Chapter 1068
Hive had always taken a strictly hands-off approach when it came to the game. All they ever did was watch from the Hexagon without getting involved in it. However, there was one thing they were especially cautious and vigilant about, and that was when NPCs started showing interest in the real world.
Thus, Hive had implemented a built-in filtering system designed to prevent NPCs from becoming curious about the real world in the first place.
An example of the filtering system would be when a player told an NPC that the in-game world was actually a virtual world, the NPC wouldn't be able to understand it. The filtering system would make the NPC interpret that statement as something completely random, such as “the weather is really nice today,” and be dismissed.
As a result, the NPCs couldn’t learn anything about the world where the Adventurers actually lived. At best, they would overhear a few fragmented bits of information, but they would never come to know the full picture.
Thus, NPCs naturally lacked any real interest in reality.
But now, these NPCs were suddenly actively collecting information about the real world.
This was a problem and a very dangerous one at that.
“Could this be... Don’t tell me this is a sign that the Fourth Wall is starting to crack...?” Oppenheimer muttered under his breath.
What the Fourth Wall referred to here was the moment the NPCs began to grasp the truth, the realization that they were nothing more than bundles of data, and that the world they inhabited was nothing but a fake world.
No one could predict how the game would unfold if the Fourth Wall shattered. There was no telling how the NPCs would react, and in the worst-case scenario, a total mental breakdown of the NPCs could lead to the collapse of the game itself.
This was precisely the reason Hive had gone to such lengths to filter out any perception of the truth, ensuring that the Fourth Wall would never break.
“Form a task force team and investigate why these NPCs are gathering information about our world. And I want real-time updates from them. Don’t miss out on reporting even the smallest thing.”