[Quest: Devil Moth Hunt (Repeatable)]
[Briefing: Devil moths have nested in the greenhouse ruins. Suspected items like fusion batteries or emergency reactors are located there, which is precisely what we need.]
[Requirement: Bring back 1 devil moth carcass]
[Reward: 1 silver coin]
——
[Quest: Devil Moth Cocoon (Repeatable)]
[Briefing: Devil moth cocoons are valuable resources. We can weave fabric from their silk to make clothes or armor. And word has it the pupae inside might be edible?]
[Requirement: Bring back 1 devil moth cocoon]
[Reward: 5 silver coins]
——
[Quest: Clear the First Floor of the Greenhouse Ruins]
[Briefing: We need to forge a path to the underground of the greenhouse ruins to safely retrieve the "treasures" there.]
[Requirement: Shut the gate on the first floor of the greenhouse to cut off connection to the other levels...]
……
At dusk.
Leading a group of players who had locked horns with the devil moth nest, Brother Mole sang a victory tune as they pulled five full carts of spoils, heading back from the direction of the greenhouse ruins.
"The blissful sparrow~ sleeps naked on the antenna pole~~~"
"Lard bones, stewed and braised, I forgot to wash the eggs again~~~"
"Fuck, what the hell are you singing?"
"Yeah, what kind of garbage is that? A brother of ours just died, and we have to see another off in a bit! Can you be a little serious!"
"Oshiete yo, oshiete yo~~~"
"Damn it, someone sew this mole's mouth shut!"
"I'll do it, I'm good at that."
"Noooo! I've achieved merits for the devs! I've bled for the base! You can't do this to me~~~"
As it turned out, devil moths weren't inexhaustible. If once wasn't enough, then twice; if twice wasn't enough, then a third, a fourth time.
For two consecutive days.
Following Brother Mole's strategy guide, eighteen players formed a "5-3-1 composition" and split into two squads to launch alternating assaults, slaying a vast number of devil moths in the narrow passageways.
Some were burned with fire, while others were impaled with melee weapons.
Interestingly, these devil moths didn't seem to fully inherit typical moth behavior—or perhaps they had evolved a peculiar hive-mind trait.
Once their population in the area dropped to a certain threshold, the insects abruptly abandoned their suicidal frontal attacks. Instead, they fell back into their nest to protect the larvae and the cocoons incubating adults, launching ambushes under the cover of shadows against any targets entering the nest.
This had some impact on the players' routine tactics.
In Brother Mole's view, the damn devs had probably realized they were exploiting a bug to farm mobs and tweaked the server parameters.
However, it wasn't a major issue.
The remaining devil moths on the first floor were no longer enough to pose a lethal threat.
With Strength-type players still serving as the frontline and Agility-types dishing out damage from behind, the group quickly harvested the devil moth cocoons near the passageway exit, gathered the moth carcasses nearby, and headed home laden with rich spoils.
Although the toll was one dead and one severely crippled, compared to their haul from this trip, the losses were completely negligible.
Over a hundred devil moth carcasses were piled like a small mountain, along with more than a hundred soccer-ball-sized cocoons. Had another swarm of devil moths not surged up behind them, they could have carried away even more.
Add in the small amount of spirit leaves harvested from the planting units, and their total quest earnings reached 841 silver coins!
An average of 41 silver per person!
Of course, when splitting the payout, it couldn't possibly be an even split—lives and equipment durability were costs. Even so, each person was guaranteed to receive at least 33 silver.
This felt vastly better than firing bricks.
……
The group passed by the east gate.
Wu Tiefu and several locals, who had just finished exchanging supplies at the outpost and were walking out, happened to spot the devil moth carcasses and pupae piled high on the wooden carts. Shock washed over their faces.
They naturally knew what these creatures were.
Especially in summer, during the season when spirit leaves grew most lushly, these things were practically the Grim Reaper of the wasteland. Wherever they swept through, not even an intact corpse was left behind.
Yet why had these insects appeared in Qingquan City?
And where was there a field of spirit leaves?
In this cursed weather, several degrees below zero, did the moths here not even need to hibernate?
"They can even defeat devil moths..."
"Unbelievable. How did they do it?"
"They came from the east... There's a devil moth nest in the eastern district."
