Handwritten Notes 120: The Hidden Society

The Hidden Society, Gaia.

This is Li Aoz, and this is the first time I've started recording this.

I'm in this abandoned settlement in Triangle Town now. I've lit a lamp and made coffee. The ether has hurt me too much, and I want to get some rest.

To be honest, I never expected that, based on my supposed ability to predict the future, I would make a mistake for the first time.

I can't understand why such a peculiar existence as the Hidden Society is not recorded on Qiqiao Network's official website, nor are there any eyewitness accounts or even rumors among players.

As its name suggests, it is 'secret'.

I intend to write this down. Although decent people never keep diaries, I will use it as a journal to record some of the strange things that happened to me.

Since transmigrating, I have relied on the advantage of being ahead of the game version to obtain the best weapons, take away important resources, and gather most of the talents around me. It can be said that without these intelligence resources, based solely on my personal abilities, I would not have achieved what I have today—I really can't imagine it. I even feel as if I came back specifically with this part of my memories.

Sometimes I feel that I shouldn't limit myself to the main gods of the [Starcaller] path, but rather look towards the main gods of the Overlord Class... But no one knows exactly how to become a main god of a system.

There are many things I don't know. I am not omniscient or omnipotent. In fact, my intelligence is limited. In order to prevent being corrupted by society, I never intended to improve my intelligence too much in the first place.

(In the game of my past life, being transformed by society was equivalent to being deleted from the account. I dare not take that risk in reality. Besides, if it is knowledge, and my [charm] is high enough, knowledge will naturally come and chase after me. Characters with high intelligence will also be attracted to me. With [autocracy] in hand, I don't need to waste energy investing in a hidden bomb.)

I'd consider myself an expert on societies. In my previous game, with the help of Narrative-level Civilization, I participated in hunting nine societies, ranking first among players. They were:

[Broken Sound Society] - Naraku Dean (Lv.199)

[Machine World Society] —Mash Gergang (Lv.300)

[Colorful Domain Society]—Six Liuqi Weiku (lv.270)

[North Shore Society] - Havel (lv.298)

[Eternal Industry Society] —Podolton (lv.230)

[Phoenix Jade Society] —Fini Connective (lv.200)

[Purple Moon Society] - Atenia (lv.180)

[Dream Medicine Society]—Fei Kang Enmi (lv.160)

[Ruin Flame Society] - Satan Jima (lv.300)

As I write this, I've come to realize that society cannot be defeated by an individual; only civilization can stand against society.

At first glance, their rank is not high, but in reality, their actual Combat Power is their rank multiplied by the total number of members (speaker + members + jury + citizens).

Yes, multiplication.

Society is capable of many horrific things. You can temporarily repel or drive it away, but there is only one way to kill it—from bottom to top, wipe out all the citizens, juries, members of parliament, and the speaker! This is the most insane form of slaughter because once society enters combat mode, in a level 200 society, all its citizens will be raised to level 200, and then it's all over. You will be facing a mobile calamity whose strength increases exponentially, and individual strong individuals simply cannot fight against it.

But do you know how we hunt societies? — We bring two hostile societies together and let them tear each other apart, but we can't devour the other, otherwise we'll be the ones who perish.

I'm very good at this, especially the process of 'luring the enemy into the trap'. I always have a very pleasant working relationship with those Narrative-level Civilization in this field, and I even feel like I was born to hunt societies.

Well, this might sound a bit disgusting—I feel really good, happy, and extremely pleased when I see society screaming, wailing, and being killed in agony.

Because I followed the Narrative-level Civilization, I once thought that society wasn't so scary after all. The Narrative-level Civilization would precisely exile the victors when a society died, letting it fight for nothing. Great, let the dogs fight each other and leave them with nothing. Let these stupid beasts kill each other.

However, the Hidden Society shattered my naive illusions; it was absolutely the most bizarre existence I had ever seen.

Let me start by saying that society can be considered as the ultimate existence of all humanities, evolved from civilization, and can even be considered as a living civilization with self-awareness.

In interstellar space, society is simply referred to as 'it', because society is considered Living Civilization, and also a beast that feeds on civilization.

Citizens are, in the context of society, a hunting organ or a cell of society.

Yes, cells.

Cells are equal, and society deliberately uses this to corrupt those with exceptional intelligence or those who are unruly and extraordinary.

But they never say what happens to the cells.

—To serve the core, even at the cost of death.

Those who think they have power and therefore control everything will find that their power is nothing when they enter society. No matter how strong you are individually, you can't beat a society that is dozens of levels high (if such a low-level society really exists).

According to the official calculation formula, a society at level 100 can probably directly increase its level to one thousand or even ten thousand (depending on the number of its citizens and the strength of its chairman).

Furthermore, even if it doesn't have enough bursts of power, its lifespan is endless. Can you outlast it?

What I find puzzling about the existence of the Hidden Society is that if its citizens are so powerful and possess such obvious characteristics as being highly poisonous (and crucially, highly poisonous; without that Blood of Ether, I could have killed that White Knight without gravity), it's impossible that they wouldn't be recorded by the Qiqiao Network.

At the very least, players should have eyewitness accounts, right? Currently, it seems that the Hidden Society uses some kind of ethereal substance as a medium to transform humans into professional citizens and grant them extraordinary abilities, thereby dismantling Reality Society from within, with the ultimate goal of devouring civilization.

