This Game Is Too Real
Chapter 203: Everyone is hungry during the winter, why does your family have so much grain?!

Chapter 203: Chapter 203: Everyone is hungry during the winter, why does your family have so much grain?!

The Cattle and Horse Club group.

WC There Really Are Mosquitoes: "Weird, where have all the Dog Managers gone? Haven’t seen anyone all day."

Old White: "Fang Chang and the others went on a mission and probably haven’t logged off yet. Do you really think it’s okay to say that in front of me? (sideways smile)"

(Group member "WC There Really Are Mosquitoes" withdrew a message.)

WC There Really Are Mosquitoes: "Damn! They haven’t logged off yet? Don’t their characters get tired?"

If it weren’t for the fact that characters in the game also need to sleep, many people would probably stay online 24 hours a day.

Old White: "Seems like they’re taking shifts sleeping. I just saw Fang Chang on the forum."

Tomato and Eggs Stir-Fried: "Speaking of which, did you guys see the post Ah Guang shared on the official website? Version 1.0 seems to be launching the Guild System. Should we start a guild then?"

WC There Really Are Mosquitoes: "Do you even have to ask? Of course, we should! All the combat professionals and life professionals from the T0 ladder are here in our group. If we join forces, won’t we be invincible! (grinning)"

Night Ten: "Just asking if you mean yourself when you talk about the life professional in the T0 ladder? (funny)"

WC There Really Are Mosquitoes: "Damn! You look down on Goblin Technology? (angry)"

Night Ten: "I don’t, I’m not, I wouldn’t dare. (funny)"

Tomato and Eggs Stir-Fried: "(sideways)"

Old White: "Haha, don’t pick on Mosquito. Some of the gadgets he makes are pretty strong; I doubt I could make them myself. By the way, Night Ten, why are you here? Did you finish your mission?"

Night Ten: "Finished it, now on my way back. We’re taking turns riding the bicycle. I was just riding it, now Wild Wind is carrying me, and I took a nap on his back. Quit Smoking Brother still hasn’t mastered the art of logging off, probably dawdling around. I just washed my face, waiting to eat and then take over Wild Wind’s shift."

Previously, when they didn’t recruit Old White into the team, Night Ten had called Quit Smoking.

The bicycles manufactured by Steel Factory No. 81 are quite large, enough to accommodate two people comfortably. Four people with two bicycles, just right to take turns riding.

Tomato and Eggs Stir-Fried: "So, what mission did you guys do?"

Night Ten: "Reconnaissance! We’ve got another group up north, about 6 trucks and 5 machine-gun-mounted armored pickups. They’re slightly better equipped than the group we encountered last night, most likely the main forces of the Chewing Bone Tribe. They circled the lab base twice before heading up there. Probably fuming by now; I even heard some gunshots. (funny)"

Old White: "Haha, we took all the fuel rods and supplies, burned what we couldn’t carry. If I were them, I’d be fuming too!"

WC There Really Are Mosquitoes: "Don’t change the subject, what about the guild? We need a badass name, right?"

Night Ten: "Do we even need to ask? (funny)"

Old White: "Indeed, no need to ask. (laugh)"

The name Cattle and Horse Club, almost becoming an urban legend in the single-player game circle alongside "Wasteland OL."

It would be a waste not to use that name for the guild.

"Fuck! That’s really stingy!"

Residents of the refuge, checking the rewards from the opened Blind Box, Chu Guang couldn’t help but curse.

There was no power armor.

The prizes were as follows:

Two lollipops, three healing injections, and an Active Substance Extractor.

Chu Guang just didn’t get it, what kind of weapon was an Active Substance Extractor supposed to be?

Was it because it could produce active substances used to create clones? And then, are clones considered a type of consumable under weapons?

The indirect relationship here was just too long!

Chu Guang felt that if this logic held, cyborgs could also be considered weapons.

After all, they could act as human bombs, serve as cannon fodder online, and when captured, they even drain the enemy’s resources. If that’s not a weapon, what is?

