Chapter 68: On the Philosophy of the Boss

The shop owner gave a wry smile. "You’re talking about 'Digital Source World'? How could I not know about it? To tell you the truth, my daughter—the one you met around noon—she’s been quite obsessed with that game lately."

"Oh? You don’t restrict her from playing games? She still seems to be a student," Beast was somewhat surprised. From what he had seen online, the prevailing attitudes seemed quite different from this shop owner’s approach.

Beast recalled a message he’d once seen on the web—a screenshot from a gaming group. In it, a woman, apparently the mother of a student, had flown into a rage. Judging by her words, her child’s grades had slipped, and she’d come to the group to blame others for leading her kid astray.

Reading that, Beast found it hard to understand. In this world, there were students who excelled and students who struggled. No one could guarantee their grades would always be perfect. Some children’s gifts simply didn’t lie in academics; forcing them to study could ruin them instead.

Take Agumon, for example. Usually, Agumon evolves into Greymon or MetalGreymon—like students who advance smoothly through school. But Agumon could also evolve into other forms. If he becomes Seadramon, then further into the Supreme Swordmaster, and eventually AlphaMon, that path surpasses the conventional Greymon-to-MetalGreymon-to-WarGreymon evolution by far.

Still, if you only looked at the mature stage, most people would say Agumon evolving into Seadramon was inferior to evolving into Greymon, believing he was a failure. Yet the truth lies in the evolutionary chain itself.

You can never judge a person’s future by their present. Some people plod along, earning three thousand a month, and after fifty years, they’ve made 1.8 million in total. Another might scrape by on a thousand a month for forty-nine years, only to strike it rich in the fiftieth, earning millions in a single year.

If you only look at those first forty-nine years, no one would think much of the second person; people might even criticize him or warn their children not to be like him. But when the fiftieth year arrives, all memory of those earlier struggles fades away.

The shop owner scratched his head, a trace of embarrassment on his face. "I believe these things shouldn’t be suppressed—they should be guided."

Beast’s interest was piqued. "Oh? Guided? Interesting. That’s a new perspective for me. Would you care to elaborate?"

"Why not." The shop owner glanced around, then sat down across from Beast, laughing heartily. "There aren’t any other customers right now. Let’s have a chat."

After organizing his thoughts, the shop owner began to speak. According to his logic, it went like this:

Why do children want to play games? Because they want an outlet; they want to free themselves from the pain of endless coursework. That, in itself, is a form of desire.

In Beast’s era, the word "desire" was often seen as negative, but to the shop owner, it was a positive force. If there were no desires, there would be no modern society.

If their ancestors had no desires, if they simply drifted through life, they wouldn’t have invented weapons to hunt more beasts and survive—there would have been no Stone Age.

If their ancestors had no desires, they wouldn’t have gathered people into towns, towns into states, states into nations.

If their ancestors had no desires, they wouldn’t have expanded their territories.

If their ancestors had no desires, they wouldn’t have built the layers of civilization that exist today.

From this, it was clear: desire is one of humanity’s most fundamental driving forces. Even now, desire remains the prime engine of progress.

Because people are lazy and want convenience, they invented elevators—desire, in a sense. Because they are poor and want to make money, they build businesses and drive economic growth—desire, again.

Even opening this shop was driven by the desire to earn money, and Beast’s journey into the game to find Zero’s data was also a kind of desire.

Desire, when kept in check, can drive society forward; but unbridled, it can destroy everything. People today, influenced as they are, tend to see all desires as uncontrollable.

But in truth, desire is already present in everyone. Unless you’ve lost all will to live, you have desires.

The shop owner explained that most parents see their children playing games as an uncontrollable desire, believing that if the child becomes addicted, they will be ruined.

But in reality, they never attempt to guide their children’s desires—they try to extinguish them, turning their children into puppets to fulfill their own dreams.

For instance, a parent who only finished high school might dream of earning a doctorate. Rather than striving for it themselves, they relentlessly pressure their child to achieve it for them.

As for what the child wants? That rarely matters. To such parents, their dreams are paramount; the child’s dreams are irrelevant. If a child has dreams, it’s only because their workload isn’t heavy enough, leaving them time for idle thoughts.

According to the shop owner, this approach is the most detrimental, for it grinds away a child’s nature. And truly, it seldom works; those who succeed under such pressure are rare.

That’s why the shop owner doesn’t restrict his daughter from playing games. Instead, he guides her—teaching her how to play responsibly, so that she balances gaming with her studies.

In fact, the shop owner had succeeded.