"Blue Angel"

Chu Guang tightened the plastic bag shut and continued.

"You should be glad you didn't keep going inside. These mushrooms usually grow near mutated leech nests."

Ye Shi froze for a moment.

"Mutated leeches?"

Chu Guang answered casually.

"Mm. Juvenile mutated leeches are only palm-sized. Aside from their unusual mouthparts, they look no different from ordinary leeches."

"However, once they reach adulthood, they rapidly grow to over a meter long. The largest can even reach three meters, and their feeding habits change as well. I heard they can swallow a living person whole in one bite... though that was only something I heard."

After listening to the administrator's explanation, Ye Shi broke out in goosebumps.

No wonder he had felt something was off while picking those mushrooms, yet couldn't put his finger on it. Looking at it now, he had taken a stroll right past death's door.

"Can't we eat them?" Gale looked rather disappointed. Staring at the mushrooms Chu Guang had put away, he muttered, "I thought they could give us a buff."

"Don't get ahead of yourself."

Where were they supposed to get so many buffs?

There was something Chu Guang hadn't said.

Though these things couldn't be eaten, they were the main ingredient for making radiation medicine.

Chu Guang didn't know the exact principle behind it either. He had only heard about it from Old Charlie on Bette Street.

Blue umbrella mushrooms contained a special polypeptide substance that could effectively alleviate and heal nonlethal damage caused by gamma radiation.

Merchants from Boulder City bought these things, and their offers were quite generous. Usually, the mushrooms were transported to Boulder City and sold to factories there.

The problem was that they were incredibly difficult to obtain. Few scavengers were willing to risk their lives searching mutated leech nests in swamps, subway tunnels, or sewers.

Finding them was one thing.

Finding them and surviving long enough to bring them back was another.

Even if driven by desperation, nobody wanted to deal with those bone-swallowing tentacles...

Who would have thought there was a mutated leech nest practically right on their doorstep?

Chu Guang felt both pleased and worried.

He was pleased because the blue umbrella mushrooms could fetch quite a bit of money. He was worried because mutated leeches were not easy to handle.

Sprinkle salt?

Where was he supposed to find several hundred kilograms of salt? If he had that much salt, he might as well sell the salt directly.

Set them on fire?

These things generally lived in damp places. They would not be easy to ignite.

"Do you remember the exact location of that sewer entrance?"

Faced with the administrator's question, Gale quickly took out his map and pointed at the marked location.

"Right here."

Chu Guang glanced at the location on the map and silently committed it to memory.

"I understand."

The blue umbrella mushrooms Gale and Ye Shi had brought back weighed roughly two kilograms. At the usual rate, every fifty grams could be exchanged for one chip.

Two thousand grams meant forty chips!

That was nearly equal to all the savings Chu Guang had accumulated over the past five months.

And that was only the price offered by the recycling station on Bette Street.

The actual value of these things was at least twice that amount!

Chu Guang planned to sell all of the mushrooms and use the chips he received to buy supplies urgently needed by the outpost.

"The outpost needs more supplies. I'm heading out for a while. You stay here, and remember not to wander too far."

"At five in the afternoon, Xiao Qi will open the elevator for you on time so you can return to the vault."

"While I'm gone, Xiao Qi will tally your work results. You can also ask it anything you don't understand."

As for the two kilograms of blue umbrella mushrooms, Chu Guang awarded Gale and Ye Shi a total of 220 Contribution Points.

Two hundred Contribution Points were for discovering the mutated leech nest, while the other twenty were for the blue umbrella mushrooms.

It wasn't that he was being stingy by giving them so little. He was afraid that giving too much would let these players get a taste for it, prompting them to risk their lives picking these things and accidentally getting killed inside.

Before he found a generator capable of powering the Active Matter Extractor, he felt it was better to remain cautious.

Lunch was porridge made from boiled green wheat.

It was called porridge, but Chu Guang thought it was more like mung bean soup without any sweetness.

The stuff had no real flavor. It was purely meant to fill the stomach.

Yet to Chu Guang's surprise, the four players wolfed it down as though they were starving ghosts reborn.

Was it really that good?

Chu Guang began to doubt his own cooking.

Could I actually be good at cooking?

That shouldn't be possible...

After hurriedly finishing the meal.

Chu Guang put away the pots and bowls, extinguished the campfire, and set off alone. Only the four players and an AI robot idling upstairs remained in the sanatorium.

