This Game Is Too Real
Chapter 529: Three Days Holiday

Chapter 529: Chapter 529: Three Days Holiday

After the banquet had ended, Chu Guang received numerous gifts.

Although most of the Survivor Settlements gifted these to him personally, Chu Guang accepted them on behalf of the Alliance.

"...This sword was my elder brother’s sidearm; the former king gifted it to him when he was a month old, and he has carried it with him ever since he could remember. He asked me to tell you that the Honey Badger Kingdom is willing to be the blade of the Alliance, and the enemies of the Alliance are our enemies."

Afni handed the treasured sword to Chu Guang, gazing intently at him, and then passed him a shield engraved with the Honey Badger royal family’s crest.

"This shield is a gift from my second brother; he insisted I convey his exact words to you, that the Honey Badger Kingdom is willing to be the shield of the Alliance. We will guard against threats from the west, and our friendship will be as solid as steel."

After taking the shield from her hands and setting it aside, Chu Guang spoke with solemnity.

"Thank you for your gifts. The friendship between the Alliance and the Honey Badger Kingdom will be as firm as steel. Also, I sincerely hope that your two brothers can maintain a harmonious relationship, handle internal affairs properly, and not betray the trust your residents place in you."

The Honey Badger royal family was beloved by the local residents.

Otherwise, when the Army arrived, so many people wouldn’t have resisted or even followed Yard into exile to the Lion Kingdom to form a government-in-exile.

Chu Guang did not intend to interfere in their affairs, provided they did not escalate into bloody conflicts.

He believed Yard and Sommer were aware of this.

"I will keep your teachings in mind and will advise them when appropriate."

Afni gave a slight bow.

After a brief pause, she turned to retrieve the red satin that had been placed under the sword and shield. It was only then that Chu Guang realized it was a cloak, and he couldn’t help but make a light-hearted comment.

"You are the only group that has gifted us three different congratulatory presents; we will cherish this friendship."

"This is my gift." Afni blinked, nodded slightly in thanks, and said, "Thank you for imparting your knowledge to me and for the care you have shown all this while."

"There’s no need for formalities; colleagues who have worked with you all speak highly of you. What we do can hardly be called ’care’."

Glancing at the small mountain of gifts behind him, Chu Guang was slightly moved and smiled, "I plan to build a museum in City of Dawn to house all the gifts as a testament to our friendships, for all residents to appreciate."

He also planned to construct a zoo to house Variants captured by players, including the Claw of Death and Monsters.

This would not only serve scientific purposes but also provide education for new players and residents who had never traveled far, showcasing the Alliance’s formidable combat power.

"That would be wonderful."

Personally, Afni felt a bit regretful, but then she thought about it and quickly smiled brightly again.

Perhaps this was also good...

Aside from the gifts from the Honey Badger Kingdom, the Lion Kingdom had presented the Alliance with a hundred mighty warhorses. These obviously couldn’t be placed in a museum and would have to wait until the zoo was planned to be incorporated.

Since the Alliance didn’t have a traditional cavalry, Chu Guang selected sixty horses to be sent to the guard squads in City of Dawn, Dawn City, and Falling Leaves City.

In the rugged wilderness, horses were faster than bicycles and provided sufficient deterrence without terrifying people like the Claw of Death.

The Golden Lizard Kingdom had given Chu Guang a 1:1 replica of a bust made of gold, supposedly melted down from the Army’s dinars. Though they were a vassal of the Academy, they also saw potential in the River Valley Province’s market.

The Camel Hump Kingdom sent a mechanical clock inlaid with blood diamonds to the Alliance, thanking the Alliance for its timely support during military operations in Lost Valley, while also displaying its wealth and the skilled craftsmanship of its artisans.

Comparatively, the gifts from the corporate entities were more pragmatic.

On behalf of the council, Wu Changnian gave Chu Guang a nearly three-meter-tall all-terrain vehicle.

Its huge tires raised the chassis, the vehicle’s body was made of lightweight special steel, and the glass was specially made bulletproof glass, reportedly able to withstand light Gauss weapons fire.

"I see you’re always in power armor, so you might like this muscular behemoth," Wu Changnian said with a smile, patting the engine hood of the off-road vehicle outside the hall, "This is a product from a subsidiary of the Chang Ge Group, the V-100 ’Tiger’ off-road vehicle. You could even use it as a wheeled armor vehicle."

