Reincarnation NPC, but Arknights

This can be considered the first formal large-scale conflict between the players and the native inhabitants.

The incident originated in a mobile city in a state of Columbia.

Colombia is a rather unique country. It is probably the youngest political entity in the country, but it is very powerful.

The laws differ from state to state, and in the state where the incident occurred, the governor attempted to enact new laws to keep players within the state and make them serve him.

To be precise, he passed a new law in the state legislature that requires the "immortals" to join a special department he established and to serve the state government under his orders.

In the governor's view, the undead and the infected are similar, both being special groups that need to be well managed. And just as he discriminates against the infected, he also discriminates against the player group.

Moreover, this newly appointed governor had never read Bai Ye's works (he hadn't read them at all in his previous life). He arrogantly believed that the law applied equally to players within the state, and that players must respect the law.

The fate of those infected serves as the best example. In Colombia, infected individuals are subject to zoned management, and most never leave the designated treatment area in their lifetime. For those infected individuals who are still capable of working and useful, Colombia sends them to the wilderness to reclaim wasteland, only to discard them arbitrarily once their value has been fully exploited.

Perhaps in this governor's eyes, players should be treated in the same way.

Unfortunately, the players' reaction was—"I'm dying of laughter, but I'm not dying of laughter at all."

A few dishes and you're already this drunk.

Want to restrict players? And even set up a separate department specifically to monitor them?

Don't be ridiculous, how could players possibly fall for your nonsense?

It's unclear which player first discovered the law enacted by this "genius" governor, then took a screenshot and posted it on the game forum.

At first, players even thought the image was photoshopped, after all, what kind of stupid lord would do something like this to players...

It wasn't until some busybodies repeatedly confirmed that they discovered that the game's official developers had actually created such an idiotic lord, who had the audacity to want to manage the players.

Players are generally more receptive to gentle persuasion than force. If you are humble and humble, they will be more willing to listen to what you have to say. However, if you are arrogant and condescending, players will not pay any attention to you.

When you're weak, you might just be annoyed and players might tolerate it. But if you talk to them like that when they're high level, do you believe they'll come at you and attack you?

In single-player games, players with an inherently chaotic and evil nature become even more unscrupulous, capable of things like massacring entire cities. It's only in large-scale online MMORPGs that, in addition to system restrictions, "green game supervision systems" also play a role, making it difficult for some ambitious players to unleash their full potential.

All we can say is that this governor may have some ambition, or he may simply dislike the players running rampant under his rule, or perhaps the players are taking away his business and making him very unhappy.

In short, this guy started his first attempt to contact the players with an arrogant attitude. And this attempt became the prelude to a major conflict.

Players are ignoring the governor's new laws.

They even found it funny and deliberately walked around in front of the state government building.

Seeing that Colombian citizens (Colombian federal law allows players to register for citizenship once they reach a certain level of reputation in their region) dared to disregard his laws, the governor began to use law enforcement agencies to enforce the plan.

Players have discovered that this idiot seems to be serious!

He began targeting the players, sending federal police and bounty hunters to capture them everywhere.

In fact, this was the first entity to specifically target players. Initially, the players didn't take it seriously and were careless, resulting in the arrest and imprisonment of a few relatively weak newbies.

The players who had been tricked realized that things were starting to go wrong. They began to hide when they saw large gatherings of indigenous people, and started playing hide-and-seek with the Colombian military, police and other armed forces by making good use of teleportation, logging in and out.

To be honest, players were quite passive at the beginning. If you tried to capture me, I would run away; if you didn't, I would come back out. After all, in their minds, there was no point in fighting against the native nations in the game. And in the early stages of the game, they valued reputation quite a bit.

The most important point is that it's extremely rare for a game to feature an entire region's native inhabitants as your adversaries. This is practically impossible for players to understand.

Unfortunately, *Arknights Online* isn't a typical game; it contains far too many things that defy common sense and game rules. It seems the governor is determined to target the players…

After realizing something was wrong, the players began to take corresponding measures. At first, they simply fled passively, but after discovering that their regional reputation could not be raised no matter what, and even continued to decline due to disobedience to state laws, the players also began to take action.

Some players simply chose to leave. These players were all newbies, and in their view, this was likely a regional event set up by the game's official team. Although there was no explicit level restriction for participation, it was clearly a soft lock to automatically discourage newbies who weren't skilled enough.

The remaining players can be roughly divided into two categories.

One type is guild players. They have fixed businesses in this mobile city, such as guild bases. If they just leave, all their previous efforts and accumulated wealth will be for nothing.

