On the other side of the mainland, deep within a mountain range, on a cliff, a huge black dragon lazily basked in the sun. Beside it, a man in black armor was intently watching the battle below. Even the mighty beast king with a body ten meters long could not hide the intimidating aura emanating from this man.
Below the cliff, an imposing golden-haired knight was engaged in a fierce battle with the monsters. The knight was clad in silver armor, riding a pure white unicorn, darting left and right among the monster group, with his golden long spear constantly emitting dazzling light, causing the monsters to wail and turn to white light. The red eyes of the unicorn flickered with strange colors from time to time, and the monsters struck by its single horn had a great chance of being petrified. Not far away, within a protective shield formed by the light-based magic circle, a beautiful female priest in a white robe and golden eyes was adding various enhancement spells to the struggling knight and unicorn, and healing them.
The 39-level demon beast "Iron Tooth" fell one by one. When fighting the last few, a new batch of "Iron Tooth" appeared in the valley, repeating the cycle. It seemed that this valley could be called a paradise for level-up, of course, provided that the level-upers had sufficient strength.
The man on the cliff smiled: "Good job, human intelligence is not to be underestimated. With your level-up speed like this, it's quite fast. No wonder both of you have already reached level 40, only a little weaker than those unknown trash intelligent programs. I also learned a lot from you."
Suddenly, an angry roar came from the valley. The knight's face changed: "Sherry, be careful, the boss has appeared!"
A huge figure emerged from the dark cave, and the valley shook with his footsteps. This was a half-human, half-beast monster over five meters tall. The female priest cast a high-level scouting spell, her face changed: "42-level boss, the demon 'Silver Tooth King'!" The knight's eyes became feverish: "We're waiting for him. This is the first demon-level boss we will kill!"
The knight urged the unicorn, his golden artifact-level long spear whistling and leaving trails of debris as it stabbed towards the Silver Tooth King. -150, -140, -130... Seven numbers floated up, it was the knight's "advanced consecutive strikes". The Silver Tooth King roared, a palm slapped out, the knight's body quickly swerved to the right, hiding under the unicorn, precisely avoiding the palm strike. He turned over and stood up, striking the ground with one gun, emitting "Earthquake Spell", pushing the approaching Iron Tooths away with the flames. The Silver Tooth King also stopped for a moment, the knight made another consecutive strike hitting the Silver Tooth King...
The battle was extremely tough. Although the knight, relying on his superb combat skills and the agility of his mount and the petrification skills, won with five strikes against the Silver Tooth King's one strike, under the siege of more and more Iron Tooth monsters surrounding him, his blood continued to drop rapidly. He was saved by the female priest's extremely powerful healing spells. In a critical moment, the female priest also had a 40-level new learned "Light Stare Spell", making all the monsters unable to open their eyes and attack for a moment. It seemed that as long as they had sufficient potions, there was still hope to kill this boss.
The man on the mountain suddenly showed a sinister smile. With his "magic eye" skill, he had already seen that the Silver Tooth King's health was less than 10,000 left. The Silver Tooth King and the knight knew that it was a life-and-death moment. Just now, they had used all their big spells, their fatigue levels had greatly increased. It was time!
The huge black shadow covered the valley, the black dragon flew above, spewing out huge flames! The entire valley instantly turned into a sea of fire, thousands of Iron Tooths were burned and turned into black smoke in an instant. The knight threw speed-boosting blood medicine into his mouth in horror, but still couldn't withstand the continuous flames. The female priest was desperately throwing special healing spells and magic defense shields at him. Just when she was giving her all, a strange laugh came from behind, then she felt her vision spinning, her beautiful head flew into the air, just in time to see a man in black armor, then lost consciousness. The knight also vanished into white light along with the unicorn in the fire. The Silver Tooth King desperately tried to escape back into the cave, but it was too late. A black light shot into his back, and a huge explosion was heard in the valley. The Silver Tooth King turned into pieces.
