Chapter 318.1: This Game Company Is Too Powerful!

"Holy shit... Have those NPCs lost their minds?"

Inside a half-collapsed residential building, standing in the open-top bathroom, Night Ten held binoculars in his hands. He stared dumbfounded at the street 300 meters away.

It was currently 5:00 in the morning and the sun had not yet risen. However, the earth was already illuminated.

He had just spotted a truck closely followed by about 50 marauders. The truck had steel plates welded on the sides, and 1 machine gun... No, to be precise, it should be 4 machine guns mounted on the top!

Perhaps due to a shortage of 12mm heavy machine guns, the marauders of the Fang Clan also connected light machine guns in series, using wires, steel bars, and screws to link them in a row.

This reminded Night Ten of the quadruple Maxim that he had seen in a movie. The similarity between the two was simply a case of ‘different tunes, same theme’.

The only difference was that one was water-cooled, and the other was slightly advanced air-cooled.

However, Night Ten's intuition told him that these marauders probably did not learn it from movies and television works, but from the anti-aircraft trucks of the Skeleton Corps.

"Using 7mm machine guns as anti-aircraft weapons... What kind of genius came up with this idea?" Ample Time was completely dumbfounded.

Old White, who was sitting by the side gnawing on the wheat cake, said with a smile, "Not gonna lie, if they can keep up the supply, the density of firepower might scare people to death. If it's just Mosquito's wooden plane, it'll probably be shot down from the sky in no time."

Gale touched the bridge of his nose with his index finger. "... We probably hurt them really badly that night for them to come up with things like this in such a short time.”

Night Ten put down his binoculars and sighed as he watched the patrol disappear around the street corner. "You're probably right, but now that they are moving in groups, it becomes much more difficult to deal with."

The AI in this game is really smart.

Not only does it know how to scam players, but it can also change the NPC's actions in real time according to the player's behavior in the game. The marauder NPCs that originally could only stare blankly at the plane, are even able to craft DIY anti-aircraft weapons after a series of battles.

What do they call this?

Oh right!

Machine Learning!

As expected of the only fully immersive virtual reality online game in the world. Its AI technology is truly incredible.

Night Ten couldn't help thinking to himself.

Old White, who was eating the cake, said calmly, "Don't worry, the Fang Clan is trying to dispatch troops to the front line recently. We just need to keep an eye on their tanks."

The Burning Corps had been split into smaller teams and scattered in the city area. It would be a bit difficult to rely on a single 4 man squad to fight a company of marauders head-on.

But it was still not impossible.

After all... They could call in air strikes.

Normally the marauder's tanks were kept in the underground garage. But now that they were all being moved to the front line, the members of Burning Corps naturally didn't need to fight the tanks head-on. As long as they could locate the approximate position of the tanks, the players who were flying the planes would naturally give them a surprise.

In just a week, the Burning Corps had already used air strikes to destroy 4 Conqueror 10 Tanks. Although there was another one that they failed to destroy completely, they still managed to immobilize it.

Without the support of logistics supplies, this group of barbarians would only be able to repair a track at most with their hands-on ability. But if the engine or even the oil pipe was damaged, the tank would be pretty much scrapped.

"It seems that there will be no tanks passing by this street today." Ample Time glanced at the time on the VM as the sky not far away started to get brighter.

Old White threw away the cake wrapper and got up from the floor with the rifle in hand. "Let's go find a safe place to logout."

Just when he was talking, there was a soft creaking sound from downstairs.

The 4 immediately became alert.

Old White quickly moved to the hallway of the living room and stretched out half of his body to guard the stairs. Immediately afterwards, Gale released the Firefly drone, which flew out from the damaged ceiling and started to descend from outside the residential building.

Night Ten said in a serious voice, "I didn't sense any killing intent... The other party probably hasn't discovered us, or maybe they aren't sure where we are."

"One second, let me take a look..." Gale, who was operating the drone, suddenly paused and froze for a moment.

Through the drone, he spotted a small immature face hidden behind the window downstairs. It was hard to tell the kid's gender from the unkempt appearance. He could only judge that the kid was not very old, 7 or 8 years old at most, even if he took the impact of malnutrition on development into consideration.

The dark eyes of the kid stared motionlessly at the drone outside the window, his pupils filled with apprehension, nervousness and curiosity.

He probably thought he was hiding well, but he didn't know that the camera could see the situation in the room clearly.

"It should be a local survivor... It’s a child." Gale then synced the drone's footage to his teammate's VM.

Ample Time asked cautiously. "Anyone else around? Or any weapons?"

There were a lot of young soldiers among the marauders. He didn't let his guard down just because the opponent was a child.

Gale shook his head. "I haven't seen anyone else... And I have never seen such a skinny marauder before."

"All clear."

At least for now...

Old White breathed a sigh of relief, put away the rifle in his hand, and switched on the safety catch.

The game was too realistic in some places.

Even if the dream filter had filtered out most of the sensory stimuli beyond the tolerance limit, for players with a strong sense of immersion, the behavior of crossing the boundary would still cause some mental discomfort.

For example, seeing marauders throwing a living person into a cauldron...

If possible, he really didn't want to treat someone younger than him as an enemy.

Patting Ample Time on the shoulder, Old White said, "Let's go. We need to relocate now."

