The Damn Dev Is Back to Harvest Leeks!

"...We have met the people from Shelter 404." In the center of a pure white room, Horne's face was filled with reverent devotion. "Oh?" A gentle voice echoed beside his ears as if drifting from an ethereal realm. "What manner of people are they?" Horne replied respectfully. "They are a very... peculiar group. My experience does not allow me to make a more concrete assessment. They extended an invitation, and I would like to send a few people over to have a look." "That is a fine idea. You need to maintain communication with other survivors. Have the candidates been chosen?" A hint of approval tinged the voice. A flicker of joy showed on the old man's weathered face, and he continued with deep deference. "Not yet, but we plan to send one student and two engineers." The voice from beyond seemed to sink into contemplation. After perhaps two or three minutes, it spoke again. "Send Pai." Horne felt a trace of surprise at his Mentor's words, but did not question them. "I shall follow your instructions." The old man bowed respectfully. After pausing for a moment, he voiced his remaining thought. "The New Alliance's capital is more than a hundred kilometers away from us. For safety's sake, I would like to request a bodyguard." "Approved. The gate shall open tomorrow at six hundred hours," the voice answered readily. Horne inclined his head slightly. "Thank you." "You are welcome. Go and make your preparations," the voice continued. "I must also select a suitable gift for our neighbors." The communication ended. After the presence withdrew, Horne slowly raised both hands, felt around his temples with his index fingers, and took off the VR headset. The pure white light faded from his surroundings. At that moment, he was standing in the camp's administrative center. The shelter's heavy blast doors were never opened lightly. Whenever important matters needed discussion, he would sit in his office like this and communicate with the Administrator through VR equipment. After a moment's contemplation, Horne reached out and pressed a spot on the desktop touch screen. Watching the connection icon light up, he spoke slowly. "Have Ivan come to the administrative center." "I have an urgent matter to discuss with him." ... *Wasteland OL* Official Website. The reward tally for the "Blade Drawn" expansion was underway in full swing. This war had lasted for two months. Nearly every player had reaped a massive harvest and hoarded a huge pile of points, just waiting to spend them. Even before the settlement officially opened, many players were already posting screenshots on the forum, showing off their point balances. Ice and Fire Guy: "Holy shit, 100,000 points?!" I'll Fight You to the Death: "Did you use cheats?!" Luo Yu: "Jealous? Traded my life for it. (Smug)" A hundred thousand points was not even the most absurd. A certain fat rat had racked up a staggering 120,000 points. The most dazzling group was probably the Burning Corps, whose average score hovered near 80,000. Even a low-profile third-tier outfit like the Silver Corps boasted an average score above 30,000. One had to admit that the corps system was truly the darling of this patch. Solo players who wanted high scores had to carve out unconventional paths like Qiangren Suonan did. In the corps system, however, as long as top players led the charge and the rest didn't slack off too hard or get kicked out for disobeying orders, everyone's gains were consistently solid. Although points could not be exchanged directly for silver coins, quests that granted points usually rewarded silver coins or contribution points as well. One could only imagine how much "war wealth" they had accumulated! Cut the Crap: "The server average might easily hit 20,000 points this time." WC Really Has Mosquitoes: "Have some confidence! I'd say at least 40,000. (Smug)" Brother Mole: "Suddenly feeling a bit panicked..." Makabazi: "Panicked about what? Isn't having more points a good thing?" Brother Mole: "No... don't just look at the surface. More points means more people rolling the gacha. Given how this game's lottery system is designed, what's fixed isn't the drop rate, but the prizes in the reward pool..." Cut the Crap: "Hold up, hold up, speak human please." Brother Mole: "In plain English: the prize pool might get diluted to hell." Construction Site Youth and Brick: "Holy shit?!" Indebted Big Eye: "They wouldn't be that dog, would they?!" Fang Chang: "You look as shocked as if this were your first day playing this game. (Smirking)" Just as the players were buzzing with discussion, Ah Guang's handle suddenly surfaced on the forum. Seeing the damn dev's ID, not only did the players perk up, but the lurkers, corporate and state spies from various countries, and regular meme-loving netizens all sat up straight. "Hello everyone, I'm your dearest developer, Ah Guang! First of all, on behalf of the entire dev team, let me wish everyone a happy Children's Day!" "To celebrate the holiday and relieve the anxiety of our code monkeys, our engineer-lions designed an automatic banana-feeding machine... Unfortunately, the company ran out of AA batteries, and with no supermarkets out here, we had to solve the problem ourselves." "Fortunately, our engineer-lions proved reliable. Not only did they successfully fabricate the batteries, but they also cracked a few interesting problems along the way. Hint: it's a layer of film. We all agreed it would be a shame not to use it to earn some snack money, so we've decided to sell it to the highest bidder!" "And