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Is This Really A Game? - Chapter 96

Published at 19th of May 2023 05:57:20 AM


Chapter 96

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Lucius had a long, long dream.

This time, it wasn't that he was hit by a dump truck while working part-time, but then he dreamed of playing a round of Civilization 6, and it was an enhanced version of the marathon bladder round once a year.

When he started to develop from the primitive society, he sent scouts to trample on the village frantically, and climbed and climbed along the technology tree... After climbing for thousands of rounds, he finally killed a few god-level AIs and pointed out the technological victory. But when he opened his eyes, nothing was there.

"Hey! At least wait until I finish my dream!"

Not surprisingly, if you continue to do it, it will probably be civilized space? Stretched and sat up from the bed, the bones all over his body cracked.

Lucius's heart moved, and he immediately went to the residential hall next door, found the medical examination equipment and gave himself a full body examination.

As expected, he was promoted!

【 ID: Lucius

Genetic Sequences: Managers

Level: LV.8→LV.9

——Basic attributes——

Strength: 10 → 11

Dexterity: 6

Constitution: 8

Perception: 7

Intelligence: 7 】

【 Ability: Feral Instinct 】

"Sure enough, sleep can grow my body."

Good boy, let's go to bed early from now on.

After sitting in front of the computer and confirming the electronic version of the medical examination report, Lucius dragged it into a folder for filing, stood up and stretched his arms.

With 220% of the basic strength of a normal adult male, coupled with the improvement of the "Feral instinct" attribute, Lucius feels that he is now the bravest.

"Time to go out and get something to eat."

Yes, but also give players loot. Thinking of this, Lucius hummed a little song and walked into the buffer room, put on the exoskeleton placed there, and hung the big hammer firmly behind him.

After everything was ready, he stepped on the elevator to the surface.

Wasteland time is 5:30 p.m., which is the busiest time for the outpost. Especially the bazaar at the north gate was crowded with players returning from scavenging.

Although it was snowing again in the sky, it didn't affect the lively atmosphere here at all. Now the players have developed a habit of picking up garbage or hunting trophies, first set up a stall at the north gate, and only send them to the warehouse to hand in the materials if no one buys them.

After such an operation, they can earn two copper coins more than before, and those players who have shopping needs will also come here before going to the NPC store.

"I don't know whether to say they are indifferent or powerful. One out of ten people died yesterday, but no one mourned for the dead, not even a decent funeral." Standing at the north gate, Luna looked Surprised to see these blue coats.

She found that there was no trace of sadness on their faces.

"Indifference and strength do not conflict. The world has become like this. If you are not strong, you have to be defeated by yourself before being defeated by others."

It was also the first time for Harvey to see such a blue coat, but he had seen many strange things after all, so he was only surprised.

Existence is reasonable. Besides, thinking about it from another angle, if they were the kind of weak people who indulged in sorrow, it might be another group of people standing here.

Attracted by a booth next to it, Harvey stepped forward, looked at the Split-Claw Crab legs on the iron shelf for a while, and asked curiously.

"How much is this?"

Yaya looked up at the NPC.

Although she didn't understand what he said, but she can probably guess from his gestures that he probably wants to buy her own grilled crab legs.

Yaya waved an index finger.

"A small silver coin."

She hasn't figured out how much to sell the big one, but she plans to think about it again, after all, it's not cheap to buy from the warehouse.

Do you mean a chip?

The survivor settlements in Spring City seem to be trading with chips.

"Two."

Harvey gestured with two fingers, then took out two chips from his pocket, and threw them into Yaya's outstretched hand.

However, after seeing the chips, Yaya shook his head, anxiously took out two silver coins, and shook them in front of him.

Harvey and Luna looked confused. They have been to so many places, and they have never seen such a metal coin.

Seeing that they didn't respond, Yaya sighed helplessly, and reached out to pick up two chips.

"Two pieces of plastic can only be used as one silver coin."

As she said that, she touched two chips and a silver coin to show that they were equal. Then he took out a grilled crab leg and handed it to Harvey who was standing in front of the booth.

