Chapter 58 Version Update
In the wilderness.
The tricycle convoy was traveling on the bumpy road, making Mia, who was sitting in the tricycle bed, dizzy, her stomach churning, and every bone in her body seemed to ache.
The physical pain can be endured, but the mental pressure is a bit overwhelming...
Mia hugged her little bundle tightly and bent her legs as much as possible. Her face was pale and the back of her neck was covered with sweat.
At her feet ... there were several packages made of tent cloth and rolled-up clothes.
Because the truck bed was not very spacious, the pile of packages not only touched Mia's calves, but the legs of the three women in the car with Mia also inevitably touched the pile of things.
As the car body shook while moving, the package made a "crackling" sound of bones colliding from time to time...
Mia used her ten fingers to tightly grasp her small bag, staring stiffly at the pile of casually wrapped bones, not daring to look away...
The youngest of the four women riding with Mia was thirty-five or thirty-six years old. The year-round textile work had severely damaged their eyesight, and their physical strength had also declined significantly from sitting for long periods of time. Although they knew that the things "in the same car" with them were extremely strange, no one had the energy to hold on, and after half a day of bumpy ride, they all fell into a deep sleep.
Only the younger Mia was left to face the gale alone...
If it was just an ordinary corpse, Mia wouldn't be so scared.
Poor people struggling to make ends meet are not qualified to pursue quality of life or to make a fuss. From childhood to adulthood, Mia has seen many bodies of people who starved to death at home being carried out and thrown away, and she has also seen many fellow villagers being sent back from the plantation with blood and flesh covered.
The problem is, these seemingly random bones thrown into the truck bed are not ordinary at all...
Just as Mia, who was nervous, was shivering uncontrollably, a roll of cloth that was pressed on the ground was suddenly stretched open.
With the strange sound of "crackling", a pile of bones floated up from the spread-out bundle.
Mia's eyes widened in horror and she immediately covered her mouth.
Just like she had seen several times before... In just two seconds, these human skeletons of varying lengths seemed to be controlled by invisible hands, quickly flying and combining to form a complete skeleton figure.
The moment the "assembly" was completed, the skeleton moved seamlessly, bending down flexibly to pull out its clothes and equipment, and while putting them on, it excitedly shouted to the undead following the car.
The undead who were jogging lazily and boredly following the car soon started to make a lot of noise.
Inside the truck, Mia, who was once again completely ignored, breathed a sigh of relief, put down her hands tremblingly, and continued to hold her small bag, forcing herself to lower her head and stare at the tattered sandals on her feet.
Sure enough, no matter how many times I see it, I feel scared.
But... as long as I'm not "noticed" by these undead spirits, I should be safe... Mia tried to comfort herself.
Anyway, every extra day she lived was given to her for nothing. No matter how uncomfortable it was to ride in a tricycle, it was not as uncomfortable as sitting in a dim room and weaving cloth without any hope.
She had not touched her loom for a whole week, and yet she had access to food.
If, if she could reach the town that the black magician described, and live there with her neighbor Uncle Carter like a normal family, and she wouldn't have to be scolded and blamed for wanting to eat one more loaf of bread, then no matter how scary and horrible the undead were, she could endure it.
"The official website has released an update announcement!"
This was the first sentence that the newly-launched player “Gummy Candy” said to his friends.
This sentence successfully activated the teammates who were so bored that they wanted to log off. Even a few people from the team behind came up and asked, "What announcement was made? Is there a new version?"
"Yes, there's a new version! Version 1.05!" Tang Jia excitedly said to the players while putting on her clothes, "There's a faction called the Undead Chamber of Commerce, which is specifically designed to increase the reputation of living players. Even if you don't have reputation, you can still trade with the Undead Chamber of Commerce. You can use material copper coins plus territory reputation to exchange equipment with the Chamber of Commerce. There are all kinds of equipment, from blank equipment to excellent equipment with special effects!"
"I'll log off and take a look!" An anxious player immediately ran to the tricycle that his team was in charge of.
"Can I still exchange things without the reputation of this Chamber of Commerce?" Some people who were not in a hurry to log off asked Tang Jia directly.
"Yeah, yeah, that's why I rushed online to tell you." Tang Jia hurriedly put on leather armor with steel plates and jumped off the tricycle. "The reputation of Exile Town has been renamed Tarantan reputation. It has become independent from the reputation system. In addition to having the same reputation value, it can also be used as a token to trade with NPCs of the Undead Chamber of Commerce. 50 points of Tarantan territory reputation plus ten spider venom sacs can be exchanged for a white steel knife. You can get it for free!"
The white steel knife sold by the weapons merchant costs twenty copper coins.
Spider venom sacs are very cheap and can be dropped by any monster in a spider's nest. A temporary monster-killing group of individual players can get quite a few by squatting all night.
One excellent-grade material can only be exchanged for 20 points of territory reputation.
Even after the opening of the new map Desolate Stronghold and the addition of the "Poison Swamp", a monster spawning point where the monsters are relatively powerful but the density is not as high as that of the Spider's Lair and it is not so easy to wipe out the group, the price of excellent materials has steadily decreased, but this price is by no means particularly cost-effective...
But - the point is, they are on escort duty!
There were more than 200 players who accepted this escort mission. Because it was impossible for the players to be online the entire time, they were divided into 12 teams. Each team was responsible for two tricycles (some tricycles were left in the Desolate Stronghold) and escorted five or six civilians.
Each civilian can provide 50 reputation points for all members of the escort team. If all the escorts are in place, each player in the team can get 200 to 300 reputation points. This is why Tang Jia said that you can get it for free.
You should know that there is no NPC in the game that can repair equipment. Players can only sell their broken steel knives to the NPC at 10% of the original price. This pitfall has been criticized by players for a long time, but the official has no intention of changing it... Just for the common weapon of the steel knife, players have recovered a lot of copper coins.
