Terra Nova Online: Rise of The Strongest Player

Chapter 525: Gaslighting the world

(Leo’s POV, The next day)

Leo was completely unaware of the crimes that the uprising was committing in his name.

He was already detached from the world, and since he already knew that he would not be returning to his duties as a supervisor, he wasn’t too worried about any worker confronting him at work either.

However, for the sake of not letting the rumors boil over, and to preserve the integrity of his identity, on the third day after becoming a ‘Master’, Leo finally logged back into the game, his goal being to clear his name, and to follow up on the operations of the uprising.

[ System Notification :- You have 232 unread private messages. ]

As soon as he logged back into the game, the first thing he noticed was that he had 232 unread messages.

65 of them were from his mother, 70 more from Amanda, and surprisingly, ChaosBringer made the third biggest chunk at 55.

‘What are you, my side chick?’ Leo wondered, as while he could understand the panic from Amanda and Elena, he could not understand why ChaosBringer was acting like a little girl.

Opening his chat, Leo quickly read through the messages, as he could not help but chuckle.

“Don’t worry about the rumors on the forums Boss, I have a super plan to deflate them all–”

“Sorry, my plan to deflate them all was deflated, but I’m mobilizing the guild members to push back as a unit”

“Apologies, the stupid guild members have failed us. The only option left is to terrorize and kill the most vocal critics”

“We have terrorized and critically injured BrownRock, that bastard won’t say a damn thing anymore–”

“I’m proud to announce, we will go after 71 more targets, our deep assets in Sector E and D are ready to mobilize in real life”

Leo thought ChaosBringer was joking; he never imagined in his wildest dreams that the threats would spill into the real world, as to him, they were just part of the virtual game.

“Relax ChaosBringer, I’ll address the doubts of the world today” Leo replied, as he closed the chat window and focused on replying to his mom next.

**********

Once he was done replying to his mom, Leo finally began with his act.

Using [Mirror World] he created a perfect clone of himself as ‘TheBoss’, and then changed his own appearance to that of Leo Skyshard the merchant.

Once that was done, he controlled the clone to sit in his office as the Baron, while he himself walked to the main entrance of the Manor, and started to record a fake video.

Walking confidently past the manor’s gates and towards the main entrance, he stood waiting at the main door, as Butler George the NPC came to escort him personally.

“Mr.Skyshard, the Baron has been expecting you, please follow me….” The Butler said, as he escorted Leo through the Manor and towards TheBoss’s office.

“Baron…. Mr.Skyshard is here to meet you” he announced, opening the door to TheBoss’s office, as only then did he gesture for Leo to enter the room.

As Leo entered the room, The Boss glanced up from behind his cluttered desk, surrounded by piles of documents, as after a brief pause, he set his pen down and courteously extended his hand.

“Baron,” Leo greeted, offering his own hand as they shook firmly.

At this moment, Leo ended the live video as he felt like this was sufficient proof that the two of them were most definitely not one and the same, and using this video as irrefutable evidence, he posted it on the global forums under the I.D of ‘Leo Skyshard’, with the title of the post reading “Meeting an old friend”.

The post naturally broke the global forums, garnering over 20 million views in under 20 minutes, with almost everyone sharing it within their friend circles immediately, as it was the first time since the controversy took place that one of the main characters had posted a clarification video.

In a way, it wasn’t a clarification video, since ‘Leo Skyshard’ addressed nothing in the video, however, to anyone with a functioning brain, the video was enough proof to put the conspiracy of ‘Leo Skyshard’ and ‘TheBoss’ being one and the same to bed.

“Holy shit it’s over; the career of everyone who boldly claimed that ‘TheBoss’ and ‘Leo Skyshard’ are one and the same is over! Although we don’t know what connection there is between them both, they are at least not the same player”

“I would like to offer a flower to the grave of CriticalThinker, the most foolish conspiracy theorist of our time. The man did the research, but came with the most absurd claims to connect the dots. RIP–”

“Leo Skyshard and The Boss must have been laughing their asses off this whole time while we were busy debating this stupid theory. I mean, come on—everyone knows a player can’t have two IDs in the same game world. How did we all get sucked into this?”

The absurdity of the situation finally began to sink in for many. The idea that Leo Skyshard and TheBoss were the same player was, in hindsight, one of the most ridiculous theories ever conceived in the game. It defied the basic mechanics everyone knew, but somehow, for a brief moment, the entire player base had been convinced.

“This has to be the greatest hoax of all time,” another player chimed in. “We were all hunting for evidence, treating it like some grand conspiracy, and now it feels like we’ve been chasing shadows.”

The realization spread quickly. What had started as an innocent rumor spiraled into one of the game’s largest witch hunts. Forums had been flooded with “evidence,” connecting dots that didn’t exist. Players had poured hours into dissecting everything from skill timings to dialogue patterns, building up an elaborate case that had now been utterly demolished.

“Honestly, props to both of them,” a player commented. “TheBoss must’ve been sitting back, watching this circus unfold, just shaking his head while sipping on virtual wine or something.”

The memes started flowing in almost immediately. A popular one featured an image of TheBoss lounging in his office, feet up on the desk, captioned: “Watching you fools argue for weeks.” Another meme showed Leo Skyshard with a magnifying glass, inspecting a map of the game world, with the text: “Trying to find the common sense that disappeared during this whole debate.”

Trolls, naturally, took the opportunity to stir up new chaos. “It’s all part of a bigger conspiracy! What if they’re secretly working together and manipulating the game’s economy?” But these were quickly drowned out by the overwhelming response from the majority of players who were ready to move on.

“This has to go down in history as the dumbest debate ever,” one player remarked. “I mean, how did CriticalThinker convince everyone that Leo Skyshard and TheBoss were the same person? His entire post is now just a graveyard of failed theories.”

It became a running joke in the forums. Any new, outlandish theory would be met with: “Oh, so is this another ‘Leo and TheBoss are the same person’ situation?” Players who had passionately defended the theory were either going silent or trying to quietly change their positions.

As Leo watched the reactions flood in, he couldn’t help but smirk. The chaos had finally settled, and while the conspiracy theorists were licking their wounds, he was already thinking about his next move. The hoax had collapsed, and now, it was time to focus on what really mattered.

———

/// A/N – Fun fact, there is no photoshop in the game world, so videos and photos can’t be manipulated. So when the memes are mentioned, they’re actually paintings made by painter class players within the game world and later circulated as meme images. ///