There was something he didn’t say.

If you find it useful, it wouldn’t be a problem to purchase more, unlike large aircraft, which aren’t on the list of technologically sensitive items.

Chu Guang admired the vehicle with a look of appreciation, then turned to Wu Changnian and asked.

"Can this vehicle fly?"

According to Fang Chang and Mole, vehicles in Ideal City could fly in the sky.

He was quite interested in that technology.

Wu Changnian coughed lightly.

"There’s no magnetic levitation infrastructure here... so we didn’t install a maglev unit. But even if there were, I wouldn’t recommend flying this thing in the sky; steel structures are a bit heavy."

However, that also meant that even someone in power armor could get into it.

And even seat four.

Staring at the off-road vehicle, Chu Guang suddenly reflected.

"I just said I was preparing to set up a museum to put all representative gifts."

"We are pragmatists; a product that goes unused is its regret. You could start by placing one set of car keys, and then put the whole vehicle in after it’s old. I think that would be more meaningful and better evidence our friendship," Wu Changnian grasped Chu Guang’s hand and shook it, smiling, "I’ve enjoyed our cooperation this time and hope it continues so we can explore a brighter future together."

Chu Guang firmly shook his hand back, smiling.

"Definitely!"

Later, he planned to assign this vehicle to the Guards Corps.

If it proved useful, he would consider importing more from the Chang Ge Group for departments and corps that needed them. Of course, if the reverse-engineering work on the Academy’s "Reindeer" track vehicle by Dawn City’s industrial zone progressed well, this foreign exchange expense could be saved.

The large-scale war had ended, and the development of heavy equipment such as tanks and artillery could be slowed down. According to Chu Guang’s plans for Alliance Army Command, the next phase of equipment development would focus on miniaturization and special operations.

That meant, refining details that were previously omitted or skipped altogether.

In any case, not only the allies and partners of the Alliance but also Giant Stone City, Garbage City, Red River Alliance, and even Dam City, which Chu Guang had heard of for the first time, all sent substantial gifts to the Alliance.

However, the gifts that delighted Chu Guang the most were not those from other Survivor Settlements but the "big gift" that Little Fish brought back from Camp 101...

...

"Little Fish and Pai also have a special gift for Brother Chu, although it’s nothing precious."

Shelter No. 404, Floor B4 browsing room.

Little Fish’s face was flushed, and she spoke shyly with an embarrassed smile.

Pai, standing next to her, couldn’t wait to hand over a thumb-sized hard drive, proudly curling her lips as she said,

"The item you wanted is ready; feel free to use it! By the way, you can check it on the holographic computer I gave you and just let me know if there’s anything that needs to be improved."

That expression.

It was almost as if she had "Hurry up and praise me" written on her face.

"Wonderful!" Chu Guang, smiling, took the hard drive from her hand and indulged her wish, "Thank you, you’ve both been a great help."

Hearing this, Little Fish’s face bloomed into a happy smile, but she quickly appeared to realize something and looked at Pai in surprise, whispering,

"Wait... didn’t you say we were going to give Brother Chu a surprise? How did it turn into something Brother Chu asked us to do?"

Pai’s proud expression instantly stiffened on her face as she subtly shifted her gaze, muttering awkwardly,

"I thought this would motivate you more..."

Even the speed at which she learned things had increased.

Little Fish stared at her, lifting an eyebrow, looking genuinely a bit angry.

"You lied!"

During her time at Camp 101, she had always considered Pai a good friend, but Pai had been deceiving her for so long!

"Wuwu... it’s my fault, I’m sorry! I won’t dare to do it again!"

Unable to bear her best friend’s solemn and serious expression, Pai looked at Chu Guang for help, hoping he could assist her.

However, Chu Guang’s attention was entirely captured by the deep blue light projected from the holographic computer, as he keenly dragged his index finger across the screen.

Long before the war started, he had asked Camp 101 to help develop a set of bond credit contracts suitable for the Alliance’s current economic rules and supporting trading systems.

These systems were originally designed to issue war bonds with the aim of "allowing societal resources to be allocated more efficiently in the Alliance’s war machine."

However, it was only because he received a substantial loan from Giant Stone City and companies provided both loans and subsidies that he delayed deploying this exploit.