"It seems to be a good deal now, but after the reputation gained from this mission is consumed, the price of high-quality materials will definitely go up. After that, it may not be that good a deal anymore." An individual player who joined the Entropy No Increase team did the math and said.
"Just do it yourself!" Tang Jia raised the steel knife in his hand fiercely, "If you're lucky, killing a demonized clam can drop a dozen high-quality materials. After this mission is over, we'll form a fixed team and go to the poisonous swamp to kill monsters!"
"Wait a minute, Tang Jia." Teammate Jia Luo came over and said, "A white steel blade only costs 50 territory reputation points, so how much does an excellent-grade equipment cost?"
"1,000 points." Tang Jia said.
"What the hell?! This is a robbery!" Not only Jialuo, but also the players in his team and other teams who came over were all shocked, "Why is the money so much more?"
"That's how much the excellent grade with special effects costs." Tang Jia spread her hands, "It also depends on the type of special effects you choose. You have to hand in a lot of materials. But at least there is a clear channel to obtain top-quality equipment, which is better than taking a chance and snatching it from NPCs before, right? This mission robbed those noble private soldiers, and all the special effects are blank, isn't that even more deceptive?"
"That's right." Yang Ying agreed , "Our team doesn't even have any special effect equipment. If we can exchange it with reputation and materials, we can afford special effect equipment with more time."
During the last "Carnival Night", the two good equipment snatched by the individual group, the wristbands with special effects were bought by wealthy individual players, and their team only had a white dagger used by Pansy left.
"The guy who gave me the medicine got a special effect weapon for only a few hundred copper coins. It's really a huge profit." Some players couldn't help but express their jealousy.
"Good materials will be more scarce in the future, and it will be harder for individual players to survive." An individual player sighed.
Previously, materials could only be exchanged for reputation. The reputation exchanged for good materials was used by big guys to compete for the mayor. Ordinary people did not need to brush up on territory reputation, so the price of excellent grade and above materials did not fluctuate much.
Now that the Undead Chamber of Commerce has been opened, ordinary players who are not interested in competing for the mayor will also need to use good materials and territory reputation to exchange for top-quality equipment. With such a large demand gap, it would be strange if the price did not increase.
"So didn't I just say that we should form a fixed team?" Tang Jia shouted in her signature loud voice. "When a fixed team kills monsters, the materials will be divided equally among the whole team. We can save materials and buy good equipment without spending money! We are still short of people in the team. Does anyone want to join?"
The scattered people were just waiting for these words and immediately signed up enthusiastically: "I want to come, I want to come, count me in!"
"Take me with you, I'm online and stable!"
Tang Jia didn't play tricks either. She asked about the online time of these individual players and asked them to join the team WeChat group after they logged off...
At the front of the convoy, Ji Tang, who took turns leading the team with En Buzeng, looked back at the energetic players, smiled and shook his head.
As someone who knows the truth about the game "Another World", Ji Tang is often annoyed by the silly nature of the players... But generally speaking, the players are still quite cute, at least much cuter than some of the natives of this world in Ji Tang's opinion.
The players only regarded the capture of the nobles' private soldiers as a welfare task specially arranged by the system to reward them for their hard work. However, when Ji Tang led the team to set an ambush, they understood what was going on with this group of guys who were fully equipped but disorganized, had no discipline or organization, and scattered at the first sign of danger.
This group of people are not "monsters" ready to be spawned by players, but private armed forces who come for the purpose of killing civilians.
Ji Tang had never been on a mission abroad, but several of his comrades were in the peacekeeping force. As a Chinese soldier, Ji Tang had no liking for foreign private armed forces.
Not to mention private armed forces, Ji Tang doesn't even think highly of the armies of many (Earth) countries...
It may be difficult for ordinary Chinese people to understand, but the reality is that even the regular armies of some claiming to be civilized countries on Earth can sit idly by and watch the death of people from other countries (or even their own country) without doing anything.
From the end of World War II to the 21st century, the widespread problem of "post-war syndrome" among soldiers in many countries is very telling - even on Earth, there are very few armies that can maintain strict discipline and do not abuse and kill civilians and prisoners.
The regular army is like this, let alone private armed forces.
Players treat everyone in this "game world" as virtual data, as NPCs, and they are eyeing the "NPCs" wearing good equipment... But at least, players will not take pleasure in killing civilians.
When the "mission" requires players to take care of these civilians, although players cannot say it is "as warm as spring", they will at least do what they should do.
The zombie general stayed in the desolate stronghold. Ji Tang, who led the team alone, silently thought about what he had seen and heard in the past few days.
"It seems that Lord Yang wants to increase the population of the Tarantan territory. He is using materials and reputation to drive players to kill monsters. Is he trying to eliminate safety risks?"
"So... Lord Yang, you want to build the territory of Tarantan?"
"Other 'high-level NPCs' can be seen to be reluctant and impatient when dealing with players. The one with the most normal attitude towards players, besides Weapon Master Charlie Rex, is Lord Yang."
"Could these two people... be related to the 'target' on Earth?"
"Or, one of them is the 'target', the one who promoted the game 'Otherworld' on Earth?"
"What is the purpose of this 'game'..."
The more Ji Tang thought about it, the more troubled he became. This kind of thing was indeed not something he was good at.
"Forget it - let the experts consider these issues, and I'll just focus on doing what I can do."
"Brother Tang! Brother Tang!"
A player rushed up from behind the team in an anxious manner, using the "Primary Wind Control Technique" and nervously shouted, "Oh no! The NPC in our team seems to be dead!"
Ji Tang was so shocked that he almost jumped up: "What?!"
