Chu Guang tied the plastic bag shut and continued, "You should count yourselves lucky that you didn't go any deeper. This type of mushroom usually grows near the nests of mutant leeches."
Ye Shi blinked in surprise. "Mutant leeches?"
Chu Guang replied offhandedly, "Yeah. In their juvenile stage, mutant leeches are only about the size of a palm. Aside from their unique mouthparts, they look no different from normal leeches.
"Once they mature, though, their size rapidly expands past one meter, sometimes even reaching three meters. Their feeding habits change as well—supposedly, they can swallow a living person whole in a single gulp... Of course, that's only what I've heard."
Listening to the Manager's description, Ye Shi felt a sudden chill run through his entire body.
He knew something had felt off when they were picking the mushrooms, even if he couldn't put his finger on what it was at the time. Looking at it now, he had basically taken a stroll right past the gates of hell.
"Can't we eat them?" Gale Force 8 looked rather disappointed. Staring at the mushrooms Chu Guang had packed away, he muttered, "I thought they’d give us a buff."
"Don't overthink it."
*As if buffs were that easy to come by.*
There was something Chu Guang didn't say.
While the mushrooms were inedible, they were the primary raw ingredient for making anti-radiation drugs.
Chu Guang didn't know the specific science behind it either; he had merely heard about it from Old Charlie on Bet Street.
Blue Parasol mushrooms contained a special polypeptide substance that could effectively relieve and heal non-lethal damage caused by gamma radiation.
Caravans from Boulder City bought them at handsome prices, usually transporting them to Boulder City to sell to the factories there.
It was just that securing them was terribly difficult. Very few scavengers were willing to risk their lives searching swamplands, subways, or sewers for mutant leech nests.
Finding them was one problem.
Surviving long enough to bring them back was another.
Even when driven by desperation, no one wanted to tangle with those man-eating tentacles...
To think that right under their noses was a mutant leech nest.
Chu Guang's mood was a mix of joy and concern.
The good news was that the Blue Parasol mushrooms could fetch a pretty penny; the bad news was that mutant leeches were nasty business to deal with.
Salt them?
Where would he get hundreds of kilograms of salt? If he had that much salt, he'd be better off just selling the salt.
Burn them out?
The creatures usually lived in damp environments, so starting a fire would be no simple task.
"Do you remember the exact location of that sewer entrance?"
At the Manager's question, Gale Force 8 quickly pulled out his map and pointed to a marked spot. "Right here."
Chu Guang glanced at the location on the map and committed it to memory. "Got it."
...
Chu Guang estimated that the Blue Parasol mushrooms Gale Force 8 and Ye Shi had brought back weighed about two kilograms. The going rate was roughly one chip per fifty grams.
Two thousand grams meant forty chips!
That was nearly equal to all the savings Chu Guang had scraped together over the past five months.
And that was only the price offered by the recycling depot on Bet Street.
The mushrooms' actual value was at least twice that!
Chu Guang intended to sell every last one of them and use the chips to purchase desperately needed supplies for the outpost.
"The outpost needs supplies, so I'm making a trip out. You stay here, and remember not to wander far.
"At five o'clock this afternoon, Xiao Qi will open the elevator right on time for you to return to the shelter.
"While I'm gone, Xiao Qi will track your work results. If there's anything you don't understand, you can ask it as well."
As for the two kilograms of Blue Parasol mushrooms, Chu Guang awarded Gale Force 8 and Ye Shi a total of 220 contribution points.
Two hundred points were for discovering the mutant leech nest, and the remaining twenty were for the Blue Parasol mushrooms.
Awarding so little wasn't because he was stingy. Rather, he worried that giving too much would make the players greedy for rewards, prompting them to recklessly go forage for more and get themselves killed inside.
Until they found a generator to power the active substance extractor, he felt it was best to err on the side of caution.
Lunch consisted of porridge boiled from green wheat.
Calling it porridge was generous; Chu Guang felt it was more like unsweetened mung bean soup.
It possessed virtually no flavor to speak of and existed purely to fill the belly.
Yet to Chu Guang's surprise, the four players wolfed it down like starving ghosts reincarnated.
*Is it really that good?*
Chu Guang began to doubt his own culinary self-assessment.
*Could it be that I'm actually a great cook?*
*That shouldn't be possible...*
After quickly finishing the meal, Chu Guang packed up the pots and bowls, put out the fire, and set off alone. The sanatorium was left with only the four players and an AI robot idling upstairs.
Fang Chang stared at the quest board planted at the entrance of the sanatorium, lost in thought.
