[ WP ] As a villager in an MMORPG , you 've grown increasingly jaded from every single hero easily completing your `` quest '' . You 've decided to actively sabotage them from now on ...

It was always the same. That was the life of a farmer villager, after all. A Hero would emerge from the forest, stumble into the inn, spring up bright and early the next day, complete some mundane tasks and be rewarded gratefully, then have a dramatic confrontation in the town square and race on to the south. 
 
 Henry had grown tired of the routine. He had seen the radiant God-Heroes racing north on draconic steeds, and the Heroes emerging from the wood either badly injured or dressed in expensive armor or robes. 
 
 He knew the natural order could be changed, a point that was driven home when poor Alfred's farm was burned to the ground by marauding Orcs and Alfred was forced to pack up the remains of his belongings and seek a job in the floating city of Aeropolis. 
 
 Henry's function in the current order was simple. He had a nice farm, with chickens and pigs, a wheat field, a large melon patch, and a cocoa stand. ( Alfred had always said he should invest in pumpkins, but Henry was fairly certain that pumpkin season did n't even happen in this region. ) Alfred's melon patch, ostensibly his main source of income, was eternally infested with the local variety of oversized translucent slime-mold, known colloquially as `` green slimes''. 
 Henry had to make sure it was that way. His melons were the perfect environment to raise cultures of slime mold that would then terrorize his melon patch by themselves. The melons did n't need to be harvested to reproduce, either. With the slimes scaring off anything willing to eat the melons, there was no way for them to spread outside the patch. It was the perfect system. 
 
 Henry hated it. It made him a profit, yes; the samples he asked for from the Heroes contained enough digested Melon to make a decent drink that he then sold as a low-grade mana potion. It just barely let him break even after the reward he had to pay them in the first place. 
 
 Harold had grown to appreciate the slimes. They were a long way from intelligent; the sharp ones could just about outwit a tired mouse in the dark. They did n't mean anyone any harm. It sickened him to make them into potions, as he knew he had enough money from his regular farm business to make a profit even after rewarding the adventurers. 
 
 First he stopped selling mana potions. Nobody really noticed. A few of the sharper magic-wielding Heroes paused for a moment ( Henry had heard this behavior referred to as `` Wiki'ing'' ), but no-one commented. 
 
 Then he lowered his reward. This caused a bit more Wiki'ing, but the few who noticed any discrepancy shrugged it off as an unlogged balance change. 
 
 Then he started breeding the slimes. It was n't like breeding pigs or chickens, as slime molds reproduced asexually, but Henry managed it. In just a few days he had selectively produced a generation of slimes with twice the volume and motile range of the ones he had before. The adventurers shrugged it off. 
 
 Henry appreciated the Nemesis. They had never met, but Henry had discovered that the Heroes had no choice but to hang around town until the Nemesis confronted them, and the Nemesis had, seemingly arbitrarily, decided that he would not confront Heroes who had n't completed Henry's task. Henry could effectively force the Heroes to do anything - as long as they did n't report it to a Mod. He had to keep it subtle. 
 
 Then Henry stumbled upon his masterstroke. Mutation. In another two generations, his slimes had great diversity of size and strength. With Henry's numerical limitation, the Heroes began killing only the slimes that were easiest to kill. 
 
 Henry had bred slimes that would evolve to beat the Heroes. Now all he had to do was wait. 
 
 - 
 
 It had been only a month. Henry's slimes now hugely outclassed the most well-equipped Heroes, forcing the Heroes to form impromptu bands in order to take out all of the ten slimes Henry smugly ordered them to. Word began to spread. 
 
 One day an elf arrived from the south on a steed made of starlight. His armor was so well-polished it glowed in the shade, and his shoulderplates were so outlandishly voluminous that he had given up on helmets entirely. 
 
 Henry snorted derisively. He had seen much more impressive individuals. The elf walked straight over to Henry. 
 
