Chapter 51: The Fifty-First Day of Being a Lazy Fish

“So, is the game fun?” Inside the Sea Eagle Pirates’ base, Siming was asking Zhu Rong the same question.

In truth, he already had an idea of what the answer would be.

Zhu Rong had been soaked in this game for an entire day.

Aside from coming out at noon to grab a meal and give him a brief update on the situation, she had spent the rest of her time inside the game.

If it wasn’t fun, it would be impossible for Zhu Rong to spend so much time in there.

“It’s fun.” Naturally, Zhu Rong, who had just disconnected from the game, nodded readily as she removed the halo-like holographic device from her head.

This was a holographic game. Like many others, entering the experience required wearing a metallic ring-shaped device. This device could read human brainwaves and feed signals back to the brain; through this stimulation, it made the person feel as if they were in another world.

When holographic games were first developed, achieving “full immersion” was extremely difficult.

For instance, some games utilized massive “gaming pods” where a person had to curl up inside so the pod could read their physical and brainwave data.

Other games, building on VR technology, designed full-body “haptic suits.” This technology didn’t require reading brainwaves; gaming goggles presented the world to the player, headphones provided sound, and the suit provided sensations like touch and smell while capturing the player’s movements to interact with the game world.

However, playing holographic games was no longer such an ordeal today.

As technology advanced, holographic tech evolved alongside it. The latter category of games gradually exited the stage of history, while the bulky gaming pods “shrank,” eventually being integrated into small gaming halos.

Setting the halo aside, Zhu Rong glanced around the room and saw that both Siming and Geshu Qing were present. She asked curiously, “Don’t you have your own things to do? You look like you’ve been waiting here for me.”

“…” Geshu Qing smiled. “It’s twelve o’clock. Do you think we have things to do?”

“…Is it that late already?” Zhu Rong was startled.

Although many years had passed and humanity’s footprints had reached far across the stars, it was worth noting that even in the current Galactic Empire, a human “day” was still recorded as twenty-four hours.

The reason was simple: the genes of humans in the Milky Way determined that their biological rhythm cycle was twenty-four hours.

While this wasn’t impossible to change…

It was too painful.

Changing the cycle of one’s biological clock was infinitely more agonizing than “jet lag.”

Humans had never been fond of seeking out unnecessary suffering.

Furthermore, if the time on every planet were completely different, it would cause numerous issues.

For example, cross-planetary meetings. People coming from planets with different rotation periods would have different intervals for eating and sleeping. Scheduling such a meeting would become a nightmare.

Therefore, a very important criterion in the human definition of a “Habitable Planet” was that the planet’s rotation period had to be close to twenty-four hours, or at least a multiple of it.

A difference of a few minutes was acceptable, but it couldn’t be too much.

Of course, this didn’t actually make the number of “Habitable Planets” significantly lower than the number of planets where humans could technically survive.

After all, a planet’s rotation period was something that could be adjusted.

If it spun too slowly, you gave it a nudge in the right direction. If it was too fast, you hit it from the opposite side. Humanity always found a way.

As for whether impacting a planet would affect its ecology…

Humans didn’t care.

The other changes required to transform a “near-habitable planet” into a “Habitable Planet” weren’t necessarily any less drastic than the changes caused by a single impact.

In short, no matter where one went, “twelve o’clock” remained a number representing midnight and noon.

Zhu Rong glanced at the optical computer on her wrist, which displayed the time.

[Local Time 23:57]

[Capital Star Time 14:22]

Local time referred to the time at the specific location on the planet they were currently on. This time could often be adjusted manually. After all, while the optical computer had a positioning function, it could not track the user’s location without permission if the user chose not to enable it.

However, one could also choose options like “Enable but do not upload data” or “Enable and upload data,” deciding whether to send location data to the StarNet database while the positioning was active. If one chose not to upload, most people would still have no right to view your location even if the positioning function was on.

In most cases, the Empire still respected the privacy of its citizens.

“Oh,” Zhu Rong said. “Sorry, I lost track of time.”

“It’s fine.” Siming shook his head and gave her hair a playful rub. “Is it really that fun?”

“It’s fun!” Zhu Rong looked up at him, her eyes sparkling.

“Did you get a Mecha?” Geshu Qing asked.

“No.” Zhu Rong shook her head. “It’s only been a day; it’s not that fast. Besides, my pace is very slow.”

