The Gamer who traveled to Honkai: Star Rail

The simulation inside the Simulated Universe was still ongoing, but the player base inside had already gone from unity to total fragmentation.

Why "fragmentation"? Because among those 100,000 players, there were literally all kinds… fighting among themselves hadn't stopped since Day 7!

Why 100,000 players? Well, the notification Pei Guang received was that there wasn't enough hardware capacity to add more.

Even Nous expressed helplessness about this: Its hardware setup could only support 100,000 simulated players—and even then, those 100,000 had it constantly overheating. 

In fact, Its "close friend" took pity on It and provided every type of cooling: ice, wind, and more.

So, what was the most populous guild or faction among the players? Naturally, it was the Poop Gang. 

Pei Guang had no idea which twisted soul started it, but once one person started playing with poop, others followed—and even used it to fight.

This group was something else: when they weren't fighting, they seemed like they had nothing to do with each other. But once a fight broke out and someone pulled out poop, their true natures were revealed.

Aside from that disgusting bunch, there was another faction led by Silver Wolf: the bug exploiters. They're the ones who're devoted to studying the Simulated Universe for glitches.

And they actually made progress.

As of now, they had figured out how to duplicate resources, boost stats, and other typical exploits. Pei Guang noticed what they were doing, but didn't stop them. 

After all, he was just a "dog dev," it wasn't like anyone was paying him a salary for this game!

What? Herta? Herta said they could test however they wanted, and that meant full freedom!

Because of that, Pei Guang basically just set a main storyline and a few restrictions, then let the players do whatever they wanted as long as it didn't break the core rules.

And so, the Simulated Universe began spiraling out of control. 

At first, the poop players just seemed gross: but then they did something that made everyone's vision go dark.

They built a warship made out of poop and started fighting the company. The Interastral Peace Corporation's personnel were too stunned: imagine accepting a mission to suppress a rebellion, only to find a warship made of poop? 

And when it fired, it sprayed poop???

Even just describing the scene in words, you could practically smell it.

One player, a member of the Abundance faction, refused to be outdone: along with other Abundance players, he repeatedly died and revived to preserve his body, eventually using their corpses to create a living warship.

But since it was a living ship, it needed to eat and ,unlike in reality, the in-game version didn't need divine relics: just enough energy.

The Abundance player sought out the farming and science players. The science players were busy with bigger projects and ignored him, but the farming players thought it sounded interesting and helped design a self-sustaining system.

The problem was, the system needed enough nutrients to grow crops. So where would they get enough nutrients? 

From the poop warship, of course.

The Abundance players and farming players approached the poop players. The Poop Gang was open-minded: they agreed to let them grow crops on their poop ship, as long as they could collect the waste from the living ship in return.

And so, a bizarre cycle began: in the cosmos, there now existed a ship that constantly ate, then expelled waste. The poop warship followed behind, collecting the waste.

In an incredibly short amount of time, these three player factions had scaled their strength to the point where they could actually stand up to the IPC's warships.

Outside the Simulated Universe, Herta went completely silent as she watched the incoming reports. The Simulated Universe didn't just return text feedback: some live visuals were also available.

Seeing the combat system of this self-sustaining, two-faction alliance, Herta could only mutter: "You live long enough, you see everything…"

Compared to the poop players and the Abundance faction, the Destruction faction players took things even further. One, in particular, was a destruction-chasing maniac in real life, but in the game, he became… a nurturing player.

This Destruction player adopted two children, around ten years old. He showed them the beauty of the world, taught them good and evil, gave them delicious food, and let them attend the schools they had once only dreamed of.

After raising them for a while, just when the kids were full of hope for the future, just when they saw light in the world, this Destruction player arranged for someone to roleplay an IPC employee and "kill" him.

Before dying, he even recorded a video of himself being abused and threatened. In the end, his body was cut into pieces and sent to the two children he'd raised.

Though that Destruction player didn't become an Emanator, the two children he raised displayed astonishing talent after his "death," wreaking massive havoc on the company's operations.

Compared to that, a player from the Xianzhou Alliance was the true definition of "inhuman."

Using his understanding of the Interastral Peace Corporation, he piloted a ship directly to the company's headquarters. Since this was during the early days of the company in the Simulated Universe, many systems were incomplete, so he exploited a loophole.

Then what?

Then he planted a teleportation point behind the company's HQ!

All the players, using him as the anchor point, began teleporting there like mad.

"Kill! Kill all those company dogs!"

"Keep it alive! Keep it alive! If we hold it, we get a teleport point!!"

"I've copied the teleportation feature. Now everyone can teleport together."

The entire Simulated Universe was expanding at a terrifying data rate: one second, two seconds, three seconds...

The battle began at the Interastral Peace Corporation headquarters. 

At first, the player forces were progressing smoothly, but once a Preservation Emanator joined the fight, the player teams melted away like snowflakes.

Compared to the players waging war with the IPC, another group caught Herta's attention even more: the lore-hunters.

Strangely enough, while no one in real life ever cared to study anything about the Aeons, once these people became players, a small group of them suddenly turned into diehard lore enthusiasts.

Based on the data fed back by the Simulated Universe, these lore-hunters had uncovered certain historical truths. They found information related to the Aeons of Remembrance, Enigmata and Propagation.

They even dug up reasons behind the disappearance of the Aeons of Permanence and Beauty.

Herta: "What the hell! These people are that good? Why have I never heard of them in real life?!"

Herta was dumbfounded. 

She originally thought this simulation would yield very little information related to the Aeons, but as the lore-hunters kept digging deeper and deeper, she began to feel that if the simulation continued, these people might strip every last secret from the Aeons.

What was most ridiculous was how these lore-hunters began: one person simply wanted to research the "game's backstory," and another one wanted to as well. 

A few of them hit it off and started investigating together. 

They had no leads: just a desire to explore. And then they actually found documents about the Aeons, using those to uncover more records step by step.

It was as if these clues had appeared out of thin air, but many of them actually had bases in real-world facts. Using these hints, they dug into everything about the Aeons: speeches, prophecies, even obscure accounts and scattered records.

Incredibly, they pieced together a coherent framework related to the Aeons.

Herta: "Damn it! Keep digging, all of you! You lot over there playing with poop, go dig into the lore too!"

Herta looked at the players in the Simulated Universe who were still battling with the Preservation Emanator using poop-based tactics. She wanted nothing more than to jump in herself and make them read the backstory files, unfortunately, she couldn't enter the Simulated Universe right now. 

The machines had overheated so badly that the entire space station had triggered another alarm.

Herta had a feeling: if nothing went wrong, these people Pei Guang had brought in—who knows from where—might unearth a great deal of Aeon-related information. Even if it turned out to be fake, it would still be hugely valuable for current research.

But of course, something had to go wrong.