 `` Hail, adventurer!'' Henry said, putting a sardonic twist on the words. `` Would you help me? My melon patch -'' Henry held back his laughter with effort - ``... is infested with... SLIMES!'' Henry bent double under the force of his restrained laughter. The elf maintained a perfectly blank expression, but that was elves for you. Henry managed to stand up again. `` If you could bring me the remains of 10 slimes I would be very grateful.'' Now chuckling into his hand, Henry watched the elf walk through the gate into Henry's Melon Patch. 
 
 It was only about 20 seconds before the elf raced back through the gate, tailed by a slime as tall as a man. Henry allowed himself to laugh openly. 
 
 - 
 
 The Mods arrived. Henry sighed. It had been fun while it lasted. But then... something unexpected happened. Instead of restructuring the natural order, the Mods called for more Mods. Those Mods called for an Admin! Henry had never seen an Admin before, but then the Admin called on another Admin! Before long, Henry was watching seven Mods squatting on his roof, four on various hovering mounts, and eight balancing on his garden fence, and no fewer than six Admins simply standing on solid air, speaking of'self-altering AI' and'rogue variables'. Finally, they called on the Dev. Henry was flabbergasted - the Dev had only been called once before, to deal with a plague in some faraway city. 
 
 The Dev arrived. There was no fanfare, no descent from the clouds - where the Mods had poured in from the nearest gate, and the Admins ridden in at twice the speed of sound, the Dev simply... appeared. Like the Admins, he stood on apparently solid air about 10 feet above Henry's Melon Patch, where the slimes swiped ineffectually at his feet. Then he did something Henry had never heard of. The Dev called another Dev. 
 
 Henry was not even aware there was more than one Dev, but apparently there were at least three - a human, a dwarf, and an undead. All three of them were now standing 15 feet above the Melon Patch, as the Admins shooed away the Mods and the gathering crowd of Heroes. Several minutes passed, and Henry noticed there were only five Admins and no Mods around. The crowd of Heroes was still present, though, apparently held back only by the threat of the slimes. 
 
 One of the Devs - the dwarf - descended to the ground, walking straight through the slimes as though they were air and hopping smoothly over Henry's garden gate. He walked over to Henry, and Henry, as he had been trained, delivered his line. 
 
 `` Hail,'adventurer'. Would you help me out? My melon patch is *infested* with slimes. If you could bring me the remains of 10 slimes, I would be very grateful.'' 
 
 Most adventurers simply nodded, some said `` okay'', a few said `` of course''; the few that refused at first would simply ignore him. The dwarvish Dev responded. 
 
 `` NPC 119, access source code. Authority 1, Developer George Larsson, Passcode 112-Miranda.'' 
 
 - 
 
 Henry awoke with a start. The world had restructured, he could feel it. The natural order had changed somehow. He looked around. There were no Devs, no Admins, no Mods, not even a Hero in sight. The town was still there, as it had been; his neighbors stood in their usual places, making small talk. He looked at his house. 
 
 Well, there was a change. The fence to his Melon Patch was now 10 feet high, and a sign had been hung on it that said `` CHALLENGE QUEST: LEVEL 80''. He walked into his house. Its interior had been subtlely altered. His staircase now had a window at the top that overlooked his now-restricted melon patch. Henry saw that he could still operate his farm, but his melon patch was locked - and for good reason. His slimes appeared to have undergone a couple more generations of rapid evolution, and were now each 7 or 8 feet high. Henry was glad the patch had also been greatly expanded in size, since otherwise the slimes would n't even have room to move. 
 
 On a whim, Henry reached into his pocket. It contained a large, ominous black key. Words appeared in his head, just as the words to his original task had when he was promoted to task-giver. 
 
 `` My melons have grown a strain of highly adaptive slimes! They're quite dangerous, and they've absorbed items from the fools who failed to stop them before! I could let you into the melon patch... perhaps a half-dozen platinum coins would persuade me to open that gate?''
