Evening.
Players began to trickle back into the sanatorium. The cook, Egg Frying Bro, set up a large pot in the open space and started making the last meal of the day.
Tonight's menu was salt-boiled horned potatoes with smoked dried meat.
Thanks to the discovery of a new NPC base, the players at the refuge finally got to eat something other than fish soup.
These horned potatoes tasted quite good. After boiling them in salt-water, a drizzle of soy sauce gave them a bit of that KFC mashed potato vibe.
The only downside was the excessive use of soy sauce.
Just making these 28 servings of mashed potatoes consumed nearly a fifth of a bottle of soy sauce, even though they were being frugal with it.
On the other hand, it seemed that the refuge was also running low on salt, with only half a bag left.
At this rate of consumption, it wouldn't be long before everyone would be back to plain broth and water.
"Woohoo! This mashed potato is incredible! Egg Frying Uncle, can I have another bowl?" Teng Teng, clutching a bowl and squatting on the ground, looked utterly content.
"No more, everyone gets just one bowl." Egg Frying was not pleased with being called "uncle" and rolled his eyes in annoyance.
"So, are we eating mashed potatoes again tomorrow?" Teng Teng asked pitifully.
"We can't afford it, we're running low on soy sauce, and we need to save it. If you want mashed potatoes, get up and order some takeout yourself." As he spoke, Egg Frying sighed inwardly.
Cooking for this bunch every day was a real heartbreaker.
Having been a chef for so many years, he had never scrimped for a boss like this, hating not having two grains of salt for every one used.
Meanwhile, Night Ten, sitting among the players, held his bowl and went into a vivid description of the day's events, even forgetting to eat his meal.
Especially when he came to the part about encountering a Crawler on the way back, he got so excited that he put his bowl down and picked up a tree branch to start drawing on the ground.
"I was just walking down the street when I felt a chill down my spine, a sudden surge of alarm! I grabbed my rifle and fired a volley in the blink of an eye—"
Fang Chang, sitting nearby, couldn't bear to listen and interrupted.
"You and your volley, anyone would think you had a Gatling gun in your hands."
Night Ten coughed awkwardly.
"That's not important!"
"So, what happened next? Keep going, how did you guys beat that thing?"
"Yeah, keep going, don't interrupt!"
The other players didn't much care for the details; they were at the good part of the story, too hooked to bother whether he was bragging or not, and egged him on to continue.
"Don't panic, guys, let me keep going. It all happened in a flash; the moment the Crawler pounced, I did a sliding tackle..."
Seeing everyone's interest, Night Ten quickly regained his composure and resumed his tale, describing how he provided support for the Manager entangled by a Variant, how he scavenged on the battlefield, and how after a slip-up he was sneak-attacked by a scoundrel, and ultimately how he made a tactical log-off, coordinating with his teammates for a desperate counter-kill...
Fang Chang rolled his eyes as he listened, unable to bear it any longer, he simply picked up his bowl and moved elsewhere to eat in peace.
Once dinner was over,
The sun was close to setting.
Chu Guang brought Xiao Qi down from upstairs and led the players back to the refuge in groups, watching as they laid in the cultivation chambers for a safe log-off.
Except for Garbage King, who was still out in the wild, everyone else had returned.
But Chu Guang wasn't too worried about him.
Through the player list, Chu Guang could confirm that the guy was still alive, but he had logged off two hours ago.
Even the most hardcore players can't be on the Game for twenty-four hours straight; you've got to get up to eat and stretch your limbs or something.
Plus, the clones in the Game also need to rest; no one can stay awake for twenty-four hours, not even the Lizard people.
According to the official data on the website.
Logging off wasn't limited to lying back in the cultivation chamber for a voluntary hibernation; any loss of consciousness could sever the connection.
That included giving yourself a bonk on the back of the head or finding a spot to lie down and sleep.
However, logging out like that wasn't very reliable.
First, you couldn't "save your progress"; second, it wasn't safe.
The clones rapidly synthesized by the cultivation chamber didn't possess any consciousness.
In other words, without a Consciousness Entity connected, these clones would hardly react to external stimuli beyond reflexive responses.
At that moment, if a mutant mouse or cockroach happened to pass by, it could nibble away at a person bit by bit.
But Junk Collector had probably found a safe place to hide; he seemed pretty secure for now.