2 chips for a grilled crab leg?! Are you crazy! It doesn't matter if it's a little bigger, this small crab leg obviously only weighs one or two kg, and the crab meat inside probably doesn't even weigh a kg.

The corners of Harvey's brows and mouth twitched, but he couldn't say anything. After all, now that he is dependent on others, it is better to avoid conflicts.

Damn it! Still hurts! In such a rural place, 2 chips can buy a lot of supplies!

Harvey didn't want to buy a second one, but he still looked at his companion and said something politely.

"Would you like some?"

Luna didn't talk nonsense, she caught half of it with her left hand, swung out the scimitar with her right hand, neatly split the crab leg into two, and shook the half in her hand.

"This one belongs to me."

"..."

Getting used to this guy's rudeness, Harvey shook his head without saying anything, and took a bite of the soft and tender crab meat.

Um. Not to mention, it's quite delicious.

It's just that the food sold at the roadside stall didn't have any condiments, and it was still far from the meal that Lucius invited him to eat the day before yesterday. And it doesn't always feel fresh...

After eating the crab meat, Luna licked the juice from the corner of her mouth, looked at the people in the market at the north gate, and suddenly said something.

"How do you think their strength is?"

Harvey thought for a while and gave a pertinent evaluation.

"Very strong. Whether it is psychological quality or various abilities, these people are much better than the blue coats I have seen."

"Especially their leaders, I'm afraid he have reached the verge of awakening... I don't understand, they are not barbarians who worship force. This is the first time I have seen a leader of a faction train himself to awakening. Could it be that he is bored sitting in command? Want to try other things?"

In the middle of speaking, Harvey suddenly noticed the intriguing expression on Luna's face, and hesitated for a moment before speaking.

"What do you want to do?"

"It's not about you anyway," Luna said bluntly, flicking her hair without concealing it, "I like strong males."

Harvey glanced at her mockingly, and then at the big girl grilling crab legs at the stall next to her.

"Look, even she is grilling crabs, I don't think that man can take a fancy to you."

Sensing Luna's unfriendly eyes, Harvey shrugged weakly, saying that he was not her opponent, made a gesture of surrender and left.

Just as the two were chatting, Lucius, carrying a sledgehammer, came out from the north gate. As soon as the players saw Manager, they immediately surrounded him with bright eyes.

Loot! Contribute points! And favorability!

Before waiting for the players to be courteous, Lucius raised his right fist majestically like a real NPC, and made a gesture of assembly. Then, he announced in a sonorous voice.

"Divide the spoils!"

"Old rules, I won't repeat them."

Walking to the trolley piled with trophies, Lucius casually picked up a rifled double-barreled shotgun, and started the work that the NPC should do——

Appraise the equipment!

"...This is an 18mm double-barreled shotgun. His owner is Bear, the leader of the Bloody Hand clan. Although he is a villain, committed evil all his life and deserved to die, he was finally sent to hell by the hammer of justice. Their weapons are innocent. A bear is carved on the wooden butt, maybe a few misspellings but it doesn't matter, the ppredatoedtors aren't cultured."

"The auction starts now, the starting price is 40 silver coins, and the highest price is 80 silver coins—"

Mosquito took the lead, and raised his hand before he finished speaking.

"80 silver!"

Lucius: "...?"

The players around who were ready to go were cursing.

"Damn!"

"It's this guy again!"

"Too fast, too fast!"

Lucius couldn't be dealt with either. Originally, he was thinking that this broken gun had nothing to offer except that the barrel was made of high-quality steel, so he randomly called out a price that was not too high or too low.

Can this be taken in seconds? But looking at the regretful expressions on the players' faces, he understood in an instant.

"Tsk, I was careless... Boss equipment is valuable for collection."

What is that called? Anyway, it's a weapon with a name!

There was a sloppy thought in his heart, but Lucius didn't take it too seriously. He is an informal man. What's more, there are five weapons of the ten captains here, and I will randomly arrange an exaggerated legend for those Cowboy Team later, isn't it too much to sell? It can be regarded as robbing the rich and helping the poor.

The pace of the auction was fast, and all fifty main weapons were sold within half an hour.