However, they are also in a passive position, because the governor will soon find out their residences and properties in the city and forcibly seal them off. Although this situation is almost impossible in other games, since players' properties are their own property and game companies absolutely cannot touch them, as doing so would cause a major uproar and serious problems.

However, as mentioned before, it's unfortunate that after more than a year, players have come to understand the nature of *Arknights Online*. It loves to go against all the usual gaming norms, and there's nothing you can do about it. The game's official team is unmoved by either soft or hard tactics.

To be honest, without such high quality and widespread popularity, this game would have died long ago after all this fuss...

Guild members have prepared to shelve the passive weapons of their industry and are working hard to find all possible solutions, including dialogue.

However, every guild leader knows that kneeling is absolutely forbidden, otherwise they will be killed in real life.

Kowtowing to Bai Ye isn't a big deal, but as the saying goes, players respond better to gentle persuasion than force. There are plenty of people like Bai Ye who call others "daddy" on the forums. But what if it were this governor who resorts to coercion and bribery?

If they actually obeyed and knelt down, the guild members would probably all leave, and the guild leader would be doomed both in real life and online.

There's another type of player, the more hardcore, or rather, the self-proclaimed hardcore players with a high opinion of themselves. They enjoy difficulty, constantly challenging themselves, and would be considered pro players in other games.

In Arknights Online, they are tired of or unwilling to follow the conventional game process, but instead have a special fondness for these rare, absurd, yet challenging events.

They set up chat rooms online, gathered through forum posts, and decided to confront the governor head-on.

Since you want to fight, then we'll fight you to the end.

Starting in April of the Terran calendar, players and the local forces in the state of Columbia have been embroiled in numerous conflicts and confrontations.

Thus, the first conflict between the players and the natives entered its mid-stage.

This confrontation lasted for nearly two Terran calendar months.

Initially, the players used a sting operation, luring one player alone to the military and police, while the other players ambushed and fought back, resulting in numerous battles and bloodshed.

Since players can revive anyway, even with experience penalties and weakness buffs, the generals and police are still terrified of them.

As for bounty hunters, that's another story.

Perhaps there are indeed strong individuals among them, but once they're targeted by players who've gone mad, all I can say is, good luck.

Unless your bounty hunter is named Skadi, any lone hunter will be killed by players as a regular monster, an elite monster, or a boss.

The situation suddenly reversed; now the players are the hunters, and anyone enforcing the governor's decrees is the prey.

Military police, mercenaries, scavengers, even Federation forces, tobacco and alcohol spellcasting units, and the Originium Products Administration... the players have gone on a killing spree.

This is also the first time since the server opened that players have officially demonstrated their combat power to a political entity.

Players are unafraid of death; cost and benefit calculations have become irrelevant. At this point in the battle, they may truly be fighting for pride. This is the result of a widespread rebellious mentality among players.

Later, they stopped focusing solely on fighting—after all, they were already terrified of the insects, and they couldn't afford to mess with the much more powerful suppression forces. They started deliberately getting themselves imprisoned and then selling their inventory in the prison, making a living as a business.

Even after their own people have filled the prison, they will act collectively to sabotage it, causing all the prisoners to escape.

The indigenous people discovered another peculiar trait of these immortals—separating them, imprisoning them individually, and cutting off their communication had no practical effect. They seemed to be able to communicate directly across space.

Even if players are placed in different prison blocks, they can still launch a riot simultaneously.

“The sacred Kara connects us.”

This is a phrase that players often use.

At this point, the governor should theoretically have no countermeasures left. The players are immortal, elusive, and communicate smoothly—virtually invincible. Moreover, the players are wreaking havoc within the mobile city, causing severe losses to ordinary citizens.

Ordinary NPCs are always the most miserable group in the game.

Things had reached this point, and it should have ended; the governor could have simply resigned. However, this time, having finally obtained Bai Ye's book and begun reading it, the governor conceived a wicked plan. This directly propelled the first conflict to its final climax, even turning this regional conflict into a server-wide news story, its popularity rivaling that of Bai Ye himself.

Although this was considered a major event before, it was limited to the player community in this region. Other players would at most ask, "How is the battle on Reach going today? What kind of crazy move did the governor pull this time?"

Some players even travel to this region specifically because of its "enchanting" game atmosphere, turning Arknights Online into GTA 5 Online.

However, when the governor issued a final directive before leaving office, the incident directly escalated into a server-wide event.

This governor studied the works of White Night and then creatively developed a method for dealing with players.

He began to "shut down the service".

Most people, based on common sense, would probably target the players directly.

But this one was different; his peculiar thought process came into play at this moment.

The governor has begun issuing new decrees prohibiting any form of interaction between residents and players in the state.

