The Almighty Ring

“Dead? Do you really think any of us can really be dead?” Akatziris replied coldly. Death meant nothing to them as they had experienced death countless times before they even entered the Milky Way! They had lived in cloned bodies numerous times, reviving again and again! What was one more death?

The first officer had destroyed Akatziris’ main consciousness. That was the truth. The other truth was Akatziris’ role as a captain. She had a backup for her backup plans; instead of just storing one consciousness in a single location, she had preemptively copied her memories and consciousness into the game machine’s physical drive.

The main reason for her creation of two backups was as a contingency move. She feared that the main physical drive would fail, even though it never did. Lo and behold, mutiny struck and she still had one lifeline to spare. That was also one of the reasons why the support system had chosen to store everyone’s consciousness into the gaming system’s physical drive.

The first officer thought of it all before he killed Akatziris. Before he delivered the poison, he went ahead and hacked into the main Data Management Center, deleting her consciousness there. He had anticipated all outcomes, one of which was Akatziris shutting down the life support system to kill everyone on board. Hence, before he killed Akatziris, he deleted her backup. If all went according to plan, the first officer would kill the captain, and she would then proceed to turn off the life support system or use any other means to take everyone with her to the grave. Even so, as long as Braveheart still flew and the support systems still worked, everyone but Akatziris would be revived. That was supposed to be the end.

However, due to unknown factors, the ship was caught in Earth’s gravitational pull, causing it to fall apart into several sections. When the physical drive was restored by the Terrans—Humans of Earth—all seven Namekians, including Akatzitris were awoken. Unfortunately, they were not themselves when they woke up because memories that were not theirs had been imprinted into their consciousness. Everyone had different appearances and abilities that came with their new character.

Since all crew members aside from the captain were stored at the last minute, they were all connected like multiple files being kept in the same folder. The captain, Akatziris, had stored her own data in a separate location in the same physical drive. That was why the others had no idea the captain was still alive! Everyone was convinced that the first officer’s assassination plan went through!

“Come now, where are the others?” Akatziris asked. There was a tone of hostility in her voice like that of a lion before its kill. Her true grudge lay with the first officer. If it were not for him, none of them would be standing in the room!

“Captain, we have nothing to do with the mutiny! You must understand that it was only the first officer and the seventh officer! They were the ones behind it all!” cried Ragnaros in fear.

“Captain, you have to believe us! We have even killed the first officer to avenge you!” Therazane howled. Although Akatziris looked completely different from when she was the captain, her cold and cruel demeanor was still fresh in their minds.

“So, he’s d-dead?” Akatziris stuttered.

“Explain,” she added.

“Captain, we did not know about their plans. We only realized that the ship’s life support system was failing right before we perished. When we woke up in the game, we were no longer ourselves… I… We were different,” Ragnaros explained. It was general knowledge that only the captain had authority over the ship’s life support system. Despite that, he cleverly masked the incident as a system failure instead of accusing her of shutting down the life support system.

“When we discovered the truth, we decided to hunt down the first officer and kill him. The sixth officer even sacrificed his life for the cause!” Therazane shed a tear as she explained.

“Where is the seventh?” Akatziris asked about the last person whom she would like to kill on her own.

“He’s dead… Killed by the likes of him!” said Ragnaros, pointing his fingers at Jiang Fei.

“Me? When did I even…” Jiang Fei choke. He had no recollection of ever killing an alien character in the game.

Neptulon started to explain everything.

Besides Akatziris, who had been randomly assigned a character in the Royal Nephilim family line, all the other crew members had been assigned extremely powerful entities. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth officers were programmed into four Elemental Lords while the first and seventh officers became the leaders of the High Human race. The first officer was the Emperor of the High Humans, King Zhou of Shang, whereas the seventh officer was Jiang Fei’s very own master, Ou Yezi!

The story about the first Battle of the Heavens was merely a rendition of the mutiny on Braveheart. Neptulon explained that the four of them wanted to kill Zhou as revenge for killing the captain. Alas, Zhou killed the sixth officer before he was killed by the three remaining Elemental Lords.

A while later, the Human Realm and Celestial Realm were separated, creating momentary peace between the Three Elemental Lords and Ou Yezi’s forces. That was the intro when Jiang Fei, as well as players from all around the world, started to play the game. When Miluya appeared, everyone had thought that she was the messenger of death sent by the captain. There was a certain familiarity to her presence since she was created by 0541 using Namekian programming. As such, when she appeared before Ou Yezi, he resigned to his fate because he thought that she had been sent by the captain. There was no resistance, only acceptance of his demise.

The others shared the same thought. All three Elemental Lords went into hiding when Miluya’s presence was felt. They were aware of what they were about to face as the captain they knew was never a kind-hearted one. Shortly after, Veigar, who was revived into the real world as a Supreme Android, came to understand the truth about the game, the Namekians, Jiang Fei, and Braveheart. Only then did they realize that the captain of Braveheart was no longer the same person. And only then did they charge to attack Jiang Fei with everything they had.

It was not revenge but simply a fight to retrieve what was rightfully theirs. Compared with Jiang Fei, they had all the moral justification they needed to kill Jiang Fei and claim Braveheart. He was but a Terran while they were the original owners of the ship.

As a result, instead of fighting Jiang Fei directly, they decided to hypnotize Jiang Fei in the game and obtain the Bio-Lab as well as Bio-Pod from him. With that, the three Elemental Lords now had the means to enter the real world. They had held back for a long time because they did not want to be revived as Androids. No matter what kind of technology one had, having a sack of meat was better than having a cold metal frame. Nonetheless, that was not the main reason. Having a mechanical body would only hamper their strength; they would never truly master the Level 5 realms with machines!

Akatziris was rather unfortunate. In the game, she was but a lowly servant for a human-made artificial intelligence. She was even given to Jiang Fei in the form of a pet! Be that as it may, becoming a pet was still acceptable. Akatziris considered becoming a female, who was subject to love and feelings for her counterpart, the worst form of punishment. Under any normal circumstance, she would have fought her way out of that cruel fate but she was unable to stop herself from being programmed. Her reputation level with Jiang Fei was already hitting “Infatuated”. The power of programming was so strong that she could not help herself from actually loving the boy! Her consciousness was then extracted out of the game and put into an Android body. She could not even tell whether everything else that happened due to her feelings were genuine or fictitious. They had all affected her judgment.