—an Unknown Disaster—
23:57:42… 43… 44…
"This is it Tenma-san!"
The shittydev exclaimed. He was seated on his VR chair beside his friend. They were waiting for the shutdown of Yggdrasil and the opening Beta for Yggdrasil II. They had finished their preparations, uploading and storing all the necessary metadata of the subjects and the players into the portal.
"Yes! On your mark, I will do the honor of reconnecting all the players." Tenma grinned. He was doing his part in the preparation for the automatic logout, checking all of the marked players and their status in the tablet he was operating in his hand.
"Thank you for everything, Tenma-san."
"After all this, you need to buy an energy drink for me. I can't drink your gratitude." Tenma smiled.
The shittydev chuckled without looking at his friend, he was focused on the big screen in front of him. The monitor screen showed the server time and all the status of the players' Consciousness Data and Microdata. It also detailed the portal's current condition and capacity in its excellent online speed.
The shittydev felt the violent smashed of his throbbing heart as if breaking out his delicate chest. Tenma was on his side but he was in deep concentration, deleting the world around with only him and the big screen inside the glass room. Minutes passed like hours and seconds passed like minutes. The time was slowly ticking, teasing him before he could reach his goal and fulfill his dream.
23:58:05… 06… 07…
The shittydev waved his hand, opening a list of checklists on the screen. He started the final checks of the programs in the Consciousness Portal.
"Visuals: Ready."
"Sounds: Ready."
"Odors: Ready."
"Tastes: Ready."
"World Objects: Ready."
"Subjects' Consciousness Metadata: Ready."
"Subjects' Sensation Metadata: Ready."
"Players' Consciousness Metadata: Ready."
"Players' Sensation Metadata: Ready."
"Subjects' Consciousness Receiver: Initialized."
"Subjects' Sensation Receiver: Initialized."
"Players' Consciousness Receiver: Initialized."
"Players' Sensation Receiver: Initialized."
"Ten Worlds: Initialized."
"The Consciousness Portal is now hot and ready!"
The shittydev proclaimed. The portal's full initialization of all the metadata of the subjects and the players was ready to receive the Beta players. He turned his head and gazed at Tenma on his side.
23:59:32… 33… 34…
Tenma looked at his friend and nodded in return.
"Activating Beta Server."
35… 36… 37…
Tenma licked his lips, the moment of truth would finally be revealed and the New World would be hailed.
"Beta Server Activated."
23:59:45… 46… 47…
After hearing his friend, the shittydev braced himself and glared at the crawling time on screen, clenching tightly both of his sweating hands into iron fists.
"Reconnect on my mark. 54… 55... 56…"
"Tenma-san don't reconnect yet!"
The shittydev yelled to his friend upon seeing the decline in numbers of the online player counters on the screen before the actual shutdown of Yggdrasil.
"N-No... No! It's not me, I'm not activating the automatic reconnection yet!"
57… 58...
"What?! A hacker?"
59…
"No! I don't know!"
"Activate the emergency stop!" The shittydev roared.
00…
As a swift response, Tenma quickly activated the main emergency server shut off, cutting all the external connections. He was panting and beads of sweat proliferated on his pale face as he read the data damages and losses from the disturbance of a third party.
"Some of the game data was gone..."
"What do you mean by gone!"
"I mean GONE gone! Erased, disappeared, deleted, removed, dissipated, evaporated, vanished, obliterated, dissolved, eradicated, abolished, wiped out! You name it! It was gone!"
"Or just stolen!"
The shittydev retorted, causing his friend to slam his palm into his face and then gripped his own forehead and cheek.
The shittydev exhaled a loud groaning breath.
"Tenma-san, we have activated the emergency stop!"
"I'm sorry! The emergency stop was too late, we have lost some data, even some of the players in-game."
"Lost the players? You mean their data?"
Tenma waved his hand and another list appeared on the big screen, projecting from his tablet. It was a list of marked players and their status before the activation of the emergency cut off.
"As you can see, some of the players were lost."
"Yes, the player count has decreased. But what was lost?" The shittydev inquired as he kept on rubbing and scratching the nape of his neck and shifted his body, leaning towards his friend.
Tenma took control of the screens and opened the Beta server's event log. Hundreds of events started to pop out on the screen as the log was loaded from the server's internal memory records. Tenma's eyes bulged out in surprise as his hands started to tremble as he scrolled through the list in the tablet.
"Some player's consciousness… were lost… in-game."
"Y-You mean the portal failed?!"
Tenma looked at his friend and shook his head and with an exasperated sigh, he parted his lips to let three disappointing words escape from his mouth.
