Processing Power

“Just because I'm cooperating doesn't mean I'm into this.” Reyna typed. She and Zern had spent a few more days playing, then subsequently talking after. They just finished disusing the in game arrangements Zern would like to make.

“So then why are you doing it?” He typed back. It was a solid question and one that she did not have an answer for. Not one she wanted to give, anyway. Reyna long since conceded to the horniness and simply resolved to get as much out of the situation as she could in terms of personal relief and fulfillment. With that goal in mind she could tell herself that she was 'using' him, even though it was quite the opposite. To that end she found a reasonable answer that did not give herself away.

“Simple. You said I would be able to make more money.”

“For me. lol.” He returned quickly.

“I already told you I'm going to use you in game, basically. You wouldn't see a dime and you know that. So... Just say why you really want to do it? It's not like it's a really big secret. You're a total slut.” Zern was harsh, but he was not wrong. That was the worst part for her. He pegged her so accurately.

“I mean... Just repeat back to me what I want to do to your character and give me one good reason other than your own depravity that would make you agree?”

Shamefully Reyna typed back. “You want to turn my character into an npc, basically.” The process of turning a player of O2O into an npc was not a difficult or unknown phenomenon. It was well known that there was a threshold to avoid being taken advantage of in the world past level ten. That being said, some people simply... Did not care, or wanted it to happen. It was a process that had to be carried out with the player's out of game permissions and information, which meant it was for the most part consensual and therefore completely free of any regulation. As Reyna found out, it was how Zern was able to accrue so much power and gold within the game.

“Like that one you showed me.”

*

“Her? Really?” Rey pointed at the imposing woman. In the game there were various individuals that were simply above everyone else. It could either be due to resources, or gear or even just level and in game stats. The woman that Rey pointed out seemed high in both level and gear. She was a beautiful human woman with long silver hair and pale skin. She looked incredibly heroic and stoic. Her armor was that of a holy knight and the gear was definitely expensive. Her armor was an ornate mix of tight cloth and plate that could only exist in a video game. Plate shoulders and a plate bikini with plate-thigh-highs. Her body was covered by a tight, blue suit that hid her skin, even though the plate itself was revealing. She carried a large sword on her back that looked about as expensive as everything else she had. Her ensemble was likely the culmination of years of work within the game. Players could gather gear by killing enemies or other players. The destruction of mobs was one of the main methods of creating value and that held true with gear, especially. Whether it be through drops or crafting using materials.

Zern nodded. “See, she's actually the opposite of you. You're a good girl in real life, for now, that's got a degenerate character.” Rey simply acknowledged what he was saying because she was her character at the moment and knew what he was saying to be true. Even if it were not true, she would have agreed Because Zern was a man and she was a woman.

“Know what that means?”

Rey considered the implications. “So... In real life she's really a big degenerate but her character is...”

“Her character is legit.” Zern chuckled.

“It's a sad story, right? That girl apparently wanted what you had in game from the start but her character developed in a way that made her basically unbeatable. From there her personality got a bit rough for what she was after until there was basically no way. That's where I come along.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Whatever I want, basically. I have the player's permission, which trumps everything. Only problem is the strength of the character. She's not a pushover like you, otherwise she wouldn't be having the problem she's having.”

Rey stared at the powerful-looking female knight. She was simply standing by the fountain with her arms crossed.

“What can you do with just the player's permission?”

“Guardianship.” He said simply, stepping towards the woman.

“Huh?” Rey followed and observed from nearby.

The woman turned as Zern approached. “What do you want? You are not going to convince me to do any stupid, degenerate acts, Zern. The person I am outside of this world does not know what is best. I will not listen to you, even if it is what she wants. This is the last time I will simply 'tell' you.”

Zern exhaled lightly. “Yeah, well, she's as tired of your shit as I am so she went through the proper channels to get me all her account info.” He grinned.

“So now I'm your legal 'daddy' I guess, Marsia.” He paused.

“But you already kinda knew that, huh?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “All that means is that you control my bank, my inventory, my gear and my level progression. I am already extremely high level. Higher than you. I can-”

“Stop bluffing, honey.” Zern abruptly stepped forward and grabbed the woman by her ear. He then proceeded to just drag her back towards you. He offered you a nod.

“Let's go!”

“Ow ow ow!” Marsia complained. As they passed by you she shot you a look.

“You go along with this man? Willingly?” She scoffed.

“Don't listen to her, Rey. You're perfect, almost.” He said somewhat genuinely, still dragging the knight away. Rey was flattered. She wished she was able to be as amicable outside the game as that character's player. It would have made things a lot easier.

