Thanks for Nature's Bounty

On the way back, Yin Fang held the holographic tape tightly in both hands with a solemn expression, as if cradling his own child. His right hand kept rubbing over it again and again, practically polishing it to a shine. *Holy crap...* *Thank god I memorized the passcode.* Chu Guang found the sight so painful to behold that he turned his face away, looking like that meme of the old man squinting at a phone on the subway. Yet at that exact moment, Yin Fang's eyes suddenly lit up as he turned to him. "If I bring this back, do you think the Academy would let me off the hook? You can keep the box. I won't ask for a thing." Chu Guang rolled his eyes at him. "I show you a little courtesy, and you take me for a sucker?" Yin Fang froze. With an effortless reach, Chu Guang plucked the holographic tape right from his grasp. "You know, the fact that I haven't silenced you permanently already means I'm treating you damn well." Seeing the young man's face turn pale, Chu Guang didn't keep terrorizing him. He gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder with a smile. "Do you know what I ran into the first time I came to this world... cough, I mean, the first time I woke up?" Yin Fang swallowed hard, his voice trembling slightly. "What did you run into...?" "A dog with two heads. Looked like it had climbed straight out of hell just to welcome me," Chu Guang said casually as he slipped the holographic tape into his pocket. "If I'd been just a second slower back then, I'd already be dead. In fact, I realized later that if I had run east or north at that moment, I'd have been just as dead. Surviving was pure luck, and I cherish this life of mine. So take my advice: don't make me see you as a threat." West was the lake—a dead end. North led straight into marauders, and east headed directly into the mutants' cooking pots—both fates worse than death. Even now, looking back, Chu Guang couldn't help breaking into a cold sweat. Yin Fang opened his mouth, wearing a completely dazed look. Chu Guang ignored him. Folding his arms, he closed his eyes to rest, mentally sorting through the information retrieved from the tape and planning how he would edit the footage to post on the official website later. The few players sitting in the back of the truck exchanged glances, looking utterly bewildered, like people who had just spent hours watching a foreign film without subtitles. Spring curled his finger at Brother Battlefield, signaling him to lean in, and whispered, "How do you think we should hint to the Administrator that he owes us a reward?" Brother Battlefield looked totally blank. "Dunno... just ask directly?" Neither felt bold enough to speak up first. Just then, I'm the Darkest, who had stayed quiet the entire time, spoke up. "Lord Administrator! May we ask if our mission is complete?" Looking up to meet several pairs of expectant eyes, Chu Guang realized he seemed to have forgotten to hand out the payout. Keeping his majestic expression unchanged, he nodded calmly. "You did well. Very good work, all of you." After a brief thought, Chu Guang decided to toss the players a bone. He selected a pre-edited quest reward on his VM and tapped send. [Notification: Hidden Side Quest Triggered.] [Reward: 10 silver coins, 100 contribution points] As for the hibernation pods on the truck, evaluating that salvage was the warehouse keeper's job. Chu Guang wasn't about to calculate what that junk was worth for them. Seeing the pop-up on their VM screens, the players' faces instantly lit up with excitement. Never mind the ten silver coins—just running through some plot gave a hundred contribution points! This was awesome! Seeing them so happy made Chu Guang feel good too. If only everyone in the wasteland could be as lovely as his players. The truck continued rolling toward Changjiu Farm. Just then, a sharp crack of gunfire echoed from far ahead. Bullets zipped past the truck, one striking the front windshield. "Contact!" "Marauders!" There were quite a few of them on the opposing side. That volley had at least thirty shots, but the attackers were clearly amateurs. Their gear was garbage, and firing from such a distance meant not a single person on the truck was hit. The player driving was a tough customer himself. Seeing the bullets coming from the front, he didn't panic in the slightest. With a smooth tug of the steering wheel, he expertly drove the truck's nose into a snowbank. While protecting the engine from taking hits, he yanked the handbrake, using the cushion of snow to bring the vehicle to a halt. Grabbing his rifle, he leaped out of the cab. "Bolt-action guys stay back! Brothers with assault rifles, follow me! We'll flank them!" "Awoo!" "Coming, coming!" Seeing an opportunity to rack up merits, the players' eyes practically glowed green. Grabbing their weapons, they tumbled out of the truck, leaving