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....
The Storm is coming.
~Vertin
...
The Saintess led a large number of players into the City of Glory inside Crimson Night's open-world instance.
Calling it a breach was not entirely accurate.
When the defenders of the Hunter Knights saw a crowd of main-ga Oath players standing at the city gates behind the Saintess, all wearing expressions that practically said, "Open the gates, or we'll show you exactly where all our top-up money went," Migard made the smart decision.
She let them in.
Elysium also judged the matter fairly. The city had fallen, and it now belonged to Carl.
After the city fell, Carl gained control over various facilities, such as the city gates.
However, all of Oath's NPCs inside the city had already been replaced by Imperial soldiers.
These soldiers were mbers of the Imperial Hunter Knights, who had taken over the city's defenses.
But to Carl's surprise, the defenders did not actually attack the villagers or Pokémon entering the City of Glory.
The Imperial soldiers were far smarter than Oath's official team. At the very least, Migard knew better than to directly clash with the Saviors.
After all, every player had their own individual open-world instance, and each of those instances contained an intact City of Glory.
Now that Crimson Night's City of Glory had fallen, the loss was only one City of Glory out of tens of millions.
Besides, the City of Glory was not an Imperial city. Migard had no reason to risk the Empire's reputation among players to defend a Holy Nation city.
Then, after the massive live audience and livestream viewers witnessed the Saintess's Lucario pull off a miraculous coback at the very end, Crimson Night's open-world instance was completely flooded by the crowd.
The absurd thing about Oath was that there was no upper limit to the number of players who could enter the sa open-world instance.
But while there was no online player limit, there were still practical limits at the ga-design level, such as city capacity and available areas for catching Pokémon and battling.
In Carl's view, the ideal format for a Pokémon-style ga was a single-player experience.
Players, as Pokémon Trainers, would encounter all kinds of Pokémon across the world.
There would be no need to compete with anyone else. They could simply battle wild Pokémon, catch them, then continue battling and catching more wild Pokémon.
Carl truly wanted to fill every player's open-world instance with all kinds of Pokémon right now, letting them catch to their heart's content and experience the purest Pokémon-style gaplay.
Unfortunately, he could not do that.
In the Cities of Glory that had not fallen, the defenders would imdiately and quietly eliminate any such "invasive species."
After the Imperial soldiers replaced the original NPCs, the most troubleso part was that they could kill targets without the players even noticing.
Still, Carl had no intention of letting so many players cram themselves into Crimson Night's open-world instance alone.
So, under the call and leadership of Crimson Night and the Saintess, the players who had co for the hype, along with those who felt Crimson Night's open-world instance was too crowded, began capturing the open-world instances of more than a hundred Navigator Guild players.
Although Carl wanted to keep expanding and take even more Cities of Glory, this was already the limit of the forces gathered through the tournant's montum.
In these fallen Cities of Glory, an average of about a thousand players were gathered in each one.
It was still sowhat crowded, but for the ti being, it was enough to satisfy the dreams of those players who had co to beco Pokémon Trainers.
Even so, everything was still far too crude.
The players of this world were already used to MMORPG-style gaplay, which involved fighting in the wilderness and competing with others for monsters.
On this point, Carl also temporarily added so MMO-style protection chanics.
For example, once a Pokémon battle began, other players could not interfere with the capture or disrupt the process.
But this situation would not last for long.
Carl naturally hoped they could play in a more relaxed way, with less scheming between players and more pure enjoynt in catching Pokémon.
There were two specific ways to achieve that.
First, capture more Cities of Glory.
Second, expand the safe zones around the existing fallen Cities of Glory. Netherworld Village's construction system would be very useful for that.
As for how to capture more Cities of Glory later, the thod was simple.
Start so drama online.
Mio, the moderator of the Oath Leaks Forum, also began exerting her influence at this ti.
She posted a large number of inflammatory threads across various Oath-related social platforms.
For example:
"How does Oath have gaplay that can only be unlocked by paying? Why doesn't my open-world instance have Pokémon-catching gaplay?"
"I didn't even make a fuss about the soft ban on villager players before! At least everyone could play in Netherworld Village. But now Pokémon-catching gaplay in Oath is whale-exclusive? Isn't that going too far?"
In any case, Oath's official team would definitely be bewildered once they saw all these posts.
"We don't know anything! Pokémon isn't gaplay we made! Go find Carl, he's the one who made it!"
However, most of the ti, players could not really tell whether a gaplay system was made by Carl or by Oath's official team.
They only knew that in the open-world instance of a whale like Crimson Night, who had spent two hundred thousand, there was a fun new gaplay mode they had never seen before.
And now they even had to wait in line and squeeze into Crimson Night's open-world instance just to play it.
For mobile ga players, or rather, for most online ga players, few things were more insulting than whale-exclusive gaplay.
Anyway, once Mio stirred up the drama online, a huge number of Oath players, who had confird what seed to be the truth, began collectively bombarding Oath's official social dia accounts and forums.
Just like that, a storm of public opinion began to form.