Putting Junk Collector's situation aside for a moment.
Chu Guang sat down in front of the computer in the Resident Hall and, as per usual, began to compile a summary of today's work achievements.
"The Enclosing Wall on the east side is completed."
"In terms of resources, the inventory in the building material stockpile received 110 Tree Branches, one ton of charcoal, one ton of silicate cement, two stacks of yellow clay bricks, and several blocks of hardened cement. As for consumption, 240 Tree Branches, 800 kilograms of cement... The wood stock has been decreasing for two days in a row, but surprisingly, we're starting to have a surplus of cement."
It looks like we need to assign a few Lumberjacks.
Or, increase the daily task requirement for logging for players.
"Food stock received an income of 350 kilograms of green wheat and horned potatoes, 5 jin of smoked meat, as well as a small amount of berries and mushrooms. The consumption was about 5 kilograms of dried smoked meat, 10 kilograms of horned potatoes, and 50 kilograms of smoked meat and 20 kilograms of smoked fish for trading purposes... Hunting has to continue tomorrow."
"Then, there's the fur inventory... Aside from the amount used in trading, 5 pieces of fur were consumed as raw materials. Today, Teng Teng actually made 5 pieces of clothing? Not bad... Let me see, that should be 250 Contribution Points."
"Oh, right, there's also the increase in the weapon inventory... We'll have to plan for an Armory in the future."
Finally, today's daily tasks generated 7 reward points.
Time to happily open Blind Boxes again.
After compiling the data, Chu Guang leaned back in the chair and stretched.
While he had been doing all this work, the thirty activated cultivation chambers in the next room had also completed scanning the clones inside and archiving the somatic cell samples. They compiled the players' Gene Sequence development progress and panel data into a table.
Chu Guang glanced at it briefly.
Perhaps because the current stage of the Outpost predominantly needed physical labor, the Strength Type players were obviously leveling up a bit faster.
Take Old White, for instance, now at LV3.
Besides, Night Ten, who had been following him, had his Gene Sequence improved from LV1 to LV2, and his main Perception Attribute had reached 9, making him the player with the highest Perception Attributes in the entire Outpost.
"Master!"
Looking at Xiao Qi rolling up beside the table, Chu Guang shifted his gaze away from the computer.
"What's up?"
"How come you picked up a strange woman from outside?"
Chu Guang almost choked on those words.
Although it didn't seem entirely wrong to say that, something about it didn't quite sit right.
"What are you talking about?"
"Xiao Qi saw everything from the rooftop, oh, it was carried back."
Chu Guang said impatiently.
"So?"
Speaking in an unfluctuating electronic tone, Xiao Qi said with a sense of grievance.
"It's nothing, I just wanted to remind you that compared to clones whose movements can be restricted at any time, the indigenous people of the Wasteland are much harder to control. It's better not to trust them too easily."
"You're overthinking it. I've never fully trusted anyone, be they players or the locals here," Chu Guang said indifferently.
"Mhm, mhm, that puts my mind at ease!"
The camera on top of Xiao Qi's head shook up and down to indicate a nod.
"By the way, you can always trust Xiao Qi. No matter what happens, Xiao Qi will always be your most loyal assistant!"
"Okay, got it."
"How perfunctory!"
Couldn't this guy take a break while charging?
Chu Guang suppressed the urge to retort and continued staring at the computer screen.
More than ten minutes had passed since the players logged off. As expected, this was the busiest time on the official forum.
Time for the delightful activity of screen lurking.
Humming to himself, Chu Guang opened the back end of the official website to check the number of reservations first.
The green onions, sitting in their bowls, had doubled from just over a hundred and were now just shy of hitting 300.
The threshold for reserving the Game had changed from simply filling out a form to filling out a form and answering questions.
Although they were just general knowledge questions, the patience required to read through them and fill in the blanks at least helped to filter out the more serious players.
Those who passed were quite high quality.
Meanwhile, the website's traffic had also grown significantly, with a daily average of 1000 visits.
Not everyone registered an account, nor did everyone click to reserve, but at least it showed that the visibility of Wasteland OL in the gaming community was growing.
It was just a small, unregistered "three-no" website with nothing but a pile of textual settings and a few construction site photos, and yet it had managed to attract so many people.
Chu Guang couldn't help but feel amazed.