"We'd better steer clear of it."
A few tribesmen carrying ram horn potatoes on their shoulders murmured quietly. But as the clan leader, Wu Tiefu was thinking about something else entirely.
Journeying all the way from the northern part of River Valley Province, they had fought countless perilous battles just to survive.
In the most harrowing of those fights, while escaping the guns of a slave trader's hunting party, his father and uncle had both perished in the clash.
Of the more than fifty able-bodied men the tribe once had, barely twenty-some remained; the rest were elderly, weak, women, children, and unweaned infants.
Now that powerful figures were willing to shelter them, it was time to seize the moment and recuperate.
However, the current dilemma was that, after consecutive catastrophic losses, the women capable of bearing children in the tribe far outnumbered the fertile men, and many of them shared blood ties.
Endogamy in small tribes was a headache-inducing problem. For the health and strength of newborn infants, his clan needed fresh blood.
And these formidable warriors seemed to be the optimal choice.
Recalling his long conversation with the tribal elders the night before, Wu Tiefu didn't utter a single word on the way back.
After instructing his clansmen to store the traded provisions, he returned alone to the outpost and found the ruler here outside the entrance of the sanatorium.
"My Lord."
Chu Guang glanced at him.
"What is it?"
Wu Tiefu lowered his head, speaking in a muffled, rumbling voice.
"I would like to borrow some seeds from you."
Borrow seeds?
A novelty. You nomads actually know how to farm?
Finding it rather amusing, Chu Guang smiled and said, "Unfortunately, we don't have seeds either, so I'm afraid I can't help with that. Besides, with snow this heavy outside, the ground froze long ago. Even if you got seeds, I doubt you could plant anything."
Wu Tiefu scratched the back of his head.
"No, you might have misunderstood me. The seeds I want to borrow... aren't that kind of seed, but that kind of seed."
"What this kind or that kind?" Chu Guang frowned and looked at him. "What are you trying to say? Stop beating around the bush."
Not daring to equivocate, Wu Tiefu hurried to explain.
"That is... the kind for breeding humans."
Hearing this, Chu Guang nearly choked on his own spit.
What in the world?
Had he misheard or misunderstood?
What the hell was "breeding humans"?!
Noticing the shift in Chu Guang's expression, Wu Tiefu was taken aback, unable to grasp why the lord reacted so strongly.
Nevertheless, he continued to humble himself and pleaded in an earnest tone:
"Our tribe recently endured a major battle, leaving our population depleted. We need fresh blood. We dare not presume to ask for your lineage; we only hope you will nod and grant permission for the unmarried young women of our clan to stay in your camp for a few days.
"We will not have you do this favor for nothing. As compensation, we are willing to offer a camel pelt and a dagger to the father of every newborn."
Put that plainly, Chu Guang finally understood what this guy meant.
Thinking about it, how could tribals have any concept of modern propriety or moral scruples?
For thriving large tribes, besides unions within the tribe, they could raid other clans for slaves to propagate offspring. Small tribes with dwindling numbers could only attach themselves to the strong and obtain fresh blood from suzerain powers.
"I understand your plight, but I cannot help you with this," Chu Guang said with a solemn face. "We are a respectable game... cough, I mean, our customs are different from yours. I can consider other kinds of help, but definitely not this."
Besides, even if he wanted to help, it wasn't possible.
Chu Guang had read the incubation pod's manual before, and remembered clearly that the genetic material of these clones was virtually incapable of "hitting the jackpot."
They were never designed for normal reproduction in the first place; they were merely "vessels" for the players' conscious avatars, "products" manufactured by incubation pods.
Especially the Mutant sequence: its genetic code couldn't stably pass down to the next generation at all, and due to chromosomal anomalies, the reproductive functionality was simply castrated altogether.
Furthermore, Wasteland OL was a casual, lighthearted game.
Without a second thought, Chu Guang decisively refused on behalf of the players.
"Yóuxì?"
Wu Tiefu was utterly bewildered, not understanding what this lord meant by that word.
However, looking at his expression, he didn't seem pleased with the proposal.
Thinking about it, wanderers like them came from the wilderness after all.
Even if solely out of concern for disease, this leader would never permit the robust young laborers of his own clan to squander their vigorous vitality on outsider women.
