“Pfft!” Nacht spat. “Ah ha... Ah ha ha ha ha ha! Y-You... You want me to call you big sis? When you look like that? Bwa ha ha! Well, okay! If that’s what you want, Big Sis Erin! That good?”
“Why, you!” Erin shouted pointing one of her guns at Nacht. “I’ll wipe that grin off your face!”
Nacht’s mocking smile didn’t dwindle in the slightest. “Whew...” she sighed. “Hilarious. But I suppose I should stop laughing and continue our conversation.”
“Don’t make light of me! I’ll kill you times a hundred!”
“So, Erin,” Nacht said, moving on to the main topic on her mind. “I’ve got a question for you. Whose Guild Orb is this?” Her voice suddenly sounded imperious as her aura of overwhelming power swelled forth.
Nacht was merely a common member of her guild, Outer Cafeteria. She had no need to keep a Guild Orb in her possession. Guild Orbs, after all, were items used by guildmasters to manage their guild halls.
Nacht looked up at the glowing orb, making it clear what she was referring to. “I have to admit, though,” she continued, her eyes flashing like flames. “You came up with a pretty absurd way of using one of those things. If its owner knew what you were doing with it, I can’t imagine they’d be pleased.”
Erin, however, did not respond at all how Nacht had expected. “Guild...Orb?” she asked, frowning and cocking her head. It was clear she had no idea what Nacht was talking about. Silence fell.
“Don’t tell me...” Nacht said after a moment. “You’ve been using this thing without even knowing what it is?”
“Of course I know what it is! It’s...um...you know! One of those things! If you find seven of them, you can make a wish?”
“Let’s not go there,” Nacht replied. Erin, whose explanation had hardly been an explanation at all, seemed like she agreed with the sentiment.
“Nhh...” she mumbled. “Well, anyway, papa gave it to me. He told me that if I was ever lonely, I should use it and think of him. And when I tried it, I saw papa, just like he used to be! But I don’t know what this thing is. How would I?”
Nacht was taken utterly aback. Her legs suddenly felt weak. If she hadn’t still been on her guard, she might have bowled over on the spot from the revelation. But as she thought about it, her confusion turned to a kind of awe. And suddenly, she understood. Nobody who knew what a Guild Orb was would have used it this way. Its original owner must never have imagined that its power had such an application. Nacht would have never considered it if not for Tina’s turn of phrase spurring her thoughts. “I see...” she said. “Incredible. I’m not sure if I should scold you or just laugh. Either way, this charade needs to end. I’m sure that’s what your father would want as well.”
“What do you mean?” Erin asked.
“A Guild Orb is a common item. It didn’t originally have such an incredible power. It has three general functions that you can use to create and manage a guild hall: fabrication, management, and recording. That’s all it’s supposed to do.” The Guild Orb’s power had clearly grown from when it was an ordinary item in the game. To be more precise, it had been unfettered. The game’s logic was not in effect in this world. Rather, everything seemed to work the way it was described in the game’s flavor text. Nacht had undervalued the Guild Orb in the context of reality. “The feature you’ve been using—or rather, the ability your father taught you how to use—is called the Memory Zone.”
Real World Online stored its world and managed the player characters’ data on its infamously powerful and vast network of servers. Every action a player took was recorded and logged, from their first fight against a monster to every quest they finished. There were records of every friend a player made, every guild they founded, and every raid boss they defeated. If they got married in the game, there would be a record of that too. Every last one of the players’ memories. Naturally, the devs had prepared ways for players to relive those memories themselves. One of them was the Memory Zone, which was accessible through the guildhall.
Players who belonged to a guild, as well as players the guildmaster chose to give permission, could relieve their pasts through the medium of screenshots or recorded movies. They could even share their memories with a friend if they so chose. It was an incredible accomplishment—truly a next-generation data management system. Recording a movie would be one thing, but the true achievement of the system was the ability to directly call up whatever information you liked given specified parameters. It was a wonderful power, just as Tina had said. And it was the power that had enveloped the whole city in an illusion.
With that missing piece, everything fell into place. The strange sensation Nacht had felt when she’d first entered the city was the notification a player got telling them they were entering a hostile guildhall. Nacht had felt it before when intruding on territory managed by rival guilds. It was meant to warn players and give them an opportunity to turn back. In the game, a system message would have appeared as well, but in this world, it was nothing more than a strong premonition.
Memory Zone could be applied to the whole area under a guild’s control. In this case, all Erin would have had to do was designate Euto Fia as the area associated with the Orb, which there were two ways to do. One was to conquer the area as one’s own, and the other was for it to be offered up by its present ruler. The conspirators must have chosen the second option. By the time of the king’s wife’s rumored resurrection, Euto Fia must have already been placed under the dominion of the Guild Orb. That was the beginning of the dream. Hence why Nacht had come straight to the king’s home.