Why Everyone Hates Neutral NPCs

Hate for neutral NPCs was the kind of thing that burned itself permanently into a player's skull after clearing the game just once — after hitting max level and surviving the late-game crisis.

An NPC you'd assumed was just there for interaction would suddenly flip into an event eok-kka ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠device and delete your character, wipe a critical quest, vanish gear you'd ground for ages, raid your base, or block you from talking to green friendly NPCs.

Fuck, there were so many of them.

Just the ones I could remember off the top of my head already filled a list that long, so of course the player base developed a powerful instinct to avoid neutral NPCs on sight.

In the game, you could just dodge them, spam greeting emotes, and grind a few quests through quest NPCs until your reputation climbed high enough to flip the global friendliness rating and turn most of those gray neutrals into green friendlies.

The reality patch did not give a single shit.

Neutral NPCs had multiplied like roaches, and the reputation system that raised global friendliness didn't even exist in the Status Window! Which made sense, in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a way — real life didn't exactly display affinity meters in neat little numbers.

That was also why I insisted on classifying green friendly NPCs as quest NPCs. Green with someone I'd never even met? Obviously a quest NPC.

That said, I didn't just attack every neutral NPC on sight.

Starting from castle- and city-tier settlements, there were guards. And sure, my evil alignment was already locked at a perfect 100%, so guard friendliness sat at rock bottom — the kind of level where one tiny slip would summon a whole swarm of them.

Of course, if I spread slaughter energy the way I had when I gutted that fort and dropped the settlement's level into the dirt, Auto-Battle would handle the rest. It was just tedious and ate a ton of time.

Anyway.

"Um, that senior over there is staring at me like she wants me dead. Senior."

"Hee-ah! Calm down!"

I rolled a tiny wheel between my fingers with pure irritation. I wanted to kill him. I couldn't, because my prisoner Cheon ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Nan-cho was blackmailing me over it.

Aaaah, for real.

So annoying. So goddamn annoying I wanted to just murder him.

"Finish the deal already! If that guy actually snaps, I might be fine, but you could die!"

"Yes, yes! I'll see you at the next trade, then. Preferably when that senior isn't around, if you wouldn't mind, Senior!"

I glared daggers at the neutral NPC as he fled the base at top speed — whoosh-whoosh-whoosh. No idea when that bastard was going to trigger a misfortune event.

"He's the fence I've been handing off loot from cultivators I've eaten since forever. He's fine, seriously!"

"But he's gray. And what do you mean, 'senior'—"

I could see he was over level 300.

There was definitely some shady scheme or hidden agenda. I wasn't falling for it. Every hair on my head was screaming that this guy was about to pull something.

That this neutral NPC was going to detonate a misfortune event — an eok-kka event.

"Why don't you go train or something?"

"Ah, I'm heading outside today."

It was about time I cleared some map and farmed slaughter energy and items.

I only ever wanted to do one or the other — train or hunt — but the Xianxia Mode developer clearly wanted you doing both. Train nonstop and the training exp would eventually stop coming in; hunt nonstop and the growth curve would bend under the percentage of training exp you were burning through.

So with training exp no longer ticking up, my plan was to hit the map and hunt.

Past the early game, clearing a map was something I could knock out one a day — as long as no event eok-kka showed up.

Which meant, of course, that events absolutely would show up, so map-clearing took anywhere from a lucky single day to several days to several years.

The multi-year ones were when an eok-kka event had fired, obviously!

Most of the time I was strong enough that Auto-Battle alone could go shuk-shushuk and delete regular monsters and even first-tier-prefix elites like a hack-and-slash game. But boss-corrected monsters couldn't be Auto-Battled, so those often dragged.

Which was only natural, given that Auto-Battle fought way better than I did!

"Please take me as your disciple!"

"...?"

In that sense, I had never once considered the possibility of a Mortal I'd written off as background scenery latching onto me. It wasn't an event, and he wasn't showing on the minimap, which meant his spiritual energy was pitifully low —

But ignoring him was hard when he was screaming at the top of his lungs, and I couldn't exactly mute him either. God, I hated this reality patch. Originally he would've been scenery with zero dialogue lines!