So...

Can I draw one more time?

"Forget it, another Active Substance Extractor isn’t bad."

Back when there were just dozens of players, it was rare for anyone to die in a week. Now with more players, as the exploration of the underground world of Qingquan City picked up, "natural" reductions in their numbers occurred every few days, and the Active Substance Extractor virtually never stopped operating, running at full capacity daily.

Chu Guang calculated that, ignoring the time for loading and unloading materials, it could produce 1 to 3 units of active substances per hour.

If dealing with Mucor species, the recovery speed would be significantly slower than mammals, with output ranging from 0.9 to 1.5 units per hour.

Additionally, factors such as material integrity, moisture content, temperature, and degree of decay all affect the recovery amount and speed.

After some thought, Chu Guang made a decision.

"The new Active Substance Extractor can be deployed just outside level B3."

This would also save the trouble of having to cut up the corpses of the Variants into pieces, pack them up, and send them to the surface for processing.

Chu Guang had long since considered Shelter No. 404 his home.

Bringing those bloody things back home did make him feel somewhat uncomfortable.

Shelter No. 404’s B3 level.

Two guards were carrying a pitch-black "coffin" one in front of the other, passing through a gear-shaped gate and walking out.

Outside the gate was an underground tunnel not marked on the map, which connected to the subway network of Qingquan City and extended in the direction outside of Qingquan City, leading to an unknown destination.

Currently, the players’ progress in strategy was roughly about 1 kilometer to the north and 800 meters to the south. Due to the presence of the central lair in Qingquan City center, the difficulty of strategizing in the direction of the city center was slightly higher, even though this place was very far from the city center.

The construction team at Outpost Base had built a checkpoint here with concrete, bricks, and sandbags.

Inside the checkpoint, two guards took turns standing watch, responsible for issuing tasks to the residents of the shelter while also preventing these residents from bringing strange items back into the shelter or attracting hard-to-handle Variants.

Although no accidents had occurred so far, the manager had still equipped this place with a machine gun and 300 machine gun rounds, as well as a simple 12kw wood-fired generator and four searchlights.

In addition, there were two Iron Fist Rocket Launchers in the outpost, locked in wooden boxes, with the keys kept by the duty captain.

This place was like a miniature fort.

Even if a Tyrant were encountered, it could hold off for a minute or two to get the doors of the shelter closed.

After carrying the pitch-black "coffin" into the outpost next to the generator, the young, new guard straightened up and wiped off his sweat.

Watching his superior pull a cable from the generator and connect it to this strange-looking device, he couldn’t help but ask curiously,

"Sir, what is this box used for?"

Liuding, who had just wiped his hands, glanced at the newbie, grinned, and said,

"You wouldn’t want to know."

While they were speaking, two residents of the shelter came over, carrying a pitch-black Eater.

"We just saw the task update!"

"Can we now recycle the Eater corpses?"

Looking at the subtitles on his VM, Liuding, following the manager’s orders, looked at them solemnly and nodded, reciting in a rote manner with an unstandard accent,

"Yes, esteemed warriors, this is for you to handle."

The two players beamed with joy and cheerfully stepped forward, skillfully opened the lid of the Active Substance Extractor, and tossed in the corpse about to be processed.

They were already mature little players.

They could produce their own materials now!

Gnome King Riches wiped the sweat from his forehead, stared at the working Active Substance Extractor, and couldn’t help but ask,

"Say, how many Resurrection Coins can this thing produce in a day?"

Mole from the Ravine offhandedly answered,

"Heard it’s one per hour... but the synthetic efficiency of the Eaters is very low, not sure about the exact output."

"Damn! Is that all?"

"No choice, heard that the synthetic efficiency is only higher for mammals."

Gnome King Riches suddenly had a thought and asked,

"What if... how much could be extracted from a living person?"

Mole from the Ravine glanced at him,

"Never tried it, why don’t you lie down and try?"

