Ascendance: The Rebirth Of The Unknown Gamer

After the siege had been lifted, there was a total survivor count of six.

Five were executed for the crime of cannibalism and the last was just considered a coward.

He had locked himself in his bas.e.m.e.nt for the whole two months, drinking nutrition potions he had purchased with his secret savings.

He was broke and in dire need of food.

Nutrition potions could only do so much.

Later that week, the man was found in his bed with his throat slit wide open.

There were no survivors left from the mysterious siege.

Nobody knew how or why, but the city had been thoroughly destroyed.

---

'Achievement unlocked: Murderer'

'Achievement unlocked: Mass Murderer'

'Achievement unlocked...'

'Title obtained: Mastermind'

After numerous achievements were gained and Aura got a sweet title, he could finally say that his mission had been a success.

Due to the way the crime system worked, Aura wouldn't face serious repercussions for his actions either.

In Ascendance, you were only assigned a crime value if you actually committed a crime, but you could gain achievements by being responsible for a crime.

For instance, a mob boss could avoid the penalties for a crime by simply implying that he wanted a crime comitted.

So long as the mob boss didn't directly order a crime to be committed, the system would judge him to be responsible but not guilty.

Many kind people were judged responsible for crimes they didn't commit due to mistakes or misunderstandings, but actually recieving a crime value is different.

However, just being responsible for a crime also won't allow an individual to unlock criminal classes or gain criminal titles.

Those required an individual to be guilty of a crime.

By the system's rules, Aura was not guilty of a crime, but he was certainly responsible for the death of everyone in that city.

He legitimately purchased all of their supplies, and then stole their money and valuables, which was the crime of theft.

He then sealed them into their city and let them do what humans do.

By the system's judgement, the only crime Aura was guilty of was theft.

It's an underhanded method, but given the severe penalties for mass murder, it was kind of necessary.

In the same way, soldiers of two different countries at war with each other wouldn't gain crime values for killing each other.

It was a cold, mechanical judgement, but one that made a lot of sense.

The guard who couldn't get the criminal's charges to stick wasn't guilty of the criminal's future crimes, but depending upon the system's judgement, he could be held responsible due to negligence.

This ensures that guards and those who do not wish to be complicit in criminal acts are more willing to crack down on smalltime offenders.

The heartless rules of judgement in Ascendance made trials very easy in ths case of hardcore criminals, as they could just measure the criminal's crime value.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work for criminals like thieves and embezzlers, who aren't given crime values for what they've done.

Everyone commits some sort of sin at some point in their life, and if nonviolent crimes were given crime values, then the prisons would overflow.

Forgotten Industries used the excuse that even their system had limits, and that they had cut off some bits that people might consider essential in order to reduce the data burden.

And to prove it they made one of their backup server sites public.

Ascendance's servers are run in three different locations simultaneously, with four backup locations in case any of the three fails.

This ensures that the game is always running, and that even if they needed to take a site offline for maintenance they could do so without issue.

Of course, FI may have more sites, but they've publicly stated that they only have seven, and released the location of only one.

That one server site, was a city.

The only people living in the city were the staff themselves as well as others who managed basic necessities like food, water, and electricity.

FI operated a server site that was as large as a city, and functioned like one too.

Civilians could only admit that the company's scale made judging whether they were lying or not impossible.