Look around-where would you find any crows these days? These are all Odin cosplaying as crows himself

That really was an interesting design. Chang Nie chuckled and was about to leave the page to see whether there was anything else he had missed when he suddenly spotted a line of translucent fine print in the bottom-left corner of the compendium:

[Compendium entries are edited by players. Editing access is open to all players.]

"Huh?"

At the sight of that fine print, Chang Nie suddenly frowned.

After all their past chatter in the group and today's virtual meetup, he was certain the other three players were not professionals like him. The one most likely to have the spare time to edit entries was probably [Zhongde], but that guy should still have been at work.

Then who had recorded the entries for these three creatures?

He opened the creature compendium's details again and soon found translucent fine print in the same style in a corner of the detailed view:

[Entry editor: Muninn]

"Muninn?"

Chang Nie murmured the name, immediately confirming beyond doubt that this was not one of the closed-beta players. Yet he kept feeling that he had heard it somewhere before; he just could not recall where right away.

But clearly, this did not seem like a person's name. If it was not a person's name, then what was it?

A sudden flash of inspiration struck Chang Nie, and he finally remembered where the name came from-wasn't this one of those crows from mythology?

Although the knowledge he had picked up to show off during his chuuni phase had gathered dust, Chang Nie still recalled it quickly.

Huginn and Muninn were Odin's two crows in Norse mythology. Huginn's name came from "thought," while Muninn meant "memory."

"So... a crow named 'Memory' is writing the game compendium? That really is... perfectly reasonable."

Chang Nie suddenly laughed aloud. Despite having played so very many games, little Easter eggs like this still occasionally made him laugh.

It seemed the developers intended to take minimal guidance to the extreme, using an account obviously belonging to an insider to compile the encyclopedia early on. Once more players joined, it might become a specialized task for those players who enjoyed digging into history in games.

But why choose this name? Across all the different mythologies, names with similar meanings were hardly scarce.

Another question suddenly occurred to Chang Nie. He promptly backed out of the page again and, sure enough, found the publisher's name at the very bottom of the official website-Odin Game Company.

Mystery solved.

Chang Nie could hardly wait to share this joke in the little gaming group he had just created that day-

The god-king Odin had personally made a game for everyone to play and even had his little crow help write the encyclopedia. Haha, at this rate, perhaps there would be a World Tree, a squirrel, a black dragon, and so on later.

At this thought, Chang Nie suddenly felt a little more anticipation for World of Disorder.

If this revolutionary game could strike a good balance between gameplay and competitive play, he might actually grow to like it-

That was rare for a professional player. After all, for them, games were work, and nobody liked work.

Evening soon arrived. A little after six, Chang Nie took the initiative to message the small group. First, he told them about the little Easter egg he had discovered, then got down to business:

[Howling Pothos]: "Does everyone have time? Can we all log in at eight as planned?"

The group members had already matched their group nicknames to their in-game names, so the lurkers soon responded:

[Zhongde]: "Off work, having dinner. See you at eight sharp."

[Good Times Don't Last]: "I can play. Just got chewed out during the day. The older generation doesn't believe fully immersive games exist, after all. Even if they do, they'd still think your body wasn't getting proper rest."

[Do Some Farm Work]: "Too right, bro. Never mind the older generation-even some people our age don't believe it. I spent hours arguing with a buddy today, and he was dead set on thinking I was lying."

[Zhongde]: "This buddy of yours wouldn't happen to be [Chief Shit Appraisal Master], would he?"

[Do Some Farm Work]: "That's him!"

"Well, that explains it. It's normal for his brain not to get it."

"Nothing we can do about it, though. I tested it today, and our beta access is device-locked. Once authenticated, it only works on that device. You can't switch devices. Still don't know whether switching people without switching devices works, though. I live alone and haven't found a volunteer yet."

"Speaking of devices, I keep finding that strange too. For a closed-beta game, World of Disorder is really well optimized. I used this secondhand headset all night, and it barely heated up. If it didn't still lag playing other games, I'd have thought I'd scored something good."

"So, have you already been trained into the shape of World of Disorder?"

"So what if I have?"

Just as the two began exchanging pointless remarks, [Do Some Farm Work] suddenly remembered something else:

"Guys, is there any way to get more beta slots? I thought it was strange yesterday. How could a game like this only give access to four people? Not looking down on anyone here, but none of us are star players or big streamers. Why us four? That * [Shit Appraisal Master] is so jealous his eyes are about to bleed. He keeps frantically asking whether I can get another slot."

"What's the point of asking us? We're not the game designers."

Just then, [Good Times Don't Last] suddenly said:

"I think there's one 'person' we could ask."

"Who?"

The others all fell silent, waiting for the newbie to reveal the answer.

"Why don't we ask that NPC with trees growing in his eyes?"

"...Did you forget the guide's name?"

"I forgot too..."

"Me too..."

The four in the group stared at one another through their screens, but a certain quantum ghost, peeking at their screens across the vastness of space and time, was already getting a little heated.

For a game like this, asking players to remember an NPC's name did seem a little demanding. The problem was, he was the only NPC right now!

Over twelve whole hours of testing, there had only been five breathing, intelligent beings around the old castle, including them!

They couldn't even remember one name?

Ed almost laughed in anger, but on closer thought, he seemed to have only introduced himself by name at the beginning, with that line, "My name is Ed Adrian..." After that, they had all just called him "lord."

He checked the time. The group had already talked until after seven. Ed decided to add a few features to Little Green, as optimization carried out during the daytime server downtime.

Meanwhile, in the four-person group, after skipping over the awkward matter of forgetting his name, [Good Times Don't Last] had already explained his idea:

"The NPC lord probably doesn't know how to get closed-beta access, but he should know how to 'summon souls.' We can approach it from that angle."