bugs popping up everywhere.
In other words, the state of her simulations was just barely stumbling to reach 150 years. By the 150th year, all the accumulated hidden dangers and problems would erupt together, completely destroying the social order, or completely erasing the harmony Zeroy wanted.
What Zeroy hoped for, however, was steady progress all the way to 150 years, only to suddenly encounter a severe bug and collapse. The difference was this: in the first case, collapse was inevitable; in the second, collapse was an accident. The first gave the sense of a rickety troupe always about to fall apart. The second gave a sense of reliability and stability.
And this wasn't even the only issue that made Zeroy sigh.
She had envisioned several stages for her simulations—
The first stage: everyone is an ordinary human, all of one nation and one people, using the same writing and language. This world has no supernatural side, a so-called no-magic or anti-magic world.
When she succeeded in establishing a stable order in such a world, where people could be happy and recognize that order for five hundred years, then she could advance to the second stage.
The second stage: people of different nations and races, with different languages and writing, with such differences gradually increasing.
Next was the third stage: technology and magic coexisting, not just humans but also elves, demons, angels, youkai—different species all living together, while continually unlocking more of the tech tree.
In short, adding more and more variables.
Finally, the fourth stage: setting up all sorts of natural disasters and man-made catastrophes, forcing people to overcome such trials.
Zeroy could protect them forever, yet she also had to consider: if she were gone, how could the utopia she created continue to exist?
In other words, Zeroy hadn't even gotten halfway through the first stage.
...
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