When Chu Guang realized that silver coins were running short, it wasn't because he was broke.
To put it jokingly, as the game designer, altering a value took merely a flick of his fingers—how could he ever lack money?
Setting aside "foreign currencies" like Boulder City chips, Enterprise credits (CR), and Legion dinars, "silver coins" were truly nothing more than a number to Chu Guang.
As long as there was a need, he could issue as many as he pleased.
Of course, to prevent runaway inflation, he still had Xiao Qi compile monthly reports to track the shelter's production and material consumption, drawing up planned budget spreadsheets to ensure that the steadily growing organization of Shelter 404 could operate in an orderly manner.
The problem now, however, was that although he could issue silver coins at will, the physical "arcade tokens" previously used as "silver coins" were running out.
Early on, lacking the capability to mint currency, Chu Guang had adopted a method similar to Boulder City's, using arcade tokens from a certain amusement center as a medium of exchange.
These tokens were similar to casino chips, with recognizable patterns and textures. Their proprietary design and logo were highly localized, found only at that specific arcade outside Qingquan City. In small-scale circulation, the chances of a scavenger randomly stumbling upon them were practically nonexistent.
Most importantly, the token's special design incorporated a measure of anti-counterfeiting technology, just like Boulder City's chips.
With the manufacturing capabilities available on the wasteland, producing an identical copy was, if not impossible, certainly not worth the trouble.
Yet the drawback of such currency was just as obvious: being irreproducible meant it couldn't be issued at will.
He couldn't very well slice them out with magnetically confined plasma, could he?
The cost was simply too exorbitant!
Whether it was the noble gas used as cutting propellant or the fusion core powering the equipment, both were non-renewable resources on the wasteland; once used, they were gone.
If they ran out, heaven only knew when he might find more.
Fortunately, when Chu Guang gained access to B2 of the shelter and discovered the cache of VMs piled in the warehouse, he implemented electronic currency through the devices. This allowed him to recall a portion of the physical tokens from the players, temporarily easing the strain.
However, with the influx of new players and the steady leakage of silver coins into the hands of surrounding survivors, his hundreds of thousands of tokens had recently vanished at near-lightspeed. Down to the present day, only a few thousand remained!
Come next month, Chu Guang would have to pay the NPCs their wages.
He couldn't very well hand out IOUs, could he?
Sitting on warehouses brimming with wealth yet unable to pay salaries would be an absolute joke!
Therefore, issuing a second generation of currency was an urgent necessity.
Currently, the outpost base held a gold reserve of about five hundred kilograms, and a relatively larger silver reserve of four thousand kilograms—enough to mint some precious metal currency.
The problem, however, was that precious metals were hardly scarce on the wasteland, a fact made abundantly clear by the Legion's "gold standard" monetary policy.
A single dinar weighed 9 grams, with a net gold content of roughly 4 to 5 grams. Under current market rates, purchasing a robust, non-accelerated clone slave cost between 1,000 and 2,000 dinars—in other words, 8 to 10 kilograms of gold.
A single chiliarch could afford a ransom of two hundred thousand dinars, equivalent to a whole ton of gold. Converted into real-world prices, that would be well over a hundred million yuan!
Clearly, the pre-war world's gold reserves were on an entirely different scale compared to the real world—at least ten, if not a hundred times greater—and per capita holdings weren't even comparable.
Otherwise, a mere chiliarch wouldn't be able to pull out a full ton of gold.
Consequently, a precious metal standard was largely unviable on the wasteland, and for the exact opposite reason as on Earth.
The Legion chose to brute-force the issue through raw volume, anchoring value through sheer quantity.
The Enterprise, on the other hand, relied on pure fiat currency, using banknotes embedded with high-grade anti-counterfeiting tech—similar to the mainstream monetary systems of modern Earth—making it easy to regulate money supply at will. The flourishing financial sector of Ideal City owed much of its success to this loose monetary policy.
Conversely, this also caused the purchasing power and influence of CR to fluctuate wildly beyond the East Coast.
Even the Enterprise's own caravans preferred bartering goods, or would rather take Legion dinars than a stack of colorful slips of paper.
After all, within their industrial framework, gold still possessed practical utility; it was just slightly oversupplied and thus depreciated.
In truth, neither approach offered a perfect solution; there was only the choice best suited to current needs.
After weighing the options, Chu Guang synthesized several proposals floated in forum discussions by the players. Under the premise of maintaining a primarily fiat-based monetary system, he decided to endow the currency with an element of inherent scarcity.
The second-generation currency would still carry the name "silver coin," but it would no longer be a misnomer; it would be designed and minted directly by the shelter.
This new coin was tentatively set at 10 grams, composed of 90% silver and 10% copper, circulating alongside a 100-value banknote.
