[NR] Worries Courtney - Chapter 543 (Patreon)

With the wave over, everyone relaxes. And then Courtney gets angry. “A puppeteer monster? Sure, swarms and insect colonies have something similar, but actually puppeting others? That just isn’t done! What kind of nonsense is NeoRealm trying to throw at us?”

Jason shrugs, “Pretty sure I’ve heard of worse even deeper into the Deep Wilds.”

Courtney waves his statement off, “Yes, deeper! We’re not deep! This is much too shallow to be facing one of the forms of mind control. They’ve shown that this kind of thing can really mess you up even in normal VR.”

Rosha, “Well, the beast didn’t use it on us? I feel like it totally should have been able to at least knock out attacks off course.”

Jason nods, “My guess is that the Deep Wilds simply pulled some random monsters together and one of them was that puppeteer. Then when it was here, the System went and prevented it from directly puppeting us.”

Courtney grimaced, “Do you think the Deep Wilds can truly break the rules like that? Sure, there are all those stories about odd things and artifacts, but most of my sources put that down to the Deep Wilds being a sort of roguelike end game zone.”

Jason shakes his head, “I’m more sensitive to this kind of stuff, so trust me when I say the Deep Wilds is separate from NeoRealm and the System.”

Courtney groans, “Well isn’t that a jolly revelation!”

Rosha, “Didn’t we already know this, though? Seems kind of obvious. NeoRealm is at least partly real and going by everything Peter taught me, the Deep Wilds broke all the rules. You really should realize what being able to find artifacts would represent.”

Courtney rolls her eyes, “All artifacts are, is fancy items that carry over from bug-fixes or that the System has decided to allow.”

Jason, “So you’re willing to believe in cultivation, but not NeoRealm being its own thing? That there can’t be stuff the System can’t grock?”

Courtney shrugs, “I can measure the effects of cultivation. Sure, I need to hook the person up to a device and know what to look for, but it is there. As for NeoRealm? Well, I guess if you want to get into the philosophical debate on what makes something real, we can.

“And sure, NeoRealm is real, likely even another dimension. After all, none of the VR games can replicate what it has done. However, it isn’t just some complete universe. Or at least if it is, the System has control of it.”

Jason raises an eyebrow, “Part of why I want to be out here is to remove what control the System has on me. Besides, reality doesn’t have a level cap. That is fully on the System restricting people to what it can control. Same as what it is doing with swarms.”

Rosha, “I have to side with Jason on this. Why are you so set on this?”

Courtney gestures at the dead puppeteer, “Because if this is real, that is real! Outside? The idea of mind control and such don’t work and yet, and yet suddenly there is cultivation. If both these things are real, what about mind control, irl?”

Rosha’s eyes widen, “Ah, yeah, that would be kind of horrible.”

Jason shrugs, “Good thing part of cultivation is mental defenses? Like, sure, with the right technique, a person can puppet normal people quite easily, but why bother? Not only is it really hard to hide, but once cultivation becomes more of a thing, the gap between those who cultivate and don’t, will mean controlling those without cultivation is pointless.

“As for controlling those who do cultivate? You need to be many stages above the one you’re controlling, again making it pointless. More worrying is when someone lets someone else take control of them willingly. Though most don’t seem to see it as mind control at that point, at least not in popular media. It still is though, even if the evil high priest is allowing the evil god to possess them, it isn’t like the priest gets a say in what they’re doing after it goes through.”

Courtney, “Except our entire world runs on normal people! All we need is one evil cultivator to take control of someone important and things go really bad! We live in hermetically sealed mega-structures! Think of the harm someone could do in just puppeting someone in charge of air quality.”

Jason shakes his head, “If I can realize what NeoRealm represents, do you really believe the higher ups don’t? Besides, governments have been dabbling in mind control since before we even fully understood the brain, let alone now. There are things in place to protect against that kind of nonsense. And like I said, mind control is super obvious from the outside.”

Courtney gestures at the other monsters. “Then why couldn’t we tell with them?”

Jason shrugs, “Because they’re not sapient? Tamers are much more common because the thing that makes mind control hard is sapience. The ability to know yourself makes attempts to control you so much harder it isn’t funny. If that monster had tried to puppet us, it would have taken all of its concentration and we would have been fighting it all the way.

“That is why small nudges to make us miss is how it would handle us. Those other monsters? It simply nudged them just right and they couldn’t even tell. A human being controlled IRL would look like someone trying to do the robot dance and have a constantly strained look on their face. Well, I guess some might end up having a terrified look?

“Either way, IRL they will have safeguards and some won’t even have originally been for mind control. Even something as simple as how they require frequent check-ins with a therapist for any high enough position will quickly spot something is wrong. And it isn’t like someone working in air filtration will be able to make major changes without it going through multiple layers of bureaucracy.”

Courtney shakes her head, “Fine, maybe it isn’t as bad as it could be.”

Jason smiles, “Oh, it will be bad. Just not ‘flood the arcology with poison gas’ bad. All it takes is controlling the right person at just the right moment to cause some chaos. I just don’t think it will be ‘end of civilization’ or even ‘end of our commitment’ bad. Besides, I’m sure NeoRealm can detect mind control and would flag anyone suffering from it. So maybe for a while all important work is done through telepresence, but we’ve handled that before.”