Ye Shi asked from the side, "What are you looking at?"
Fang Chang said, "Judging by the Manager's attitude, those Blue Parasol mushrooms aren't useless. Yet the quest only rewarded you with twenty contribution points, which is about the same as chopping down two trees... Do you think that makes sense?"
Ye Shi blinked. "Is there a problem with that?"
Fang Chang replied, "Of course there is. Normally, the rewards players get from a quest should correlate positively with its difficulty. You guys not only unlocked a new dungeon area, but also harvested high-value materials. Logically speaking, the reward shouldn't be so measly."
Gale Force 8 pondered for a moment. "Then why do you think it is?"
Fang Chang snapped his fingers. "Priority!"
"Pri-priority?" Ye Shi stammered.
"Exactly," Fang Chang nodded. "Do you remember what the Manager said in the earlier dialogue? The top priority right now is survival!"
*Did he?*
*Maybe.*
Ye Shi hadn't been listening very closely. In most games, he skipped the cutscenes entirely by holding down Ctrl. Even though he couldn't skip scenes here, zoning out for a few minutes came down to the same thing.
Fang Chang continued, "...So my guess is that the quests on the board aren't the only ones available. This game gives us tremendous autonomy. Quests aren't just handed out by NPCs—we can trigger them proactively."
Gale Force 8 frowned. "Your reasoning?"
"Haven't you already received your reward?" Fang Chang said. "Even though you didn't find a generator, you discovered a mutant nest and collected valuable resources.
"So my deduction is that as long as our actions satisfy the current needs of Shelter 404, we can earn contribution points. Furthermore, the amount of the reward is positively correlated with the value created by our actions!
"For instance, building the cesspit and latrine was a quest issued after the Manager took our suggestion. Fleeting White Horse and I both got two hundred contribution points."
Fleeting White Horse nodded. "Seems like it."
"I think I get what you mean," Gale Force 8 said, stroking his chin. "But can't we also earn contribution points by completing the quests on the board?"
And the points weren't low either.
"That brings me to my second point." A mysterious smile appeared on Fang Chang's face. "Do you remember the favorability system the developer told us about?"
A look of realization dawned on Gale Force 8's face. "I see... I get your point."
Ye Shi and Fleeting White Horse remained utterly perplexed.
"What did you two figure out?"
"Spell it out, will you!"
Fang Chang said leisurely, "Put simply, routinely doing the fixed quests on the board guarantees baseline rewards, but it doesn't showcase our capabilities. By contrast, actively triggering quests highlights our initiative! Theoretically, it should boost the Manager's impression of us."
Naturally, all these deductions were based on the premise that Wasteland OL was a "completely real" immersive virtual reality game, where the Manager's actions were governed by program logic rather than scripted rails.
If his artificial intelligence wasn't as advanced as they thought, this hypothesis might well fall apart.
For now, though, the Manager's intelligence appeared remarkably high. Normal conversation was entirely seamless; Fang Chang had even begun to wonder if the guy was roleplayed by an actual human.
Having grasped Fang Chang's explanation, Fleeting White Horse stroked his stubbled chin and nodded. "That line of thinking is pretty interesting. It's worth a shot... So what do you think we should do?"
"I'm still figuring out the specifics, but my gut tells me that accumulating NPC favorability before the second closed beta is far more crucial than just racking up contribution points. That will ensure we have a higher 'starting point' than other players when the second test rolls around."
Pausing, Fang Chang snapped his fingers. "I propose we form a party!"
"Forming a party means..." Ye Shi asked, puzzled.
Fleeting White Horse nodded. "No objections from me."
Gale Force 8 nodded as well. "I'm in."
Ye Shi blurted out, "I'm fine with it too, but could someone explain the details of this party to me?"
Fang Chang patiently explained, "Simply put, from now on, we're a team. We share intelligence and help one another. After that, what we need to do is play to our respective strengths."
Fang Chang looked toward Gale Force 8 and Ye Shi and continued, "Gale Force 8, Ye Shi, you two scout along the lake shore of Wetland Park. Pay attention to mutant distribution and movement patterns, and mark any areas suspected of being nests... But remember, don't get too close under any circumstances, and especially avoid entering combat. We need a safe water source."
Gale Force 8 nodded. "Got it."
Next, Fang Chang looked at Fleeting White Horse. "As for us, what we need to do right now is chop down more wood.
"Once we log off later, I'll go online to do some research, and tomorrow we'll figure out a way to put all these stockpiled logs to good use!"
Chapter 13