“Isn't this going to draw attention?” Rey asked while following them.

“I mean, you're basically **** her, right?”

“Nah.” Zern turned and turned Marsia as well to face Rey. Her face was flushed red and the woman was undoubtedly angry. Without her permission Zern opened her stat page. Something he normally should not have been able to do. Rey was surprised by the woman's incredible stats. She was indeed probably in the top percent of players worldwide. Everything was tuned, as well. Even her willpower was shored up properly, despite the player's apparent intent. She saw what he pointed out, the word 'Guardianship' with Zern's name next to it. The next thing he pointed out was her associations. She had been placed in the same organization as Zern.

“This girl can't touch me and nobody can touch me for doing anything to her because she's mine. The player confirmed it.”

Marsia spit. “What are you going to do? You can not affect me with my stats, even if I can not affect you.”

“First let's change your rank in my Org...” Rey was able to watch as her rank changed to 'Combat-NPC.' He looked to Rey.

“The process is a little different for girls like this because...Well, she's right. Her stats are a bit too high and I can't take advantage of her too easily.” As he said that Zern finally pulled her back into the deep part of a dark alleyway in the city. Despite the situation, Marsia smiled triumphantly at that admission. He released her ear and let her stand freely.

“But, what I can do is this.” He reeled his hand back and surprised her with a firm smack to her toned rear. She jumped, yelped, then rubbed it and hid it from him by turning her body.

“H-hey!”

He explained to Rey. “See, while Reyna outside is inevitably caving in to desire born from stuff happening in game, it's also pretty impossible for the character to not be influenced by the desires of the player. It's just that under normal circumstances she'd kill anyone that did that to her.”

“But now she can't.” Rey observed.

“That's right!”

“Stop talking about me like I'm not here!” Marsia demanded.

Zern turned back to her and smirked. “Listen, sweetie. You're an NPC now.”

She faltered and clenched her fists angrily. “N-no... I am outside but not here.”

“Her player is an NPC?” Rey asked curiously.

“Oh yeah. I helped her become an NPC in real life. Now we're just tying up loose ends at this point.” For the Rey within the game becoming an NPC in real life, whatever that meant, sent chills down her spine. Though she suspected the version of her outside of the game would not agree.

“I am NOT going along with this, you fool!” Marsia announced. Rey believed her. She seemed far stronger than Zern and in much better gear. If she did not want to do something she doubted he could make her, even with the player's blessing. As she spoke so vehemently, however, Zern was poking through some menus and gradually her armor was being replaced. First, all the expensive, pointy and ornate extras on the armor were stripped. Marsia did not even notice it as it was happening, as those were so ancillary.

“I will fight you until-” As her other armor began to disappear she of course began to notice. First it was her breastplate and her armguards.

“Uhh...” She gulped and started shaking as she rushed to cover herself in anticipation of everything being missing. Just as she expected, all of her armor and even the clothing underneath left her completely nude until she was just a pretty, tall, silver haired human with a muscular body.

“Marsia.” Zern began, grinning evilly. She stared up at him and braced herself.

“I challenge you to a pvp duel.” He cracked his neck and flexed his arms. She stepped back slowly until she was backed into the alley wall.

“As you know from painstakingly reading every word of the terms of the Organization, as everyone is presumed to have done, the cost of losing a duel is a level.”

“I-I wont lose, even if I am na-” Zern stepped forward into her space while she was still backed into the wall and easily lifted her leg by placing his palm under her thigh. With his other hand free he guided his cock into her cunt from the side. As he started fucking her, Marsia's eyes rolled back into her skull and her jaw dropped. The woman was salivating and moaning like an animal.

“-aked!” She panted and tried to fight back but only managed to push against his chest weakly as he continued pounding her, and barely managed to move him, if at all.

Zern turned to Rey with a smirk. “There's so many debuffs on this girl that she'll never be able to lay a hand on even a level 1 character. It's only possible because she sabotaged herself outside the game.” Rey observed and saw several buffs once they were revealed. One very obvious and broken one was the Leadership Aura that gave Zern increased authority over Org members. They could not harm him or fight him. There were a few other small ones just to stack things against the woman further, but they all paled in comparison to the PVP debuff. She read.

“The first player to lose control of their character will have one level encapsulated in an empty potion vial within the Org bank?” It was an odd condition, because loss of control of a character was not a typical end to a duel. It would be like having a duel be won any time a crowd control spell was cast successfully. It definitely favored weaker characters. Rey's eyes widened as Zern plunged his dick into Marsia one more time. A final status appeared. Rey had not noticed it but cumming was indeed a very short and weak crowd control effect. It was less than a second and barely affected a normal person at all, but it was still a brief loss of control.

