Kingdom of Corrosion
Chapter 537 - 268 Fuel Consumption

Chapter 537: Chapter 268 Fuel Consumption

After an uninformative briefing and words of thanks, the relationship between Doomsday Fortress and Cozy Cabin rose to 70, and the standard cost for hiring an NPC now was 12 kilograms of edible meat. This price was tempting for Lin Wu, but Maya did not approve of it. In deciding the base’s major directions, Lin Wu still gave much face to Maya and decided against hiring.

Stone later told Lin Wu that not hiring was the correct decision, because it was a commercial trap. NPCs couldn’t generate value, they only consumed it. If you insisted on hiring them for 20 kilograms of meat, then quests would never appear. When you refused to hire them, they would offer discounts. For Dawn, their value lay in consuming player resources, so as long as you kept not hiring them, they would continuously post quests.

Originally, your 38 yuan phone package was enough for everything. One day, someone called you, offering to upgrade your package and give you 50G of data for a year, with the fee rising to 58 yuan, but they would pay 20 yuan for you every month. What’s the logic behind this? The cost of data for the operators is extremely low. They’re betting that once you get used to the data, the 38 yuan won’t be enough. Even if they lose, there’s no harm to them since the cost is nearly zero.

It also doesn’t rule out the possibility of fraud. After the year’s end, when you want to revert to the 38 yuan package, they tell you, "Sorry, the 38 yuan package has been canceled."

Lin Wu felt Stone was the real scammer, tricking him into not hiring NPCs. Su Shi thought money is meant to be spent, and if supplies are abundant, there’s no need to worry about hiring costs.

The main reason is poverty; if Shadow was still as affluent as in the first summer, even if it was still 20 kilograms, they would hire NPCs.

...

Maya drove the pickup back to Doomsday Fortress first. Peanut and Dashuang, for reasons unknown, with Peanut’s help, went back to the second-floor dormitory to rest. Now the only option was to move clumsily from the second floor back to the first, and with Lin Wu’s help, lie in the bed of the pickup.

Stone was no longer surprised when Doomsday Fortress sent over another injured person. He was planting crops in the farm, which had returned to normal; Lin Wu sat nearby and began talking about the players from Mountain Top Church Business Street working the wasteland, encouraging Stone to continue making an effort to till more farmland outside the system.

Stone gestured for Lin Wu to follow him out the back door, where there was a small patch of tilled land, only one square meter in size, with a pumpkin plant on it. Lin Wu checked the pumpkin’s condition and found that it was poor, estimating only a 30% yield. The main reasons were poor soil, high temperature, lack of fertilizer, and insect damage.

Not only is the system’s farmland fertile, but other problems are easily solved. Clearing the land for farming wasn’t impossible, but it required sufficient manpower and agricultural knowledge. Additionally, there was an unavoidable shortcoming: harvesting crops from cleared land also yielded seeds, but the quality of these seeds was inferior to those from system farmland. The quality of the seeds from the system farmland would gradually improve with each harvest.

The last reason was that the agricultural bonuses from the research institute only applied to the system’s farmland.

All things considered, it could be concluded that tilling wasteland was a thankless task; it might suffice for survival needs but wouldn’t just fail to improve the quality of life, it would drag everyone into laborious farm work.

Stone said, "The homeland is still within the boundaries of the game after all. With Blue Star’s immigrating capabilities, there are few who really know how to farm. Even if someone was a Blue Star farmer, it wouldn’t work, because from planting to harvesting, mechanized farming and automated management were used on Blue Star."

Stone continued, "Don’t worry and don’t listen to their wild guesses. It’s definitely not because Earth is still occupied by zombies, requiring us to liberate it, which is why they let us play Home. If that were the case, they would undertake this game with fully realistic measures."

Lin Wu said, "I’m not worried. With my high points, I can just lie down at home every day."

Stone remarked, "The one with the highest points becomes the supreme commander of the zombie extermination forces."

Lin Wu looked at Stone and said, "When the time comes, I will first use you, Old Man, as the sacrifice to the flag."

"Haha!"

After chatting for a while, Stone called Maya over and said, "This morning, Shana took people to the mall again. The number of zombies has increased a bit, but it’s still manageable. From the messages that have come through, the mall is running out of stuff."

Maya asked, "Are you talking about the basic items obtained from demolition?"

"Yeah," Stone said. "They left at eight in the morning, and up to now, they’ve only filled two backpacks."

Curiously, Lin Wu asked, "Who’s carrying them?"

"Get lost," Stone continued. "It’s not just the mall—the decay rate of the whole world is faster than a normal world, just like the growth rate of the crops. I’m worried that by autumn, we won’t be able to get anything from human-made facilities anymore."

Maya said, "Rags, scrap iron, plastics, electronic components, and other basic items can be obtained through Corpse Looting, but except for rags, the chances of getting other basic items are very low. Strictly speaking, the easily obtainable resources are wood, building materials, and cloth. With these three items, it’s enough for players to survive. Items like scrap iron will gradually become luxury goods."

Lin Wu added from the side, "Welcome to the primitive era."

"Exactly, the primitive era," Maya said. "Waste City is a discarded primitive era with almost no usable resources."

Arguing as usual, Lin Wu said, "Although items obtained from demolition have decreased, some things don’t break, like the ’Highway Star’ and other similar objects. Demolishing scrapped cars can yield scrap iron, plastics, and electronic components; demolishing normal cars can yield these items too. Now that there’s a shortage of scrapped cars, we should look for normal cars."