so, an auction will begin in three days, with a starting bid of 1,000,000 silver coins!" "Back to business. With the arrival of June, the closed-beta server of *Wasteland OL* is about to enter a scorching summer. Rainfall will become more frequent, the urban ruins and forests will grow far more perilous, and reptiles and arthropods will enter their peak seasons... Presumably no players have explored down to the Southern Hemisphere yet, so that statement holds true." "Additionally, thank you all for your continuous support. The expansion has concluded successfully, and we have gathered invaluable experimental data! Thanks to this data, we have taken another major step toward the open beta!" "The boss says we've won big time, and I believe that goes not just for us, but for all of you as well! Isn't it thrilling to see that long string of zeros in your account? Aren't you happy? Haha, I'm just as thrilled as you are!" "To give back for everyone's continued support, we've prepared generous prizes! Effective immediately, the point lottery and achievement exchange events are officially open!" "Rejoice, and let us celebrate this victory!" The moment the post went live, the lottery system unlocked on the official website, and the forum instantly erupted into carnival frenzy. One hundred points per roll—ten thousand points meant a hundred-pull! Even though the game was stingy enough not to offer a bonus twenty pulls for every hundred-pull bundle, everyone had hoarded an average of forty thousand points. Blowing it all in one go was pure exhilaration! While players were busy scratching tickets and lurkers happily munched on popcorn, intelligence agencies around the world were not idling either. Some were lurking on screens, others were convening emergency meetings; everyone was scrambling. Ah Guang, who had not posted a single thread in over two months, had reentered their sights. For agents who had toiled for months without the slightest breakthrough, nothing could be more electrifying! "Ran out of AA batteries... Would an organization commanding mature quantum computing technology really lack AA batteries?" "That's utter nonsense!" "There must be a hidden clue buried in there... What is this Ah Guang hinting at?" "Lock down all areas worldwide that don't have a supermarket within a five-kilometer radius!" "On a global scale? That covers way too much ground..." Somewhere in an undisclosed facility. Listening to his colleagues' debates, a man with a square jaw sighed and closed the notebook in his hands. "Is it at all possible... that this guy was simply talking out of his ass?" Everyone in the conference room froze. The man in the police uniform was the first to regain his composure, tapping his index finger on the table. "We can't rule that out!" Without sufficient evidence, every possibility remained on the table. All indications suggested that the man whose existence had been erased did not seem to realize he had been abducted by an extraterrestrial civilization—or perhaps he realized it but didn't care, having fully embraced his new job. Just then, an elderly man seated at the table spoke up. "What do you think that 'film' could be?" The square-jawed man blinked. "Film...?" The old man nodded. "Didn't they say they solved a few interesting problems?" With that, he looked around at the others in the room and asked, "Do we have any battery experts here?" The group exchanged glances and shook their heads. A man in a green shirt frowned and said, "Batteries... Our department procures all its batteries from partner vendors. I don't know much about that field." At that moment, a consultant from the chemical engineering sector spoke up. "Could he be referring to an SEI film?" The square-jawed man immediately asked, "What is that?" The consultant explained, "It's nothing obscure... Put simply, it's the solid electrolyte interphase. Think of it as a passivation layer coating the surface of the electrode material, roughly one hundred nanometers thick. Take lithium batteries as an example: a good SEI film prevents solvent molecules from co-intercalating while allowing lithium ions to pass through and intercalate smoothly, thereby suppressing the formation of lithium dendrites." The old man sitting by the conference table looked utterly lost. "Lithium... what?" He had not quite caught the term. Anticipating that reaction, the consultant sighed and continued. "Simply put, it's a technical bottleneck facing lithium batteries. During the reduction of lithium ions, branch-like metallic lithium structures form. Over repeated charge and discharge cycles, these continually consume electrolyte and cause irreversible deposition of metallic lithium, forming 'dead lithium' and degrading Coulombic efficiency... In severe cases, they can pierce the separator and connect the positive and negative electrodes, creating major safety hazards." Back in the 1980s, Moli Energy went bankrupt precisely because of this issue, eventually getting acquired by the electronics giant NEC. Yet to this day, the industry still had not fully overcome the technical hurdles of metallic lithium anodes. Currently, mainstream industry relied on carbon-based materials for electrodes, sacrificing battery capacity to guarantee safety. While the energy density of lithium metal anodes was tempting, nobody wanted to carry a bomb in their pocket or sit on a rocket. While the old man was still pondering the explanation, the square-jawed man seemed to grasp the gist of it and nodded thoughtfully. "I think I get what you mean... If they've solved the