“Nng!” marsia groaned as she felt herself cumming and losing a level at the same time. She held her hands up in surrender.

“Z-zern! Stop! I'm-”

“I challenge you to a pvp duel.” She had to accept and as soon as the duel was on she was taken to the ground. Zern fucked her relentlessly as her legs lifted and curled behind his back. The high-level player quickly reached another orgasm and after each one Zern repeated the same words over and over again until she was almost the same Level as Rey. The woman that could likely take hit after his in a normal fight and not lose HP was suddenly losing duel after duel due to loss of control of her character. A technicality.

“Z-z-zeeernnn....” She groaned. Slowly it began to flip. It stopped being the case that her character was stronger. It was no longer the case that she could win if they were to fight for real. All of her levels, all of her stats that made her character who she was, all of that was stripped and bottled, likely to be sold.

“Ib sowwy...” The woman was completely out of it. He challenged her one last time to take her down to ten, then wiped his brow and stood up.

“This girl's got no willpower left so I'll process her on my own time into something useful.”

“What about outside the game?” Rey questioned, her heart racing at the sight she just witnessed.

*

Reyna logged out to see several images of a pretty girl with a thin black bar over her eyes. She looked similar to Marcia with some of her facial features. There were a few more images of different girls mixed in, each exposing themselves in different ways. After all of those were sent he messaged her.

“Those usually cost money, but I'll send them to you for free as a demo.”

“You convince dumb girls to do porn? So what?” Reyna commented in return.

“Look again. It's a bit more than that.”

Reyna did a bit of searching through the images and found them all watermarked from the site 'RealLifeNPCs.' On further inspection, the thin black bars were not edited in, they were physical They had the appearance of censor bars but were actually thin visors used to log into games like O2O. Of course, the smaller and more portable those devices were, the more expensive they were.

“What is this?”

“You can crack the game a bit. It's legal and not against any TOS, because you're not actually breaking into the code. All it does is break your own immersion. I sent you one.”

“Seriously!?” She checked her door and came back with one of the thin visors. It hooked around a persons head and entered their ears, just like the normal gear, except it was smaller and wireless. The headsets tended not to be wireless due to even a small amount of lag being immersion breaking, but Zern already said the jailbroken device blatantly broke immersion.

“What does it do?” Reyna questioned, holding it in her hands.

“It lets you stay logged into the game while being conscious outside of it.” As soon as she read that Reyna gasped.

“How does that work!? There's no way you can multi-task like that.”

“You can, actually. A big part of in game action is taken by the character. It's like auto-aim in a shooter. Most of the work is done by the system itself. You know pretty well why you can only have one character, ever? Well this is also why. Your one slot uses up a lot of data and server bandwidth just to move around.” He added subtly, downplaying the implications of it.

“The game needs less than half your attention span to run adequately, but the way it works, you basically don't even know you're in game.”

“This could be used for farming... How is it not against TOS?”

“They don't care unless you're messing with their code or their servers. A lot of wacky shit is fair play that you wouldn't expect. Hook it up and put it on.”

Reyna spent a few minutes checking it for anything wonky. Once she was satisfied that there was nothing wrong with it that he could have added without her knowledge she plugged in the wireless sensor to her setup and placed the visor around her head. The view from behind the black bar was as if she was wearing sunglasses, which was odd because it was solid black from the other side. She wondered if she was going to see anything at all. He implied that she would not. As she turned it on there was a subtle shift in... everything. She could not put her finger on what was different, it just felt different in general. She felt different.

“I feel... Weird.” She spoke to herself out loud. After a few seconds she noticed something.

“Wait! That's weird. Why am I talking to myself instead of thinking to myself?” She furrowed her brow and tried to think to herself using her internal monologue, but nothing came. Reyna stood up and began to pace around her room. When she turned to look at the screen she was able to notice the game was running. Nothing rendered on screen, of course, but there was information descending that showed actions were taking place.

“Wow, so it actually works.” Her face lit up.

“That's so neat!” She sat back down and typed at Zern.

“What's the deal? This feels weird and I think it's making me think funny.”

“It's using up a lot of your brainpower to move your character in the game subconsciously, so that's probably what it is. Nothing you need to worry about.” He added a smiling, winking emoji after he said that but that friendly yellow face had no effect on her. She felt distressed at the revelation. The visor was undoubtedly making her think differently. It may have even made her less intelligent. Reyna quickly logged out and removed it.