only Commander Spring behind in the truck bed. He wanted to charge too, but all he had was a Decurion pistol. At this range, he couldn't hit anything, and charging too close risked dropping his gear. Thinking fast on his feet, he shouted at the top of his lungs, "Go get 'em! I'll guard the base!" Saying that, he fired a symbolic shot forward, not caring whether it hit anything. At the very least, he counted as entering combat. Bullets zipped by overhead. Yin Fang sat up in the truck bed clutching his head, scanning the surroundings in sheer panic. "What's going on?!" Could it be the Academy pursuing them?! "Minor incident, don't panic." Chu Guang gripped his hammer with his right hand, but after getting a clear look at the enemies ahead, he curled his lip, released the hammer, and grabbed his Gauss rifle instead. The magazine was loaded with replicated ammo. Its armor penetration was a bit questionable, but against cannon fodder like this, it was more than enough... ... Meanwhile, behind a snowdrift three hundred meters ahead of the truck, about thirty men clad in dark blue uniforms lay flat. They all held uniform pipe rifles, looking at first glance like Decurions of the Legion, but not a single one had a squad under him. Their faces were crooked, haggard, and malnourished. A bare-faced man with tattoos held a rolled-up sheet of iron like a megaphone, shouting loudly from behind cover. "Listen up, you over there! See our uniforms? You're surrounded by the Legion! Be smart and drop your weapons to surrender! Otherwise, what awaits you is the Legion's wrath!" He shouted for a long time, but there was no response. The other side acted as though they hadn't heard a thing. Bullets continued whizzing over their heads or slapping into their cover. A man with a mohawk turned nervously toward the bald leader beside him, panic in his eyes. "Boss! These guys... aren't easy to handle!" Their morale-breaking psychological assault hadn't worked at all! In fact, it felt like the megaphone shout had only made the other side return fire even harder. The bald man cursed and smacked him upside the head. "Useless piece of crap! What the hell are you scared of?! Counting the driver, they only have nine people! We've got thirty-two guns—we can't take them down? Fire! Don't let them get away!" With that, he added another line. "And don't kill all of them, damn it! Keep a couple hostages—we still need to shake down their settlement for ransom!" The bald man's name was Tu, originally a marauder active in the central region of River Valley Province. As for how he ended up in the southernmost reaches of the province, that was a long story. The Legion had been fighting against the people of the Great Rift Valley in the north for a full year, and things hadn't been going smoothly. A few days ago, they suffered a catastrophic defeat. General Klaas's forces were decimated, wounded, or scattered, collapsing like an avalanche. Refugees fleeing from the north claimed the Legion's remnants were like locusts, leaving nothing alive in their wake, so terrifying that even mutants steered clear of them. Naturally, Tu hadn't believed that nonsense. He figured the idiot was half out of his mind with fear, spewing gibberish to stay alive, so Tu had him bled and thrown into a pot to go with his booze. The Legion? Ha! Weren't they just losers defeated by the Great Rift Valley? If they showed up, they'd just be delivering gear to him! Yet Tu likely never expected that on the third day after bragging to his boys about turning the Legatus's skull into a chamber pot, Legion deserters really did show up in the small town outside his doorstep. Not many came—just nine Decurions, without a single clone slave. Perhaps the artillery shells from the Great Rift Valley had driven them mad, or maybe their own side's bombardment had done it. Either way, they were out for blood, shooting twice at anyone on sight without a word. With over a hundred brothers under his command, Tu naturally didn't fear them. He led his men to surround them, and sure enough, they wiped out the deserters before long. However, something that left Tu utterly dumbfounded happened: with over a hundred men fighting nine, the casualties turned out to be an even one-for-one trade! Enraged, he executed the sole prisoner they managed to capture on the spot, forgetting all about ransoms! Two days later, another wave of deserters arrived. This time there were a few more Decurions—twelve of them—bringing along seventeen or eighteen clone slaves. Unlike the previous batch of lunatics, they didn't shoot everyone on sight; instead, they picked a survivor settlement and took it over directly. That settlement had been paying protection money to Tu! Watching his meal ticket vanish, Tu naturally couldn't stand for it and led his men to surround them again. That fight proved disastrous: a full