problem with that film, does that mean they can dramatically boost a battery's energy density?" A bitter smile surfaced on the consultant's face. "You can look at it that way... But I must emphasize that lithium dendrites are only one technical hurdle in lithium battery research, and artificial SEI films are merely one theoretical avenue proposed by academia to address them." "As for whether it works and how to implement it... those remain subjects of controversy. Current mainstream research directions roughly fall into either building the house or building the wall. Maybe both are right, or maybe neither is." A colleague sitting nearby asked curiously, "What do you mean by 'neither is'?" The consultant answered concisely, "I mean, not every problem necessarily has a standard answer." The old man interjected, "This film... roughly how much could it increase battery energy density?" The consultant took a sip of tea, cleared his throat, and continued. "...That depends on what you're comparing it against. According to the white paper our government released on power battery development, the target for 2025 is 400 watt-hours per kilogram, and the 2030 target is 500 watt-hours per kilogram. I'm not a battery specialist, but those figures presumably incorporate input from experts in academia and industry." "If we could replace the graphite anodes in lithium batteries with pure lithium, theoretically, the energy density should jump by an order of magnitude." "An order of magnitude?!" The man in the police uniform looked shocked. Not just him—everyone in the conference room wore startled expressions. Raw numbers meant little on their own. But once they had a baseline for comparison, they instantly understood the monumental value of this technology. The consultant added, "Somewhere around one to two thousand watt-hours per kilogram, which roughly counts as an order of magnitude higher. As for the precise numbers... you'd be better off consulting an insider from the manufacturing industry." The man in the green shirt suddenly stood up. "I'll make a call to my agency." The elderly man at the table nodded with a grave expression. "Go." At the same time, similar scenes were playing out across the globe. This *Developer Log* of fewer than a thousand words was scrutinized back and forth no fewer than a thousand times by intelligence agencies of every major organization, down to the last punctuation mark. In the end, the vast majority of intelligence agencies arrived at the same deduction—this might very well be an enlightenment signal broadcast by an extraterrestrial civilization. As everyone knew, one of the three pillars of modern technology was energy. If this mysterious website truly presented technology far ahead of the current era, it would undoubtedly provide compelling evidence for the "close encounter of the third kind" hypothesis. After all, no technology could exist without the backing of a research infrastructure; it could not simply materialize out of thin air. While players were busy scratching their lottery tickets, the silver coin consignment platform had quietly heated up. Though no one knew what *Wasteland OL*'s official website intended to auction off three days from now, preparing in advance was never wrong. One couldn't wait until "foreign exchange" was needed before scrambling to find it. The platform's daily transaction volume was limited. This was no longer a question of a buyer's or seller's market—there simply weren't enough silver coins in the pool to purchase. Players needed silver coins to upgrade gear, eat, sleep, and even bathe. Yes. According to intelligence gathered from lurking on the website, this damned game even charged money for taking a bath. "Shit... Do these lucky bastards have any idea what they're doing?" Staring at the string of numbers on his computer screen, Fick crossed his arms and cursed with undeniable envy. Just half an hour ago, their project team had received a fresh batch of funding. While the money didn't go into their personal pockets, using it within "reasonable limits" to improve their working conditions and living arrangements was perfectly fine. Part of the funding came from official agency appropriations. However, even more came from corporate giants aligned with the government. After all, the government didn't manufacture products itself. Securing the technology was useless on its own; it would ultimately have to be handed over to enterprises or individuals so they could file patents, ramp up production, build monopolies, and seize a share of others' pies. Such were the rules of the game in the real world. "It's better if they never find out!" "True enough. The fewer people who know the truth, the better... Otherwise, where would we ever buy silver coins this cheaply?" an intelligence officer standing nearby teased with a chuckle. A colleague next to him clenched his fists, eyes glued to the monitor, cheering under his breath. "Buy, damn it, buy! Why won't the trade volume budge? Are they really not selling even at eight dollars a coin?!" The trader seated before the monitor analyzed the situation with a grave expression. "I'm afraid it's not a matter of price... The proportion of players holding USD and cryptocurrency accounts is far too low! Foreign exchange trading comes with a barrier to entry. A lot of players probably filtered out uncommon currencies just to avoid the hassle." "On top of that, these dense clusters of small orders don't look like player activity at all... They look more like speculators who aren't directly participating