Dust billowed over the construction site on the grounds of the former sanatorium. Hammers clanged ceaselessly, and goods clattered as they were unloaded in a scene of bustling, feverish activity.
The players seemed to possess an inexhaustible supply of strength and enthusiasm. Pushing wheelbarrows scavenged from abandoned construction sites, they ferried load after load of gravel, pounded it to bits with hammers in front of the cement kiln, and shoveled it into the furnace to be calcined into raw cement feed.
A player squatting nearby worked the bellows with all his might to stoke the kiln's fire hotter. Not far away stood the charcoal kiln, running without pause, and further off were the earthen kiln for smoked meat and the racks for smoking fish. The rising plumes of smoke and clamor of activity had driven even the birds from the surrounding trees.
Working together, the players mixed the fired cement with sand and water into a thick slurry. In no time at all, they had already laid the foundation for the first section of the wall.
Wisps of blue smoke merged into a single haze overhead.
The place felt like a nascent tribe—young, raw, and vibrant.
Having handed off the construction site to Spare the Life Under the Blade, who had a background in civil engineering, Fleeting White Horse and Fang Chang had already moved on to researching crude, backyard steelmaking methods.
Over by the water, Gale Force 8 had improved his fish traps, using mutant leech larvae as bait. Catching a dozen fish a day was an effortless affair now. Anything they could not finish eating was handed over to Brother Scrambled Eggs to be preserved as dried fish.
The lake’s aquatic bounty was far richer than he had imagined.
The only thing to be mindful of was not putting too much bait in the traps or deploying them in water that was too deep; otherwise, the large fish lured in could easily tear the traps apart.
Still, these were minor matters.
Once they got the hang of it, everything became second nature, and the process of figuring it out was half the fun.
It was the same for the new players.
They did not even need to actively search for entertainment. Everything here was a novelty—something virtually impossible to experience in modern society.
Many of them spent all day sitting in an office cubicle, repeating replaceable tasks day after day and losing themselves amid petty, mundane chores.
Here, however, it was different.
This difference went beyond a fleeting sense of novelty; it stemmed from the satisfaction of self-actualization.
A "civil engineering grunt" who had toiled on construction sites for five or six years without ever sniffing a management position could shout, "I'm an engineer!" here and immediately be hailed as a master, entrusted with heavy responsibilities by his peers.
The same went for the workers mixing cement and plastering walls.
The vast majority of the players were ordinary people who lived unassuming lives in reality. Yet here, as long as one had a practical skill—even one that was not particularly outstanding—they could earn the respect and validation of the entire community.
Meanwhile, through their collective efforts, the shelter’s surface outpost was visibly improving by the day.
In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, this was the pinnacle. It transcended base entertainment, offering a profound sense of mental satisfaction that no cheap distraction could match.
Best of all, achieving it came at virtually no cost. Even if their muscles ached from exhaustion, it was only the game avatar that was tired, leaving their real lives the next morning completely unaffected.
If anything, going to bed early because of it made them all the more energetic the next day.
All of this, of course, was merely wild speculation running through Chu Guang's head as he returned to the outpost with his spoils and saw the players working up a storm.
Naturally, he had no way of knowing what the players were actually thinking.
To a manager, such things were entirely inconsequential.
As long as the number of pre-registrations consistently exceeded the number of players on the roster, he never had to worry about running out of fresh chives to come in and sweat for him.
Quit the game?
Go AFK?
As always, please surrender your helmet and account to someone in need, and go try out a more primitive form of gaming.
Back to business.
The haul from this outing was quite gratifying.
Two 5mm pipe rifles, sixty-two rounds of 5mm ammunition, and three backpacks they had not yet had the chance to rifle through.
All of this had been looted from the two marauders and the unlucky scavenger they had hunted down.
Chu Guang was not a man to waste resources, so he had even collected the mutant hyena that had taken a bullet to the neck.
Whether it had been domesticated or not did not affect its taste; to Chu Guang, a mutant was a mutant all the same.
Tossing the carcass to Brother Scrambled Eggs, who was serving as the camp cook, Chu Guang sat down with Ye Shi and Scavenger to go through the scavenged packs.
"Matches, a compass, a map, and... a few strips of dried meat? Plus some plastic pieces? What's written on these things?"
Hearing Ye Shi mutter to himself, Scavenger leaned in with his clumsy claws and picked one up with great interest to examine it closely.
"They look kind of like casino chips."
"Hand those plastic pieces to me. I have a use for them."
Without batting an eye, Chu Guang confiscated the twenty or so white "plastic pieces." After all, they were useless to the players anyway.
Next, he glanced at the dried meat held in Ye Shi's hand.
"...Forget about those strips of dried meat. I wouldn't recommend eating them."
Ye Shi, who had just been about to take a bite, froze.
"Why?"
Chu Guang considered his words and chose a euphemistic phrasing.
"Marauders aren't known for being picky eaters. There's no way to know what kind of meat that is."
Before Scavenger could even process the implication, Ye Shi had already hurled the meat away and started retching.
Even in a game, there were certain details he simply could not stomach.
Watching Ye Shi's reaction, Chu Guang grew curious about how these players viewed the violence here. He turned toward Scavenger and asked, "What did it feel like to kill someone?"
Scavenger blinked and rubbed his head.
