Chapter 13: Angel in Blue
Chu Guang tied a tighter knot with the plastic bag and continued, "You should be thankful that you didn't walk deeper in there. This mushroom usually grows near the nests of mutant leeches."
Night Ten was stunned. "Mutant leeches?"
Chu Guang kept talking and he seemed to be stating it in a casual tone, "Mhm, juvenile mutant leeches are only as big as your palm. Except for their special mouthparts, they look no different from normal leeches. Once it reaches adulthood, it will quickly grow to more than one meter long. They can even grow up to three meters! Its method of feeding will also change. I heard that they can even swallow a living person in one bite. Of course, that’s just what I’ve heard…"
After listening to the administrator's explanation, Night Ten felt a chill run down his spine. He felt something was wrong when he was picking mushrooms, but couldn't pinpoint what it was. Now, it seems he had narrowly escaped death.
"We can’t eat them?" The expression on Gale's face was rather regretful. Looking at the mushrooms that Chu Guang had put away, he muttered, "I thought they could be used to buff us..."
"Don't think too much about it."
How can there be buffs?
Although they couldn’t be eaten, those mushrooms were the main material for making a radiation-reducing agent. Chu Guang didn't know the specific principle behind this, he had only heard about it from Old Charlie on Baker Street, but Blue Umbrella Mushrooms contained a special peptide that could alleviate and heal any non-fatal damage caused by gamma rays.
The caravan in Boulder City would buy them, and the price wasn’t low. They were usually shipped to Boulder City and sold to the factory there, but they weren’t easy to get. Few scavengers were willing to risk their lives to search for mutant leech nests in swamps, subways, or sewers.
They were already hard to find, but it was another matter entirely to find them and bring them back safely. Even if it was unavoidable, no one wanted to deal with those cannibalistic freaks. Who could have known there was a nest of mutant leeches such a short distance away?
Chu Guang felt conflicted. The good thing was that the mushrooms could be sold for a lot of money, but the drawback was that the mutant leeches weren’t easy to deal with.
"Do you remember exactly where the sewer entrance was?"
Hearing the administrator's question, Gale quickly pulled out the map and pointed to the marked location. "Right here."
Chu Guang glanced at the location on the map and committed it to memory. "I see."
...
The blue mushrooms brought back by Gale and Night Ten weighed about two kilograms.
Roughly every fifty grams could be exchanged for a chip.
Two thousand grams meant forty chips! That was almost the same amount Chu Guang had saved over the past five months. Moreover, that was just the price quoted by the recycling station on Baker Street, their actual value had to be at least more than twice that!
Chu Guang intended to sell all of the mushrooms, and then use the exchanged chips to buy some urgently needed supplies for the outpost.
"The supplies at the outpost need to be replenished, so I'll go out and grab them. You stay here. Remember to not go far. At five o'clock sharp, Little Seven will activate the elevator for you so you can return to the shelter. While I'm away, Little Seven will count the results of your work. You can ask it anything you don’t understand.”
As for the two kilograms of the Blue Umbrella Mushrooms, Chu Guang gave Gale and Night Ten a total of two hundred twenty contribution points. Two hundred were for the discovery of a mutant leech nest, and the other twenty were for the mushrooms. He really wasn’t trying to be stingy by giving so few points, he was just worried that if he gave out too many, it would encourage the others to risk going out to pick the mushrooms. They would probably be killed when that happened. Before he could find a generator that could power the Active Matter Extractor, he felt he should be cautious.
….
They had green wheat porridge for lunch. Though it was called porridge, Chu Guang felt that it was a bit more like mung bean soup without sweetness. It had no taste at all, and was purely just to fill their stomachs, but to Chu Guang's surprise, the four players gobbled it up like they were starving.
Is it that delicious?
Chu Guang had doubts about his cooking skills.
Am I actually good at cooking? It can’t be that…
Quickly finishing the meal and putting away the pots and pans, Chu Guang put out the fire and set off on the road alone. There were only four players left in the nursing home and a robot guarding them from above.
Ample Time stared at the mission board placed at the entrance of the building, lost in thought.
