Kill Steal Man / 尾刀俠
Vol.1
Prologue
Flight 817 of StarX Budget Airlines was this year’s most popular direct route between Taiwan and the United States.
A curly-haired, medium-height young man sat slumped in his cramped seat. His clean, fair Asian face was covered with a red sleep mask printed with two wide-awake cartoon eyes. Though it looked like he was asleep, he was actually savoring the highlights of his recent trip.
This trip to Texas brought so many wonderful memories. He finally met, in person, the American guildmates he’d known for ten years through World of Warcraft. He also managed to introduce them to Nobunaga’s Ambition, an obscure Japanese online game suffering from a dwindling player base. The game, released twenty years ago, ended up mesmerizing these Texans completely.
To Americans, Chinese and Japanese were more or less the same. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s server for Nobunaga had fewer than 200 active players, most of whom were overtaken by Chinese gamers.
As a Taiwanese gamer, it was his duty to do something. After all, he had ten accounts—no need to thanks.
Now, things were looking up. He could form an international team, train new characters, and create two squads of seven to dominate the Nobunaga wars, avenging his years of defeat. The game’s population was so sparse that even the top three factions barely fought each other. With fourteen people on the field, the entire war could be overturned.
Thinking back to the golden days when war horns blared before each skirmish, students skipped classes, adults called in sick, and players from middle schoolers to forty-year-olds charged into battle on horseback—it still brought a smile to his face.
Ah, youth!
Now, the game’s official hours capped battles at midnight and only reopened at 8 a.m.—not friendly to daytime workers at all!
But for someone recently unemployed, that no longer posed a problem. Three days after Taiwan’s presidential election, he would fully dedicate himself (as a “guest general” in this turn-based game, similar to holding dual citizenship) to every battle his old nemeses participated in.
With a command system in place, his Texan friends would follow his orders on keyboard and mouse, leaving him free to enjoy his favorite pastime—sniping and stealing kills.
He had already trained his guildmates face-to-face. They were hardcore role-players with a penchant for PvP, so technical skills weren’t an issue. After all, WoW’s PvP was far more brutal. The moment those Texans learned they could beat up Chinese players online, these Republican enthusiasts got excited, promising to raid dungeons while fighting in the Nobunaga wars.
Over the past two years, due to the population imbalance among factions in the game, every battle would see their NPC leader getting decapitated within five minutes, granting the enemy a massive score boost. Despite relentless struggles, the situation would continue to deteriorate. In about an hour and a half, their entire territory would be taken over. Trapped in the spawn area, unable to step outside, there was no PvP to be had—it was pure "PPPPPPPVP."
Since the game’s beta twenty years ago, he’d never switched factions. From a middle school student to a jaded underpaid worker, he’d spent his life on losing battles. But he knew that switching to the enemy would mean the game was truly over. Some automated wars were so empty that NPC generals fought each other with no players present. Who were those battles even for?
The battlefield’s anonymous status was practically meaningless for him and his old rivals—it was as if they were completely exposed. His opponents had similar principles, but with the advantage of numbers, they were even more shameless. When it came to loyalty to the game, he was willing to respect his enemies for their dedication, which only made his urge to rack up kills even stronger.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Nationality wasn’t really an issue. The enemy side didn’t have more Taiwanese players, nor did his own faction have fewer Chinese players. He felt a strange affection for the Chinese gamers who paid to join Taiwan’s server. That’s why he dragged his American friends into these battles—if the servers died, no one would be the winner.
Nobunaga’s Ambition had been in decline for over a decade. When the servers merged into one, he moved on to WoW, swearing fealty to King Varian Wrynn of Stormwind. Even after Varian’s heroic death and his son’s ascension to the throne, he never stopped paying for Nobunaga. He didn’t do it to chase after glory but to keep the game—and the memories—alive.
During the Taiwanese server era, he never stayed long in any alliance or guild, and his friends list was barely a handful. Perhaps subconsciously, he didn’t want his memories of Nobunaga's Ambition to fade away. He would only join random groups when he needed gear or honor points, while his main focus was on storylines, achievements, and gathering or crafting.