"Are you a devil??"

Liuding glance at his VM, no subtitles appeared, which meant these people probably weren’t talking to him.

Meanwhile, the young guard looked at these warriors with a look full of longing.

If only he could be as strong and brave as them, battling those terrifying Variants on his own...

...

Outpost Base East Entrance.

About a hundred meters from the ditch in front of the enclosing wall, tribe residents were walking towards Rhombus Lake to the west, carrying buckets under the morning sun on the snow.

A new day started with fetching water.

Now in December, the surface of Rhombus Lake was frozen, and people could even run along the shore. They had to break the ice before they could get the fresh water they needed.

If they were lucky, they might even catch a couple of fish breathing through the ice layer.

Recently, a tribe that had fled here had settled down, and the separated tribesmen found their way here one after another, making the originally sparsely populated village much livelier.

However, even though the two tribes were next to each other, separated only by a small path, they had not fully integrated into one village.

Even though they were friendly toward each other and there were even two newly formed couples, both sides tactfully maintained a certain distance, neither too distant nor too intimately close.

The newly arrived tribal chief had planted a spear at the entrance of their settlement as the totem of the tribe.

Seeing this, Wuding Axe did the same by placing a post at the entrance of his settlement and sticking an axe on it.

Thus, the Frost Spear and Iron Axe tribes were born.

Carrying rifles, while patrolling outside the base, two guards stopped at the eastern gate for a while and glanced at the village of the tribespeople, casually chatting.

"It’s getting increasingly lively around the base."

"Yes."

"Did you hear that among the recent newcomers to the guard team, two are tribespeople?"

"That’s true, I remember them being two skinny and dark-skinned young fellas. Not sure if they even reached sixteen, I’m truly worried they’ll piss their pants from bullets flying over the trenches."

With this damn weather, wetting pants isn’t a joke, it could be life-threatening.

"So, are we going to fight soon?"

"It’s likely, I heard from a brother who came back last night that they fought with the people from the Chewing Bone Tribe more than ten kilometers away. Rockets whizzed through the sky, killing many!"

Talking about war, although it made people frown, none of the young guys in the guard team were scared.

After all, even armies as formidable as theirs had once been defeated by their hands, what more a group of blood-thirsty barbarians?

They had no doubt that the brilliant and courageous Manager could lead them to victory, and those daring to bare their canine teeth, like Hyenas, would surely be crushed under the righteous Iron Hammer!

At that moment, a young guard came running from not far away.

"We need manpower to the north! If you aren’t too busy, come and give us a hand."

The two patrolling guards tensed up, gripping their rifle straps tighter.

"We are on patrol, what’s the situation in the north?"

Seeing their anxious expressions, the young guard smiled and said,

"Don’t worry, it’s not the Looters, but spoils of war! From last night’s operation, we have dragged the spoils to Changjiu Farm, and now a batch has arrived at the North Gate of Wetland Park. Trucks can’t enter the park, so we need a few strong men to help with moving and unloading the goods."

Hearing this, the two relaxed and let go of their rifle straps.

"I’ll notify the Warehouse Manager, just wait a moment."

The task of moving was for the Warehouse Manager to assign, as they did not have the authorization to assign tasks.

The young guard nodded energetically.

"Hmm, we don’t need many, about 10 should be enough!"

Last night’s battle had captured over 30 tons of food from the Looters, along with a large quantity of standard military weapons, ammunition, and even rockets!

Part of the supplies was left at Changjiu Farm, and the other part was brought here to Outpost Base.

At this very moment, in the central square of the healthcare facility, Brun, having just woken up, stretched and rubbed the soreness at the brow. He couldn’t help but yawn.

The aerial images from the VM last night kept appearing in his dreams repeatedly, depriving him of sleep all night.

"Yo, our old landlord is up this early too."

Hearing the voice from behind, Brun instinctively turned his head and saw the person speaking to him, his brows immediately knitting into three furrows.