As for copper coins, their circulation would be gradually suspended until they were completely phased out of the market.
Veteran players could rely on digital transactions, but new players and most NPCs could not, nor could the wastelanders and merchant caravans passing through.
The new currency was designed primarily for them!
At the same time, to prevent the silver coin's face value from wildly outstripping the metal's intrinsic worth, Chu Guang intended to engineer an intentional inflation of about fifty percent over the next two versions.
The specific plan was to keep respawn fees unchanged while raising the NPC shop purchase and sale prices for agricultural produce, hunted game, scrap, and other raw materials, lifting the minimum transaction unit to 1 silver coin or higher.
Meanwhile, prices for industrial goods like weapons and ammunition would remain fixed.
Since the establishment of the new industrial zone, the production cost of industrial goods had plummeted, perfectly offsetting part of the inflationary impact.
Enabling more players to afford ammunition and superior weapons served as a disguised buff.
At the same time, as raw material prices rose, NPC wages and baseline rewards for player missions would climb accordingly. Prey brought in by hunters would fetch nearly double in the new version.
This would also help balance income disparities between different playstyles and professions.
...
The new industrial zone.
In a corner of the abandoned tire factory, inside a brick building right next to the guard post, a sprawling heap of scrapped parts lay displayed, some of which had already been assembled into functional machinery.
Several workers clad in furs were stirring a large vat of pulp boiled from cotton, hemp, and other plant fibers, adding a specially formulated alkaline sizing agent.
Production was in full swing.
Beside them sat wooden crates containing the first batch of finished goods.
Under natural light, the sheets showed a flaxen-gray hue, revealing a faint bluish tint when held up to the light. This was primarily due to the inclusion of dried, powdered Blue Parasol mushrooms mixed into the pulp.
Chu Guang hadn't anticipated that the mushrooms gathering dust at the bottom of his warehouse crates would come in handy here.
Standing next to the crate, Chu Guang held a square-cut piece of paper, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger before looking toward the elderly man beside him.
"How many sheets of this paper can you produce in a day?"
Hearing the Administrator's question, the old man replied respectfully,
"My Lord, beyond Blue Parasol mushrooms, making this paper requires a specific type of nettle. While not particularly rare, it is hard to find in the winter. If raw materials are sufficiently supplied, producing around 500 kilograms a day won't be an issue."
The old man's name was Wu Mu. He hailed from a survivor settlement in the central River Valley Province, having fallen in with Jiu Li and the others midway and traveled with the refugee column to the northern outskirts of Qingquan City.
Before becoming a refugee, he had made his living as a papermaker.
Papermaking was an exceptionally rare trade on the wasteland, where paper was hardly scarce.
Even though physical cash had accounted for less than one percent of transactions during the Human Alliance era, the sheer volume of surviving banknotes was still astronomical.
After burning them for over two centuries, wasteland survivors still hadn't exhausted the supply.
Then there were libraries, schools, and private bookshelves. Acid-free paper made of synthetic fibers endured like plastic, lasting for ages.
Some survivors used pre-war paper currency to roll paper-cartridge ammunition, or shredded sheets into fiber to pad clothing and quilts in place of cotton.
When Jiu Li learned that Chu Guang needed a papermaker, he immediately recommended the elderly Wu Mu.
And Wu Mu certainly hadn't disappointed.
In less than a week, using parts and equipment scavenged by players, he had assembled a makeshift set of papermaking machinery.
With his special alkaline sizing agent and an ancestral formula, the paper Wu Mu produced felt virtually identical to the pre-war banknotes players scooped up from ruins to use as toilet paper.
It left Chu Guang wondering what on earth his ancestors had actually done for a living...
Clearing his throat softly, Chu Guang said,
"Five hundred kilograms is plenty."
A single banknote weighed around 1 gram.
Once printing was sorted out, 500 kilograms of paper would be enough to issue 500,000 bills!
Pausing, Chu Guang continued,
"I'll have someone handle the raw materials. Once this batch is finished, don't rush into making the next. Before resuming production, I need you to solve one critical issue."
With that, Chu Guang retrieved a filament finer than a strand of hair from his pocket and placed it into Wu Mu's palm.
Examining the thread closely for a moment, the old man's face instantly lit up with astonishment.
"Could this be... devil silk?!"
This was far rarer than Blue Parasol mushrooms!
"Indeed," Chu Guang nodded. "Since you recognize it, I won't waste time explaining its properties. I need you to find a way to embed it into the paper—whether woven into the mesh or pressed in during the papermaking process. There's only one requirement: part of the devil silk's characteristics must show on the paper's surface. To put it plainly, it's for anti-counterfeiting."
A troubled look crept across Wu Mu's face.