The black-clad man, while listening to the system's announcement, laughed and picked up the equipment on the ground: "It was really not difficult at all. I originally wanted to change my mood and see how humans level up, but accidentally upgraded again... "
System announcement: "Player 'Holy Demon' killed the Warcraft BOSS Silver Tooth King. Reward 500 reputation points!"
"Player 'Holy Demon' was the first to reach level 50. Reward 1000 reputation points!" ...
In the meeting room of Oriental Games Company, the CEOs of various game companies began their second meeting.
David, the president of American Rampage Company, excitedly said first: "At present, it seems that the intelligent programs of our various companies have been very successful in 'Infinite World'. A total of 36 computers are ranked in the top 50 of the game, and most of the programs have enhanced a certain life skill to an advanced level. So, they (they) have already acquired considerable power!"
Then Lee Ju-soo, the president of Korean Daegu Company, continued: "From the performance of our programs, this 'Hailun' is not something remarkable. Many NPCs in the game have low intelligence, and under the attack of our programs, they easily disclose all the information within their authority. And the monsters are also easily found to have weaknesses. Even the hundreds of testers and professional players we sent in found many hidden tasks and fast upgrade methods, such as traps, setting fires, using poisons, etc. Some who specialize in life occupations have already reached the highest skill level and made a fortune by exchanging a lot of RMB. I think if this exchange continues, the Yellow Diamonds should be crying out loud, haha!"
Suddenly, a cold laugh was heard. This was the initiator of this operation, Oriental Games Company CEO Daru: "You are too happy too early. Up to now, we have not come into contact with the third layer of the 'Hailun' program!"
"Do you know that 'Infinite World' is composed of countless billions of sub-programs. Each monster and every NPC is controlled by a separate sub-program. Ordinary NPCs and monsters have low intelligence, equivalent to the level of those games in 2010; the NPCs with certain status and abilities have the same intelligence level as the low-level monster bosses, which is the second layer of this program, with simple thinking and learning capabilities. The high-level NPCs and high-level BOSS sub-programs, as well as those responsible for adjusting the drop rate, the speed of monster evolution, the calculation of player attributes, the balance adjustment of professions, bug fixes, and game content updates, are the third and fourth layers of the program. Yesterday, the intelligent program of Teige Company attempted to deceive a city lord in the game, and was immediately deducted 500 prestige points! As for the intelligence of the fifth layer and beyond of the game, our intelligence personnel have not yet found out."
Everyone was stunned. It was unexpected that the intelligence of this third and fourth layer of the game had already replaced all the work of the previous program designers. The intelligence of the fifth layer was simply unimaginable.
Daru took a deep breath: "Now, the 'Holy Demon King' who ranks first in the game, we already know that he is a hidden profession and has the highest rewards from the system. Originally, we thought he was just an exceptionally lucky guy, but from his level-up speed and online time, he must also be an artificial intelligence! In my opinion, he may have broken through the third layer of the game's intelligence. Unfortunately, we have no way to contact his owner. The few people I sent to communicate with him were K'd by him. It's really troublesome! However, from now on, everyone must instruct the people below and the programs not to be enemies with this 'Holy Demon King' and try to cooperate with him as much as possible."
"Finally, I have a suggestion. Given that our intelligent programs have a considerable gap with Teige Company's 'Hailun', I think we should gather the most outstanding talents from each company to develop a new intelligent system, just named 'Terminator', and enter the game. Do you think it's feasible?"
The CEOs discussed for a long time and finally made up their minds to cooperate. This was an inevitable situation. In one week, the game they developed had lost 90% of its players and was in a loss-making state. Cooperation was the only chance. If we sent experts to hack Teige Company, it would violate the computer management law. So, we had to use this method of entering the game to cause damage. The specific methods were: monopolizing various rankings and high-level equipment, reducing the interest of professional players; Converting a large amount of game currency reduces the profit of Tianji Company; at the right time, start large-scale PKs, monster grabs, etc.
Amid the discussions, a subtle worry appeared in Daru's eyes: "The intelligence of 'Hai Lan' is so terrifying. It's impossible that he didn't notice our invasion of these intelligent programs, right? Why did he let these programs run freely? It's just a dead thing, yet I can't even understand it. Why...?"