The sun was already up.

It was unlikely for the marauder's tanks to come out during the day, so it was meaningless to wait online. It was much better to go offline and go to the official website to spam the forum with shitposts for some time.

But at this time, most of the test players were all online. From 6:00 at night to midnight, the official website actually belonged to the cloud gamers.

Recently, the players had been fighting night battles every day; it had completely disrupted their schedules in real life...

After arriving at the stairs, Old White suddenly remembered something. "By the way, the airdrop crate last night hasn't been recovered yet. Let's recover it before going offline."

Night Ten frowned. "Didn't you say that you are not in a hurry to recover it?"

Old White didn't answer the question, but took out the large pack of green wheat cakes left in his backpack and put them on the floor.

"I changed my mind." He said.

Ample Time sighed, "It's better not to take NPCs in the game too seriously. In the setting, there are at least 5,000 to 6,000 survivors in this city. It's impossible to help them with that little airdrop. If you really want to save them, it's better to get rid of the marauders as soon as possible."

Old White smiled. "I know. Just let me be willful this once."

The group then quickly left the place.

Hearing voices from upstairs disappeared, the boy cautiously came upstairs to see if there was any garbage left by the New Alliance's soldiers that could be recycled.

For example, things like bullet casings that could be exchanged for food at the stronghold of the resistance organization.

However... He didn’t really hold out much hope that there would be casings.

Last night, those people didn't fire a single shot. It would only be strange if there were any bullet casings left.

Since the group of marauders came, the survivor settlements were destroyed one after another. The survivors were either captured as slaves or went hiding underground. Since there was no farmland, they could only grow some fungi that did not require much light, or go outside to find wild green wheat, shofar potatoes, or even tree bark.

Originally, they could still manage to survive. However, unfortunately, the recent outbreak of the plague of rodents in West Continent City had led to a significant reduction in mushroom yields, and a severe shortage of wild crops like green wheat and shofar potatoes. These wild crops had almost disappeared from West Continent City, causing the resistance organization's stronghold to face an unprecedented survival crisis.

In the past, everyone could still receive some relief food, but now even nutrient cream had to be exchanged using the scraps scavenged from the outside.

The boy originally wanted to join the guerrillas because he heard that the guerrillas would provide food, but he was too young, and the guerrillas weren't interested in recruiting him, so he could only come out of the hideout to scavenge scraps.

Fortunately, soldiers from the New Alliance started to join the battlefield one after another. Not only were these individuals better equipped than the guerrilla forces, but they also possessed wasteful habits.

They never picked up the shell casings that fell on the ground. Sometimes, when they encountered marauders suddenly, they didn't bother to collect the half-eaten dry rations and simply threw them away.

It was because of them that the guerrillas encouraged the people in the hideout to collect used bullet casings from the ground and promised that 20 copper casings could be exchanged for 100g of nutrient cream.

At times, the boy couldn't help but think that it would be great if he had the chance to join the New Alliance.

Since people from the New Alliance didn't even want bullet casings that fell on the ground, there must be endless scraps in their settlement that could be recycled.

The boy was just about to grope into the next room when he suddenly smelled a fragrance.

Sniffing around, he searched for the scent.

When he found the green wheat cakes on the ground, his dark eyes instantly widened. He was so hungry that he immediately pounced on them and stuffed a piece into his mouth.

As the taste of happiness spread between his lips and teeth, an expression of disbelief appeared on his sallow face.

He couldn't describe that kind of taste, and he had never eaten such a delicious green wheat cake before...

Is this really green wheat cake?

The boy couldn't help thinking to himself.

Why is there a smell of oil? It’s not sour at all!

How did they do it?

Are these people the messengers of the Great Horned Deer God?!

Finally swallowing the food in his mouth, the boy stared greedily at the bag of green wheat cakes on the ground. However, he didn't continue to eat. Instead, he carefully put them into his sack.

"I have to get back as soon as possible."

After staying outside for a long time, his elder sister would be worried...

Silently thanking those generous people in his heart, the boy carefully held the sack containing the remaining wheat cakes in his arms, got into the narrow gap like a rabbit, and left the apartment in a flash.

He didn't know why the soldiers of the New Alliance would leave these delicious delicacies behind, just like he didn't know at this moment that there were 4 people following him secretly in the dark.

"Uh guys... Is it really okay for us to stalk a child?" Night Ten asked with a strange expression.

Ample Time did not answer his question.

Or it should be said that he didn't answer from the perspective of Night Ten's question.

"Let's make a bold assumption. Assuming that an NPC's behavioral logic is to go out for food, so if enough food is collected, what is his next step?"

Night Ten was dazed for a moment. "... Bring the food home?"

𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

"Correct!" Ample Time snapped his fingers silently, and said with a smile, "As long as we follow him, we'll be able to find his home."

Night Ten couldn't help holding his forehead. "I mean... You are not telling me that you're going to loot a scavenger's house, are you?"

Gale nodded. "I don't agree with this kind of behavior. There's no need to loot a kid's house just for a few silver coins."

Ample Time coughed, "When did I ever say that I wanted to loot a kid's house? Am I that kind of person?! I'm just curious about where he lives. Aren't you curious?"

Night Ten and Gale exchanged glances.

"Isn’t he living underground?"