Chapter 14: The Seal Method and the Idiot Method
“Asker.” Medea ran over to Asker, who was still examining the bodies, and bent down to call him.
“What’s up?” Asker asked calmly.
“It’s like this…” Medea briefly explained the girls’ reasoning.
In short, the girls wanted to devise a method to identify their companions, to prevent the anomaly from continuing to create replicas and infiltrating their team.
However, the awkward part was that any information that entered their memories would be read by the anomaly and perfectly replicated, rendering the method useless.
Asker: ???
Wait, we’re just running a Mind-type anomaly dungeon, is it really that complicated?
After thinking for a moment, Asker realized: Back when I wasn’t a professional player, running this kind of anomaly dungeon as a player was quite complicated.
As a groundbreaking, super-intelligent, full-immersion virtual reality game, “Steel and Fire” created many innovative gameplays in its so-called anomaly dungeons.
For example, Mind dungeons would use intelligent AI disguised as teammates to deceive the players in the squad.
In the early versions, the deception method was very simple and crude, just having a replica suddenly join the team, then speaking and acting in sync with the original character, making it difficult for players to distinguish between the real person and the AI.
Although the full-immersion game pod prohibited external programs like YY voice chat, it couldn’t stop players from logging off. So they just had to log off and ask to know for sure.
In later versions of the game, a more insidious game design appeared: swapping.
Using plot devices like fog or teleportation to forcefully separate the team, then creating a team of replicas to deceive the separated teammates.
Trained by server big data and advanced algorithms, the intelligence of these replica NPCs was far superior to that of ordinary NPCs. They could pass the Turing test, simulating millions of different speech personalities. Whether the original character’s personality was cold, straightforward, gentle, or foul-mouthed, they could simulate it with 99% accuracy.
Moreover, when players communicated online, regardless of the method, the server would record it. As long as it was information you directly saw or heard, the server, based on the corresponding algorithms, would determine that the replica’s AI also knew it, allowing these replicas to be perfectly disguised, making them almost impossible for ordinary people to identify.
How did players counter this? They still relied on cheesy methods, exchanging secret codes offline and then verifying them online. The server was powerless against this.
However, in this world, this method probably wouldn’t work – at least the obstacle of “not being able to log off” couldn’t be overcome.
There was a simple solution: have all the girls teleport back to Furnace Island, leaving only Asker to deal with the anomaly alone.
If he ran the dungeon solo, then no matter who the anomaly impersonated, it wouldn’t matter. He would just kill everything in his path and clear the stage.
However, this opportunistic method undoubtedly violated Asker’s intention of training the team. If they retreated to Furnace Island whenever they encountered a problem, how would they learn to think and grow?
Seeing Medea still deep in thought, Asker smiled and offered a suggestion:
“Here’s an idea. Have Sidlipha carve a seal, any pattern, as long as it’s not symmetrical.”
“Then, borrow some carbon paper from Nuo.”
“Carbon paper?” Medea asked, puzzled.
“Place each sheet of carbon paper under a page in a notebook,” Asker explained. “Then, close your eyes, rotate the seal randomly a few times, and press down firmly. Move it to the right, rotate again, and press down again.”
“Because you’re rotating the seal with your eyes closed, you won’t know the angle at which the two patterns are arranged on each page.”
“Finally, still with your eyes closed, tear off these pages, crumple them into balls, and give one to each member of the team.”
“Since no one knows the content on the paper, the anomaly naturally won’t know either.”
Medea suddenly realized: “Although we don’t know what’s on the paper, the pattern on each piece is the same!”
“So, when we encounter a replica, we just have to ask them to open the paper and compare whether the pattern on mine and theirs is the same. Then I’ll know if they are real or a replica!”
“As expected of the captain! Brilliant!” The more Medea thought about it, the more ingenious it seemed. She hugged Asker excitedly, her eyes sparkling.
Asker awkwardly extracted himself from her embrace, coughed, and said:
“In short, use your brains when encountering this kind of anomaly, understand?”
“Understood!” Medea immediately and excitedly explained the method through their mental communication channel, making the other girls exclaim in admiration.
This method cleverly exploited the mechanism of the mind-type anomaly, which “could only copy by reading memories,” isolating the secret code from their memories while allowing for easy identification.
“To further optimize it, we can close our eyes and stamp the seal, then take a picture with our phones and send it to the group chat.” Thira said. “When we meet, we just open our photo albums and compare the pictures.”
“But we don’t have our phones.” Nuo took out the carbon paper from her bag. “Let’s use Asker’s method for now.”
“Why do you have carbon paper?” Eleanor asked curiously.
“I write down some important information twice,” Nuo replied. “Then I tear off one page and keep it separately, in case I lose my notebook.”
On the other side, Sidlipha took out a potato, skillfully cut it open with a knife, and then carved a few simple patterns on the cross-section.
“Wait a minute!” Eleanor was even more curious. “Why do you carry a potato with you?!”
“Emergency food,” Sidlipha replied. “In case I have nothing to eat, it can save my life.”
The things you carry around are so strange! Eleanor thought, amused.
After quickly finishing the carving, Sidlipha closed her eyes and pressed the potato firmly twice on the notebook where Nuo had already placed the carbon paper.
Then she tore off these printed pages, crumpled them into balls, and distributed one to each member of the team.
Matthews watched, confused. Since Medea had spoken through the mental communication channel, he hadn’t heard a word.
Seeing the girls of Azure Longsword distributing paper balls, he could only guess that they had come up with an effective identification method, and he began to rack his brains.
What was their method? What method?!
“That…” After much thought, Matthews finally decided to swallow his pride and ask their captain, Asker.
As soon as he opened his mouth, Medea stepped forward and sneered:
“Want to know our identification method? Name your price.”
Good thing I’m here, otherwise, with the captain’s casual attitude towards money, he might just tell them the secret.
“Damn it!” Matthews immediately lost interest. You want to charge me for such a simple trick?
He sullenly returned to his team, called over a few of his more astute confidants, and explained the situation.
“So, this anomaly can copy people we know and impersonate them to deceive and infiltrate us,” one of his confidants said. “In that case, we can agree on a secret code…”
“Once you know the secret code, the anomaly will also know it by reading your memory,” Matthews said irritably. “Then wouldn’t the anomaly’s replicas also know it?”
“But if we don’t know the secret code, how can we verify it?” Another confidant asked in surprise.
“That’s the key to the problem! The key!” Matthews said impatiently. “Those girls figured it out, and you can’t? Use your brains!”
The confidants were speechless. You couldn’t figure it out either, could you?
But Matthews was the leader, after all, and could act unreasonably and delegate responsibility. So everyone racked their brains for a long time. Suddenly, one of his confidants had a bright idea and asked for confirmation:
“Captain, you said that they made marks on the notebook just now, then tore off the pages, crumpled them into balls, and distributed them to everyone?”
“That’s right,” Matthews said. “But I didn’t see clearly what they wrote. And, if they clearly wrote down the secret code, the person writing it must have a memory of it, right? Then wouldn’t this anomaly still be able to read it?”
“I understand,” the confidant said confidently. “The key to this method is that the person writing must be an idiot.”
“An idiot?”
“Exactly, an idiot with a terrible memory.”
Matthews and the others suddenly felt enlightened:
“That’s right!”
“Find an idiot to write it, have him write the same secret code on all the papers, and then he forgets everything after writing it!”
“This way, the anomaly can’t read his memory!”
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