"I didn't really notice..."
What kind of feeling could there be in a game? It wasn't as if he hadn't played titles that were far gorier. If anything, the blood effects in this game weren't overly exaggerated, so he hadn't paid much attention to it at the time.
And yet...
The moment he had charged forward, driven the javelin into that last marauder's chest, and felt the warm blood splatter across him, an urge to feed had suddenly surged from deep within his gut.
It felt just like a primal, biological instinct.
Chu Guang shot a surprised look at the lizardman. He hadn't expected this player to possess such decent mental fortitude.
Was it that the dreamlike nature of the game blunted the reality of death?
Or did the players view this world through some kind of filter he didn't understand?
It was hard to say.
After all, Chu Guang had not designed the setup himself. He had never put on one of the players' helmets, and he had no idea whether the world they saw was identical to the one before his own eyes.
*It looks like I'll need to chat with the players more often in my role as game developer...*
***
By five in the afternoon, the northern perimeter wall of the sanatorium had been largely restored.
It had to be said: these players were sheer geniuses.
Chu Guang even felt that his presence as an NPC was practically redundant.
Certain talents might not be listed on a character stat sheet, but they were etched right into their bones. Hand them a patch of dirt, and by tomorrow, it would be turned into an arable field.
Even if the server wiped and the world ended tomorrow, they would still rebuild this place brick by brick.
The treasures on the construction site were not limited to the gray-blue gravel; there were also mountain-high piles of bagged cement blocks.
These materials had been too heavy for ordinary survivors to haul away, nor did they have any use for them, so they had remained largely untouched since the outbreak of the nuclear war.
Although the cement had long since hardened and could not be mixed with sand to pour foundations, changing their approach turned them into excellent building blocks for raising a wall.
At the very least, they were far sturdier than the mud bricks Fleeting White Horse had fired!
Under the direction of Spare the Life Under the Blade, the players drove four- to five-meter pine logs into the ground, stacked the scavenged cement blocks between them, inserted looted rebar for structural reinforcement, and finally poured a well-blended calcium carbonate cement over the top.
Once the cement cured, a rudimentary yet dependable concrete fortification stood complete.
On the inner side of the wall, they built a ramp from cement chunks and concrete rubble.
In the event of an attack, players inside only needed to lie prone on the ramp to return fire from behind solid cover.
Factoring in future expansions of the outpost, an outer layer of fortifications could eventually be built beyond the redoubt, complemented by sentry posts and watchtowers to maintain a vigilant watch.
"...The terrain across the Wetland Park is relatively flat, and the area around the sanatorium is a forested plain with no steep slopes to provide cover. We can chop down the surrounding trees so we can spot anything approaching the outpost right away!"
"Not bad, brother! What do you actually do in real life?" Fleeting White Horse asked, eyeing the new player with astonishment.
He had a faint recollection of the handle Spare the Life Under the Blade, but only barely; he merely remembered the guy joining the chat group quite some time ago.
Who would have guessed that their modest gaming group was a crouching tiger, hidden dragon den of so many hidden masters?
Spare the Life Under the Blade gave a shy, sheepish grin.
"...I'm just a civil engineering dog. A nobody at the firm who spends all day drinking tea and reading the papers while barely anyone gives me the time of day."
"Don't sell yourself short, you've got real skill! Honestly, I didn't think we'd manage to finish an entire wall today."
"You flatter me, really!"
Dusk had already fallen, tinting the edge of the sky a hazy amber.
Serving as the camp cook, Brother Scrambled Eggs set up a massive cauldron in the open clearing before the sanatorium, tossed in the fish Gale Force 8 had pulled from the lake, and brewed a large pot of fresh fish soup with pine nuts.
The players sat scattered on the ground, each holding a bowl and a piece of dried smoked meat. Washing down the meat with gulps of hot fish soup, the meal took on a peculiar rustic charm.
Of course, not everyone could stomach the flavor.
Tengteng, for one, sat on the ground with her nose pinched, staring down at her bowl with a face full of misery.
"Ugh, it smells so fishy..."
Whether in the game or in real life, she had an acute sense of smell and simply could not stomach such unrefined cooking.
Hearing her complaint from not far away, Brother Scrambled Eggs rolled his eyes.
"You think I wanted it like this? We don't even have cooking wine here. Yours truly did the best he could."
His expression clearly said: *Take it or leave it.*
"Just bear with it and eat," Ye Shi chimed in from the side, trying to comfort her. "In this game, if you don't eat, you starve. Do you want to pinch your nose and chug it down? I can help hold the bowl."
Tengteng dodged to the side.
"That won't be necessary."
*Speaking of which, do NPCs need to eat too?*
Tengteng glanced around and spotted the Manager standing nearby.
However, he did not join the players for dinner. He only lingered for a moment before hurriedly walking away.
When he returned, several players sitting close by noticed that his face was grim and ashen, as if something had put him in a foul mood.
A murmur swept through the players.
Noticing the commotion, Fleeting White Horse grew curious. He set down his bowl and rose to his feet.
Quickening his pace, he caught up with Gale Force 8, who was standing nearby, and asked, "Brother, what happened?"
Gale Force 8's expression turned grave, his voice sinking low.
"I heard..."
"Someone died."
Chapter 32