If he could reach his goals by exploiting others, Chu Guang would certainly not exploit his own people. By uniting his own people, he could unite even more others.

Now, the reason he brought this tool back was partly to share the dividends of economic development among more residents of the Alliance and partly to further exploit the resources of neighboring societies.

The Alliance would issue two sets of bonds.

One was a domestic bond repaid in base currency to absorb excess liquidity generated from large-scale infrastructure investments, incidentally transferring a portion of the wealth created by infrastructure from direct beneficiaries to the majority of survivors who could not participate.

The other was a foreign bond repaid in foreign currency used to purchase commodities in that currency’s market, curb inflation in the domestic market, and export excess domestic market liquidity.

It was like having two barrels of beer.

As the person "distributing the beer," Chu Guang could to some extent decide which barrel would hold the genuine beer and which would hold the froth.

Although such financial tools had appeared in the history of the United Human, the current situation was different from the past, and simply copying old methods was obviously not viable.

Little Fish had once served as the president of Alliance Bank for a time.

Although her day-to-day work involved merely handling silver coins, she dealt daily with workers from all walks of life, including players, which gave her an intuitive sense of the Alliance’s economic operating mode; she only lacked matching knowledge.

Sending her to study at Camp 101 was not only to supplement her professional knowledge but also to hope she could combine the actual conditions of the Alliance with the research of Camp 101’s researchers to better complete this work.

Later, likely finding the technical content of the project too low, Professor Aven assigned this task to his student Pai.

On one hand, Pai had considerable expertise in programming, electronics, and mechanics, and on the other, she had a good relationship with Little Fish.

And indeed, as Aven had anticipated, their cooperation was highly efficient and yielded good results.

"Not bad! There’s hardly anything that needs changing. I’ll assign Little Qi to manage the maintenance and updating of the trading system; you guys did a great job!"

With a light swipe of his finger...

Chu Guang, turning off the holographic screen and looking at the two seated opposite him on the sofa, noticed Little Fish glaring intently at Pai, seemingly holding a grudge, and he was momentarily puzzled.

"What’s wrong?"

"Umm... it was my fault," Pai confessed, glancing guiltily at Chu Guang and admitting proactively, "I previously told Little Fish that we’d give it to you as a gift when you returned from the front line without telling her that you had actually asked me to do it."

Hearing her explanation, Little Fish’s frown deepened.

"Isn’t the point that you lied to me for half a year!"

"Wuwu..." Pai didn’t expect her apology to backfire, shrinking back slightly as she became even smaller.

As Pai timidly shrank back, Chu Guang couldn’t help but suppress a smile. Although he knew it wasn’t good to feel schadenfreude at such a time, it had been a long while since he had mediated a conflict as pure as this one on the Wasteland.

Of course, this was not a trivial matter to be taken lightly.

Little Fish’s personality greatly resembled her older brother, Yu Hu—the flattering way to put it was pure and earnest; the unflattering way was stubborn and irrational. Sometimes she was as stubborn as a mule, the type you couldn’t pull back once she set her mind on something.

With such personality, she easily trusted others, but once deceived, she was deeply hurt, even by well-intentioned lies.

"Pai."

"Uh?" Upon hearing Chu Guang call her name, Pai, unsure of what to do next, cautiously looked up at him.

"You are a very intelligent girl, and though not a resident of the shelter, your talent is no less than anyone here, even surpassing others. Otherwise, Dr. Method wouldn’t call you a genius and gift you that precious chip. If I were to assess, your talents would earn you significant recognition in any settlement."

Watching Pai’s face flicker between nervous and uncontrollably proud as she smirked, Chu Guang took a deep breath and patiently continued,

"But I don’t believe what you did was right."

"Why..." Her smile fading, Pai murmured in a hurt tone, "I just... saw that she so desperately wanted to become someone powerful, so I wanted to help her. Don’t you want her to be able to assist you sooner?"

Chu Guang looked at her seriously.

"I believe you value Little Fish and care a lot about your friendship with her, wanting to unlock her potential, but we shouldn’t fully ignore the means to an end just because the result is correct, the intentions are good... In fact, instead of fabricating something that doesn’t exist, you could have communicated with her properly, right? If you treat her as a friend, and not as a follower or an accessory."

