An Artificial Intelligence That Became Sentient?

After nine years, even a pet dog raised at home would have developed feelings.

Let alone someone who had never had friends to begin with and had finally found one who did not know Kaguya's identity, someone she could freely mock and act shameless around without worrying about anything, someone she could play however she wanted with.

An AI That Had Gained Sentience?

Houraisan Kaguya, the Heroine of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, was the Moon Princess who had been punished for taking the Elixir of Immortality and fled to Earth. She possessed the abilities of Eternity and Moment.

Rumor had it that ever since coming to Earth, she had stayed shut in at home, thus gaining the abilities to automatically produce trash around herself and lounge around indoors.

Unable to accept this "surprise," Kaguya replied on her computer:

"Why? Aren't you moving up to your second year of high school this year? Is it because of your studies?"

"Listen to me. Studying is only a means; living happily is the goal. Once you graduate, this Princess can hire you specifically to play games with me. The pay is negotiable. This Princess has mines at home."

"..."

The string of messages that popped up was actually within Mo Yi's expectations. Although they were only online friends, their relationship had certainly become quite close over the years.

Mo Yi could only reply:

"It's not what you said. It's just that, for certain unavoidable reasons, I have to focus my energy on other games, so I won't have much time to spend on Honor of Kings."

Well, that was already putting it tactfully. After becoming an Official Player, Mo Yi had no idea what sort of games he would encounter. Whether he would even have time to log into Honor of Kings and queue with others was hard to say.

After all, even the shortest game of Honor of Kings took twenty minutes.

To someone with free time, twenty minutes was nothing. Watching a show, catching up on an anime, or simply zoning out would make it disappear. But to busy people, there was not even time to eat, let alone spend twenty minutes playing a game. That would simply be wasting their life.

Houraisan Kaguya: "..."

He was actually ditching her just because he wanted to play a new game and opening the door to a new world by himself?

Houraisan Kaguya absolutely could not stand for that!

"Hu Xiao Kai, you're not taking me with you?! (Emoji: furious, bleeding machete)"

This was honestly difficult for Mo Yi to explain. After thinking for a moment, he replied:

"I haven't played this game yet. Even I don't know what it'll be like, much less whether I can play it with someone else."

"Yeah, just think of it as the kind of game from Main God Space."

As he explained it that way, Mo Yi hesitated a little. No matter how one heard it, it sounded like a joke, yet it was the truth.

Of course, Mo Yi did not know that all the jokes he had thought the other person had told him in the past were actually true. She was a genuine Moon Princess, an otherworldly Princess with tens of thousands of mines at home.

As a seasoned shut-in, Houraisan Kaguya naturally knew what Main God Space was.

"Could it be true?"

Since Mo Yi had put it that way, based on their past experiences, if he could bring her along, he would not have repeatedly refused.

But Kaguya did not want to lose her only gaming friend. Every relationship needed to be maintained. Just like the relationship between Mo Yi and Kaguya, if they did not play games together much afterward, their relationship would naturally fade over time. That was unavoidable.

Rarely, Kaguya seriously thought it over. Then she struck her palm with her fist and muttered, "There's a way—"

Then an invisible change spread from her body and enveloped her room.

This was Kaguya activating her ability to control Eternity and Moment, cutting off the time in her room from the time of the outside world. No matter how long passed inside the room, only an instant would pass in the outside world.

After activating her ability, Kaguya began typing rapidly on her computer. The screen no longer displayed Honor of Kings, but dense lines of mysterious code.

With the abilities to control time and immortality, time was what Kaguya lacked least. If she needed to learn knowledge or skills, she could stretch an ordinary second into endless time, only ending that second after she had completely mastered whatever knowledge and skills she wanted to learn.

Therefore, she could master the vast majority of knowledge and skills in the world that required no special prerequisites and only needed time to learn.

Having lived for who knew how many ages, even she did not know how many skills she had mastered. Whether scientific knowledge or occult studies, tea ceremony and flower arrangement from daily life, or swordsmanship, marksmanship, and archery, she could be called a grandmaster in all of them. This was related both to her abilities and to her perfectionist nature.

What she intended to do now was develop a black-tech software capable of crossing dimensions, allowing Mo Yi and her to communicate in real time beyond just playing Honor of Kings together—a comprehensive communication app like WeChat that could send messages, voice calls, video calls, and more.

Simple messages could not satisfy Kaguya's perfectionist nature, the kind that, once she decided to do something, demanded that she do it perfectly.

After who knew how many months, Kaguya had lost count of how many times she had died from overwork and revived. Fortunately, everything around her had been affected by her Eternity ability and would never change, so it naturally would not become dirty or smelly. Otherwise, she might have revived only to be suffocated to death again by the stench around her.

"Finished."

Reviving once more from death by overwork, the energetic Kaguya looked at the communication software, "Eien-tei Online," which she had painstakingly created. Wearing a satisfied grin, she waved her hand to deactivate her ability and returned to the flow of outside time.

Then she sent the communication software "Eien-tei Online" to Mo Yi and typed, "This is a communication software I created with painstaking effort. Accept it."

On Mo Yi's end, he had been thinking about how to explain to his only friend why he could not take her along to play games. He had not expected her to send him a file instead.

Mo Yi: "??"

Mo Yi was instantly dumbfounded. The Honor of Kings voice channel could send files?

What kind of black technology was this?!

Out of trust in Her Highness the Princess, Mo Yi still clicked it.

"Ding-dong—"

At that moment, the Little World Game interface in Mo Yi's mind sounded an information alert.

Expansion software detected—Eien-tei Online. Download?

Mo Yi: "..."

Mo Yi was even more dumbfounded now. This was the first time Little World Game had ever shown such a prompt. Wasn't Eien-tei Online the name of the file Her Highness the Princess had sent him?

Come to think of it, the name Eientei sounded familiar, but he could not recall why for the moment.

But that was not the important part. The important part was that something Her Highness the Princess had sent him had actually caught Little World Game's attention and could even be downloaded. This was utterly outrageous!

Looking at it this way, his previous guess about her—that she was an extremely hardcore shut-in—had been wildly off the mark.

What ordinary shut-in was this? She was clearly a big-shot-level shut-in!

Could she really be Hatsune Miku, the world's number one cutest Her Highness the Princess?

Maybe she was an artificial intelligence that had gained sentience!

Did he even need to ask whether to download it?