third of his men were wiped out. If the deserters hadn't run out of ammunition, Tu's gang might have lost entirely. This time, Tu was genuinely terrified. He finally understood the horror of those locusts. In less than a week, thirty to forty of his brothers had died, and the wounded were countless. Even as raiders living by plunder, they couldn't endure such absurd attrition. Upon hearing that more Legion deserters were coming, Tu was scared out of his wits. This time he didn't even dare fight; he gathered his inner circle, packed his bags, and fled south. After a grueling journey where half his followers deserted along the way, they finally found a survivor settlement that looked quite prosperous. However, the people here didn't look like easy targets. The soldiers standing on the perimeter walls all held uniform rifles, and smoke never stopped rising from the compound. All they could see were about a hundred people living outside; no one knew how many were inside. Tu didn't act rashly. He didn't even dare get too close. He found high ground to the north and watched the base through binoculars. After waiting for two whole days, just as his brothers were growing restless, they finally caught an opportunity to strike. A truck headed toward the abandoned urban district to the north, carrying only a few people. Without hesitation, Tu seized the moment, leading his men to ambush the route on their way back, aiming to wipe them out in one go. To Tu's surprise, things didn't go as smoothly as planned. After taking the opening volley, the targets showed none of the expected panic; they even detached a squad to flank his position. Right at that moment, something nearby seemed to explode with a sharp *crack*, frightening Tu just as he was about to lean out from cover to shoot. "Fuck, what the hell was—" Tu whipped his head around, and what he saw instantly chilled his blood. The head of one of his men looked like it had been hit by an artillery shell—blown entirely apart, leaving only a lone stump of a neck spurting blood endlessly. Before he could process what had happened, another explosive crack sounded nearby. This brother met an even grimmer end: a gaping hole was blasted through both him and his cover. He convulsed on the ground for a moment before choking out his final breath. Now it wasn't just Tu who was stunned. The marauders around him were equally petrified, momentarily forgetting to shoot. "...What kind of weapon is that?!" "It's the guy on the truck!" "Fuck! A Gauss rifle?! How do they have a Gauss rifle!" Marauders had heard rumors of Gauss rifles. While they didn't understand the underlying science, they knew the weapon could punch through power armor in a single shot—better than the Legion's anti-materiel rifles. Hearing it was a Gauss rifle, everyone panicked, not daring to poke their heads out to return fire. Yet the more they cowered, the more perilous their situation became. The marauder with the mohawk looked toward his boss, his voice full of dread. "Boss, let's pull back!" As long as the green hills lasted, there would always be firewood to burn. If they kept fighting, they might get wiped out entirely. Four-legged sheep were hard to find, but two-legged ones were everywhere. If they couldn't chew through this survivor settlement, they could always move on to the next. Tu still hesitated. Reason told him to retreat, but he couldn't bear to let the fat sheep slip through his fingers. Even against a Gauss rifle, they still held the advantage in numbers. As long as he detached a squad to hold them while circling the rest in close— Just as the thought crossed his mind, gunfire erupted from another direction, followed by a spray of bullets tearing into their exposed backs. Caught completely off guard, several marauders in the rear died screaming. Shocked, Tu turned to look back, only to see a squad charging in from the direction of Yumu District. And quite a few of them too! A good ten or more! "Boss! Their reinforcements are here!" "Shut your damn beak, do I need you to tell me that?! Fuck!" Alarmed and enraged, Tu hastily diverted some men toward the west to halt the approaching reinforcements. For the life of him, he couldn't comprehend how these people had reinforced so quickly. It had only been ten minutes since the first shot! Even reacting should have taken longer than that! The tide turned in an instant. The two forces formed a pincer from east and west, trapping the marauders on a gentle north-south slope! With enemies on both sides, using the reverse slope on either end meant getting hammered from the other. Moments later, several more men dropped, and several others were blasted to bits by the Gauss rifle. In less than ten minutes, their casualties approached thirty percent. How could this rabble muster the courage to keep fighting? Tu could no longer control his subordinates. The