Fang Chang stared at the mission board planted at the sanatorium entrance and fell into thought.

Ye Shi asked from beside him.

"What are you looking at?"

Fang Chang said.

"The administrator's attitude. These blue umbrella mushrooms probably aren't useless, but the mission reward you got was only twenty Contribution Points, equivalent to chopping down two trees... Do you think that makes sense?"

Ye Shi paused.

"What's the problem?"

Fang Chang said.

"Of course there's a problem. Normally, the rewards players get from missions should be positively correlated with the difficulty of those missions. You not only unlocked a new dungeon, but also collected valuable supplies. Logically speaking, you shouldn't have received such a small reward."

Gale pondered this.

"Then why do you think that was?"

Fang Chang snapped his fingers.

"Priority!"

"P-priority?" Ye Shi asked blankly.

"That's right." Fang Chang nodded. "Do you remember what the administrator said earlier in the story? The current top priority is survival!"

Had he?

Probably.

Ye Shi hadn't listened too closely. In most games, he skipped the story with Ctrl. Though this game didn't let him press Ctrl, spacing out for a few minutes made no difference.

Fang Chang continued.

"...So I'm guessing the missions on the board aren't all the missions in the game. This game gives us a great deal of autonomy. Missions can not only be issued by NPCs, but also triggered proactively."

Gale frowned.

"Your reasoning?"

"Haven't you already received rewards?" Fang Chang said. "You didn't find a generator, but you discovered a mutant nest and gathered valuable materials."

"So I conclude that as long as our actions meet Vault 404's current needs, we can earn Contribution Points. And the number of rewards we receive is positively correlated with the value our actions create!"

"For example, building the latrine and toilets was a mission issued after the administrator accepted our suggestion. Old White and I both received 200 Contribution Points."

Old White nodded.

"Seems like that's true."

"I think I get what you mean," Gale said, rubbing his chin. "But can't we also earn Contribution Points by completing the missions on the board?"

And the rewards were not low, either.

"That's the second point I wanted to make." A mysterious smile appeared on Fang Chang's face. "Do you remember the affinity system the developers told us about?"

A look of realization appeared on Gale's face.

"So that's it... I understand what you mean."

Ye Shi and Old White were still completely confused.

"What exactly do you understand?"

"Spell it out!"

Fang Chang said leisurely.

"Simply put, completing the fixed missions on the board step by step can get us fixed guaranteed rewards, but it can't demonstrate our abilities. Actively triggering missions, on the other hand, better shows what we can do! In theory, it should improve the administrator's evaluation of us."

Of course, these guesses were based on Wasteland OL being a "completely realistic" immersive virtual reality game, and on the administrator's behavior being controlled by program logic rather than human design.

If his intelligence was not as high as imagined, this deduction was very likely invalid.

Still, judging from things so far, the administrator's intelligence was quite high. Normal conversation posed no problem at all. Fang Chang could hardly stop himself from wondering whether this guy might actually be played by a real person.

Having understood Fang Chang's explanation, Old White stroked the stubble on his chin and nodded.

"This idea is interesting. It's worth trying... So what do you think we should do?"

"I'm still figuring out the specifics, but my intuition tells me that compared with Contribution Points, accumulating more NPC affinity before the second closed beta is more important. That can ensure we have a higher 'starting point' than other players in the second closed beta."

After a pause, Fang Chang snapped his fingers.

"I propose we form a team!"

"Form a team means..." Ye Shi asked doubtfully.

Old White nodded.

"I have no objections."

Gale nodded as well.

"I agree too."

Ye Shi said blankly.

"I don't object either, but could you explain the details of this team-up?"

Fang Chang explained patiently.

"Simply put, from now on, we're a team. We share intelligence and help each other. After that, we just need to play to each person's strengths."

Fang Chang looked at Gale and Ye Shi, then continued.

"Gale, Ye Shi, scout along the lakeshore of Wetland Park. Pay attention to the distribution and movement patterns of mutants. If you find areas that seem like nests, mark them... But remember, don't get too close, and especially avoid fighting. We need a safe water source."

Gale nodded.

"Alright."

Then Fang Chang turned to Old White.

"As for us, we need to chop more wood right now."

"Once we log off later, I'll look up some information online. Tomorrow, we'll figure out a way to make use of all this wood we've stockpiled!"