“Your pace is… slow?” Both men were surprised.

“Yeah, because it’s so fun!” Zhu Rong explained. “The Desolate Planet is very beautiful.”

…Right, the strange adjectives were making a comeback.

Siming felt helpless. “Can you be more specific?”

“Hmm…” Zhu Rong knew Siming probably wouldn’t understand her meaning, so she cooperated by providing a bit more explanation. “It’s probably… realistic? Even though it’s all fake, it feels very real.”

“Huh?”

“I mean, the wild monsters inside are definitely virtual. Many of them probably don’t even exist in reality. For example, some use Mental Power, some breathe fire, some glow…”

Zhu Rong hadn’t studied biology and knew very little about the many existing organisms in the world. The Desolate Planet was a place where few things survived, and the variety of species there was extremely limited. There were over a dozen Habitable Planets in the Sea Eagle Nebula with plenty of animals, but Zhu Rong hadn’t had the chance to see them yet.

However, she still knew some common-sense facts.

For instance, Mental Power was an ability unique to humans.

Furthermore, things like magic or superpowers—things that sounded cool and actually were cool, which humans had been fantasizing about for thousands of years—had yielded no evidence of existence to this day.

Humanity had already been able to deconstruct the world and had found no “magic element” particles. Humans could analyze their own bodies and had found no meridian systems¹ or energy cores.

They were, in the end, just fantasies.

Therefore, any wild monster that possessed magic, superpowers… or had something like a “Crystal Core” in its head, certainly did not exist in reality.

But—

“But they are very… harmonious?” Zhu Rong struggled to dig some adjectives out of her vocabulary. “Very real, harmonious… self-consistent.”

Seeing that Siming still didn’t seem to understand, she explained, “We’ve played a few holographic games together before. Like ‘Fairyland,’ which set it up so people could cultivate immortality, ride flying swords, and so on. It also had spirit beasts with special abilities.”

“But those were ‘programmed’ in,” Zhu Rong said. “The game system says this spirit beast can fire wind blades, so it fires them. The game doesn’t give a… principle for how it fires them. Those wind blades just seem to appear out of thin air.”

“But this game is different. Their abilities correspond to their physical structures. Their behavior isn’t just random or pre-set. When they walk forward, every muscle, every bone, even the fur on their bodies moves accordingly.”

“The fire-breathing animals have a special organ in their abdomens that helps them produce flames. While they’re breathing fire, that organ is actually working.”

“It’s just… the feeling it gives you is that the game didn’t just simulate an animal’s breathing and heartbeat to give you a sense of realism where people can see it… it simulated the activity of every single cell inside.”

As Zhu Rong described it, her eyes were shining. She truly felt that the environment in the game was exceptionally well-made, incomparably so. Based on that alone, she would love the game even if it didn’t have Mecha elements.

Thus, she was exceptionally enthusiastic and patient while describing these details.

“…Hiss.” Siming took a sharp breath.

He could imagine the sheer amount of computational power required to make a single animal so detailed.

And if every animal inside was like that…

It had reached a terrifying level.

Geshu Qing, however, didn’t know what Siming was thinking. He suddenly asked, “So, how exactly do you know that the fire-breathing animal has a fire-breathing organ in its belly, and that the organ is actually working when it breathes fire?”

“You didn’t just grab some random unlucky creature and gut it, did you?”

Zhu Rong nodded. “I did.”

“If I remember correctly, you don’t even have a Mecha yet, right? Your starting character is practically empty-handed!” Geshu Qing’s expression crumbled. “Don’t tell me you gutted this thing with your bare hands!”

“Well…” Zhu Rong thought for a moment. “Not exactly. I used its own teeth.”

“I felt a bit bad for it, actually. I originally planned to pull the teeth out to use as tools, but I wasn’t strong enough and didn’t have any equipment to help… Luckily, it had a very long neck.”

Siming was equally stunned. “So you made that poor creature lower its own head and rip open its own belly? While it was still alive?”

“Yes,” Zhu Rong confirmed with a nod.

“You’re a monster!” Geshu Qing covered his face. “This girl is definitely a monster!”

Siming fell into deep thought.

Geshu Qing shook him violently by the shoulders. “She’s your kid! Teach her some manners! Even if she—”

He paused, not daring to mention the words Desolate Planet.

“…Even if she came from there, she shouldn’t be this brutal!”

Translator’s Notes