men abandoned their positions and broke into a mad sprint northward. Yet in both stamina and physical conditioning, they fell far short of players who ate three square meals a day. Especially in the eyes of the players, these fleeing marauders looked like walking silver coins, contribution points, and regional reputation! This was an encounter battle triggered near Changjiu Farm—granting one or two hundred regional reputation points wouldn't be excessive, right? The benevolent and generous Administrator was right on the scene. Even if that stingy dog planner A Guang was tightfisted, Lord Dawn, with server-wide administrative privileges, certainly wouldn't skimp on such meager rewards! Watching their retreating backs, the pursuing players were like hungry wolves with eyes glowing green, howling as they gave chase. "Don't run!" "Drop your weapons and you won't be killed!" "Hands on your heads, get down!" Over this period, some veteran players had picked up a few words the NPCs could understand. Through their jumbled shouts, several marauders actually understood, dropping their weapons and squatting on the ground with their hands behind their heads. Throughout the entire skirmish, the players suffered zero fatalities and three wounded—all minor injuries. One player had simply run too hard, tripped over a root buried in the snow, and banged his nose. In reality, that would have hurt for ages, but in the game, ignoring it caused no harm at all. As for the marauders, their outcome was miserable: a full eleven dead and twenty-six captured. After handing out rewards of fifty silver coins, fifty contribution points, and a hundred regional reputation to each player who took part in the fight, Chu Guang instructed the cheering players to escort the prisoners to the open ground before Changjiu Farm's north gate, making them squat with hands behind their heads. Walking up to the captives accompanied by two guards, Chu Guang glanced at their dark blue coats and asked, "Are you with the Legion? Who is your commanding officer?" Tu, bruised and swollen from his fall, tremblingly started to raise his hand, but before he could speak, the lackey beside him stammered nervously, "N-no, we aren't, my lord." So they were just ordinary marauders. Understanding dawned on Chu Guang. He continued inspecting them. "And those uniforms? Where did you get them?" Squatting nearby, Tu hurriedly spoke up. "The Legion in the north suffered a defeat. Word is that General Klaas, commander of the expeditionary force, was executed by the people of the Great Rift Valley. Legion deserters fled either west or south, killing anyone they saw like locusts. Our uniforms and guns were scavenged from those Decurion deserters." The uniforms had proven very useful. Especially further north, many survivors took one look at the dark blue coats, panicked, and ran away. Tu was bewildered too—why weren't these people afraid at all? *The Legion lost?* Chu Guang was surprised, but not shocked. Such heavy snow was naturally harsher on an invading force with extended supply lines. In the general's shoes, he would have considered launching a decisive battle before conditions worsened, settling the outcome once and for all—retreating home in defeat or moving into enemy territory in victory. Vannus's appearance had further corroborated his guess that those forces could no longer maintain the offensive. What Chu Guang hadn't anticipated was how utterly the expeditionary force had collapsed, to the point that General Klaas himself was slain. With Legion remnants rampaging everywhere, even marauders were forced south. This winter was going to be rough... Seeing Chu Guang sink into thought, Old Luka assumed he was uncertain how to handle the captives. He stepped forward and suggested in a low voice, "My lord, if you are undecided on how to handle them, perhaps you might consider my advice." "Speak." "We need hands for labor right now. Killing them outright would be a waste. Better to put them to hard labor, and come spring, we can decide whether to keep them or sell them off to the mines in Red River Town." Not a bad idea. Chu Guang nodded. However, there was still an issue. "The guard force is stretched thin. What if someone tries to escape?" Old Luka continued, "That's actually simple to solve. Mix the new captives with the old ones, two and two to a cell. If one goes missing, hang the other three." Chu Guang's eyes lit up. "That's a good idea. How did you come up with that?" Luka gave a slightly embarrassed smile, bowing his head respectfully. "My lord, it is nothing unusual... Many slave-holding survivor settlements do the same." Well then. Looks like he had been too merciful. Chu Guang let out a quiet sigh, then looked back at the marauders. Putting on a stern expression, he looked down at them and said, "I intended to hang you all from the gallows, but killing