Chapter 416 The Malice of the Production Team
A day and a night passed in the other world, but for the players it was just a night.
We gathered and set out the night before, relying on a map that was not much better than a stick figure drawing, and taking many detours. We inevitably stopped along the way to practice life skills (hunting wild animals and gathering herbs), take turns to go offline to ensure game time, eat supper and wait for people, etc., and it was not until dawn (on the Earth plane) that we finally reached the border of Adler Territory.
During this time, the players encountered several caravans heading towards the city of Dutata.
And then... players no longer run up to talk to NPCs they encounter in the wild excitedly like they did in the early days. Instead, they run into the caravan and hang out for a while, and when they see that the quest plot is not triggered (no NPC takes the initiative to talk to them), they just walk away.
The foreign caravan was left staring in confusion.
It also made the online GM Master Liu feel a little relieved...
The flow of money, goods, information and personnel brought by land caravans is very important to the current undead regime. Players who have become accustomed to the "background NPCs" everywhere know that most of the "NPCs" will not give them tasks or bother them too much, which is better than watching these players wander around and causing chaos wherever they go.
After the players came out of the deep mountains and forests and finally found Kata Town, Master Liu, who had been watching these guys all night, quickly used his "GM authority" to send a reminder message to Lord Yang.
Lord Yang soon gave instructions and sent a hidden task template, asking Master Liu to assign the task to the player based on the situation - since prevention is useless, effective guidance must be given, and these idiots cannot be allowed to do whatever they want without restraint!
Kata Town is geographically remote. Its only advantage is that it is the only population settlement in the northern part of Adler Territory. People entering or leaving Adler Territory from the north have to resupply here.
Last year, the Kenyan investigation team sneaked into Adler Territory, but Yang Qiu didn't notice it until they showed up in the new town in the south to meet Walton. In order to avoid similar situations, Yang Qiu asked Zhao Zhenzhen to arrange for operators to come to Kata Town to install loudspeakers, and also asked the operators to carry a zombie with them, and set up an "Underground Base of the Undead Chamber of Commerce" in Kata Town for surveillance purposes.
Now, this "Underworld Chamber of Commerce Underground Base" comes in handy...
The players, unaware of how much trouble their rampage had caused to the people behind the scenes, came down from the mountain where the locals grew khata grass, and ran happily towards the town ahead that was visible to the naked eye.
"The Kata Town on the map should be here. After this town, go north for 20 kilometers and you will reach Tachia Territory!"
En Bu Zeng held a map in his hand, with the wonderful corpse equipment of the man who had logged off to eat breakfast on his back, and pointed excitedly to the front.
"This place is too far. It takes an entire night just to make the trip." Halfway through, I regretted participating in the exploration mission and complained, "We are just running here. Can we open a teleportation point? If not, I won't come again next time."
"Brother Yao, your patience has decreased a lot. Didn't it take us more than two days to run from Tarantan to Westham?" said Sister Jialuo.
"At least there were monsters spawning along the way." The man who gave me the medicine angrily pulled the heavy backpack strap, "Not only are there no monsters spawning and no excitement this time, but I also have to help the orange cat carry corpses the whole time. It's too painful."
"There's nothing we can do. The orange cat boss's wife won't let him wear a helmet into the bedroom." Jialuo said happily, "It's okay, Yao brother. When the orange cat comes up, you can ask him to carry you for a day."
A group of players were chattering and gossiping as they passed by a caravan that had just come out of Kata Town.
This caravan that set out in the morning had been to Adler Territory twice last year and had also seen the undead in Dutata City. They did not make a fuss about it and stopped by the roadside to wait for the undead to pass, then continued on their journey with the six-legged lizards carrying the goods.
The caravan that had seen the undead remained calm, but the locals of Kata Town who had never seen the undead were panicked.
On both sides of the road at Nanzhenmen is the market of Kata Town.
The sacks, flatbed carts, baskets, dustpans, basins and other utensils placed on the roadside were filled with processed fodder, roasted wheat grains, dried vegetables, fruits, meat and other dry food that were easy to carry and were sold to the caravans leaving the town. The townspeople who had just finished a business deal were chatting in a relaxed manner.
The townspeople were instantly speechless when they saw twenty or so undead trotting straight towards the town gate.
Next, the locals, who usually listened to "Caddy's Farm" and laughed at the jokes made by the ghosts, began to hide in the buildings beside the road with strange screams...
I ran to the front of the player team and gave me medicine. I complained on the spot: "Are the NPCs here acting like drama queens? A bunch of green names (friendly camps) are making a fuss when they see us."
"That's right, the yellow-named NPCs in Moses Port don't perform this trick anymore." Jialuo said.
"Maybe it's because of the setting." En Bu Zeng thought for a moment and said, "This town is a million miles away from the main city. The townspeople are probably the kind of closed and backward people who don't know the Qin and Han dynasties. They will deliberately show this kind of reaction when they first meet the players."
"That's possible. This crappy game just likes to waste time on useless things like this." He continued to complain while giving me medicine.
The green-named NPCs who didn't even have a special model (beautiful model) were no different from the roadside scene scenery to the players. No one paid any attention to these townspeople, and they walked through the middle of the market without even looking around.
When these players ran to the streets of the town, there was another commotion...
"Ms. Gold! There are undead! There are undead!"
"Oh my god, the undead have come to town!"
"Mother--!"
Most of the locals who had never seen the undead fled with their heads in their hands, while a few hid in roadside shops and alleys, nervously looking outside.