in the game." "In other words, we haven't touched any of the large blocks above a thousand silver coins!" The silver coin trading platform wasn't exclusive to players. Lurkers could trade just as easily, and could even invest in the game indirectly through proxy-holding agreements. When the silver coin trading platform first went live, many people had stockpiled coins. Now that a massive buyer had suddenly appeared, these retail investors—clueless about what was truly happening—promptly cashed out and exited. It was entirely thanks to these people that cheap chips were available. The real auction wouldn't happen for three days. The closer it got, the fiercer the competition would become, and the price of silver coins would likely soar to even more absurd heights... The intelligence officer standing beside him said somberly, "We still need to find a way to secure an RMB account with a clean paper trail!" *Damn it, why does it have to be so complicated?!* Fick couldn't help kicking the desk. "Fuck!" ... Fick's colleague had guessed correctly on one point. Most of the accounts selling on the silver coin trading platform right now did indeed belong to lurkers. As for why actual players weren't participating, it wasn't entirely due to account issues. The fundamental reason was that everyone was currently busy rolling the gacha, paying no attention to the market at all. Plenty of point-heavy tycoons were ripping ten consecutive hundred-pulls, gold light flashing endlessly across their computer screens. Every prize had a corresponding card. Even skipping the reveal animations, just glancing over every reward took quite a while. Not to mention screenshotting big drops to brag on the forum, or complaining in private group chats about the damn dev whenever junk showed up. Closed Beta Player Discussion Section. Many players had already posted screenshots, sharing the joy of their wins with everyone. "Wait, what the hell is an Armory Care Package? Did any of you pull one?" "The description says it's a random assortment of weapons and supplies that can be traded with NPC factions, sold to newbies, or kept for yourself... Isn't that just battlefield loot?" "I get the concept, but why do I have to roll a gacha inside a gacha?" "I pulled one too... A Ripper rifle?" "What kind of Russian nesting doll nonsense is this!" "Hahaha, I pulled ten of them!" "Holy crap, nice!!" The Ripper rifle was standard-issue equipment for Legion cannon fodder. Its distinguishing features were a long, rigid barrel and an overall length of nearly two meters when fitted with a bayonet. On the forum, it was also known as the Salted Fish Thrust. Aside from being ammunition-efficient and virtually jam-proof, it had almost no other redeeming qualities. In actual trench bayonet fighting, a relatively compact assault rifle like the LD-47 was far handier; longer weapons weren't necessarily advantageous. However, because they existed in such large quantities, ammunition for the Ripper rifle was far easier to scavenge than the Enterprise's Black Swan rounds. As a result, the weapon remained quite popular across many survivor settlements. After all, not every survivor community could field automatic rifles on a large scale. While these arms wouldn't fetch much within the New Alliance, hauling them to distant survivor settlements for sale and bringing back local specialties would yield handsome profits. All in all, this Armory Care Package was leagues better than a mere consolation prize. Of course, the damn dev's new gimmicks were just an appetizer; what players truly cared about were the grand prizes in the pool. Even if not everyone could be an RNG god, basking in someone else's luck was satisfying enough. It was a closed beta, after all. The primary focus was testing, so a sparse gear pool was only natural. Once open beta arrived, everyone would get their hands on the good stuff sooner or later! Under the watchful eyes of the community, the first RNG god of this expansion's lottery was finally crowned. Commander Spring: "HOLY SHIT! Destroyer Type I exoskeleton! Equipped with a rear-mounted 120mm mortar... Holy crap?! This gear is fucking insane!" Presumably blinded by excitement, Commander Spring forgot to maintain a low profile this time. Not content with merely flexing, he posted both the screenshot and his acceptance speech, sharing the joy of becoming the chosen one with the community. And yet... No one shared in his joy. The thread blew up instantly. Edge Paddler: "Holy shit! Why the hell is it you again!" Brother Mole: "Fucking RNG dog! Go die!" Jieyan: "Rigged! It's absolutely rigged!" Commander Spring: "Rigged my ass! I had 120,000 points, why shouldn't I hit! Twelve hundred pulls, brothers!" Evidently, that explanation failed to appease the masses. The casuals didn't care about logic. Silver Daddy: "I'm gonna vomit. How did this camper bastard get 120,000 points while I'm stuck at fucking 30,000?" Scavenger Lv99: "Waaaah, where's the justice?! Dear Dev God, please nerf him!" Next Door Old Wang: "Seconded! Hands raised in full support!" Commander Spring panicked and hurried to delete the thread, but it was already too late. Screenshots of the equipment were circulating everywhere across the website. According to the information displayed in the screenshot, the Destroyer Type I exoskeleton was a full size larger than the Type 6 "Heavy Cavalry" exoskeleton, bordering on the scale of power armor. Unlike the Type 6, the Destroyer Type I's armor plating was not designed primarily to stop small-arms fire, but rather to guard