Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 113: Children Must Not Suffer, No Matter How Hard It Is! (First Update)

Chapter 113: Chapter 113: Children Must Not Suffer, No Matter How Hard It Is! (First Update)

"Huh, there’s a little girl too?"

Instructor Ding was somewhat surprised because it felt somewhat out of place for a little girl to suddenly pop up in such a game.

Although the little girl’s art style and details fit the game’s story background, it was still strange for a little girl to appear in a game focused on management simulation and real-time combat, right?

When something is out of the ordinary, there must be some trickery afoot, Instructor Ding couldn’t help but become vigilant.

He subconsciously suspected that this little girl must carry some important gameplay function.

Clicking on the little girl’s avatar brought up a new interface.

In this interface, the upper half showed various basic data for the little girl, but all of this data was hidden and couldn’t be viewed.

Of course, other combat units in the game, such as the Garrison Captain who followed the City Lord to fight the Rogues, or the leader of the Rogues, also had data panels, but they too were all hidden.

Instructor Ding speculated that later in the game, there should be specific skills that could reveal these statuses, like "Observing Stars" in Destiny of the Sleeping Dragon.

So, he didn’t pay much attention to these data. After all, how outrageous could the data be for a little girl?

The key was the operation panel below.

Here, players could perform a series of nurturing operations on the little girl, divided into five categories: lifestyle, education, affection, tasks, and special.

"Special? What kind of special is this?"

With curiosity, Instructor Ding clicked on the "special" category in the main menu, but he was shocked by the sub-options that popped up.

"Ignore", "Abandon", "Imprison", "Execute"!

Each option was more excessive than the last.

Instructor Ding instantly became indignant: "What’s with this game! Even though he’s a sponsor, I must say this is too much!

"How can one perform such excessive actions on such a cute little girl?

"Folks, I, Little Ding, am a kind man, especially protective of children, and I won’t touch any of these options! I speak the truth.

"What? Click ’Execute’ to try it out?

"Demons, you’re all demons.

"I, Instructor Ding, would rather starve to death, die outside, or jump from a building than do something so outrageous!"

Instructor Ding moved the mouse to check the other options again.

The other four categories seemed much more normal.

First, Instructor Ding opened the "lifestyle" category and pulled all of the little girl’s standards for clothing, food, housing, and travel to the highest level.

"Children are growing, they’re the future of this city, how can we let them go hungry or sleep poorly? It must be maxed out!

"What? No need to raise living and travel standards that high?

"Alright, that’s true, but she’s my girl, I’ll raise her however I want to!"

After that came the choices for "education", "affection", and "tasks".

These three activities seemed different, but they all consumed the same amount of time, meaning that only one of them could be done at a time.

The education category was mainly about learning knowledge and skills; affection involved accompanying, entertaining, and playing with the child; and tasks involved having the little girl help handle various matters in town.

After serious thought, Instructor Ding chose the "education" category first.

"Even in poverty, you can’t skimp on education, and even in hardship, you can’t begrudge the children!

"This entertainment category is of course also important, beneficial to the child’s physical and mental health, but we must be temperate, maybe ten times of skill learning to one time of entertainment.

"Think about it, the kid could help me with town affairs, but she is still too young right now, lacking knowledge, and might end up causing more harm than good, right?

"Let’s learn the professional knowledge first, master the management skills, and then it won’t be too late to help relieve my worries."

Instructor Ding made another decision he believed was most in line with the game mechanism.

If it were some streamers who like to goof around, they might try letting the little girl handle matters in town right away, or max out entertainment to see what effects it might have.

However, at this point, Instructor Ding wanted to play through the game seriously for at least one round, so he played more conservatively.

After making his choice, a figure who seemed like a Priest or Pastor began to teach the little girl, and the Little Girl Xia Mi started to listen to the lessons obediently.

Above the little girl’s avatar appeared an icon representing "Educational Activities" along with a countdown.