The rest of the odds and ends are 1 silver coin and 1 piece are randomly picked, and all the rest are calculated as 1 copper coin, and then pulled to the warehouse for slowly sorting.

20 of the 50 pieces of equipment were unsold, and 30 pieces were sold for a total of 971 silver. It is still the old rule to deduct 10% of the transaction tax to get 873.9 silver coins, and erase the odds of 873 silver coins!

In addition, the 29 captives were also counted as 5 silver coins per person according to the team battle reward rules, making a total of 145 silver coins.

Adding in the 21 predators veterans killed in battle, 5 predators captains, 1 Boss-level predator, and a series of dungeon branch rewards such as attacking strongholds and rescuing prisoners, the total rewards actually reached 4371 A silver coin!

In contrast, the funds raised by the auction are small. All 82 participating players can get at least 50 silver coins, and more can get 55, or even 60!

Get rich overnight! Players who died in the battle, in addition to the loot rewards, also have a special pension from Manager.

However, the amount of the pension is not high. Taking the gene sequence LV1 as an example, each level is subsidized with 1 silver coin per day, and after three days, you can get almost 3 silver coins.

LV2 is 6 silver, LV3 is 9 silver, and so on.

The money is not much, but it is better than nothing, and after three days, he will be a good man again!

"Long live Manager!"

"Cool! I have a gun now hahaha!"

"Whoa, 41 silver coins! I've never been so rich!"

"Hurry up and buy something!"

The fighting professional players cheered for a while, holding the silver coins handed out by Lucius himself, and went to spend happily.

The 8 life professional players who did not participate in the battle looked at it and cried with envy. They had known that the reward was so high, so they took the shovel and stick together.

Yaya secretly marked the big crab leg with a "Sky-high price" of 3 silver coins. It couldn't be sold just now, but it should be able to sell now.

Luna and Harvey, who were standing by and watched, looked stunned, and it took a while to swallow and communicate in a low voice.

"What are they doing?"

"Looks like an auction."

"I don't understand why it's their own loot and they have to spend money to buy it back? Shouldn't it be whoever picks it up?"

"I couldn't read it either, but I was shocked."

Harvey suddenly had a new understanding of the young ruler. Although he didn't know what method or spell he used, the art of power had been played to the extreme by him.

There is nothing admirable in asking a farmer to offer up his harvest; after all, a human being can load a rifle. But if a group of farmers are willing, even grateful, to offer the coins in their hands and buy back their harvest...

I'm afraid only demons have this ability. In any case, this is already the second time in a day that Harvey has raised his evaluation and opinion of the same person.

However, Lucius, who was rated by him in his heart, didn't care what others thought of him.

Compared with kelly from the heaven, Lucius felt that he was already a good person, at least he would not cheat the players' wallets, nor would he fool them with hidden burst rates.

Does anyone really think that more money can make players feel happy? Most of the people who think this way are because they play too few games. They have never seen the kind of game where hundreds of millions and billions of gold coins are thrown out at every turn. Players of the Liver Game feel like an ass.

Yes, Lucius has been tricked more than once, so he was very careful when designing Wasteland OL's economic system. He is very clear that he is not like those real dog planners, who can randomly develop some "Magic costumes" to absorb the super-issued currency, and then farm a bunch of bosses with overflowing values ​​​​to stimulate players to krypton gold.

Amidst the cheers of the players, Lucius waved his hand, returned to the nursing home through the north gate, and took the elevator to the underground.

The elevator to the B2 floor is in the residents' lobby on the B1 floor, and it is still locked, and there are still a few hours left to open.

Taking advantage of some free time, Lucius sat in front of the computer and updated the information he sorted out from "Blood Hand Diary" in the setting collection of the official website, for those cloud players and fun people to imagine freely.

Then Lucius collected materials on the forum for a while, looking over the posts that he didn't have time to read last night like reviewing a memorial. Some of these ideas are really good and can be considered for inclusion in the Alpha0.5 version package.

Time passed by, and finally it was two o'clock in the morning.