After a brief hesitation, he replied cautiously,
"My Lord, I have never tried such a thing... I cannot promise success, but I will do my best to test it."
"Good. Try whatever methods come to mind first," Chu Guang said. "If none work, I'll think of an alternative."
Having concluded his business, Chu Guang turned to head outside.
Just as he reached the doorway, another thought crossed his mind. Halting, he glanced back at the old man.
"By the way, does anyone else know the formula for this paper?"
The old man answered at once,
"I personally measured the proportions of the pulp and added the key ingredients. Aside from the detailed recipe you hold in your hands, no one else knows what went in or in what amounts!"
Chu Guang gave him an approving nod.
"Very good. Keep it that way."
"Furthermore, I don't want to see anyone elsewhere manufacturing paper identical to ours. Do you understand what I mean?"
The old man swore tensely,
"Rest assured, My Lord, I swear to take this secret to my grave."
Chu Guang nodded.
"Let us hope so."
Counting on absolute secrecy was unrealistic. There was no insurmountable technological barrier; anyone studying it closely might unravel it.
At most, Blue Parasol mushrooms offered resource scarcity—post-war wasteland tech could neither synthesize nor artificially cultivate them, and in Boulder City they were sold by the gram at steep prices.
And then there was devil silk.
With both combined, even without the Enterprise's formidable watermark technology, it would guarantee that counterfeiters couldn't turn a profit.
Both banknotes and physical coins were primarily intended for NPCs.
As for the players?
Digital payments remained far more convenient.
...
Official Forum:
[Server Announcement: Over six hundred survivor households from the Chaowei Battery Factory, Mount Hope Cooperative, Scavenger's Home, Highway Town, and Winter Willow Camp have relocated to the New Union Gas Station. Phase One of the evacuation plan is a complete success! Thank you all for your dedicated cooperation!]
[Event: Due to the impending arrival of a large influx of refugees, Changjiu Farm's Prosperity +200 (Current: 360)]
[Server Announcement: In recognition of the outstanding contributions of Edge Slacker... and nineteen other players, Shelter 404 will award them the Silver Shield Medal. Digital medals have been updated in personal accounts, and physical medals will be claimable alongside mission rewards upon release.]
['Shield' Medal: Unlocked by achieving victory in an 'Epic' difficulty defensive mission. (+500 Contribution Points, +1,000 Regional Reputation in Changjiu Farm)]
[Xiao Yu: To celebrate the arrival of Version Alpha 1.0, Bank 404 will soon issue the second-generation currency! We are now soliciting designs for the currency patterns. If yours is adopted, you will receive a mysterious grand prize! Submissions are welcome!]
[Xia Yan: Small arms upgrade! The weapons shop will soon introduce new arrivals—a light machine gun designed for medium-to-long-range suppression, and a submachine gun suited for close-quarters urban combat. Stay tuned for more details!]
[Luka: A massive wave of refugees is approaching, and our food is running short. Please try to conserve provisions.]
[Today's Recommended Menu: Boiled ram horn potatoes, green wheat porridge]
Tail: "Medals! Wait, does this mean medals will have physical versions in the future?!! ∑(°Д°ノ)ノ"
Jieyan: "Holy shit! An epic buff for the Soldier class! Good thing my second profession was Soldier! (grins)"
Mole on the Run from the Canyon: "Collectors rejoice! How does this not warrant a 0.91 patch?"
Ye Shi: "Brother Fang Chang is a god! (funny face)"
Fang Chang: "What does this have to do with me? (side-eye)"
Yaya: "Speaking of which, today's recommended menu looks so bland. Can the Administrator even get full? (＊′·v·)"
Elaina: "Maybe the Administrator ate too much meat and fish and wanted a change of pace. (funny face)"
Ye Shi: "Dawn: 'Ehh, you caught me secretly ordering dishes.' (funny face)"
Discussions on the forum were mainly centered on the upcoming Alpha 1.0 update and the newly introduced medal system.
As for the new weapons Boss Xia was releasing, fewer people talked about them.
After all, the barrels and receivers were manufactured by No. 81 Steel Mill, whose two plant directors posted on the forum every single day, chatting about seamless steel tubing craftsmanship with netizens who flirted with the law harder than Mosquito.
Players already knew what new weapons would hit the shelves; the only real suspense was their names.
Last time was the LD-47. What about this time?
Surely it wouldn't be "Hammer," right?
...
Apart from serious discussion threads, there were also posts teasing Brother Edge Slacker.
Worrying that spectating teammates on the forum wouldn't find their home base, Indebted Big Eye made a dedicated thread, @-ing the whole crew.