"I don't know!"
With that, the room was enveloped by a deafening silence where only defeated sounds of frustrated breaths could be heard. The shittydev crouched, silently mourning in unbearable heartache. His hands were clasping his head, squeezing any explanation from his brain of what had happened.
"What else was lost?" The shittydev managed to ask with a grim voice, breaking the solemness of the glass room.
"Some of the players' consciousness and data were gone. Some of the subjects' data were gone. Some newly programmed bosses were gone. All of their data, microdata, and even their unique metadata in the portal were gone. Some guild bases were also gone. Plenty to mention but they were absolutely gone, there are no remnants of their data."
"The data could be hacked but how could they lose consciousness in-game?!"
"I'm sorry, but I don't really know. And what I know is they had lost their consciousness in-game and they were not automatically logged out, otherwise it would reflect in the event log and all the lost data had only one thing in common. Most of them involved World Class Items."
"But why would someone hack the game data of marked players or… did the portal really fai- wait!"
The shittydev stumbled, perking up from his chair. He swiftly raised and swung his crouching head with break-neck speed towards his friend. He was mauled by an alarming horror, chilling the depths of his spine, as he thought of the result if ever the portal had actually failed, causing the overloaded nanomachines to roast or break the nerves of the human brain, instant death or worse- to live like dead.
The shittydev trembled in his seat as he stared at his friend through his frightened eyes.
"H-How about Momonga?!"
"Momonga... "
Tenma mumbled but as he turned his head and blinked his eyes, he evocatively saw the pale and quivering lips of his friend. He unknowingly dropped his jaw, opening his mouth in shock as he understood the meaning of his friend.
"Momonga, Momonga, Momonga...
Tenma frantically scrolled through the player logs on his tablet but after a few slides, trickles of sweat ran down on his cheeks as he clicked on the greyed name on the player list.
"Momonga… Momonga's consciousness was gone. The guild base was gone. NPCs were gone."
"Fuuuuck!"
The shittydev cursed through his gritted teeth, wildly bashing and pounding the arms of his VR chair with his clenched fist.
"What the fuck happened, Tenma-san!"
"All I'm gonna tell you will just end up the same, over and over again. I - DON'T - KNOW!"
"Aarrgghh!"
The shittydev groaned, leaning his back into the VR chair, shutting close his blurred eyes.
Tenma could only sigh as he had no idea of what had transpired except for the theory of the malfunctioned Consciousness Portal though not even a single log of error was recorded. Everything that happened was unusual.
"With all our experience in this field, we know it was not a hacker. Hackers could hack the players then that's it, the server could never be hacked. The server is connecting into the players and not the other way. We have designed the Beta server that way so a server breached would never be plausible. And also hackers could never hack both the players and the host at the same time, well, as far as I know.
"I know and what we don't know is what happened!"
The shittydev roared in dissatisfaction with the factual explanation of his friend as he could not fathom and find his answers to what disaster had taken place.
"Hahh! This is the only reason I can think of what happened. It was an enigma. It was not just a malfunction or simple data thief or data loss! If you want me to say it then I will phrase it this way: what happened is quite far from technological but more like paranormal."
"You sounded like you didn't believe what you've said, Tenma-san."
As the shittydev said the mocking words, drips of warm tears had broken free from his sealed eyes and flowed straight down into his flushed ears.
"Of course! I have never believed in the Isekai Project in the first place! But what happened? It happened! And now what? This happened!"
Tenma exclaimed as he leaned his back on the VR chair and rested his aching head, staring at the supposedly new version of the gaming world above him.
The shittydev weakly opened his moisty eyes and together with his friend, he was gazing at the ceiling which held his unworldly creation that transcended the mortal limitations of virtual reality, it was the opened and unguarded gate into the future of the gaming world— the Consciousness Portal of the Isekai Project.
The shittydev failed spectacularly and with his failure, he failed everyone who shared his dream. He ground his teeth as the words of his friend had kept on echoing and ringing on his head. Everything happened because he thought what he thought would perfectly happen.
The shittydev suffered innumerable stabs of guilt all over his shaking body, hoping all the players would be alright and fine. He closed his eyes and decided to fall asleep, mindlessly muttering the regretful words in his weak and sorrowful voice.
"What have I done…"
A/N: Dear reader, if you have reached this note after you have read everything in this hilarious fanfic then you might already have guessed what tragedy has happened with the Isekai Project and the cause of it and for my friend who has no idea what I'm talking about, then the event of its cause might be written in a different story or a part of the New World Guardian fanfic in the future.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Overlord Universe.