Naturally, a genius has the capital to be proud, but without care, pride can easily turn into arrogance. Most dilemmas faced by the shelter are not due to lack of preparation, but because of the arrogance in assuming that everything will turn out fine if the less intelligent simply obey.

If Pai were a bit more mature, he would relay more precise experiences from Dr. Method to her.

For instance, selectively retaining some truths is always more tactful than lying, and even when lying becomes necessary, it should include promises that can be fulfilled.

However, these experiences were still too premature for her.

"I didn’t! I have never treated Little Fish as an accessory!"

Finally realizing her mistake, Pai turned to Little Fish and sincerely apologized with a lowered head, "I was wrong, sorry... I shouldn’t have kept this from you."

This time, Little Fish’s eyebrows finally relaxed a bit.

Although steadfast, she wasn’t the type to unrelentingly cling to being right.

She could feel that Pai hadn’t intended to deceive her out of malice.

In fact, she regretted losing her temper earlier. After all, the other was considerate of her, perhaps she should have expressed her discontent in a gentler manner.

Chu Guang looked towards Little Fish, his tone gentle.

"Can you forgive her? She has sincerely apologized."

"Yes, but... you cannot lie to me next time," Little Fish murmured softly, taking the step down offered by Chu Guang, diverting her challenging gaze away from Pai’s face.

"Uh-huh, I promise!" Pai immediately raised her little hand and nodded vigorously.

Meeting her friend’s sincere gaze, Little Fish’s cheeks slightly reddened as she gently nodded.

"Then... I forgive you."

Observing the two reconcile, a smile inevitably formed on Chu Guang’s face.

Sitting at the desk, Xiao Qi covered her mouth and giggled softly, whispering playfully into his ear through the headset.

"You really know how to comfort people, Master!"

Chu Guang chuckled softly, whispering in Mandarin,

"You’d laugh, but before I graduated, I actually wanted to become a teacher."

Though he wasn’t trained as a teacher, he was good at sciences and had tutored as a part-time job. Both students and parents liked him; one girl even earnestly vowed to apply to his college, although unfortunately, she didn’t pass the high entrance scores of Jiangcheng University that year.

Before graduating, he had considered getting his teaching credentials to possibly teach mathematics or physics.

Xiao Qi paused, then looked at him surprised.

"Eh...? But Master, didn’t you say you were in sales before?"

"Yes," Chu Guang smiled faintly, "so you see, what one wants to do and what one is doing can be completely different matters. Humans are such contradictory creatures, something hard to grasp with a programmer’s mindset."

Xiao Qi tilted her head.

"I don’t find it hard to understand."

"Is that so? Perhaps you understand me best."

With a casual remark, Chu Guang gazed at the hard disk in his hands, his lips slowly curling into a smile.

The last piece of the puzzle had just been placed.

It was now up to the other party to make their move.

Xiao Qi blinked, intently studying Chu Guang.

Although it didn’t know what the master was planning to do, intuition told it that a lot of people were about to have a really bad time...

This probably was the recent peak!

Among them, 1201 people applied for settlement as refugees.

Most of these people had no money and no special skills. Some were enticed by the prosperity of the Alliance, some were drawn by the culture of the Alliance, and some simply acted on impulse, deciding to end their wandering life and make this their final stop in the Wasteland.

According to the usual practice of the Alliance, residents settling as refugees would first obtain the status of "supervisees" with limited resident rights and would be accommodated by the Home of the Refugees. The Home of the Refugees would provide them free dormitories and food and require them to participate in work and educational courses, converting their status to that of regular residents within no more than six months.

For them, the Home of the Refugees was more like a school.

The remaining 1510 people were mainly residents of Giant Stone City. Among them, some were engineers and some were ordinary workers who had been living in the Alliance for a long time due to work, had savings, and possessed job skills, but had been delaying formalizing their paperwork.

What finally prompted them to make up their minds and get their paperwork done was largely due to Chu Guang’s speech at Triumph Square.

It couldn’t be helped.

He gave too much.

In the Wasteland, survival alone was difficult enough, and people usually didn’t ask for much more. They didn’t care whether the Army, the Company, or the Academy was right; whoever could keep them from starving and freezing, they would regard as a god or a savior.

No one had ever been willing like that man to consider things from the perspective of ordinary survivors.