"Market's closed, folks! The results of today's Death Lottery are out! The final tally is twenty! Pity I guessed six—clearly I was far too conservative. But no worries, since no one guessed right, it's a draw! A world where nobody loses money has been achieved! (funny face)"
Makka Pakka: "Hahaha, the black hearse of death is confirmed! Wait, fuck me, I died too!"
Construction Site Youth and Brick: "Dammit! I was having a blast laying down suppressing fire with the machine gun when bam, gone! I hadn't even finished the free ammo issued for the quest! (angry)"
Indebted Big Eye: "Don't worry, I finished rattling it off for you. (funny face)"
Construction Site Youth and Brick: "Screw you!"
Edge Slacker: "Sigh, guys, I'm sorry. I failed to bring you all back."
Typing out those words, Edge Slacker was truly on the verge of tears.
The earliest time he led a squad was the encounter with the mutants on 76th Street.
Ever since then, whenever he acted as squad leader, nothing went right. He constantly soaked ten thousand tons of damage, to the point where someone joked that next time he should just wear a gas mask so he could cosplay the Death Korps of Krieg when he died.
If the developers weren't targeting him, he'd eat his hat.
Fortunately, his teammates harbored no grudges.
Indebted Big Eye: "It's fine. Seeing you come down here with us brought perfect balance to my soul."
Commander Spring: "Patting Brother Edge on the head. You're a real man!"
Drum Hairwasher: "Hahaha, +1! What's the big deal? Who doesn't die playing games? Look at Makka Pakka—he's kicked the bucket how many times, and he's still grinning all day long."
Makka Pakka: "Fuck off! What do you mean 'how many times'? I was targeted by the game devs, dammit!"
Construction Site Youth and Brick: "Brother Guang: Say that again? I dare you. I'll do it again next time."
Makka Pakka: "@#%!"
While spectating players were still shooting the breeze on the forum, the clever ones had already started drawing.
Regardless of what Xiao Yu's mystery grand prize was, this was a chance to design the game's actual currency!
If their entry got accepted, wouldn't they secure a spot in the hall of fame?
Every player on the entire server using currency you designed—just imagining it was exhilarating!
...
On the highway heading toward the south of Tianshui City, a hundred-man force was in retreat.
Having arrived in a rush and departed in equal haste, everyone looked thoroughly exhausted, slumping listlessly in the beds of the trucks.
Also riding in the truck, a man with only a single tuft of hair on his head wore a somber expression.
Opposite him sat decurions such as Yu, Beaver, and Iron Knee, none of them daring to breathe loudly. Trembling, they kept their heads down, counting the clods of mud on their boots.
Beside Gangya, Kevin offered a word of comfort.
"At least we wiped out one of their elite units. The situation isn't as terrible as you think."
Gangya ground his teeth, squeezing words out from between them.
"Why do they have Legion weapons too?"
"Legion weapons are all over the River Valley Province; there's nothing strange about that. What should worry you more is that they don't just possess Legion weapons—they have their own standardized weapons."
Gazing at the captured assault rifle in his hands, Kevin, unbothered by temporary victory or defeat, wore an intrigued look in his eyes.
The design of this rifle was exceedingly clever.
In particular, its receiver was remarkably simple, almost archaic.
Yet it was surprisingly durable.
The Legion's assault rifles followed a similar design philosophy, though assault rifles weren't widely issued across the Legion; they were generally reserved for elite units or paired with submachine guns for frontline decurions.
Within the Legion, the light infantry massed to hold trenches and charge enemy lines were mostly armed with bolt-action rifles fitted with long bayonets, while fire support was provided by one or two machine gunners.
After all, a cloned infantryman's lifespan on the front was far too brief; issuing them automatic rifles was unnecessary, and even an extra pouch of ammunition was viewed as a waste.
Rather than using logistical transport capacity on that, it was far better to deliver another couple of artillery shells to the batteries.
"If they can stamp-forge receivers, they can stamp cartridge cases... This is miles beyond pipe rifles."
Hearing Kevin's remark, Gangya frowned.
"Is there any difference?"
The Bone Chewer tribe could also replicate Legion ammunition and weaponry. Though their efficiency was lower, they had plenty of slaves.
Combined with the vast Legion stockpiles they had seized and the backing of the Church of the Torch, he didn't see what was so impressive about manufacturing weapons.
Once the main army arrived at the front, crushing those ants would only be a matter of time!
Still, this was the adviser speaking, so Gangya took it seriously.
Kevin nodded and said succinctly,
"Yes, and the difference is enormous."
His gaze shifted toward the outside of the truck.
Looking south, the hawk-nosed man narrowed his eyes slightly.
"It means they have already developed a degree of industrial capacity, even if it's only rudimentary."
"These people will not be easy to deal with!"
Chapter 209