After the decline of the Taiwanese servers for World of Warcraft, the curly-haired young man unexpectedly discovered a player interaction on one of the U.S. servers that reminded him of the dynamics in Nobunaga's Ambition.
For years, those vibrant memories had still faded. Now he admitted to himself that he didn’t particularly love games—he just wanted a place to belong. Old players always came back once in a while, so who would be there to call out their names and retell their stories?
It was almost laughable—at 35, he had never even owned a passport. Most of his income, after covering health insurance, social security, online gaming, and daily expenses, went straight into an emergency fund. He wasn’t some paragon of justice, just someone who liked having a small escape route for those moments when he couldn’t take it anymore.
Two weeks ago, tensions flared due to the Russia-Ukraine war and Taiwan’s upcoming presidential election. The curly-haired young man finally exploded at his exploitative restaurant boss, who constantly forced him to work overtime.
“Garbage isn’t exclusive to blue or green? Please. Trash comes in every color. Spare me your talk of ‘mutual understanding.’ I might’ve only served a year in the military, but I’ve paid every cent of my taxes—I don’t owe the government a thing! For me, true Taiwanese independence means breaking away from the Republic of China. How many actual ‘Taiwanese’ were part of the ROC’s constitutional assembly? I wouldn’t know. Did they outnumber the so-called ‘Taiwanese representatives’ in the CCP’s National People’s Congress today? Doubt it. Back then, Taiwan was under Japanese rule, and during the ROC’s constitutional convention, 9.2% of the attendees were CCP representatives. Should we tear out 50 pages of their constitution and mail them back to Beijing?”
“Carrying an ROC ID card is a courtesy to your government. What does that have to do with China? And the whole ‘one culture, one people’ nonsense—here in Taiwan, I can’t even understand Hakka or Indigenous languages. And, boss, when are you going to learn Vietnamese? Your wife already speaks Taiwanese!”
After years of bottling it up, he finally let loose. Watching his exploitative, Blue-leaning boss—who spent his days spitting germs and spewing idiotic political hot takes in the kitchen—gape in stunned silence gave the curly-haired man a deep sense of satisfaction.
He couldn’t stand it when people, unable to win an argument, resorted to accusing him of being “pro-Green.” To him, branding him as part of the Green camp was just a sneaky way of undermining advocates for Taiwan’s legal independence. Boil it down, and it was nothing short of psychological warfare. Did they think the few hardcore extremists were just for show?
He wasn’t afraid of failure; he had long grown used to being defeated. As long as his comrades were still willing to fight and they still had their own territory—a small patch of land, a ceiling in an apartment where he didn’t have to bow his head—it made him happier than any major victory ever could. With just a click of a mouse, he could join the dominant faction in an online game. No one would stop him from renouncing his Republic of China citizenship, and the Taiwan Strait wasn’t exactly walled off. It’s just that, historically, more people swam toward the Pacific. Otherwise, where did the Austronesian people come from?
That day, he threw his apron to the ground and left. He might not have a superhero uniform under it, but at that moment, his soul soared into the stratosphere.
With encouragement from his American guildmates, he impulsively applied for a passport, booked a discounted flight on a budget airline suffering from PR woes, and traveled to Texas. There, he wowed his friends by disassembling a rifle in seconds—a skill learned during his military days.
At the airport, his middle-aged World of Warcraft guildmates cried as they bid him farewell. His “citizen diplomacy” was a huge success.
Too many memories—old and new. He dozed off in his seat, only to be jolted awake by violent turbulence. The plane shook. Oxygen masks dangled from the ceiling. Amid screams and crying children, he felt strangely calm and sleepy.
Had he died already? Was this a heart attack? Was everything he’d remembered just the proverbial “life flashing before his eyes”?
“Hope the pilot lands safely. If not, someone can at least sing ‘Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep’ for me…” he murmured.
Darkness fell.