And to think about so much.

Especially since Chu Guang mentioned that many future benefits of the Alliance would be linked to residence status, and only citizens of the Alliance could own property as individuals. Since they had already decided to settle here, it naturally was better to take care of the paperwork earlier.

It especially surprised Chu Guang that some residents of Ideal City even applied for citizen status!

Clearly, it wasn’t the welfare benefits of the Alliance that enticed them, as the welfare here, no matter how good, couldn’t compare to that of Ideal City—it was far inferior.

However, the Resident Registration Office did not issue them with resident permits.

Although the threshold for obtaining resident status in the Alliance was low, it didn’t mean there were no requirements.

Under current regulations, anyone could apply for resident status, but passing the application required working for at least six months at a company or institution with relevant qualifications, or at an officially-operated nonprofit organization.

The investment settlement scheme was even stricter, with specific requirements for the number of employees, business scale, industry type, and duration of operation. It was better to start a company, obtain the necessary qualifications, hire employees, or receive placement as a refugee.

These first-time visitors to the Alliance, obviously, didn’t meet these conditions.

However, two young men did not give up.

According to the head of the Resident Registration Office, after being rejected, they were even more motivated and planned to apply for teaching positions at the Home of the Refugees to teach reading and arithmetic to the Wasteland Wanderers there, intending to prove with their actions that they weren’t just messing around.

Honestly, both the head of the Resident Registration Office, who reported this matter, and Chu Guang, who heard the report, thought that those two young men were just fooling around and would probably get sick of life on the Wasteland in a couple of days.

But they also didn’t rule out the one-in-a-thousand chance that they were genuinely moved by the story of the Pioneer, inspired by the speech at Triumph Square and the societal thoughts of the Alliance, and wanted to help make a difference here.

Whatever the case, this was a good beginning.

The celebration had a total of three days of holiday, but that was for ordinary residents.

The entire next day, Chu Guang spent almost entirely busy with tasks and buried in piles of reports, for which he was severely scolded by Boss Xia.

However, Chu Guang didn’t mind.

Being busy now was also for the sake of being more relaxed later.

Some things were like the roads in "City Skyline"—if not planned well from the start, they would only become more troublesome later.

On the third day of the celebration.

Chu Guang convened a work meeting with senior departmental staff to critically review the industrial transformation plan submitted by the Department of Industry and a series of budgetary proposals for policies.

The central theme of the entire meeting was to shift part of the heavy and military industries towards light industry.

Especially the industries that, due to the urgency of war, the Alliance had no time to develop and had delegated to Giant Stone City, now also needed to be built slowly.

It would be best to pluck the ready fruits from the neighbor’s tree.

Already in a previous closed-door meeting, Chu Guang had hinted to the finance department that the upcoming economic policies of the Alliance aimed to challenge the mainstream currency position of chips.

Thus, all assets of the Alliance priced in chips, whether fixed or non-fixed assets, had to be planned for phased disposal as potential bad assets.

Otherwise, his plan of cutting leeks would become a self-harming tactic, bashing the others severely but leaving himself barely hanging on.

That would be harmful to oneself and others.

The entire meeting lasted from morning until afternoon and even the lunch was something Chu Guang paid for personally for the participants.

Perhaps because the boxed lunches he ordered were quite appealing, all the ministers and deputy ministers at the meeting threw themselves into their work with great enthusiasm and finally came up with a basically reliable execution plan before dusk.

Starting tomorrow, the Alliance would implement a new work system, granting certain subsidies to factories that actively cooperated.

Although finance was the lubricant of industry, Chu Guang was well aware that merely having a lubricant was not enough to hollow out a neighbor’s home.

He not only wanted to ensure that the survivors who chose the Alliance could at least live in corn-loft apartments, but also had to ensure there were sufficient industries to absorb the continually growing population.

Cutting leeks was just one of the means of speeding up development.

At the root of it all, "self-strengthening" was the real solution to all problems.

After the meeting concluded.

Chu Guang pondered whether to catch the tail end of the celebration by strolling casually on the street, relaxing his mind, and appreciating the achievements that he and the little players had worked hard for, when suddenly a piece of good news came from List.

On the phone, his voice carried an unmistakable tone of pride.

"Respected Manager, the task you assigned me has been successfully completed!"