A death…someone died?!
Old Bai was utterly baffled, momentarily unable to comprehend what had happened.
When he finally processed it, his first thought was—can players actually die in this game?
To be fair, unless you actively seek death or throw caution to the wind, it's actually quite difficult to die here.
Not only was Old Bai puzzled, but Chu Guang was equally perplexed.
He hadn't expected a non-combat fatality among the third wave of players, especially not this soon—it was at least half a month earlier than he'd anticipated.
The deceased player's ID was [Crow], a "Perceptive" gene sequence with a talent for toxin intuition.
Chu Guang remembered assigning her to gather berries and edible mushrooms that morning. Somehow, though, she had wandered into a mutant leech nest.
By checking the player list, Chu Guang could locate her general position. When he followed her trail and confirmed it led into the mutant leech nest, he promptly gave up on retrieving the body.
Juvenile mutant leeches weren't the main problem—they were barely able to feed, with degenerated mouthparts unsuited for biting. Yet, "The generator won't arrive until the end of the month; I can't wait until then to revive the fallen player."
"There are still seventy cans left unopened," said Xiao Qi quietly. "Leaving them untouched won't help us; we might as well use the bioactive material inside."
"But…what if we run out?"
"Then we'll figure it out," Chu Guang replied without hesitation. "Let's solve the immediate problem first."
Solutions are never in short supply.
Increasing death penalties, or adding extra consequences for repeated deaths, would eventually curb some of the players' curiosity.
When there are more players, we can even set up a "beginner's village" and restrict level-five players from wandering too far out. There are plenty of ways to prevent unnecessary resource waste.
Chu Guang still couldn't understand what was going through [Crow]'s mind. She should've been more cautious, especially being of the perceptive type.
He planned to have a word with her back at the shelter, as a developer, to discuss this matter.
But the real problem wasn't how she died—it was that she was a new player without any contribution points to deduct.
In other words, she couldn't pay the death penalty.
This was troublesome.
They couldn't exactly let her run a tab.
If they did, other players might get reckless too.
"...Looks like we need to introduce forced labor or punitive tasks as a substitute for death penalties in cases of non-payment."
"Yes, as well as decreased reputation and longer cooldowns for repeated revivals."
There are always more solutions than problems.
Returning to the shelter with Xiao Qi, Chu Guang first compiled the day's work results into a digital document.
It was a habit he had recently developed.
With the player base growing, the daily fluctuations in stockpiled resources had become significant.
As a manager, he needed to orchestrate every resource carefully.
When lumber ran low, he would rally players to chop trees; when food was short, he'd send everyone out hunting and gathering to keep production and construction moving smoothly without stalling due to a shortage of any single material.
"Building stock: 84 logs, 500 kg of charcoal, 500 kg of calcium carbonate cement, two stacks of mud bricks, and a few hardened cement blocks. Consumption-wise…220 logs, nearly all cement produced consumed, plus an additional 200 kg from stock."
"Approximately."
"Food inventory: 50 kg of smoked jerky, 10 kg of smoked fish…about 2 kg of edible roots, and a few tree berries. Roughly 10 kg of jerky consumed; dinner included pine nut fish soup, so no smoked fish was used."
"Maybe I should hire a warehouse manager."
He also needed a more accurate scale and measurement tools.
Chu Guang spent some time, using Xiao Qi's statistical data, to allocate contribution points to each player's personal account.
New players primarily earned contribution points through manual labor, calculated at ten points per hour, with most of them earning between ninety and one hundred points.
Only Tengteng remained at zero.
Of course, tailoring was a skill-intensive task, especially when using unfamiliar materials. A learning curve was inevitable.
Once she adapted to the tools and materials here, her contribution points would likely snowball quickly.
Having distributed the players' rewards, Chu Guang then opened the system to review today's daily task rewards.
**[Task: Chop ten trees, Reward: 1 point]**
**[Task: Kill one mutant, Reward: 3 points]**
**[Task: Collect one ton of stone, Reward: 1 point]**
**[Task: Reserve ten kilograms of food, Reward: 1 point]**
A total of six reward points.
In truth, the players' workload far exceeded the requirements for daily tasks, but only a few points could be earned so easily each day.
Chu Guang calculated the points accumulated from the past few days. Including today's points, he now had seventeen in total.
"Might as well take a gamble!"
After a brief consideration, Chu Guang opened the [Manager's Stipend] page, spending ten points on a mid-tier blind box, with the remaining seven points on basic blind boxes.
Soon, the wall trembled slightly.
As the alloy door opened, the rewards from the blind boxes rolled out on the conveyor.
**[Nano Healing Syringe: Primarily for non-lethal wounds, accelerates tissue repair to speed up recovery.]**
"That's probably from the mid-tier blind box."
Its effectiveness, side effects, and ingredients were unspecified—like previous enhancements, it was a mysterious "three-no" product.
Since Chu Guang wasn't injured, he tucked the healing syringe into his desk drawer and examined the remaining rewards.
Predictably, five of the seven rewards were lollipops.
One was orange-flavored, similar to the chocolate-flavored one before, and granted a ten-hour attribute boost. This time, the bonus applied to endurance instead of strength.
As for the other two, one was a 200g bar of chocolate, and the other was a 230g can of beef.
Hmm…
The chocolate should be safe to eat, but the beef can was another matter.
If he recalled correctly, canned food was invented during the Franco-Prussian War in the 1800s. This ancient can might even predate the relics displayed in museums back in his original world…
"Well…guess I'll have one of the players taste it first."
After some hesitation, Chu Guang decided to pick a player with high goodwill to treat them to this meal when they logged in the next day.
No one would likely refuse such an "opportunity."
With the rewards confirmed, Chu Guang sat down at his computer. Rather than opening the group chat immediately, he visited the official forum to locate [Crow]'s player ID.
Expecting it might take some time, he was surprised to find her ID already pinned to the forum's front page, with over a hundred replies to her post.
**"Wuwuwu, I messed up! I shouldn't have taken the risk! Please, dear developer, be merciful—I didn't mean it! Don't ban my device! Qaq"**
Ban her device?
Wasn't that a bit extreme?
Just reading the title left Chu Guang perplexed. Only after scrolling down and reading the post did he finally grasp the situation.
This player…
She truly had a unique knack for courting disaster.