The Hidden Society itself is called 'Gaia', ' Secrecy Mother ', etc., which seems to be its name. It sounds strange. Gaia... This is not a name I have ever encountered in any language. It is not from Azure Planet, nor is it the language of the Federation in my previous life.

In the vast universe, the Hidden Society is perhaps an extremely dangerous cosmic predator. It certainly didn't From the Star Abyss, I'm certain of that.

The stronger a being is, the more severe the negative effects will be after they descend into the Star Abyss and ascend to the surface. The Hidden Society will not risk surfacing here.

Of course, there is also a possibility: it is currently in the Sixth Layer Star Abyss - the Source Abyss, so there is no need for it to rise, and what is scattered outside are just some of its citizens.

That's the only place that neither players nor officials are allowed to enter.

Let me think about the rest.

Speaking of which, I unexpectedly obtained some information from Xiajian Jing. Xiajian Jing said on her phone that her mentor accidentally ingested natural ether in her early years, which caused her entire body to be Secrecy Transformation, turning her into a cyborg who wandered alone in the Outland for two centuries.

Unfortunately, he was not C3 Luca-type Cosmic Human Race.

In this Hidden Society, only C3 Luca-type Cosmic Human Race can be citizens. However, according to the mentor from the Xiajian Jing, you can't just be one; you must have certain qualifications, which are the 'quality' required for a professional to actually grow.

Professionals have some connection with the Hidden Society, which endows them with abilities and will give them 'guidance' at the right time to help them develop their own abilities.

The Xiajian Jing told me: Professionals in the Hidden Society are directly influenced by Gaia's will. As the Ether Blood Concentration increases, she will continuously grant you knowledge and extraordinary abilities.

Fortunately, citizens of the Hidden Society also use a power-based system called "reforging." At least I know something about it now, thank goodness.

All Social Citizen need to 'reforge' to strengthen their physical capabilities in the material world; each reforging greatly improves their strength.

From the first Final Reforging, there are a total of ten reforgings. The Final Reforging is considered to be on par with Omega-class powerhouses. Society claims that there are at least 2,000 people at the Final Reforging level—how ridiculous! The entire universe probably has no more than 10,000 Omega-class people. Of those, 10% are too old to fight, and 70% have to go down into the Star Abyss to avoid being targeted by society.

The remaining less than a thousand people are members of the Omega-class civilization; they are all newcomers, incredibly inexperienced.

If society really had so many citizens who could be reborn ten times, the universe would have been finished long ago.

Therefore, I think the actual number of Final Reforging is probably no more than 10, and I even doubt it will exceed 5, because the advancement of Social Citizen is much more difficult than that of civilizations on the Star Abyss Side.

Xiajian Jing mentions that once a professional incorporated into the system of Hidden Society dies, their influence will rapidly decline, and ordinary people will be unable to remember any of the deceased professionals, even their own blood relatives and friends.

That's great, I'm really looking forward to taking down Yuhelai.

Every time I bring up the topic of the Hidden Society, I feel a lump in my throat, like a spit of gas that's about to explode.

I love babies, and the more I love babies, the more I hate the existence of the Hidden Society —it's strange, even though this is the first time I've heard of it, I feel like I've had this resentment for a long time.

Sometimes I start to wonder if my memories of my past life have been tampered with. I even feel that my time travel was a planned event, the result of someone secretly manipulating things behind the scenes.

That sounds a bit too conspiratorial, but I can sense that it's not just about secrecy; there are many things that are different from what I expected.

For example, Nomi.

In the original storyline, Nomi was just a minor character who could serve as a temporary teammate, and no one ever discovered her true identity.

For example, Alexia, shortly after she defeated the Grand Duke, the Beccaria system went on strike and then backfired, and she was supposed to become a mortal last week.

But no, she still managed to lift a bus and use the judicial system to try criminals.

Take the Imitation Human for example. It seems that the Imitation Human didn't have any fire-fearing abilities in their previous lives. We just killed them directly. They were very weak, but they caused a lot of harm.

And then there's Du Zexin... He's changed a lot, and as a long-term NPC, his storyline and personality should have been thoroughly explored long ago, so there's no chance of a plot twist.

So what did he confide in me?

All of this felt eerie to me. I even felt as if everything I experienced in my past life was just a game, and the world I live in now is the real one.

There are no secrets in the game, but they exist in reality. There's no high-level dragon merchant like Grina·Water Vortex in the game, but she exists in reality. I can blow up planets in the game, but in reality, I'm just an ordinary streamer...

That's enough, that's enough.

Everything I have now is real.

But how do you explain my ability to communicate with players, and the changes I cause in the Real World?

I have some concerns. I worry that someone is secretly pulling the strings behind all of this, or as Du Zexin said, I'm afraid that everything is beyond my understanding—afraid that I can't control everything.

But if there's a mastermind behind it all, what would they be after? I'm not the best professional player, nor am I the most famous streamer. Although I'm considered top-tier, I'm just an ordinary person.

If my time travel was driven by some force, I really don't understand what's so special about me.

What do they want me to do?

I have no idea.

If I had to say what's special about me... I think it might be the name of my body.

My name, ' Li Aoz,' is a bit difficult to pronounce, even for Azure Planet People.

Especially when I ask everyone to call me by my name, they all get it wrong.

And 99% of the time, they'll call him by the wrong name: Lioz.