These Players Are Getting Way Too Criminal

Yesterday's snow seemed to have been a mere fluke. The morning sun the next day still carried faint traces of autumn warmth. Stepping out of the shelter, Scavenger peered outside cautiously. Finding that it wasn't as cold as imagined, he finally breathed a sigh of relief, wagged his tail cheerfully, and scampered out. The nights were too cold. He had no choice but to shift his login schedule back to the daytime. Aside from Chu Guang and Scavenger, no one else seemed worried at all. On the contrary, the players were even somewhat looking forward to the impending winter. Players from the south, in particular, rarely had the chance to see heavy snow. Here on the wasteland, flurries were already falling before September had even ended. In another ten days to half a month, there would surely be a satisfying, proper snowfall. Passing through the outpost base's outer wall, Chu Guang inspected his territory while quietly calculating in his mind which plot of land would be best to wall off next. North or south? The question was worth careful consideration. Just as he reached the gate, he noticed two players busy at work before the north entrance, using timber to build a portal-shaped frame. Judging by its shape... It looked a bit like the gallows outside Brown Farm. "...What are you two doing?" Spotting the esteemed manager, the two players immediately dropped what they were doing and looked over, faces glowing with excitement. Ya'er I Wanna Go to the Restroom said, "Respected Manager, sir, we're building a gallows!" Chu Guang said, "...A gallows? What are you making that for?" Who Will Smell My Athlete's Foot said, "It feels more post-apocalyptic this way! More punk!" Ya'er I Wanna Go to the Restroom chimed in, "Exactly, and it's super practical! If anyone breaks the shelter's laws, we'll string 'em up right here! Heh-heh." Chu Guang said, "..." Feasible. Totally unnecessary, but feasible. Aside from these two clowns, the other players in the shelter seemed fairly normal. They were either busy running quests, or chopping wood, hauling bricks, and working away. The outpost was still in its early stages of development. It lacked everything except work, so there was no need to worry about players running out of things to do. If one or two slacked off once in a while, it didn't matter. Let them be. The art of management lay not in micromanagement, but in guiding the overall direction. As long as the players were reasonably diligent as a whole, that was enough. Unless someone stayed offline for an extended period, Chu Guang wouldn't interfere much. If he confirmed someone was truly AFK, he would simply reassign their closed-beta slot to someone else. As for how the system retrieved the helmets, how it delivered them, or whether that stirred up any controversy, none of that was his concern. If it could be done, there was naturally a reason it could be done. Once he gathered enough clues, he would understand. Baseless, endless skepticism served no purpose. While scientific thinking emphasized questioning everything—including oneself—it equally emphasized that all conclusions required evidence, and conjectures must never be treated as facts. So why stress over things in a "parallel world"? It wasn't as if he could go back anyway. Walking over to the woodworking shed, Chu Guang took inventory of the gear resting on the shelves. To date, Brother Mosquito had already produced fifteen wooden bows and hundreds of arrows, and his craft had grown noticeably swifter and cleaner. Not only that, Chu Guang found the fellow to be an absolute talent. He possessed novel ideas and consistently applied what he learned to innovate on the job. Take the arrows alone: he had designed two distinct types of arrowheads. One involved jamming an iron point into a notched wooden strip, heating it, and forging it several times into place. Arrows of this type could be reused many times over until the tip completely broke down. The other simply relied on a mix of pine resin and animal fat to glue a rusty iron flake straight onto the shaft. Though single-use and lacking penetration, as long as it hit effectively, the rusty flake would almost certainly dislodge inside the victim's body, inflicting continuous agony. Even if it didn't incapacitate them on the spot, they would most likely die of tetanus or some other infection a few days later. "Respected Manager! I was just about to look for you." Seeing Chu Guang appear in the doorway, WC Really Has Mosquitoes' eyes lit up. Setting down his tools, he stood up from his chair. Chu Guang looked at him and said, "I'm just taking a walk around. Do you have something to report?" "The gunpowder you ordered me to make earlier—I've made it!" With that, Mosquito pulled a glass jar of black powder from the shelf and held it out enthusiastically in front of Chu Guang. The manager involuntarily took half a step back, nearly using his admin privileges to kick the fellow offline. "Don't worry, there's no open flame here. It's completely safe! Heh-heh." Mosquito gave a chuckle, then continued, "I followed a recipe I looked up online, using 74.6 percent potassium nitrate. At this ratio, the powder achieves optimal combustion!" As usual, Chu Guang ignored the out-of-game references, took the glass jar, examined it closely, and nodded. "Well done... Have you tested it?" "I can run a test for you right now! Please follow me!" Saying that, Mosquito led the manager outside the woodworking shed, pulling a small glass bottle of about a hundred and fifty milliliters from his pocket. It was packed with powder, a cotton fuse inserted through the mouth and sealed tight with animal fat. Mosquito jogged a short distance away, set the bottle beside a tree, struck a match to light the fuse, and sprinted away as fast as his legs could carry him. As the fuse burned down, a thunderous boom erupted. The glass bottle detonated violently, shredding the bark and trunk into splinters and leaving the tree teetering at a crooked angle. Many players chopping trees nearby jumped out of their skins at the noise and came rushing over to see the spectacle. "Holy crap?! Nice