Instructor Ding zoomed out the camera and discovered that this notification could still be seen even at the highest viewing angle, and it wasn’t hidden like other less important event activities.

This indicated that the little girl’s related affairs had extremely high priority, equivalent to the urgent matters within the city.

No sooner had he settled the little girl than a popup appeared on the game screen.

[Housing Problem]

[Homeless are sleeping on the streets!]

[City Lord, the refugees from the last influx still haven’t found proper shelter. Housing in the slums and relief agencies is severely lacking, and many homeless are sleeping on the streets, greatly affecting our city’s appearance and stirring dissatisfaction among some of the citizens.]

There were four different options below the panel.

[1. I will provide shelter for all of them. (↑↑↑)]

[2. I will provide some shelter. (↑)]

[3. Let’s deal with this matter later, we have more urgent issues to attend to. (↓)]

[4. Drive the troublemakers sleeping on the streets back to the relief agencies or send them straight to the mines outside to dig! City Forsaken by Gods does not indulge idlers! (↓↓↓)]

Instructor Ding frowned deeply, lost in thought.

"Let me see what this arrow signifies? Oh, it represents satisfaction."

Clearly, the impact of these options on satisfaction was basically sorted from high to low.

Providing shelters for everyone would certainly increase satisfaction significantly, but then Ding would have to spend a lot of resources on building houses and even more on distributing food at the shelters.

The last option, though it would cause a sharp decrease in satisfaction, indeed solved the problem at a low cost and might even generate revenue.

As for options 2 and 3, they were somewhat moderate.

After some thought, Ding chose the second option.

Making a promise to build shelters, but not too many, seemed like the best choice for now.

There was still a lot of empty space available for building new facilities in City Forsaken by Gods, and presumably enough resources, so erecting a few shelters wasn’t a big deal.

Moreover, Ding had just started playing the game and wasn’t sure if a low satisfaction among the populace would lead to serious consequences, such as a direct revolt or collusion with external rogues.

Therefore, choosing the middle path seemed the safest.

After clicking the option, the satisfaction bar for the citizens increased by a segment of a dashed line.

This dashed line was clearly distinguishable in color from the original satisfaction progress bar.

A system prompt popped up on the dashed line, indicating that this dashed part would continue to decrease over time, and the faster the farther it went. Only when the City Lord fulfilled the promise and met the corresponding conditions would this dashed line turn solid and be added to the actual satisfaction level.

Even if the promised shelter wasn’t completed in the end, a small portion of the pre-existing satisfaction would be deducted.

To the left side of the interface was the "Pending Items" section, with just one item at the moment: build 2 shelters.

Ding quickly opened the building page, located the shelters, and found a piece of land near the slums, placing two shelters there in succession.

The shelters’ silhouettes appeared on the map, and some craftsmen showed up, starting to work on the shelters.

Laying foundations, constructing scaffolds...

During the construction process, resources such as stone and wood continuously decreased in the resource bar at the top of the interface.

It seemed that the time needed to build these structures was quite long.

In the upper right corner of the UI, there was a date and time, with icons of the sun, moon, clouds, and snowflakes appearing in turns.

In the lower right corner, there was a fast-forward button, which accelerated the passage of time when clicked.

By gauging the building progress bar, Ding estimated the construction period and found that building in the game was a bit faster than in real life but still felt slow within the game context.

As soon as the shelters were completed, more issues requiring attention arose.

There were hungry citizens who had run out of food, which required a decision about whether to use stored food for relief; refugees were coming from outside the city seeking shelter, making it necessary to consider whether to accept them; someone had wandered into the Demon Ruins and gone mad, prompting a choice about whether to seal it off; some residents had died from a mysterious disease, necessitating a decision on how to handle the bodies; the temperature had plummeted rapidly, raising the question of whether to build heating facilities in the city...

As Instructor Ding dealt with these emergencies, he planned the city’s development and also needed to frequently deal with rogues, watching over Little Girl Xia Mi’s educational progress, keeping him extremely busy.