Siva (Volume 3) The Frozen Blue Heart

Chapter 21: Side B

**Establishing Connection...

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**Connection Established

**Integrity at 89%

**Connecting Call...

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[Carl. I need good news right now.]

"President Ethan. I—I believe I will have to break your expectations sir."

[Just report.]

"Sir, right now, we're in the border of the Walled City of Linda and... I just discovered some sort of unregistered quest data signature."

[Some sort of—what are you talking about?] 

"Sir. It seems that the update's nature was not as we thought it was."

[Would it kill you to tell me the problem straight?]

"Ah. I'm sorry sir. What I mean is, it seems that giving Janus a physical rendering wasn't just the purpose of the update. Just now sir, a group of players ambushed us and said that they were doing a mission from a message in a bottle."

[A message in a bottle? Have you checked the database on its origin? I find this attack odd in nature.]

"Already did sir and that's what I actually found wrong in this situation. According to the players that attacked us, the bottle itself just fell out of the sky and that they received an A-rank mission to stop the bikers coming from the south when they read it." 

[And the data reference?]

"It's a legit mission with description and snapshot of the info window. But the mission archive code it has is not registered as part of Janus's signature coding. The quest data signature itself appeared to be part of a third party program with the same status as Janus."

[Same status as Janus?! Damn it, Carl, I'm freaking lost with all your gibberish. Are you actually telling me that not only we lost control of Janus, there's also a psychopath program trying to stop us from eliminating the inconsistency of the system?]

"More accurately sir, there are two rogue programs with the same status as Janus; they are all physical, mortal data rendering of Janus' nature. Like a split persona with their own AI Programming. And while we can tell that the first wanted to stop us, the other seem to be on the opposite side of the table."

[You lost me already. First you tell me it's not what we thought it is, then you tell me there's a rogue program, now there are actually three of these program including Janus? Carl, do I looked like a white drawing board to you?]

"Eeeekkk... sorry sir. I really am. But right now, it's a rather difficult problem than we thought. The three said programs are not in league which each other and it seems that with their unregistered quests popping up here and there, the original flow of Terroa's storyline had been severely changed!"

[Meaning, not only we actually can't control it but we also lost all predictions for the game's storyline and Terroa itself? Am I getting it?]

"Precisely sir."

[So kill all three.]

"Eh?"

[You heard me. Hunt down these rouge programs.]

"Eh, sir... but..."

[But what?]

"It's already hard enough working with these guys to hunt Janus. But to also hunt down the other two..."