"It's not a quest… not even a mission. Why would I? Why bother?"

"Because you're strong, Immortal! I'll do anything!"

Oh, so you can interact with background scenery too, I thought — and curiosity got the better of me. I dug through my inventory and scanned him with a spiritual technique. Messy, but he did have a spiritual root.

Well, no idiot without a spiritual root would've asked to become a disciple in the first place.

I pulled out a basic spiritual-power cultivation manual I'd failed to learn myself, plus a few low-level consumables that were basically junk, and tossed them at him.

"Look at those and cultivate. Right now."

I was curious what would happen if that pure background scenery actually became a cultivator.

It was a simple experiment, so while I spent a few years clearing instance dungeons on this map or holing up in disposable territories for skill-grinding between sessions, the background finally reached Qi Condensation. The moment I felt his presence, I flew straight over.

"Master!"

I let out a long sigh at the sight of the background — now a dot on the minimap — who'd taken three whole years to hit Qi Condensation even after all those consumables I'd force-fed him.

"Gray. Fucking gray."

The background had evolved into an NPC… and it was a gray dot.

"…Mas…ter?"

The problem was that I couldn't just ignore a level-12 shrimp NPC. God, I hated this piece-of-shit game.

I dusted off my hands and casually crushed the neutral NPC under a wave of slaughter energy. He vanished without even a scream, dissolving into the sea of slaughter energy as a single drop of experience. Leaving the nameless neutral NPC behind, I finally got out of the map I'd been stuck in out of pure curiosity.

Whether it was friendliness or affinity, anything over 50 should've registered as a friendly NPC and shown green on the minimap. The fact that he'd come up gray was proof enough he was a rotten seed from the start.

"So. Confirmed: raise a background properly and it becomes an NPC."

The real problem was getting them to show green instead of gray.

Huh? Shouldn't I check talent and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠traits before raising an NPC?

Why would I care about that? I had a Status Window.

And a base.

Park a friendly NPC in the base and they'd get level correction anyway, so they'd climb to my level on their own. Why bother checking any of that when I was just going to plant them in the base?

I'd left base management to Cheon Nan-cho, but handing it to an NPC inevitably meant efficiency went out the window. You had to check every Xianxia Mode building against buildings from other mods and construct them for synergy.

"Hmm. While I'm thinking about it, maybe I should do some base management."

Manage it hard once, queue up the construction orders, and the buildings would raise themselves as materials and money filled the warehouse. That was how the training grounds had gone up.

More precisely, it burned spirit stones — Xianxia Mode currency — to generate spiritual energy that compacted materials, and then my innate ability auto-raised buildings with special effects. But same idea.

The endgame of base management was building special Wonders that functioned like landmarks!

Things like the Leaning Tower Wonder, which let you receive the effects of special prefixes that only boss mobs carried, or the Petite Palace Wonder, which dumped bundles of same-level consumables on you every twenty-four hours like an attendance reward.

I used Base Return, got home, opened the base management window, and checked. Xianxia Mode had a full three endgame Wonders.

So basically: an aerial fortress, a giant figurine modeled after the player, and a sparkly mountain tile. I squinted at the preview images in the base management window.

I couldn't see the effects yet. I hadn't finished unlocking the tech tree, and I still needed to raise every related lower-tier building first.

Alright then — time to queue construction on the lower-tier buildings.

I switched into base management mode and surveyed the entire map of my land — the sect grounds.

Strip out the useless flower beds and decorations, and all I had were four roughly placed buildings forming an invasion kill zone, a warehouse, and a single training ground. A pitifully bare collection of structures… and the sect grounds themselves were absurdly vast by comparison.

Whoa! I was a land baron!

Except for the part where every scrap of spiritual energy had dried up, so by Xianxia Mode standards the empty land's value sat at zero — no, negative.