Four Split Personalities

"I’d be pleased," Motan readily agreed, feeling that his companion surely had a wealth of information to share with him.

But he had no idea of the scale of revelation he was about to receive.

"This world operates on its own set of rules," Double Leaf said, leaning in and speaking softly to Motan. "The twelve hours we can log in each day (19:00 to 07:00) are twice as long in this world, making it, in effect, a twenty-four hour day. During the daylight hours when players can’t log into the game, this world stops turning until the real world reaches 19:00 when the players can log in again."

This shocked Motan. He had never heard of anything like this before. Neither the official communications from the Realm of Innocence company or any forum posts had mentioned such a theory. Yet, if this theory were correct, then the value of this information was extraordinary, especially for interacting with NPCs. At least now Motan knew what time he should report to the camp the next day.

"How did you...?" Motan asked, curiosity gleaming in his eyes. But Double Leaf cut him off with a wave of her hand.

"It’s simply paying back a favor. I also picked up some useful information when you were chatting with those guys. Consider it us returning the favor," she said, chuckling, "Besides, even if I didn’t tell you, others would figure it out soon. As for how I found out first..."

Double Leaf blinked, speaking in a teasing tone: "Well, because I’m a tech geek who dabbles in a bit of hacking here and there. Which is essentially why I play this game."

"Planning to steal some data or break into the game company’s system?" asked Motan, looking surprised. "I heard the firewall on Realm of Innocence is so strong that even the legendary ’Black Sun’ was defeated by it."

Black Sun is a living legend. Known as the ’King of Hackers’, ’he’ has infiltrated virtually every renowned private institution’s servers worldwide. Vague estimates place the direct or indirect damages caused by ’him’ into the stratosphere. And ’he’ remains beyond the grasp of the law to his day.

Some say that Black Sun is an organization, others say Black Sun is a duo, some say Black Sun is an extraterrestrial entity or a special agency of a foreign government or even a Korean...

In any case, the name Black Sun is revered as a kind of godfather figure in the hacker world. His operational patterns and hacking techniques remain a mystery; as does his choice of targets, which is evidently without pattern. Perhaps Black Sun would hack into hundreds of ATM machines simultaneously, causing them to spew out cash. Or, Black Sun might hack into a family business network, disseminating nude photos of an important figure at random. Or perhaps, Black Sun would infiltrate a famous actor’s personal computer, pulling out private videos or photos and circulating them on different forums.

Like an eccentric mischievous genius.

Then suddenly, Double Leaf scratched her head and laughed, "Yeah, that’s why I started playing this game~ I didn’t expect to get this hooked."

"What?!" Motan stared at her, his pupils dilating in shock, "Did you just say you’re Black Sun?"

"Yes," Double Leaf casually answered before looking up at the sun overhead, "So hot..."

’Poof!’

A small ice ball appeared on her upraised index finger, bringing with it a cooling sensation.

Double Leaf nodded in satisfaction, "Much better now."

"You can use your skills like that?" Motan, watching the ice ball on her fingertip, asked curiously, "Or is it because you’re Black Sun that you can do all this?"

His question lingered in the air as he stared at Double Leaf’s bright brown eyes as if trying to see straight through her.

"Relax..." Double Leaf shook her head, "When your intelligence attribute is twice the minimum requirement of a spell, you can customize it to a certain extent. But it also goes to show that the flexibility of the data model in [Realm of Innocence] is outright outrageous. I struggled with it for days and only got as far as creating a low-cost simulator. I almost gave up."

Motan saw no trace of deceit in the girl’s eyes. Instead, he saw a lingering sense of defeat and asked, "If you really are Black Sun, why would you..."

"Why would I tell you?" Double Leaf interrupted, glancing at him and pouting, "Anyway, it doesn’t matter! I couldn’t even hack a single byte of this game’s server. Plus, my in-game appearance has been changed so much that even my mom wouldn’t recognize me. Do you think you can identify me, the Black Sun, from this character named Double Leaf? Even if you spread the word on the forums, no one will believe you. So, it doesn’t matter ... Ugh... What a stupid game... It thinks it’s the CIA or something... The CIA isn’t like that... Ugh! Just kill me now! I wish Realm of Innocence and I were dead~~~"

The feeling of utter despair...

Seeing the girl with round glasses continuously voice her complaints made Motan laugh. And then,..