Night Ten asked, "What are you looking at?"
Ample Time quickly replied, "According to the Administrator, Blue Umbrella Mushrooms can be used as a raw material for the production of an anti-radiation agent, but the reward given to you for completing the mission was only twenty points. That’s the same as cutting down two trees. Do you think that’s reasonable?"
Night Ten was dazed. "Is there something wrong with that?"
Ample Time said, "Of course there is. Typically, the rewards players get from missions are proportional to the difficulty of the mission. You’ve not only unlocked a new area but also collected valuable material. Normally there would be more of a reward than that."
Gale muttered after some thought, "Then what do you think the reason is?"
Ample Time snapped his fingers. "Priority!"
"P-priority?" Night Ten was confused.
"That's right." Ample Time nodded. "Do you remember what the Administrator said earlier in the storyline? The current priority is survival!"
Did he say that? It seemed he had. Night Ten hadn’t listened carefully. In most games, he didn't read the plot and he usually skipped most of the dialogue. Although he couldn’t skip it in this game, being distracted for a few minutes had the same effect.
Ample Time continued, "So I guess the things listed on the mission board aren’t all the missions we can do. This game gives us a lot of freedom. Not only can missions be issued by NPCs, they can also be triggered by players."
Gale frowned. "What makes you say that?"
"Didn't you already receive your reward?" Ample Time replied, "Even though the generator wasn’t found, the mutants' nest was and valuable supplies were collected. My guess is that as long as our behavior meets the current needs of Shelter 404, we can earn contribution points and the value of the reward is related to the value of our actions!
"For example, building cesspits and toilets were missions released by the administrator after hearing our ideas; both Old White and I were rewarded with two hundred contribution points."
Old White nodded. "It definitely seems that way."
"I think I understand what you mean," Gale said, touching his chin, "but you can still get contribution points by completing the missions on the mission board, right?"
The points were not insignificant at all.
"That brings me to my next point," Ample Time gave a mysterious smile, "Do you remember the favorability setting that the dev told us about?"
Realization dawned on Gale's face. "I see... I understand what you’re saying."
Night Ten and Old White were still at a loss. "What do you understand?"
"Explain like I’m five?!"
Ample Time said slowly, "In simple terms, although we can earn a guaranteed reward by completing the fixed missions on the board one at a time, we can’t show our abilities. By actively triggering missions, we can better reflect our own abilities which should, in theory, improve the Administrator's evaluation of us."
Of course, these speculations were based on the fact that Wasteland Online was a fully immersive virtual reality game and assumed that the administrator’s behavior was governed by programmed logic and wasn’t arbitrary. If the artificial intelligence wasn’t as great as they imagined, their conclusion would likely be wrong.
From his current viewpoint though, the administrator's intelligence was relatively high. They hadn’t had any problems communicating with him. Ample Time even wondered if the administrator was a real person.
After understanding Ample Time's explanation, Old White touched the stubble of his chin and nodded. "This idea is pretty interesting. I think it's worth trying... What do you think we should do?"
"I'm still grappling with what to do, but my instincts tell me that it’s more important to build NPC favorability before the second round of testing than to gain contribution points. That way we can ensure that we have a higher starting point than other players in the second round."
After a slight pause, Ample Time snapped his fingers. "I propose we form a team!"
"Teaming up? Do you mean…" Night Ten was confused.
Old White nodded. "I have no objections."
Gale also nodded. "I agree."
Night Ten was dazed. "I have no objections, but can you tell me the details first?"
Ample Time explained patiently, "From now on we will be on the same team. We’ll share information and help each other out by using our strengths." Ample Time looked at Gale and Night Ten before he continued, "Gale, Night Ten, you can investigate along the side of the marsh. Pay attention to the distribution of mutant camps and the area of their activity. If you find areas that look like nests, mark them, but remember not to get too close. Avoid fighting them. We also need a safe place to get water."
Gale nodded. "Okay."
Next, Ample Time turned to Old White. "As for us, what we have to do for now is chop more wood. When I go offline in a while, I’ll look up a way we can use the wood we obtained.”
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