The April Fools event was about immortality, literally everything became immortal in the game, the bosses, the players, the NPCs, everything living became one, and with it, all the grind, all the sleepless nights turned to be worth nothing for a day.
It was almost like a psychological thing from the devs, maybe telling the player to go touch grass for a day… but no, the players did exactly the opposite of it.
Everybody, literally everybody in the game did one single thing… try to kill each other, even though it was impossible… like level 1 players attacked level 1000 ones with daggers, and so on, everybody tried to kill everybody, they even raided bosses, raided the dungeons. The event turned into endless and meaningless fights that would lead to nowhere… but of course, the developers came up with a move to actually let players have something in the end.
The ITL, Immortal Trial Leaderboard.
So because players couldn't earn exp, skill points, couldn't even level up a bit, the endless bloodshed and fight just went on with one thing in mind, the ITL and its glorious Divine reward.
The top player who did the most damage through the whole day received the Divine Blessing, which granted 25 extra lives, in all situations and with no reset, which meant if the player died during a boss fight it didn't reset, which was a huge privilege to have, because all boss fights had a long prepare prep phase… yeah that Divine Blessing felt like a cheat… and on the other side there was a leaderboard too that received a gift too… a much worse one.
The player who would have died the most received a gift too. Basically the developers calculated how much damage the player character took, and just divided it by his health… he would have died more than 982 times as for some reason he tried to beat one of the Forgotten Gods with a level 160 account… though for his performance he received a title the "Fool of Death" and with it a passive skill, one that was more like a curse.
Though the player couldn't believe it, like he saw level 1 accounts being beaten up by level 1000, how did he get the title… well it was all the grand plan of the developers and they needed a high level account that had knowledge about the game to not fuck up their plans… though they fucked up his plans about the game and his progression.
Basically the developers needed to create something that was actually something beneficial and at the same time not.
So they came up with an idea that was… dark, useful and also pretty bad… all at the same time.
The Fool of Death passive worked in a way when the player killed anything, let it be a boss, another player or anything else it gave him aura points, and that aura surrendered the player and created a pressure around him… the devs definitely stole it from a cultivation game, though it worked as the pressure was the darkness itself, the death of the players and bosses he killed, their aura was his, and it could affect every player.
The aura of the Fool of Death debuffed every skill by 50 percent, not just that but it could go up to 70 percent if the player slayed powerful bosses or killed powerful players, though it worked backwards too.
There was a so-called mental system in the game, which meant if the mental points went down to zero then the player couldn't enter PVP or do trades, or anything NPC involved, basically couldn't play the game as it intended to be, but for the Fool of Death they created a whole ass new thing with.
So the player couldn't even access PVP or play the game, level up or anything as the mental state was down and it would even go until the player did one thing… killed.
Yeah but then came the questions… who did the player kill? Why did they give him a skill that he can't even use?
Once again it was the developers grand plan and what they made was that the Fool of Death could kill NPCs, but not just the hostile ones, or ones that are in quests, no, the player could kill ever NPCs in the game and the worst, the aura itself told the player how many deaths it needs to get back to the mental state so he can play the game normally.
Like there was the Fésin boss which was a basic fire dragon, it took 1 soul to rest, while the highest boss that the player slain was the Cerberus it took 10 souls…
Basically the devs wanted the player to become a serial killer, a mass murderer… and they did it for one thing… to introduce a big event, the Murder Mystery: Hunt for the Killer… yeah they did all of it, to do another big event and well it worked.
The murder mystery was eventually solved, and the Fool of Death was caught. When he finally died in battle, his passive skill was destroyed, and he became normal again. What an ending… the whole event lasted for five months, during which the player murdered exactly 112 NPCs and the only reason the number stayed that low was because the player got tired of all the shit debuffs and that he couldn't play the game as intended, so he stopped playing altogether, at least until the devs emailed him about the event. Then he logged back in and did what they wanted.
And yeah, it wasn't immortality… he was forced by the devs to not fight but murder NPCs… maybe in a sense it was immortal as his character did not take any damage during the 5-month period of time, only when the case was solved and he was slain, and that was it.
But the only time immortality is mentioned throughout the whole game is in his character lore, "The Fool of Immortality." The murderer, who thought killing innocent lives, who thought listening to monsters would lead to immortality.
"But that wasn't immortality." Lucius whispered, his voice trembling a bit. "It was just an event that was forced by the developers onto a player. He was untouchable only to the NPCs… and nothing more."
"Exactly." Miu said fast as she smiled. "That is immortality."
"No, it's not." Lucius whispered again as she didn't get why Miu was saying it is immortality… somehow it all went past his head.
"You are in Eldoria, and everything living in Eldoria were NPCs once."
Yeah, he finally got it, he finally understood it. "N-no…"
"The Fool of Death is you, Lucius, and with it your journey waits ahead." Miu said as she still smiled… smiled at the straight desperation that went through Lucius as he realized more and more what it exactly meant. "But it is time now." Miu said with a giggle. "I send you down to Briminia, and from there it is you who decide what you will do."
"Wait!" He shouted. "You said I am Lucius which means I'm like a new character… I killed nothing, so the mental state is still good until I–"
"You forget a thing, Lucius… that the passive skill needs kills nonetheless."
Yeah, that was the worst thing about the whole thing about the Fool of Death that only the developers knew.
When they made the leaderboard to choose a player to be the Fool of Death they thought that a low-ranked player wouldn't be good as they might not know about the game lore much, so they made a change to it to a minimum rank, which was level 100, but there was a problem with that too.
Players could level up to 100 without killing anything, there was even a guild that worked that way, didn't kill anything in the game, only traded, did quests that didn't involve killings, so the developers made another change.
If the player who died the most during the April Fools event didn't have high-rank boss kills that would become the dark aura requiring souls to be calmed, then the player would have been pushed to kill, because if not then his character would have been deleted forever. In this way the developers made sure that the upcoming Murder Mystery event could work anyway.
So if the selected player, the top rank by death, would have been one that didn't kill bosses then the player would have been pushed to kill NPCs, and those NPCs he killed would have become the dark aura requiring to kill more.
"I need to kill to not die?"
"Kill to stay immortal… if we think about it, is an endless circle of bloodshed… that is the Fool of Death."