Once discovered, they will be severely punished immediately.

Furthermore, any form of mutual reporting is encouraged, and whistleblowers will receive a generous reward if the evidence is conclusive.

In this situation, the players were dumbfounded for the first time.

The city seemed to have become a ghost town.

NPCs don't interact with players, shops don't operate, and quests can't be triggered. Players can't trade with NPCs or receive quest rewards. Injuries cannot be treated, inns are inaccessible, weapons and equipment cannot be repaired, and supplies are unavailable after combat…

This city, by locking down its native inhabitants, effectively created a reverse lockdown on the players.

Civilians who came into contact with the players were all arrested, and their families were destroyed.

If I can't mess with the players, I can at least mess with you!

Given that the states in the federal government are relatively independent, and in Terra's world setting where information exchange is inefficient, it's quite reasonable that the governor wasn't held accountable by his superiors for a while.

He even deliberately suppressed dissenting voices and controlled the movement of messengers, temporarily concealing this major event.

At this point, he knew he couldn't continue as governor, but this guy was a bit of a stubborn fool and refused to back down.

It's safe to say that reality is even more surreal than fiction, so absurd that players are starting to wonder if the AI ​​is malfunctioning...

A world where only civilians are wounded is over. Even good people can only have guns pointed at them…

Even if players try to disguise themselves as natives to take advantage of loopholes, they are quickly discovered.

The governor implemented a blood-drop identification method. Players' blood is special; a drop will turn into light particles and disappear. Based on this characteristic, it's easy to identify a player.

Later, it evolved into things like plucking hair, checking body hair, and trimming nails—after all, piercing the skin and causing bleeding is still too painful.

In short, the players quickly became bored and annoyed. They couldn't attack civilians because doing so would violate the "No Proliferation of Combat Clause" jointly formulated by all players, and would make them public enemies of all players.

The governor, meanwhile, hid in the federal army's camp.

For the first time, the native inhabitants of Terra have achieved reverse control over the players, leaving the previously unbridled players somewhat helpless.

What began as a localized conflict has now escalated into a server-wide incident. Players are discussing solutions to the problem on game forums and websites.

While it's highly unlikely, what if all the AIs suddenly went crazy and started blocking players all at once?

Then the game can't be played, right?

Of course, there is a solution: violate the Non-Proliferation Clause, bring the war to civilians, and turn the game into a conflict between the Fourth Calamity and the native inhabitants.

Nobody wants to see this happen.

……

Bai Ye only remembered this matter after reading the post.

Actually, this reclusive guy hadn't even noticed this at the time; he was busy with a long series of quests near Lungmen. He'd only heard a little about it.

However, this matter had little to do with Bai Ye in the past. After all, he was just a player, and no matter how things changed, he would just go with the flow.

But now things are different. Bai Ye's identity and stance have changed. He also remembers what Luna told him: to promote the integration of the two worlds, rather than intensify the confrontation.

Bai Ye is the last person who wants to see the players completely evolve into the Fourth Calamity, as this would not benefit his or Luna's plans.

The final solution to this matter was for the players to make a final push.

The players launched an assault on the military camp fortress, only to be wiped out in a suicide attack.

Finally, they teleported away from the state, left the mobile city, and joined Bolivar's camp, beginning their player career of going head-to-head with Colombia.

Yes, this group of people were all holding their breath and started fighting.

In later versions, they stormed into Colombia again, armed themselves and stormed the prison, dragged out the governor who was already imprisoned, and then executed him...

The Colombian Federation hated this guy to the core, for bringing such a serious disaster upon the country. Colombia subsequently suffered repeated defeats on the battlefield, resulting in a massive loss of players. The entire NPC faction was considered the most unpopular faction among players.

So they completely ignored the angry players and instead held the warden accountable and imprisoned—why didn't you stop the rioters properly? You should apologize.

The impact of this incident is certainly not as great as players initially speculated. Most high-ranking officials in political entities are calm and rational and will not go against the players. Everyone knows that players respond better to gentle persuasion than force. In fact, if you deliberately lower your stance and satisfy them, they might even be happy to do your work for free.

Yes, that's just how capricious players can be.

They're pretty easy to fool, aren't they?

……

Logically speaking, Bai Ye wouldn't need to do anything; the problem would have been solved on its own.

However, Bai Ye wanted to secretly intervene during the most dangerous situation.

After all, Bai Ye worried that things wouldn't develop the way she had experienced in the past. What if a player suddenly had a change of heart and started violating the covenant by massacring civilians? What if Luna didn't close player accounts in time before detecting any threats?

In short, there are too many unstable factors, and Bai Ye is prepared to take personal action to bring them under his control.