"It was presumptuous of me."
With a face full of regret and shame, Wu Tiefu lowered his head. After offering a sincere apology, he turned and took his leave under the curious gazes of the surrounding players.
The players whispered among themselves.
"What are they talking about?"
"No idea."
"Farming! I heard the Administrator mention 'farming'! I know that word!"
"All your damn brain thinks about is farming."
……
Late at night.
The locals, having set up their camp, lit a bonfire in the center.
The flames flickered amidst the snow.
Gathered around the bonfire, the refugees played flutes crafted from animal bones and sang folk songs with lilting, indistinct lyrics. They shared murky broth and blackened flatbreads, celebrating the end of their journey and praying for blessings upon the newborns.
Though curious, the players didn't approach; they merely watched from a distance on the enclosure wall.
"What tune are they playing?"
"Never heard it before. Probably the BGM for Alpha 0.5. Didn't I say the new version would likely focus on developing NPC interaction systems? Still, gotta hand it to the dev team, they're pretty badass—even the refugees of the wasteland have their own culture."
"That bone flute they're using is pretty neat. I'll see if I can buy one tomorrow to check it out."
"What if it's made of human bone? You gonna put your mouth on that?"
"Holy shit, does your mind really have to go somewhere that twisted?"
"Just a reasonable analysis. I heard some African tribes make their parents' bones into musical instruments after they pass away."
"Thanks, I feel truly blessed by that filial piety."
The players weren't the only ones curious.
Looking out from the third floor of the sanatorium, Chu Guang also wore an intrigued expression.
He hadn't expected these refugees to possess their own distinct tribal culture.
These lore details could be updated on the official website to help the cloud players pass the time and satisfy their cravings.
He just didn't know what to call these people yet.
Chu Guang thought for a moment and decided to give them a name in a while, maybe make a banner or totem for them.
"This tune is actually pretty nice."
"Would you like me to record it, Master?"
"Can you record from this far away?"
"There is a technology called laser eavesdropping! Even across great distances, as long as a beam of light is projected over, audio can be recorded from the object's vibrational frequency."
"You can even do that?!"
"Within several hundred meters, of course I can! And I can even perform noise reduction on the audio!"
"...Then record it."
Adding it to the original soundtrack album in the official website's database wouldn't be bad either—consider it a survey of local customs across the wasteland.
After midnight.
Carrying Xiao Qi, Chu Guang returned to the vault, then opened the system to check his Administrator Allowance.
Over these nearly two weeks, he had actually accumulated 222 points.
"Two high-grade blind boxes, two intermediate blind boxes, and two beginner ones... Might as well open them right away."
Conveniently, he was almost out of lollipops anyway.
There wasn't much point in hoarding points; there were daily active quests every day. Now that the player count had risen, with good luck he could save up ten to twenty points a day, and even with bad luck, seven or eight.
Chu Guang reached out and tapped the draw button a few times.
Pale blue light flickered.
A wall on one side of the resident hall trembled slightly. As the alloy door slid open, the rewards rolled from the blind boxes were sent out along the conveyor belt.
The two beginner blind boxes yielded a 500-gram bag of white granulated sugar and a 500-gram bag of salt; the intermediate blind boxes yielded a box of antibiotics and a healing injection.
Overall, not bad at all. In fact, Chu Guang himself was a little surprised by his good luck. Although no stat-boosting injections dropped, the sugar, salt, and medical supplies were all top-notch items.
As for the high-grade blind boxes...
To be honest, they were a bit of a letdown.
"A mechanical compound bow with a sight. Seems to have an electric motor mounted on it, and it can take a battery. Looks like it can do a charged shot? But it didn't come with dedicated arrows?"
He didn't know archery, so this thing could only be handed off to the players.
"And what's this... a grenade?"
Chu Guang picked up a silvery-white sphere from the conveyor belt, but searched for ages without finding a pull ring.
Tossing it lightly in his hand to gauge its weight, Chu Guang really couldn't figure out how this thing worked. He glanced around, wanting to find a target to see if throwing it at someone would hurt.
Apparently unable to watch any longer, Xiao Qi, squatting quietly nearby, offered a meek whisper of a reminder.
"Master..."
"That thing isn't used like that."
Chapter 110