Chapter 308 - 200: Player vs NPC Showdown (Happy New Year)

"Recently, NPC Chen Jia has been rampaging in ’Global Evolution,’ and over a thousand players have fallen victim..."

This sudden turn of events caught Chen Ba off guard. Rubbing his temples, he asked, "What’s going on? How could an NPC roam around like this?"

"Well..."

Everyone looked at each other, and finally, Lu braced himself and said, "Ba, did you forget about the last update?"

The last update?

Oh! Chen Ba remembered.

Apparently, in the last version update of ’Global Evolution,’ to solve the issue of BOSS players being too bored, they enabled NPCs to match and fight story BOSSes.

The intention was great.

In ’Global Evolution,’ because 90% of the players deviated from the path and evolved into Fierce Beast BOSSes, the number of players maintaining human form became too scarce, so they wanted these BOSS players to fight NPCs.

Give them something to do!

It could also help newbies out, as newbies joining the game might not really beat those ferocious storyline BOSSes and would be defeated until dizzy.

In this situation, newbies could team up with NPCs or directly let NPCs take on the storyline BOSSes for them...

"I get it."

Chen Ba nodded and said, "Due to the last update, this mysterious NPC girl Chen Jia can, like players, connect online and duel against other BOSS players."

"Exactly!"

"Then what about her strength? Why is she so strong?"

"Because our update lifted the limit on evolution counts, regardless of whether it’s a player or an NPC, as long as they accumulate enough Evolution Level, their strength can increase without limit."

"But this still doesn’t make sense!"

Chen Ba still felt something was wrong. This mysterious NPC Chen Jia’s strength had grown too bizarrely.

The update announcement is still fresh, and at this stage, even hardcore players have only evolved to the eleventh tier at most.

But this girl?

According to their backend data, this girl, Chen Jia, has evolved 14 times!

That’s outrageous...

This evolution speed is like taking a plane, it’s on a completely different level. Why is that?

As an NPC, how can she evolve so quickly? Even faster than players?

This is the crux of the problem.

An NPC, under normal circumstances, can’t beat a fully armed player unless she overwhelms them with sheer strength. Evolution requires a lot of experience, where did she get her experience from?

"Maybe it’s because a player gave her the experience boost!"

During the investigation of this unexpected event, Wang Wei’s actions couldn’t escape the notice of the game’s backend monitoring managed by Lu.

In simple terms,

A normal NPC, even a normal player, even after the update that removes evolution restrictions allowing unlimited evolution, wouldn’t evolve this fast.

After all, to gain evolution experience, you need to beat opponents of the same level, and it’s not that easy to defeat opponents of the same level.

Even if you’re awesome, encountering and defeating every opponent of the same level means you’ll face a problem: not finding enough opponents to kill!

"We’re a single-player game..."

Lu emphasized again, although the game, due to bugs, has turned into a "pseudo-online" game, at its core, it’s still a single-player game.

Since it’s single-player, there’s an issue: the storyline once cleared can’t be cleared again in the same save! Cleared BOSS stages can’t be replayed without starting a new game!

"But this logic doesn’t apply to NPCs. After the last update, NPCs can also go through storylines and fight BOSSes, and these BOSSes are played by players and can resurrect indefinitely..."

Chen Ba gasped.

Unlimited evolution, and it’s the NPCs who benefit, not the players. Who could have thought of that?

"Moreover, discussing why this NPC girl is so strong right now is meaningless."

Lu continued, "Because, more importantly than why this NPC girl is so strong, is... after an NPC breaks through to the tenth tier, their intelligence level significantly increases!"

What?!

Upon hearing this, Chen Ba frowned and said, "Are you saying that when an NPC evolves from the ninth to the tenth tier, their AI becomes more intelligent?"

"Looking at the results, that’s indeed what’s happening..."

Lu pulled up several posts from the Tianba Community, and there were many players expressing their amazement after encountering the 14th tier girl Chen Jia.

So smart!

Moreso than players, really? Is this really an NPC? The maneuvers and reactions don’t look like it!

Chen Ba read these posts and the players’ expressions of surprise after contact, musing, "The more they evolve, the more intelligent they become? If they keep evolving, will it really create an artificial intelligence?"

"That’s unlikely..."

Lu denied this assumption.

Real artificial intelligence can’t be nurtured. The NPC generation logic and behavior logic in ’Global Evolution’ are all derived from the framework of ’Divine Grace Continent.’

Previously, restrictions made these NPCs seem dull, not as intelligent as those in ’Divine Grace Continent.’

After evolving to the tenth tier, NPCs broke through this restriction, gaining intelligence equivalent to ’Divine Grace Continent’s NPCs, becoming an unstable factor.

The so-called unstable factor means even the Tianba Studio doesn’t know to what extent this NPC Chen Jia will evolve, or what kind of damage she’ll cause to the game environment.

Let’s wait and see!

Although this is very unexpected, for an NPC to evolve faster than players and even demolish players, after all, it’s just an NPC.