First Blood!

Dead... someone died?!

Old White stood there, completely dumbfounded, unable to process it for a moment.

And when he finally did, his first reaction was: people could actually die in this game?

Honestly, unless someone deliberately courted death or threw their life away, dying once in this game was pretty difficult.

It was not just Old White who could not understand it. Chu Guang was equally baffled.

He had not expected the third batch of players to suffer non-combat casualties as soon as they went online—at least half a month earlier than he had anticipated...

The dead player's ID was Ya Ya. Her gene sequence was "Perception-type," and her talent was Toxin Intuition.

Chu Guang remembered sending her out that morning to gather berries and edible mushrooms. Somehow, she had ended up near the mutated leech nest.

Through the player list, Chu Guang could confirm the players' approximate locations. When he followed her trail and discovered that her last active area was beyond the mutated leech nest, he immediately gave up on the idea of recovering her body.

Mutated leech hatchlings were not much of a problem. Their mouthparts had already degenerated, making it difficult even to suck blood. At most, they ate rotten food, and they were occasionally gnawed on by wasteland cockroaches and rats, or caught by hardworking players to use as bait.

However, adult mutated leeches were different.

Those things swallowed prey whole. Their anesthetic digestive fluid would relax a victim's muscles within a minute and render them unconscious within several minutes.

There was no need to wonder. By now, there was probably not even a bone left to find.

No matter what, logout time had arrived.

Chu Guang brought the players back to the shelter in batches, arranged for them to lie back down in their hibernation pods and log out, then returned alone to the surface and came to the Active Matter Extractor.

A layer of dust had settled over the cylindrical extraction furnace. Since acquiring it, Chu Guang had never used it even once, because there was no electricity.

What was especially frustrating was that the cultivation pods clearly had wireless charging ports compatible with the shelter, yet this mission reward had none. It only came with a plug bearing positive and negative terminals.

Clearly, the designer of this device had not intended for him to steal power from the shelter.

"Xiao Qi."

"What is it, Master?"

"Tell me... how should the synthesized matter generated by this thing be injected into the cultivation pods?" Chu Guang asked, stroking his chin.

"That is very simple. The active matter storage tanks in the cultivation pods can all be removed. Wouldn't it work if you just poured the active matter directly into them?"

Chu Guang nodded thoughtfully, then abruptly changed the subject.

"So... that means I can remove the storage tanks from other cultivation pods too?"

Xiao Qi paused.

"Um, I don't know. Master, you wouldn't be planning to steal—"

"Borrow."

Chu Guang cut Xiao Qi off and said in an unquestionable tone, "I will not be able to get a generator until the end of the month. I cannot wait until then to revive a dead player."

"Besides, there are still seventy unopened cans. They will just sit there otherwise, so we might as well make use of the active matter inside first."

Xiao Qi said softly.

"But... what if it runs out?"

Chu Guang answered without hesitation.

"We will figure something out when that happens. First, we solve the problem in front of us."

There were always more solutions than problems.

Increasing the death penalty, or adding extra penalties for consecutive deaths—there would always be ways to curb these players' curiosity a little.

Once there were more players, he could simply create a "beginner village" and prohibit anyone below Level 5 from leaving. There were plenty of ways to avoid waste.

Even now, Chu Guang still could not figure out what this player called Ya Ya had been thinking. Never mind the others—she was Perception-type, after all.

When he returned to the shelter later, he planned to talk to her in his capacity as a planner.

However, the key issue was not how she had died, but that the dead player was a newbie with no contribution points to deduct.

In other words, she could not afford the death penalty at all.

That was rather troublesome.

He could not exactly let her owe it, could he?

What would the other players think then? Wouldn't they all start running wild?

"...Looks like I need to set up mandatory labor or punitive missions to replace the death penalty when it cannot be paid."

"Mm, and reduced favorability, plus longer revival cooldowns for consecutive deaths."

There were always more solutions than difficulties.

After returning to the shelter with Xiao Qi, Chu Guang first compiled and summarized the day's work results in a computer document.

It was a habit he had developed recently.

As the number of players increased, the daily changes in inventory supplies had become quite substantial.

As the administrator, he had to coordinate and plan every resource.

