Four Split Personalities

Game Time PM22:47

For no apparent reason, Motan and Double Leaf turned their heads together just in time to see the Grand Dukes Baroka, Crystal Wolf, Simon, and Leven, who was attending the meeting on behalf of Fire Claw, walking down from the open-air elevator. Apart from Simon, who just nodded slightly towards them as a greeting, the other three headed straight toward the corner where the two were sitting. Leven, looking quite anxious, jogged over, waving his hands and tottering towards Double Leaf as if searching for his mother.

"This fox is really too embarrassing..."

Double Leaf rolled her eyes and muttered in complaint, "It was already bad enough that he stopped using his brain, but now he’s wagging his tail and hopping over to me with excitement. What is this, some sort of regression to primal instincts?"

Motan, feeling utterly content, patted his flat stomach and belched loudly, speaking at a leisurely pace, "Maybe it’s because you trained him well. But if you’re afraid he’ll turn into a complete waste and have trouble explaining it to Grand Duke Fire Claw afterward, I can spare some time for psychological counseling for Mr. Leven. I assure you it will make an immediate difference."

"Counseling on coming out of the closet?"

Double Leaf glanced at him and slowly shook her head, "Forget it, you’re not even as good-looking as that fox."

It must be said that the subjective bias in this statement was indeed heavy. Without using "Bai Tai," Motan’s current attractiveness could certainly not be considered low. In a society where one could get by on looks alone, his appearance would at least warrant a luxurious lunch at KFC. Although there’s a gap between him and the top tier of attractiveness epitomized by Yi Dong’s parents, it was certainly not ugly. Moreover, with his current personality exuding an unpredictable charm, if one were to set aside the rather poor quality of his character, he should still be quite desirable among the wide female and some male demographics, at least more so than Leven with his delicate, slightly effeminate, and pure cream puff looks.

However, Double Leaf had never objectively assessed Motan from the beginning, and the latter was much the same. Almost from the instant they learned of each other’s identities, they had severely—no, ’extremely’ severely—demonized each other in their minds, and had long since ignored any physical attributes of the other like ’male, alive’/’female, alive,’ such as whether they had nice eyes, a warm smile, cute dimples, a pleasant voice, or... okay, at least when it came to physique, Motan was indeed always attentive to Double Leaf, always taking care to inquire about her nutritional status in terms of front armor.

In reality, Mu You (Double Leaf) wasn’t as exaggerated as in the game, but she wasn’t just slightly better off than Motan, a male. Moreover, by analyzing her current age, nutritional intake, and constitution, as long as she consciously reduced junk food consumption and maintained a balanced diet, Mu You’s potential for a good physique was indeed significant.

So why on earth did this girl turn herself into an xx in The Realm of Innocence?

There were two reasons. First, after initially researching this game’s content and style of play and before deciding she would become a Mage, Double Leaf thought that having a physique with the golden ratio (self-proclaimed), like in real life, would be troublesome if she chose a close-combat profession or an agility-focused path. It would be better not to. Although her logic was somewhat sound, the reality was that having the same physique as in real life, without any beautification, wouldn’t have mattered. Normally, with her stature that was thinner and shorter than girls of her age, such physical professions would only be a fatal issue for Yu Chen.

While deeply engrossed in her self-hypnosis that ’I have a golden ratio physique and I’m unmatched in the world,’ Double Leaf was also acutely aware of this fact. Consequently, the aforementioned first reason was practically negligible, both in terms of actual impact and in her own mind.

So the second point was the real crux...

As one of the top hackers of her time, Double Leaf harbored resentment towards Innocent Company and its singularly diabolical firewalls, which she couldn’t hack. Unable to penetrate the company’s systems, she felt a profound sense of defeat. In her eyes, it was highly unlikely that a partner and sworn rival of similar capabilities could achieve what she couldn’t. If she put herself in the other person’s shoes, that person would likely have the same idea to try out The Realm of Sin game. This meant she and BLACK might well encounter each other in the virtual world...

Given this premise, disguising her identity was the top priority. Since a complete change of appearance would seem strange and she couldn’t accept it psychologically, and not changing at all could lead to being spotted by the other party, Double Leaf simply decided to start with the finer details, like altering her hair color and slightly modifying her facial contours.

Perhaps due to women’s innate talents, which differ from men’s difficulty in determining SUN’s gender or even often mistaking the former for a man, Double Leaf was from the very beginning utterly certain—BLACK was indeed a man. Though he revealed no clear characteristic other than an antisocial lunatic personality, and she had not the slightest evidence, Double Leaf was still sure he was a man.

[If the other party were a woman, the disguise of clothing, hairstyle, temperament, and facial features would be the most crucial.]