The players who accepted the setting were very calm. They slowed down their pace as if no one was around and looked around this small town with unique exotic atmosphere.
Kata Town, which relies on land caravans for its livelihood, has not developed a decent handicraft industry of its own. In addition, it is located between mountains and has convenient stone quarrying. Most of the buildings in the town are built with long or square stones, and the ground in the town is also very "luxuriously" paved with stone slabs. It is considered to be the most primitive and rugged town that players have seen since "traveling" to the other world.
The scene modeling is unique, and the locals’ attire is very different from the “civilian NPCs” that players have seen elsewhere.
Because they have lived in an area surrounded by mountains for a long time and are highly dependent on the cash crop khat, local men mostly wear medium-length sleeves and shorts, and wrap coarse linen strips from the elbows to wrists and from the knees to ankles. Long sleeves and long pants are easily torn by the densely planted khat when working in the mountains and are difficult to repair.
Unlike women in other places, women in Kata town do not wear long skirts that cover their calves and have the hem as wide as possible. Instead, they tend to wear culottes that are easier to move in (the legs are slightly wider than men's trousers).
As it is difficult to raise livestock in the mountains and leather products are scarce, the locals mainly wear straw sandals with wooden soles and sandals that only require a little leather processing.
"This place is very different." Even a PVE player like me who only loves to kill monsters noticed the difference and said in surprise, "It doesn't feel like a Western fantasy game background, does it?"
"It's quite interesting." En Buzeng looked around with great interest. "Hey, why don't we not leave in a hurry and stay here for a while? The painting styles here are so different, I always feel like there will be something new to discover."
Since she said so, the others certainly had no objection. She took off the backpack containing the orange cat boss and threw it to Jialuo: "Then you can help take care of the remains of me and the orange cat. I'm going to log off and have breakfast."
"I'll log off and have a meal, I'm a little hungry."
"I'm going to log off for a while and go to the bathroom."
"Hey, don't put it all down, come in batches!"
A bunch of players were standing on the street, playing rock-paper-scissors to decide the order of going offline. The winner jumped into his backpack and fell apart on the spot...
Inside the buildings on both sides of the street and at the entrances of the alleys, countless locals stared with wide eyes, watching the group of undead who had carelessly reduced their number in their town by nearly half.
Perhaps it was the players' attitude of not treating the locals as outsiders that reminded the people of Kata Town of those scary-looking but actually "friendly and cute" little skeletons in the popular radio drama "Caddy's Farm", and many people bravely came out of the building.
One player glanced in the direction of the townspeople who made the noise, then looked away.
More and more people came out, some to pick up the shoes they had just lost, some to look after the stalls they had abandoned not long ago, and some began to shout the names of their relatives and friends who had disappeared somewhere.
The brave children even took small steps to get close to the undead and looked curiously at the skeletons that they had never seen in the town before.
The players didn't care about being discriminated against by the "NPCs", nor did they care about being watched by the "NPCs". After packing up their friends' corpses, they strolled around the town.
When they wandered to an alley, a dialog box popped up in front of the players at the same time:
"I heard familiar footsteps. Those seemed to be the voices of my fellow undead... How strange, am I hallucinating? How could my fellow undead appear nearby?"
“What the hell?!”
"That's amazing! There really is a mission!"
"Qingyue is awesome!"
She was quite shocked that entropy did not increase, but this did not affect her skillful operation and she clicked on the dialog box to continue.
"Oh my God, it's really my fellow undead! My fellow undead, come to me quickly!"
After two simple lines of dialogue, the task pop-up window quickly popped up:
"The Lonely Watcher has been triggered"
"You found an isolated town in the mountains in the north of Adler Territory. When you were planning to leave quietly without alerting the locals, you suddenly heard the voices of your compatriots."
"Find Zombie Frank (0/1)"
When En Bu Zeng saw the task text clearly, he was shocked: "Fuck, that was a close call!"
"What's wrong?" Yang Ying asked curiously.
"The triggering condition for this hidden mission is not to alert the locals. If we had talked and interacted with the NPCs here when we came in, the mission might have been lost." En Buzeng said with cold sweat.
Yang Qiu, who was gathering a fire brigade in Dutata City, had been paying attention to the matrix. When he "heard" Entropy say this, he nodded with satisfaction.
That’s right, he added this task text on purpose - it’s not their problem if these Huskies run around the world and scare others unintentionally, but it’s definitely their problem if they deliberately harass others!
Jie En Bu Zeng, a military strategist player who loves making guides, made public this key point that touched his sore spot. Who knows how much trouble can be avoided in the future.
"The next step is to quickly organize a firefighting team while these idiots are being held up by the mission ahead!"
Entropy did not know that someone was taking advantage of her. After receiving the task, the girl asked her online friends to use identification skills together. After a while, they found the underground base of the Undead Chamber of Commerce hidden in a back street building and found the NPC Zombie Frank.
And then... these players truly felt the production team's malicious intent towards them - as soon as the NPC Zombie Frank showed up, he threw a bunch of pre-tasks at them without saying a word.
Drive away wild boars in a certain place, catch snakes in a certain place, go to a certain place to collect certain herbs, go to a certain place to collect certain wild fruits, go to a certain place to kill certain small monsters and collect a certain number of monster materials...
Entropy stared at the twenty or so pre- tasks , swallowed his non-existent saliva, and looked at his equally stunned friends: "How about we have one person go offline and call everyone up?"
The friends all nodded.