Seeing that it was almost time, Lucius stretched and sat up from the chair, put on the exoskeleton suit again, and carried the sledgehammer on his back. Although the possibility of the first-generation managers harming themselves is only one in ten thousand, it is better to be careful in everything.

"Popo, I'm going to go down."

Popo, who had already returned to the corner to charge, raised the camera and nodded obediently.

"Well, I know Master, be careful."

Lucius, who was about to stand on the elevator, stopped and glanced back at the wastebasket.

"What do you mean by being careful? Do you mean there's something down there? Or do you know something?"

Dumbfounded by this series of questions, Popo was stuck for a while before he said in a daze.

"I don't know... probably not?"

"Then why are you telling me to be careful?"

"Ah?! Then, that's just everyday expressions stored in the language area..."

Well.

"...You come with me."

Seeing Popo who kept her mouth shut and rolled obediently to her lap, Lucius stepped on the elevator to the B2 floor with confidence.

Not cowardly. This is purely out of an abundance of caution.

As Lucius stepped in, the two buttons B1 and B2 immediately appeared on the originally pitch-black touch screen, as well as the [ Authorized ] dialog box.

Lucius stretched out his index finger and pressed B2 without hesitation.

The door closed lightly, and as the elevator sank slightly, the door opened again in less than three seconds, and a gust of dry and refreshing air rushed in through the crack of the door. There's even a hint of heart-warming fragrance in it.

"...Air freshener?"

Lucius had a strange expression, and glanced at Popo next to him.

"You go to explore the way."

"Okay……"

The voice sounded weak, even a little aggrieved. But Popo still listened to Master's words very much, rolling the wheel and going forward.

Holding the handle of the hammer behind him with his right hand, Lucius walked forward steadily, carefully stepping into this area that is said to have been untouched for more than a century.

The floor here is very clean, without a trace of dust, and there is no creaking sound when you step on it. Not only the floor, but everything around it is so brand new that there is not even a trace of someone living there.

The elevator is located in the center of the ring hall, which is like the stage of a ring theater, and the space is more spacious than the resident hall on the B1 floor.

There are four gates in the southeast and northwest of the hall, and behind the gates is a straight main road and four fan-shaped areas divided by the main road.

There are controllable alloy doors between the adjacent partitions, which are usually opened by default, and the gates can be dropped when necessary to isolate the partition as a whole. Among them, area A is a functional area, and the facilities inside seem to be quite complicated. Lucius plans to leave it to explore later.

As for the structure of the BCD area, it is very simple. You can guess from the floor plan posted at the entrance that this is a residential area.

The densely packed doors and numbers are like pigeon cages, filling the entire corridor. It is roughly estimated that the inner area of ​​each room is only 4 to 5 square meters, which is enough for a training cabin and a table. to half of the area of ​​B1 floor.

"Is this place really inhabited?"

Lucius, who was walking in Area C, was dumbfounded. He opened a room and found that there was only a training cabin inside, and there was nothing else.

All right. There is nothing wrong with that. Maybe this is not a place for people to live in.

"...The room is a bit small, but the four-person room has been changed to a standard room, so it can be regarded as a concern for the privacy of the players."

Each division has two hundred rooms, and the rooms in the CD area are all equipped with training cabins, adding up to four hundred in total. The upper limit of the shelter's population has been directly raised from 100 to 500, which is undoubtedly good news for Lucius, who is in urgent need of labor.

With so many pits, several versions are enough! The only pity is that there may not be so many people in winter. But it doesn't matter, it will come in handy during spring plowing!

As for Area B, it is a very common configuration. There is only one bed and one foldable table in each room, and there is not even a stool.

"There should be people living here."

Lucius thought in his heart, but even though he searched all the rooms, he couldn't find a single personal item left behind. Including the supporting quilts, they are all stacked neatly, like tofu cubes. Even if you use a ruler to measure, there is no error of one millimeter.

"...If people had lived here, it would have been cleaned up."

As for? It's like destroying criminal evidence.

Just when Lucius was thinking this way, when he walked to the last room on the main road in B2 floor, he was slightly stunned.

Not only did he stop, but Popo, who was rolling in front, also stopped.

"Master, there seems to be something on the ground."

"I saw it."





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