STRATEGY is a multiplayer online cooperative strategy card game. It's ordinary, neither a hit nor a flop.
But the arrival of a new NPC brings the game back to life.
No one knows the NPC's real name. Everyone just calls her X.
From the day she opened her eyes, Zhu Peizhi could tell players and NPCs apart with perfect accuracy.
She lives in the most unremarkable village in the city-state of Malu, where her quiet life is disrupted by a group of strangers.
With the word "Player" floating above their heads, these people are always saying things Zhu Peizhi can't understand.
"Did X post any new quests today?"
"Why haven't I maxed out my affection with X yet?"
Zhu Peizhi soon realizes that her world is a game, and these players have abandoned its central themes of strategy, cooperation, and competition, making X their one and only heroine.
In other words, they're playing a massive dating sim.
But who is X?
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As Zhu Peizhi's player panel unlocks all sorts of strange identities, the players gradually discover that X's quests are getting stranger and harder to complete.
One moment, Zhu Peizhi becomes a saintess of the Shengnuo Church. The next, X, far away in the city-state of Malu, posts a new quest:
[Join the Shengnuo Church and bring me the pope's authority.]
One moment, Zhu Peizhi enters the Forest of Elves and uses her player panel to become an elf. The next, X posts another quest:
[Enter the Forest of Elves and bring me a branch from the treetop.]
But even after completing all the high-difficulty quests, X remains as cool and aloof as ever.
The players even discover that X's affection is going down instead of up.
Only when a player named Zhizhi appears out of nowhere and easily wins all of X's affection do the players finally lose it, cursing the game company for setting them up in a "dating scam."
Zhu Peizhi smiles.
STRATEGY was never a dating game, so how could this be a dating scam?
Theme: Break free from fate