Carl let public opinion simr for a while and shifted his attention to another issue.
The resettlent of the refugees from the City of Glory.
At that mont, in Netherworld Village in the main world, Oath's official plan to replace all Holy Nation refugees with Imperial soldiers had already begun.
From the players' perspective, the NPCs in the City of Glory would not change at all.
Only the people playing those NPCs had changed, from Holy Nation refugees to Imperial soldiers.
As for the refugees infected with the Calamity Plague who had not received treatnt in ti, no one cared whether they lived or died.
Anan seized this opportunity and, with the help of Miss Reaper Artemis, sent this large wave of refugees to Netherworld Village.
"The number is... larger than I expected."
Carl looked at the large group of refugees in his hideout in Netherworld Village. There were at least several hundred thousand of them.
Normally, they were distributed across the open-world instances of various players, playing different side-quest NPCs and earning tiny amounts of Emotional Antidote from players through the side quests Oath had written for them.
Unfortunately, the side quests written by Oath's writers did not seem to move players very effectively.
Even side quests like Anan's flower girl, which were designed to make players cry, had limited effect, let alone the ordinary scripts these refugees were given.
In the beginning, these refugees at least had the Saintess backing them.
She would use the happy emotions players gained from gacha pulls to treat them.
But now, the Saintess herself could barely protect her own position, and all their jobs had been taken over by Imperial soldiers.
Without a doubt, these Holy Nation refugees were now on the brink of death.
Their next fate would most likely be to beco wild monsters, killed countless tis by players after being eroded by the plague.
"I'm sorry... This is clearly my fault, yet you're the one who has to clean up the ss."
In Anan's view, the reason these Holy Nation refugees had been expelled from the City of Glory was because she had silently accepted Oath's changes to the Version 2.0 script.
But Anan really could not refuse.
She knew better than anyone how terrifying the pressure on the Abyssal Frontier had beco.
These refugees had been infected with the Calamity Plague precisely because the frontier was constantly collapsing.
Between preventing even more refugees from appearing and abandoning this group, Anan had chosen the forr.
"This isn't your fault. And you didn't abandon them, did you?"
Carl actually had to thank Anan for sending him this batch of NPC resources.
He had been worrying about where to find new NPCs to fill various Pokémon-related roles.
Thinking of this, Carl wasted no ti. He directly created multiple illusionary projections, doing his best to make sure everyone present could hear his voice.
"Everyone, I am Carl Agata. You don't need to know exactly who I am. You only need to know one thing."
Carl's voice spread across the crowd.
"I can bring you back to the Saviors' side."
The mont Carl made that promise, a commotion instantly broke out among the refugees.
After all, in the eyes of Elysium's natives, being able to co into contact with the Saviors was an incredibly precious opportunity.
The Emotional Antidote produced by the Saviors was, in a sense, even more valuable than Contract Stones.
"And if you want to return to the Saviors' side, I can offer you two paths."
Carl constructed a simple projection screen in front of everyone.
Now that Carl's own Combat Rating had reached eighteen thousand, his illusion abilities had improved greatly.
Constructing small illusions like this was effortless for him.
"The first option is to keep your original human appearance and work as NPCs for Pokémon-related content. For example, Pokémon Trainers, Pokémon healers, Pokémon item shopkeepers, and similar roles."
"Doing this kind of work will not earn you much Emotional Antidote from the Saviors. The advantage is that the job offers more freedom and fewer restrictions. I recomnd this option for those with mild infections."
After explaining the first option, Carl changed the projection screen to display various Pokémon.
"The second option is to beco rare Pokémon, also known as Shiny Pokémon. If you choose this path, I can grant you a Pokémon-related Character Core. In other words, I can give you the foundation of that Pokémon's extraordinary power."
This was also an extension of the life-creation ability granted to Carl by Elysium.
After all, every Pokémon was equivalent to a banner character.
Their power was simply much weaker than that of actual banner characters, but their growth potential was superior.
"But the price is that you will be bound by a contract to a certain Savior for a long period of ti. If you truly cannot adapt, you can apply to terminate the relationship."
"However, the benefit is that in this form, you can earn a large amount of Emotional Antidote from the Saviors while also possessing a certain degree of extraordinary power yourself."
Carl had already explained enough, but out of pure career-planning consideration, he added one more thing.
"I will also open courses to teach you how to beco NPCs that Saviors like."
"At the sa ti, I will launch a related Favorability System, allowing Saviors to invite you to settle permanently in their villages."
After Carl gave them their choices, the Holy Nation refugees quickly began making their decisions.
To Carl's surprise, the ratio between those who chose to beco ordinary NPCs and those who chose to beco Pokémon was about half and half.
There were also quite a few people signing up for Carl's course on "How to Beco an NPC Loved by Players."
At that mont, Carl received an ergency call from Sophia of Vengeful Blood.
Out of curiosity, Carl temporarily handed the refugee registration process over to Elysium and the Abyssal Knights, then shifted his attention to Vengeful Blood's open-world instance.
(To be continued.)
◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)
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