against explosive shrapnel and shockwaves. This manifested in a thick layer of shock-absorbing padding lining the interior of the plating, giving it an exceptionally bulky appearance. When deploying the 120mm mortar on its back, the operator had to brace both hands against the ground like a sprinter at the starting blocks, rendering them completely immobile. Equipped with an autoloader system, however, deploying a single unit could theoretically rain down massive firepower on a target zone in short order, provided ammunition held out. It was essentially an all-terrain self-propelled mortar that could squeeze into narrow alleys. A veritable godsend for urban combat! That said, because the unit was excessively heavy, the chemical batteries unwieldy, and the ammunition racks externally mounted, it was ill-suited for open front lines. Without exaggeration, it was riddled with vulnerabilities, and getting flanked at close quarters would be disastrously awkward. Players from the Storm Corps quipped that letting this consummate camper get his hands on such camper gear would surely take his cowardly tactics to unprecedented heights. All jokes aside, though. Having close-range fire support on tap before an assault was undeniably fantastic. The reward pool held more than just this single piece of new gear. The developers had prepared a total of ten grand prizes for this event, half of which had never been seen before. As for the mortar-toting exoskeleton, it wasn't necessarily the pinnacle of the pool. Such specialized equipment only excelled under specific conditions, and ammunition supply remained a headache. In terms of comprehensive combat effectiveness, it might not even match the Type 5 "Light Cavalry." "A plasma sword! Badass! I'm respeccing into a Force Warrior right now!" "A magnetic slingshot... What use is this thing? Shooting birds?" "A portable jetpack... Honest question, are they trying to send me into the sky to serve as target practice?" "Hahahahaha, you could work out a deal with the guy above you—you play the bird." "..." In a university computer lab. Browsing the threads on the official forum, Ye Wei was consumed with envy. *Damn it!* He had hoarded over a hundred thousand points too—why couldn't he pull a single SSSR?! The damn dev had definitely manipulated his odds for balance! Still, it didn't really matter. One couldn't be too greedy. His profits from the expansion far exceeded those meager points. Even if his drop rates had been throttled, he had no real grounds for complaint. Construction on the new map, Daybreak City, had only just begun, yet orders at the Niuma Brick Factory were already booked through the end of the year, forcing them into mad production expansion. Their business scope covered not just bricks, but cement as well. While several competitors had cropped up in Dawn City recently to fight for market share, in terms of sheer scale, none could hold a candle to an enterprise with Shelter equity behind it. Switching out of the closed-beta section, Ye Wei browsed the casual discussion board for a bit to see what the lurkers were chatting about. The very first thread made him chuckle. "...Silver coin prices are spiking?" What kind of joke was that? Silver prices had surged before, but that usually happened when a new expansion or gameplay feature launched—never right as an expansion concluded. Rewards from the expansion had just settled, leaving everyone's pockets stuffed with silver coins and little immediate need to upgrade equipment. Even wealthy whales wouldn't spend real cash to buy coins at a time like this. It made zero sense! Not to mention that across the preceding battles, the expansion had showered players with money, and several wealthy tycoons had been dumping coins daily to "improve their offline lives." Just a few days ago, the transaction price of silver coins had nearly plunged into single digits. "Heh, let's see how high it could possibly go." Out of curiosity, Ye Wei clicked open the silver coin trading platform. The moment he looked, he froze dead in his seat. "Holy shit?!" Eight dollars per silver coin?! He double-checked several times: those listed were buy orders, not sell orders. And not just one. Ten whole buy orders, each demanding one hundred thousand silver coins, lined up in a neat column staggered by one-dollar increments! The top order had already filled forty percent. The buy orders at seven and six dollars hadn't begun filling yet, since the highest bid had not been fully satisfied. Beyond US dollars, buy orders in RMB, euros, and other currencies were stacked on the board as well. Each bid was more absurd than the last! It felt as though overnight, the market had reverted to the manic frenzy when the silver coin trading platform first went live. "Are these people insane?!" Staring at the pending buy order at 52 RMB, Ye Wei felt his pulse race, palm sweating against the mouse. His immediate instinct was to dump his hoard right now! Sell everything while the price was sky-high! Opportunities like this wouldn't come twice! Yet the urge lingered in his mind for only half a minute before he forced himself to calm down. Something was off here! The entire trading platform was completely choked with buy orders, without a single sell order in sight. Just who on earth was throwing around this kind of cash? Taking a deep breath, Ye Wei suppressed the urge to cash out, snatched his phone off the desk, and typed at lightning speed, sending a message into the Ox and Horse group chat. "Quick!" "Check the silver coin trading platform right now!!!"