"Your mouth is still as foul as ever, it’s a wonder you’ve survived this long."

Embracing his arms, Night Owl didn’t take that comment to heart and squeezed out a slightly mocking smile from his scarred face.

"Don’t misunderstand, I mean no harm. Let’s talk business, have you considered it?"

Brun slightly tilted his chin upwards.

"Until I hear a concrete relocation plan, I refuse to express any opinions."

A relocation plan?

Was that even necessary?

"You always speak so cryptically... let me put it straight, I plan to move."

For this juvenile remark, Brown scoffed and replied indifferently.

"Is this just your idea, or the idea of all the survivors in the highway town?"

Night Owl shrugged his shoulders.

"It doesn’t matter, I’ll convince them."

"With what will you convince them?"

"We are no match for those Looters, and Giant Stone City does not care about us nor will it intervene in our survival. If we don’t unite now, we will be defeated one by one."

Hearing this naive statement, Brown couldn’t help but scoff.

"Can you guarantee that those in Blue Jackets will definitely ensure your safety? Even if they have the capability, can you assure they won’t use you as cannon fodder, thrown into the frontline to deplete the Looters’ bullets?"

Honestly, although Brown was hoping that this emerging group of Blue Jackets could solve the increasingly close troubles from the north, otherwise, he wouldn’t have shown up here.

But his envisioned plan involved the Blue Jackets organizing an allied force that would appear at their doorstep in critical moments to confront the Looter’s attacks together.

For this, he could pay a price, be it food or something else.

However, Brown never expected that the proposal from these Blue Jackets was for them all to move here.

It was absurd!

If he really did that, it undoubtedly meant losing everything he currently possessed!

And if one must flee, why not run to the safer Giant Stone City?

It was clearly more civilized!

The army was stronger!

And it was much safer than here!

As the two were firm in their respective views, a commotion was heard from the north gate.

A group of residents from the refuge was seen dragging wooden and metal carts, transporting bundles of grain from the outside.

At a rough count, that grain weighed at least ten tons.

Coincidentally coming out of the sanatorium, Doru, who had just woken up, rubbed his eyes.

Staring at the grain being carted from the north gate to the warehouse, his mung bean-sized eyes instantly widened to the size of coins, and he couldn’t help but mutter.

"Where did all this grain come from?!"

Everyone was hungry through the winter, why do you have so much grain!

"Eighty percent it’s those Looters’." Coming out from the sanatorium’s door, Du Conglin with a hunter’s hat had a mixed expression of joy and worry.

Joyous because the group in Blue Jackets was strong, and judging from these spoils, at least the pitch-black video wasn’t fabricated. They truly fought with those Looters and even won!

However, he was worried because looking at the amount of this grain, the Looters eyeing the North suburb of Qingquan City probably weren’t few in numbers!

Tens of thousands of kilograms of grain, pushed by hand carts into the grain store, and what couldn’t fit was piled up in a temporarily built shed.

With so much food, even a truck would need several trips, it didn’t seem like it was prepared for just a hundred or two people!

It’s well known that those Looters don’t farm, at least not themselves.

To collect so much grain, they must have caused much destruction along the way...

Continuously emerging from the guest rooms, representatives from other survivor settlements in the North suburb saw those residents of the refuge busily transporting the spoils, each with an expression more vivid than the last.

There were envious, anxious, and undecided faces.

Just then, a man clad in powered armor walked out from the front door of the sanatorium.

Removing the face mask of the powered armor, Chu Guang turned to the nearest unfamiliar survivor and spoke in a friendly tone.

"Did you rest well last night?"

Hearing the lord of this place addressing him, Du Conglin from Morning wind community responded with a constrained expression.

"Thank you for your hospitality, I had a very peaceful sleep last night."

"That’s good."

Smiling faintly, Chu Guang paused for a moment before looking at the other representatives from different survivor settlements around him and continued.

"Now that everyone is here,"

"Please follow me."

-

(Next Chapter before 11 o’clock!)