GOT : Battle Royale[ An ASOIAF Fanfiction]

Since they had agreed to form an alliance, they must have arranged a meeting place before entering the game.

For example, the place Ian had agreed upon with his two former allies was St. Belle's Cathedral in King's Landing.

But because his allies withdrew from the game, he had changed his starting point to the Riverlands.

Now that he had no allies, other players weren't like that. They would definitely go to iconic buildings like the Crossroads Inn or Shataya's Tavern to meet up, as originally planned!

Driven by this "first blood" mission, wouldn't those promised allies become prime hunting targets?

It was true that some players would become wary after seeing this mission and wouldn't go to the appointment, but humanity would never lack adventurers.

When doing something, if it offered a 20% profit, people would be eager to do it; if it offered a 50% profit, they'd dare to take risks; for a 100% profit, they'd dare to trample on all human laws; if there was a 300% profit, they'd dare to commit any crime and even risk hanging.

And what was the profit of this task?

Putting aside attribute points and skill points, the money alone was worth three thousand gold dragons. With this money and two S-level NPCs, players could even easily form a small army of hundreds of people.

In this game, where the vast majority of players couldn't get resources from the system, what did it mean to be the first to acquire such a large amount of resources?

The player might be difficult to surpass for the next few years, or even escape the threat of the standings' assassination mechanism and be free to develop as they wished.

There was no reason for players not to take the risk.

"But the second problem is still unresolved!" Ian quickly calmed himself down. "Seeing through them—how do players see through other players' disguises?"

"First of all, let's assume that two allies who've made an appointment in advance meet at the agreed place. However, with a 'first blood' mission active, they can't possibly boldly use a pre-arranged secret code to confirm each other's identities, right?"

"They'll definitely try to test others while carefully hiding themselves."

"But how can a wary player be discovered so easily? We're all elite players who've made it through so many qualifiers. How could we easily expose our flaws?"

"From a planning perspective, since they've designed it to this point, it means that in their opinion, players can definitely see through each other. In other words, there's something that all of us don't know or are ignoring. There are loopholes."

Ian suddenly thought of the background story. According to Annie, the existence of the background story was to help players disguise themselves.

But obviously, the planner didn't want the players to disguise themselves well. On the contrary, he wanted the players to see through each other and start fighting.

The planner's actions in this regard were very contradictory.

Unless there was something wrong with this backstory?

Ian quickly closed his eyes, opened the auxiliary system, and entered the information column to read his background story in detail again.

Soon, he really discovered a small problem.

That was, he didn't have a last name.

Originally, as a commoner in the valley, he didn't have a surname at the beginning. However, in the subsequent story, he had been canonized as a knight, which meant he had the qualifications to give himself a surname.

But he still didn't have a last name, which was unusual.

However, this was only a minor issue and not a flaw that would guarantee discovery. Moreover, this problem should only be unique to players who started as a hedge knight, and it wasn't a problem shared by all players.

"Yes, all players. If we want to consistently detect flaws, this flaw should be shared by all players, or at least the vast majority. In other words, what is the common denominator for all of us?"

What did the players have in common that was obvious enough to be a flaw that most people could see through?

It couldn't be that they all liked to jump around, right? This was the real world! It was impossible to dance and have fun. Wouldn't that be exhausting?

Ian thought about this as he paced back and forth in the room.

Suddenly, his eyes fell on the set of equipment he'd piled in the corner.

A half-hand sword, a nasal helmet, a gorget, an old piece of mail, a pair of mail gloves, and a pair of greaves.

In a daze, the preview of the final interface for character creation appeared before his eyes again.

"Fuck! The starting equipment! It's the starting equipment!"

The starting equipment for each profession was the same, and over 90% of players should have chosen one of the five professions Ian had identified as starting options.

This meant that, except for the face, the other parts of a player's image at this moment were exactly the same as the preview on the final interface during character creation!

Among them, the traveling merchants were the most obvious. Their set of 4 servants, 4 old draft horses, two carts, and 7 mules was almost a clear giveaway (but correspondingly, they would definitely realize they were easily exposed and would make changes).

Second were the mercenary knights, because they abnormally had a full set of equipment that usually only wealthy knights possessed, yet they didn't even have a squire.

Of course, the Distressed Sailor and the Brotherhood Hunter weren't much better. After all, these two professions were relatively uncommon, and one used a throwing axe while the other used a yew longbow, both of which were easy to spot.

When it came to concealment, only the wandering mercenary was likely better off. After all, taverns in Westeros were full of mercenaries, and the wandering mercenary started with a set of old leather armor, short swords, and daggers. There was almost no difference from the natives.

But except for wandering mercenaries, once other professions appeared at a meeting place agreed upon by players, they would probably react as soon as they met: "Have I seen this guy somewhere?"

This was the real purpose of planning a background story for the players!

The planner had deliberately made the character creation options so complicated in order to give each player numerous differences while making them ignore the striking similarities brought about by the final profession.

He'd asked the AI to deliberately interpret the existence of the background story as "allowing the player to have background memory for better disguise," in order to mislead the player and give them the impression that they wouldn't be easily seen through!

When the human brain receives information about a matter, the opinion it accepts first will usually have greater influence, and people won't even actively consider the opposite possibility.

Even Ian himself had ignored the obvious flaw in the starting equipment at the beginning!

Since the organizer wouldn't be able to interfere with the progress of the game by any means after the game started, the planners chose to use this method to arrange things in advance, quickly triggering players to fight and make the game more exciting!

Mudd! Unexpectedly, participating in this hundred-player game, the first enemy the players had to face wasn't each other, but a trap designed in advance!