job, bro!" "Did you just craft TNT?" "What TNT? All you know is TNT! Look at the smoke—that's clearly black powder. Still insane, though! Everyone knows the formula, but getting the raw materials is tough as hell." "God-tier player, absolute legend!" Clearly hearing the praise from the other players, Mosquito turned to the manager beside him, his face flushed with excitement. "What do you think?" Chu Guang's face was likewise etched with astonishment. This... This player was practically begging for a prison sentence, wasn't he? What was a woodworker doing knowing so much about explosives? "...Excellent. Your performance has exceeded my expectations. Although it produces quite a bit of smoke and the explosive yield could use some improvement, those aren't major problems. I will report your achievements to the organization, and you will be awarded five hundred contribution points." "In addition, you can try to produce smokeless powder, such as nitrocellulose. If you succeed, the shelter will grant you a reward of one thousand contribution points, and I will have a new assignment for you." A new assignment? Mosquito's expression instantly flared with exhilaration. Did that mean a hidden quest? Even without a hidden quest, a reward of one thousand contribution points was enticing enough on its own. Ever since the Alpha 0.3 update, contribution point yields had been nerfed. Maxing out daily active quests only yielded around a hundred and sixty points, and regular labor gave about the same. One thousand contribution points was an enormous sum. Even though he had already become a citizen, who would turn down more contribution points? Earning them would only get harder down the line. He remembered the dev team dangling a carrot on the official site, teasing that higher status tiers above citizen would unlock later, allowing players to purchase even more land. Mosquito said joyfully, "No problem, Respected Manager! Once I produce nitric acid and sulfuric acid, I'll give it a shot!" Chu Guang nodded, dismissed him to get back to work, and then continued his rounds over toward the blast furnace. To make hauling easier, the earth kilns for making charcoal and the cement kilns were all constructed nearby in a line, forming an informal industrial zone. The furnace fires burned uninterrupted, raising the surrounding temperature by a couple of degrees compared to elsewhere. Ever since Who Will Smell My Athlete's Foot and Ya'er I Wanna Go to the Restroom had improved the backyard steelmaking process, they had separated the carbon chamber from the iron-melting chamber. They used carbon monoxide from incomplete combustion to reduce iron oxide rather than directly using charcoal. This way, the scrap steel used as raw material wouldn't absorb excessive carbon during the smelting process, eliminating the need for repeated forging and quenching to remove carbon to produce steel. While restoring the metal to its two-hundred-year-old state was out of the question, its physical properties were unquestionably superior to iron smelted from raw ore. After all, the rare metals originally blended into the scrap steel hadn't vanished into thin air; a fraction still remained. Experience was always hammered out step by step. Watching the players laboring with fiery enthusiasm, Chu Guang felt a deep sense of accomplishment. Just days ago, the outpost had relied entirely on tools imported from nearby Brown Farm, traded for animal pelts. Now, not only had the players learned to melt down scavenged scrap metal in the furnace, they could even manufacture the tools they needed with their own hands. The woodworking shed solved immediate needs. This place was where real miracles were forged. *The production efficiency of these makeshift kilns is still too primitive. Expanding our facilities requires more building materials and tools. To achieve that, I have to let some players directly or indirectly take control of the means of production. Only then can we unleash their initiative and creativity, giving them free rein to improve manufacturing.* *Let me think... In future updates, I can designate this area as an industrial zone, set clear land-use regulations, and allow players who reach the citizen tier to lease land here, open workshops, and engage in light industrial processing. That way, they directly control part of the means of production.* *As for heavy industries with massive output, high upfront costs, and unstable returns like steelmaking and cement, I can set up 'publicly owned' steel mills and cement plants. I can appoint outstanding lifestyle players as plant managers through 'hidden quests' to oversee and plan production, giving them indirect control of the means of production.* *As for game balance... I'll handle that through mechanics like taxes and land rent.* *After all, they were the ones who came up with the ideas anyway.* Stroking his chin, Chu Guang pondered silently. As a qualified game planner, the very first priority was understanding what the current meta needed. For example, if nobody was queuing as an ADC in ranked matches, you buffed ADCs. If everyone flocked to play hyper-carries, you brought down the nerf hammer on their heads or buffed junglers. The biggest difference between games and reality was that enacting reforms and adjusting policies in reality came with heavy costs. In a game, tweaking balance usually just earned the dev team a round of curses. As long as the game wasn't literally unplayable, the players would grumble, adapt, and go right back to grinding. "Manager, sir!" Hearing someone call out, Chu Guang stopped and looked back to see a player with a bow slung across his back running toward him, panting for breath. "What is it?" "North of the outpost, near the elevated highway—two people just showed up leading a cow with two heads! The guy in the lead looks familiar, like someone who visited our base before!" Bracing his hands on his knees, the player delivered the report in ragged gasps. A two-headed cow? Could it be that merchant from Red River Town? Already? Chu Guang was mildly surprised, but his expression remained calm as he instructed the player, "Lead the way." "Yes, sir!"