captives is not the way of justice." Looking at the trembling prisoners, he continued, "Starting today, you will undergo reform through labor and strive to become useful components of society, civilization, and humanity." Without another glance at them, Chu Guang turned to Old Luka. "I leave them to you." Old Luka bowed respectfully. "Yes, my lord." ... Official Website: [Announcement: Intelligence on the Academy faction updated, linking Vault 117 and the Great Rift Valley. Version 0.9 is in development. Look forward to new gameplay features!] [Today's Recommended Menu: The Lord Administrator doesn't know what to eat today either, so he's leaving it up to you.] [Settlement System Announcement: Marauder activity detected north of Changjiu Farm (Prosperity +10)] Jieyan: "Wait, why did prosperity increase when barbarian activity appeared?" Fang Chang: "Because those guys are too weak—no different from delivering free kills. Honestly, I think ten points is too little. It's probably factoring in the impact of marauder activity on local security and immigrant influx." Ye Shi: "Thanks for nature's bounty. (funny face)" Jieyan: "I see! As expected of Brother Fang Chang, I never would've thought of that. Awesome planner!" Fang Chang: "...?" Ye Shi: "Pfft." Construction Site Youth and Bricks: "Boss Crow, why haven't you been selling mushrooms lately?!" Yaya: "Where am I supposed to find mushrooms in this freezing weather?! None left, none until spring! QAQ" Makka Pakka: "Damn it! My life is pitch black." Cut the Crap: "+1, I'm gonna die without Boss Crow's mushroom soup." Yaya: "I-is it really that serious?" Sisi: "Don't buy it, you're gonna get scammed like that." Tail: "Eep! How did Sisi know Tail was thinking about how to trick unemployed Boss Crow into wearing a maid outfit and pouring wine for Tail while calling me Master?! ∑(°Д°ノ)ノ" Sisi: "...?" Tengteng: "?" Ye Shi: "Pardon my ignorance, but is this content I get to see without paying? (funny face)" Elaina: "@Mole on the Run from the Canyon, you know what to do (nosebleed)" Yaya: "I'm gonna kill you guys. ^o^" After returning to the shelter, Chu Guang browsed the official website, paying particular attention to the raid progress on the entrance of Vault 117. Brother Mole's side was doing great, teaming up with Mosquito to develop a cheesy strat: finding an Agility-type newbie to pull aggro, baiting the monster up, and focusing fire to take it down. Monsters in *Wasteland OL* had no leash range limit. For creatures without a fixed lair, in theory, as long as you were slippery enough, they would chase you to the ends of the earth. They had already used this strategy to take down two Crawlers! Brother Mole assumed he had found an exploit and hadn't dared explain it too clearly on the forum. What he didn't know was that the VMs recorded their communication logs and discreetly uploaded them to the cloud. Combining that with their movement routes, Chu Guang didn't even need Xiao Qi's help to figure it out. Aside from Brother Mole, the other active closed-beta player on the forum today was the "Luck King," Brother Spring. The guy had scavenged ten hibernation pods in good condition, netting seven hundred silver coins. Splitting it among his three-man team gave each of them 233.3 silver. That wasn't even counting their earnings from the subsequent skirmish and story progression. Beyond that, Brother Spring made a separate post shilling Mosquito's "Steel Nail 1.0," hailing it as a godly melee weapon. "Brothers, trust me, Mosquito comes through once in a while. I swear, I've never seen a melee weapon more useful than this! Back when the Crawler tackled me and was about to snap my neck, I clenched my fist without hesitation, and *bang*—a hole went straight through the Crawler's skull! Simple, brutal, one-hit kill! I nominate it as the meta weapon of the patch!" Ye Shi: "Spit it out, how much did Mosquito pay you to shill against your conscience? (funny face)" WC Really Has Mosquitoes: "Fuck! What do you mean 'comes through once in a while'? Are my Hellfire and Tempest not reliable? They're strong as hell, okay!" Scavenger Lv99: "I can testify! Mosquito can be reliable once in a while—it's just a bit hard on the user. Last time I strapped on a boiler and charged into a trench for a thrill, it took me three days to recover before logging back in." WC Really Has Mosquitoes: "Pay me back!" Scavenger Lv99: "QAQ" Lurking on the screen, Chu Guang couldn't help marveling, "These guys are real pieces of work." Just then, a knock sounded at the door. Without looking up, Chu Guang called out casually, "Come in." He thought Boss Xia was coming to pester him again, but to his surprise, the person who walked in was Yin Fang. Upon entering, the young man didn't speak. He stood with his head lowered for quite a while before speaking up, full of shame. "I..." "Need to apologize to you."