"There sure are a lot of bored people."
Just perfect.
Since he had nothing better to do, why not come into the "Game" and put them to work?
Closing the back-end page, he entered the forum.
As Chu Guang anticipated, the players who had logged off had all come here to report in, and the forum was bustling with activity.
Including the Trash Guy, who had logged off two hours earlier, soaking in the forum as well.
Pick up trash 99 level: [Damn, I'm dead tired today, but luckily there was some gain! About 2 kilometers north of the abandoned work site, there's a tire processing plant. There are people patrolling with dogs nearby, possibly a Raider Camp, but I'm not sure yet! I plan to get closer and take a look when it gets dark, and boast on the forum once I've confirmed it.]
{Wild Wind: 666!}
{Old White: Damn, I was wondering why I didn't see you when logging off! Also, why can you log on during the day???}
{Pick up trash 99 level: If you were a Variant, you could too! Cut the crap. I'm going to rest a bit and then log in. {Bared teeth}}
{Night Ten: You just came here to show off, didn't you!}
{Quit smoking: Forget being able to log on during the day, I'd die without regrets if I could just log on to take a peek! T.T}
{Crow: I'm still on revival cooldown, so sad.}
{Pick up trash 99 level: {Bared teeth}}
Besides Trash Guy showing off by himself, the vast majority of players on the forum were eagerly discussing the new NPC brought back by the Manager as well as the newly discovered Survivor Settlement.
Especially the latter.
The players were particularly interested.
At the top of a long string of posts, Chu Guang quickly found an analysis post by Long Days Ahead.
This guy was as good at summarizing as ever, and his posts were the most popular in the forum. If circumstances allowed, Chu Guang would've dearly liked to invite him to plan the Game.
[...I have to praise the Alpha 0.2 version update! It's clear that the game officials are quite sincere, truly conscientious!]
[The content of this update is far more than just the few optimization items listed on the official website, including new factions, new monster models, a larger map, and so on. The content is far richer than I had previously imagined!]
[For example, the Brown farm that traded with us. As soon as I arrived at the concrete Enclosing Wall, I was shocked by the game officials' art design. The immersion is hard to describe in words, whether it's the post-apocalyptic Architectural style or the detailed textures on the clothing of different NPCs, everywhere you can see traces of careful sculpting rather than just re-skinning existing materials!]
[In addition, there was the combat system test. On our way back, we were attacked by Crawlers, and had a close yet harmless battle. Before this, I had thought that such outrageously powerful Variants only existed in the set-up, but I didn't expect them to be implemented in the current version!]
[I must say, our Manager is truly deserving of the Novice Instructor title, so powerful in combat! The moment the Crawler pounced, neither Night Ten nor I reacted in time, almost on the verge of being out-of-body. It was all on him to dish out damage, managing to take down a two-meter-tall Eater with just a small pipe! It was so thrilling!]
[Moreover, personally, the most surprising to me has been the new NPC joining our Outpost. Her unique identity could perhaps bring us more new gameplay, such as weapon modifications or even more side storylines... I think we can look forward to it!]
[For more details on the Alpha 0.2 version update, I'll keep updating this post. Friends interested in dirt can give a follow!]
Conscientious, okay.
Ah, this is a bit embarrassing.
After reading the post from start to finish, Chu Guang couldn't stop grinning.
But to be fair, Chu Guang felt he was quite conscientious indeed; at least he hadn't duped the players out of their wallets.
A next-generation game that released the dreams and sleep—had Goose Factory or Pig Factory been endorsing it, wouldn't it cost at least 800 RMB just to play?
Not to mention play; you'd probably have to first subscribe to be a member even to move bricks!
What?
You don't have money?
Well, no problem, you probably wouldn't mind smoothing some plaster with your hands, right?
After all, how else could the noble RMB warrior, wielding a trowel to build walls, be embodied? And of course, you could choose to watch two hours of ads to unlock a membership discount coupon.
At least such unscrupulous deeds were something Chu Guang couldn't bring himself to do.
Feeling flattered that he was being praised for his conscience, Chu Guang made Brother Fang Chang's post sticky.
Casually closing the post, as Chu Guang pondered what to do to pass the long night, Xiao Qi's plaintive voice came from next door.
"Master."
"The woman you brought back has woken up."