—Five missing two, no troublemakers allowed!—

At this moment, a dashing troublemaker logged into the game and, without hesitation, named himself Baba Hao.

Fortunately, his chosen ID hadn’t been taken, and he successfully avoided the system’s sensitive word detection thanks to a homophone, thus retaining this sacred ID.

Next came the character card phase. The game allowed for drawing five character cards, but only one could be logged in at a time. After some hesitation, Baba Hao chose the “Thug” profession. While the Thug started with 20 in brawling, its education attribute points were restricted to below 40, resulting in fewer initial skill points compared to the Unemployed Youth and the Homeless.

He randomly selected skills from the three major families and entered the game. His view was of an empty alley. Baba Hao walked out of the alley, onto a street, and began his performance.

In reality, he was not an experienced RPG enthusiast. He was more of a troublemaker aficionado. Unfortunately, RPGs were social games, and persistent troublemakers tended to be blacklisted by all the secret-keepers. As a result, Baba Hao hadn’t played an RPG for a long time, until this game, which claimed to have full AI supervision, came out.

Though he was a troublemaker, he prided himself on being an ethical one, enjoying the fun of driving NPCs and AIs crazy, without the desire for real player combat. Hence, he chose this game to vent his troublemaker tendencies.

Now, he wanted to test whether this game was truly as it advertised, with complete AI oversight.

[System! I want to activate my skill! I want to stealth!]

The system did not respond. Baba Hao thought for a moment and then, under the watchful eyes of numerous passersby, suddenly collapsed onto the ground, continuously rolling in the dirt as if trying to merge with the earth.

[Stealth: Failure]

The failed stealth maneuver turned Baba Hao into the center of attention in this neighborhood. To the onlookers, Baba Hao undoubtedly appeared to be engaged in performance art or a madman who had escaped from a mental hospital. Many had already pulled out their phones, ready to call the police.

Baba Hao got up and fell into deep thought.

In the past, he had received warning letters from the system when he behaved this way, but until now, despite the NPCs around him seeming ready to send him to the hospital, no warning had come. It seemed this was indeed a rather tolerant game.

Thinking this, Baba Hao placed his hand on his pants, wanting to probe the limits of the game once more.

At that moment, he heard a store door nearby suddenly open, and an NPC appeared behind it.

“Hello?”

He looked up, and his expression turned blank. The only thought in his mind was: so the image and video on the forum really weren’t exaggerated…

Ranen lowered his gaze to Baba Hao, who was adjusting his pants. Though he had long been aware of the player’s behavior, his smile froze on his face. “I think, perhaps you might need a bit of help?”

Baba Hao paused for a moment, looked up, and then saw that he was standing outside a clinic labeled “Psychotherapy Room.”

“…” He recalled his recent actions, glanced at Ranen’s face, and decisively responded, “Yes, I need help. It’s just as well that you came out.”

He then followed Ranen into the treatment room without hesitation.

The people on the street, seeing that the place he entered was a psychotherapy room, revealed knowing expressions and, finding no more entertainment, reluctantly dispersed.

Only one person remained, observing the treatment room discreetly before quickly disappearing into the crowd.

Baba Hao followed Ranen into the treatment room. Just as Ranen was about to speak, he saw the player cheerfully extend a hand and say, “Hello, my name is Baba Hao. You can just call me by my name.”

With that, he looked at Ranen expectantly.

Ranen paused for a moment, instantly understanding the type of player he was dealing with, and immediately put on a stern face. “You arrived just in time. I have something that needs your help.”

“Um… Aren’t you going to call me by my name first?”

“Okay, Mr. Hao, could you help me find someone? He’s a friend of one of my clients and has been missing recently.” Ranen provided an address. “Perhaps there are clues near the outskirts, close to the Andrew Factory.”

Such a classic quest initiation…

Baba Hao was silent for a moment. He really wanted to accept the quest. He had done enough homework before starting the game and knew that taking quests in this broken game wasn’t easy, but he was reluctant to give up. “Actually, you can just call me by the name I mentioned earlier…”

Ranen smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Hao.”

Watching the troublesome player leave while muttering something about ‘maybe my charm skill isn’t high enough,’ Ranen let out a discreet sigh of relief.

Although he had enjoyed playing with troublesome players in his previous life—after all, mods with them were always full of fun—being on the receiving end of such harassment wasn’t quite as pleasant.

If possible, he would have preferred to be with immersive players; at least they mostly behaved like normal people.

With that thought in mind, Ranen quickly looked at Ogre, only to find that Ogre seemed unaware of the commotion on his side and was still engrossed in drawing.

Ranen sighed in relief, opened the game forum, and, as expected, saw that the countdown had reached 0, meaning the beta test had begun.

The forum was flooded with posts.

“Has the hospital instance opened yet? Looking for a team.”

“Ignore the idiot above; players aren’t high-level enough yet to tackle high-level instances, especially with him being a troublemaker!”

“About logging into the game and not knowing what to do.”

“Career Choices—Analysis.”

“Looking to form a fixed team? We need two more here. No troublemakers!”

“Seeking: Where is Ranen?”

In short, the forum was in chaos. Ranen glanced through it and noticed that most players seemed confused about what to do after selecting their attributes and skill points.

—

This was also one of the game’s drawbacks, a major hurdle when transitioning from tabletop role-playing to online games.

The issue was quest acquisition.

