Aaron's Attitude

He had also observed his fighting skills from the cave and knew that he's quite unskilled in fighting and had not even sharpened his skills to their highest degree.

There might be a reason for that but even if there were indeed reasons behind his low skills, he doesn't and wouldn't give a care.

While he was thinking about this, the azure-haired youth opened his mouth and confusingly talked to him.

"That sorry, I had spaced out for a moment. My name is Ra- erm... Mirage... yes you can just call me that."

It seems like he was talking to him but to him, it looks like he was talking to himself instead.

Aaron was taken aback by his name, he silently thought to himself and grumbled while maintaining an impassive face.

'What's with this name? It's obviously an alias! How could one have a given name like that? Now that I think about it, I had used my real given name to him instead of using my codename! What a blunder! How can I be so careless?!'

He had learned from his mistakes and was now mindful of each word that he would say. He opened his mouth and adjusted his tone to sound polite and said.

"It's a pleasure to meet you Mr. Mirage. I should not engage with useless pleasantries with you. Now that we know of each other's names, could we now proceed to talk about the main topic?"

He squinted his eyes threateningly after saying those words as if he was giving a warning to Mirage to not act irrationally.

His stance was extremely domineering and fierce.

Meanwhile, Mirage felt his head hurt and was feeling extremely conflicted right now as he had yet to formulate a plan on how he would deal with the precarious situation he was in.

He would've come up with a plausible plan if he had not been affected by his emotions earlier, he felt helpless and could do nothing but silently grumble to himself.

'It's already too late to come up with a plan now,  the most important matter at hand is on how would I be able to get out of this place alive.'

He was now treading on thin ice that he did not know when it might break, he would be safe if he had managed to convince Aaron to let him go, but he would also die if he were to accidentally provoke him.

He could also try to fish for some benefits, but it is too risky as he hadn't even convinced Aaron to let him live.

He did not bother to beg for his life, he knew that he would not be let off the hook, assassins were merciless people, they are extremely efficient when it comes to their job.

He had seen his face and he even knows of his name, so how could Aaron possibly let him leave? He should be itching to silence him right now.

He had come up with three possible scenarios: The first and good scenario was that he would be pardoned of his life and be able to walk out intact.

The second and bad scenario would be him getting chopped in half by Aaron.

While the last scenario would be somewhat impossible, he would kill Aaron. This scenario is impossible unless he received Qianna's assistance.

But Qianna is too unstable right now and would not be able to provide help to him at all.

Right now, his fate highly depended on his choices, one careless mistake and he would immediately die.

***

He was not fully confident in dealing with this head-on. His strength was not enough and would not let him be able to escape from Aaron.

His escape would instead incite Aaron to kill him.

'This NPC is really hard to deal with..' he grumbled then he suddenly had a thought.

Wasn't he inside a game? How could he forget about this? His mind immediately spurned, countless thoughts were being generated and discarded at the same time.

Meanwhile, Aaron was currently feeling anxious and impatient right now. He did not know why was Mirage was taking so long to decide, then he suddenly had a thought.

'What if he is stalling for time?'

Thinking of this made his heart go cold, he hoped that it was not the case, so he urged the still thinking Mirage.

"Are you done deciding yet?" he asked this with apparent impatience with an underlying tone of killing intent, he tightly held his trusty sharp dagger.

If he found his answer unacceptable he would immediately make his move to kill.

Mirage was surprised yet still acted unhurriedly which conformed to Aaron's thoughts that he was bidding for time, maybe reinforcements would arrive any time by now.

"No hurries, I still have to ask you questions for me to come up with a decision." Mirage unhurriedly said.

Aaron's eyes went cold by this answer. He could not act yet as he could still not use any movement skills now, he planned to strike the moment the Water Domain's effects wear off. He assumed that it was about time for its duration to end, so he calmly asked for his question.

"Oh, I see. What is it that you want to ask then?" he asked.

Meanwhile, Mirage was extremely elated that his plan was going smoothly and was going to how he had planned it to be.

Little did he know that Aaron was only waiting for the Water Area to end, he was completely oblivious by Aaron's thought.

He did not think of this as he only knew that AI's are designed to do tasks that they were asked to do, so he thought that there has to be some sort of a trigger that would let him receive a quest, he also expected for the quest to let him choose sides.

He did not know that the so-called 'NPC' in front of him was secretly scheming on how to effectively kill him right now.

Finally, Mirage asked.

"What are you planning to do with this girl?" he said while pointing towards the still unconscious girl.

Aaron wasn't surprised that he asked that question so he answered him in a monotonous tone.

"Whether I kill her or torture her has nothing to do with you, you don't even have a relationship with her or whatsoever, I don't see the point of you asking this stupid question."

Mirage smiled wryly at his cold response, he had expected that he would not divulge anything to him, but still to hear him insult him like that made him feel a bit hurt and angry.

He was about to open his mouth when the Water Domain around them dissipated with a weng.

The watery blue barrier disappeared out of thin air, he looked up in surprise but then he saw that Aaron was slowly dissipating too, though not quite, more like he was blending in his surroundings.

Aaron was staring at him with clear hostility and killing intent.

He was shocked by this. How could he suddenly change attitudes like flipping coins? Though he had also expected this to happen, he did not have any solution to solve it as the gap between them was extremely large.

He was confident of his gaming sense, but that's it. It could not possibly do anything to bridge the large gap between them, he could not do anything but passively defend and guard for any incoming attacks from the man.

'This is quite illogical. How could an NPC go out of the script? Shouldn't they go according to what they are meant to do?' he thought to himself.

'No! This game is not as simple as it looked like! In the first place, how could a game possibly help me cure my gene injury? Not even father had come up with medicine related to my injury.'

Earlier, he had thought that maybe the system had some sort of error in which the Artificial Intelligence would be able to solve, but what if the Artificial Intelligence that governed this game was the one that had an error? Just thinking of this made him tremble in fear.

That's possibly the worst-case scenario that he doesn't want to happen the most. Back then, the government has announced that the AI they had created was said to be capable of growth and it also could think for itself.

They used this AI to govern and manage the virtual reality game, with countless tests and errors they had successfully created the game which is now called 'Dystopia'.

But what if the AI suddenly had a problem? What would happen to thousands or millions of people playing the game? Would they be trapped and unable to go out? He doesn't know what would happen, but he's 80% sure that his inability to log out was one of the effects of the AI error. The 20% was an algorithm error that was possibly being repaired by the AI right now.

He had also thought that the illogical responses of the NPC's here may be attributed to the error of the Artificial Intelligence.

He just hoped that he was overthinking these things.