When there was not enough wood, he had to mobilize the players to chop trees. When food was scarce, he had to send everyone out hunting and gathering, ensuring that construction and production could proceed smoothly rather than grinding to a halt due to shortages of a particular resource.

"Construction materials added: eighty-four logs, five hundred kilograms of carbon, five hundred kilograms of calcium carbonate cement, two stacks of yellow mud bricks, and several hardened cement blocks. Consumption... two hundred and twenty logs, basically all cement produced today, plus an additional two hundred kilograms from inventory."

"Approximately."

"Food inventory added: fifty kilograms of smoked jerky, ten kilograms of smoked fish... as well as two kilograms of edible roots and a small amount of raspberry berries. Consumption was approximately ten kilograms of smoked jerky. Tonight's stew was fresh fish soup with pine nuts, so no stored smoked fish was used."

"Perhaps I should hire a warehouse manager."

He also needed to find a more accurate scale and measuring tools.

Chu Guang spent some time distributing contribution points into each player's personal account according to the actual circumstances, based on the statistics Xiao Qi had provided.

The newly joined players had earned most of their contribution points through hauling bricks. Calculated at ten contribution points per hour, most of them had ended up with either ninety or one hundred points.

Only Teng Teng still had zero contribution points.

However, making clothes was a technical craft to begin with, especially when using unfamiliar materials. She would certainly need time to experiment.

Once she fully adapted to the tools and materials here, her contribution points would surely grow like a snowball.

After distributing the players' pay,

Chu Guang opened the system and checked the rewards for today's daily missions.

Mission: Chop down ten trees. Reward: 1 reward point

Mission: Kill one mutant. Reward: 3 reward points

Mission: Gather 1 ton of stone. Reward: 1 reward point

Mission: Stockpile 10 kilograms of food. Reward: 1 reward point

Six reward points in total.

In truth, the amount of work the players had completed far exceeded the daily mission requirements, but there were only so many reward points available each day for easy earning.

Chu Guang calculated the reward points he had earned over the previous days. Including today's gains, he now had seventeen points in total.

"Let's take a gamble!"

After a brief consideration, Chu Guang opened the administrator stipend page, spent ten points on an Intermediate Blind Box, and used the remaining seven points on Beginner Blind Boxes.

Soon, the walls began to shake.

As the alloy door opened, the rewards from the blind boxes rolled out along the conveyor belt.

Nano Healing Injection: Primarily used for nonfatal external injuries. It could enhance tissue repair ability in a short period, thereby accelerating wound healing.

"This should have come from the Intermediate Blind Box."

It did not specify the exact effects. The side effects were unknown, and neither the active ingredients nor mechanism of action had been labeled. Like the enhancement injection from before, it was a product with no manufacturer, date, or safety information.

Chu Guang was not injured at the moment, so he put the healing injection into the drawer of his computer desk for now and turned to the other rewards.

As expected, five of the seven rewards were lollipops.

One was orange-flavored. Like the chocolate-flavored one from before, it provided a ten-hour attribute boost buff, except it boosted not Strength but Constitution.

As for the remaining two, one was a two-hundred-gram chocolate bar, and the other was a two-hundred-and-thirty-gram can of beef.

Emmm...

The chocolate was probably edible, but was the canned beef really safe?

If Chu Guang remembered correctly, canned food had been invented during the Franco-Prussian War in the 1800s. This aged can might even be older than the antique relics displayed in museums in his original world...

"Forget it... I will find a player to try it later and see whether it is edible."

Chu Guang hesitated for a long time. In the end, he decided that once the players came online tomorrow, he would pick a player with high favorability and invite him to a meal.

No one should refuse such a good thing.

After confirming the rewards,

Chu Guang returned to his computer and sat down. Rather than immediately opening the group chat, he opened the official website forum and searched for the player with the ID Ya Ya.

He had expected it to take some effort, but as soon as he opened the forum, he saw that ID displayed on the homepage, with nearly a hundred replies beneath it.

"Wuwuwuwu, it was all because I couldn't keep my hands to myself! I shouldn't have put myself in danger! I beg you, dear planners, please have mercy! I really didn't mean to do it, don't ban my device! QAQ"

Ban her device?

That seemed excessive.

Chu Guang had no idea what was going on after reading the title. Only after he continued down and read the entire post did he finally understand what had happened.

This girl...

She really had a talent for courting death.