After all, unlike most traditional online games, quests in tabletop RPGs couldn’t be accepted multiple times, nor could players grind levels by fighting monsters like in an online games. This meant that to meet the quest demands of so many players, the amount of text required for instances would be unimaginably vast.

Wheel of Fate, the game, was marketed as being entirely AI-driven, with automatically generated instances. It was no wonder many people were initially skeptical.

But time proved that the game managed to survive. Ranen wasn’t sure how they solved this problem in the early stages, but later on, players could acquire quests through large official factions like the Inspection Bureau, underground commission markets, and large-scale campaign instances.

Of course, there were also the game’s unique features, such as the NPC affection system and a level of realism and freedom similar to Earth OL. (exp. Earth Online is a sandbox-style online game developed by a team from mainland China and distributed through the Steam platform. According to the game’s description on its Steam page, it is a massively multiplayer online game (MMO). The game’s monetization model is free-to-play with in-game item purchases. The theme of the game revolves around players facing a reborn world after destruction, and it offers players a highly open and free sandbox world to explore. Ref: https://indienova.com/game/earth-online/ )

Yes, freedom. The biggest hallmark of this game was its freedom. Creating a character card was equivalent to washing clean the points and starting a new life; here, one could do anything as long as it made sense.

Players could even run for president in this game.

And the key point was that someone actually did it. By leveraging his debut on the forums, he attracted a large number of votes from players. Before Ranen transmigrated, that player had already become a mayor, holding the highest “credit” score among the player base.

His campaign process became one of the rare sources of enjoyment in the forum’s serialized posts. They even placed bets on how far this guy would go. Unfortunately, Ranen transmigrated before he could see the results of the next midterm election.

—

Some people were searching for him everywhere, driven by the previous viral video, which was about Ranen’s arrival.

Ranen felt very conflicted.

On one hand, he hoped that players might become his clients. After all, investigating incidents would likely reduce their sanity, and he could try to see if he could help restore it. However, thinking about the troublesome player who had just sought him out, he had a very ominous feeling.

Then, the next moment, he saw a response in the NPC search thread:

Troublemaker #1: Ranen can be found at the Psychotherapy Room on the corner of Seventh Avenue. I just picked up a quest from him.

Ranen: …

—-

Meanwhile, in a bar in the city.

The bar was closed during the day, but this rule meant nothing to the Black Poker gang, as this bar was run by them and was one of their hideouts.

At this moment, the bar was bustling with activity. Amidst the flashing neon lights, gang members were drinking and reveling, but due to the boss’s orders, they dared not drink anything with high alcohol content. Instead, many found the bland beer unpalatable and watched the daringly dressed women in the dance floor talking suggestively.

At the bar, a man with black hair sat alone, seemingly indifferent to the noisy surroundings, speaking to the bartender.

Until a phone call came in, the man glanced at the caller ID and waved his hand behind him.

The music in the dance floor immediately stopped, and the members who were chatting loudly in the bar fell silent as if the mute button had been pressed.

The man then answered the phone, “Hello?”

“Boss Karens, the Psychotherapy Room you asked me to monitor has shown some activity,” the voice on the other end hesitated before continuing, “But it’s just an ordinary patient who went in.”

“How do you know he’s a patient?”

“Uh… because his behavior seems quite insane? He was pretending to swim on the street and almost took off his pants—seemed like he wanted to swim naked.”

Karens was silent for a moment. “Alright, it does sound like a patient. Is there any other news in the past few days?”

“No… Boss Karens, to be honest, this Psychotherapy Room doesn’t seem special at all. It can’t even attract customers. Is it really necessary to keep monitoring it?” The caller couldn’t help but complain; anyone would feel frustrated after three days of useless work.

In his opinion, Boss Karens was great in many ways, but too cautious.

Not just this time—whenever Black Poker assigned a task, other higher-ups might just bring their subordinates and get things done. But Karens was different; he usually conducted careful investigations into the task’s background, relevant personnel, and confirmed that everything was in order before taking action.

The reason for this operation was that a few days ago, they received news from an informant in the police department that Sean had betrayed them and leaked Black Poker’s information. As a result, Black Poker had set a plan for retaliation.

Originally, the psychologist who had “interrogated” Sean was the prime target. However, Boss Karens insisted on observing for a while longer to ensure that the person inside was truly a vulnerable ordinary person before taking action.

Karens snorted, “Do you think I’m being too cautious, maybe even a bit timid?”

The person on the phone immediately replied, “No, no, I wouldn’t dare…”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of. That’s what you think, and many people think the same way. I’m well aware of that,” Karens said, his gaze sweeping over the other gang members in the bar, who all lowered their heads and avoided making eye contact with him.

“I won’t ask you to be like me, but here’s a piece of advice: in this city, you can never be too cautious.”

“Of course, caution is one thing, but not everyone can interfere with us,” Karens knew that the gang members were already growing impatient and didn’t want to say more. “The operation is tonight. We’ll kidnap that psychologist. The demon-slaying day is coming soon, and I need to bring a commemorative gift to our old friend Albert.”

The people in the bar erupted in excited cheers. For gang members, nothing stirred them more than violence, duplicity, sex, and the trouble of dealing with cops.

“Wait, wait a minute,” the voice from the still-connected phone came through, “It looks like the situation has changed a bit… Damn it, where did these people come from?!”