The crowd gasped once again, their shock painted on their faces. For a moment, their attention was turned away from what would come of the story of Amunet, Thi Lan, and Grey. Instead, they were turned toward this new juicy piece of gossip.
A current candidate had somehow caused the death of a Producer?
The crowd was suddenly invested in a whole new storyline, but those that already had vested interests couldn’t help but frown.
The Great Udon was too much of a wild card. The things he did were nothing short of wild and reckless, and this seemed to be another one of those things. The real question was how Grid would be foolish enough to participate in such a thing.
Grid had great amounts of protection as a Genesis King, but that capital could quickly wear out depending on how he used it... especially since the Genesis Council his Race was trying to get a seat on had the largest concentration of Genesis Kings in the entire universe.
In fact, having a Genesis King was the bare minimum requirement for being on the Genesis Council in the first place.
Not to mention the fact Grid wasn’t the only Monelay in history to have become a Genesis King, and he wasn’t the only one of them still alive now either.
To say that he was gambling by taking the side of this madman was little short of an understatement. A severe one.
The problem with speaking about these matters was obvious.
Gard had committed suicide for the very same reason Caldrin was now a territory boss of the Genesis Games. This was all related to Grey’s Frames, or rather the fact he had more than one Neural Frame Type.
The only reason that things hadn’t quite boiled over was because the Monelay were in quite a precarious situation.
At this point, the Genesis Council was already aware of their mistake, it was impossible not to. If even the audience was starting to catch on, then they would be too incompetent to not know.
However, the higher ups were in a situation where they didn’t want Multi-Frames to exist, but also didn’t want the public to know this.
Right now, Grey was just a rare animal locked in a zoo cage. The audience would just see him as a particularly exotic one.
As such, the best approach from the eyes of the Genesis Council was to pressure Grey to a death within the bounds of the game. After all, even they had their hands bound by the rules of the Genesis System. A lot of things were out of their hands once it was involved.
This led to an odd limbo where Grey was constantly being faced with one life or death stakes situation after another, but no one seemed to be talking about his Multi-Frames all that much.
If The Great Udon blew the top off, then a lot more people would be asking a lot more questions. And the more questions they asked, the more might be revealed.
This led to an even odder situation where the higher ups of the Monelay and those of the Genesis Council found themselves watching with frowns, wondering what it was The Great Udon was about to say and what they would have to do in order to stop it.
"There’s no need for you to talk on my behalf, I can do it myself, Great Udon," Grid said with a charming smile. "You are a great host, but you have a flare for the dramatics."
The Great Udon released a boisterous laughter. "Indeed I do. Go on, then, Grid."
"To say that my father died due to Grey is technically true, but I cannot blame him. In truth, the real reason my father died is because of a foolish mistake of his Assistant Producer, and because my father is a man of great honor.
"After my father died, I was truly furious. I wanted to find out what happened, and it led me down a rabbit hole. Eventually, I found the originating point of it all."
Grid held out a hand and a remote flew into his palms, seemingly thrown by a producer to the side. The women shrieked as though he had just done the coolest thing imaginable. Someone in the crowd directly fainted and had to be escorted away.
Grid clicked a button on the remote and a scene played out above them. It was none other than the scene of Grey’s first moments in their reality TV, how he spawned in confusion, tried continuously to select a spear, only to not be granted a Nexis Suit at all and shipped into the Tutorial Stage without even a weapon.
The crowd watched on in shock.
"You all might not understand the process of how things work, but the hierarchy of Producers is quite strict. Every Associate Producer is paired with an Assistant Producer, and beneath them are a large funnel of unranked producers, each assigned to monitor small groups of participants.
"When things happen, they’re flagged by these unranked Producers, and it is then funneled to the Assistant Producer whose job it is to assign them color-coded orders of priority that will then be reported to the Associate Producer who is in charge of an entire zone.
"My father, the Associate Producer, was in charge of Grey’s Zone 234. However, because Caldrin was embezzling funds, the equipment used to outfit the participants of our zone were faulty and made a mistake, failing to assign a Nexis Suit to Grey.
"The end result was a cascade of decisions that Caldrin made from manipulating the spawn rates of bosses to even hiding rewards."
As Grid spoke, one scene after another played out above, proving it all.
"When my father finally learned of what happened, he was furious and punished Caldrin in the worst possible fashion he could, also hoping to grant some justice to Grey by allowing him the chance to take him out in the end.
"And then... in penance, my father killed himself."