Chapter 25: Not Enough Men
The cheers came from the cement kiln.
Chu Guang walked in and took a look. Ample Time and Old White were piling up a heap of light gray powder on the ground, adding water and sand to stir it into a paste-like slurry.
After a rough estimate, this batch of cement was about 20kgs.
Because it was a trial production, there were not many in this batch. From a cursory glance at the volume of the cement kiln's filling mouth, it should be no problem to process half a ton a day.
Although it was not as good as professional production equipment, it was enough for now.
"Dear administrator!"
Noticing Chu Guang coming here, the two players dropped the tools in their hands and greeted him excitedly.
"Cement!"
"We finally made Portland cement!"
This was really not easy.
In order to make the temperature in the cement kiln reach more than 1450 degrees, the two of them had been pressing the air blowers desperately, shoveling shovel after shovel of charcoal inside. They felt like the muscles on their arms were almost twice their original size.
Especially Old White, whose genetic sequence was the strength type, and it was about to be leveled up again after three days!
"You did an excellent job."
Chu Guang looked at them approvingly and nodded.
"With these cements, we have taken a big step forward from the first phase of the plan. Shelter will remember your contributions, and you will each receive 1,000 contribution points as rewards!"
An expression of joy appeared on the faces of the two players.
Their past few days of hard work had not been in vain!
However, what they didn't know was that the NPC standing in front of them had already begun to think about how to recover the "points" from their hands.
Inflation could not happen too fast, or it would affect the life of the game.
Or……
Should he have a gacha function?
Costing 1000 contribution points to draw once?
It was not impossible.
Just when Chu Guang was thinking over it, Ample Time and Old White looked at each other and said respectfully to him.
"Administrator, there is one thing I must report to you!"
"What is it?"
"Now that the cement has been successfully produced, we need more manpower to start the construction of the outpost!"
Chu Guang looked at them.
"How many people do you need?"
Old White rushed.
"At least ten people! Of course, the more the better! To be used, the cement kiln requires people to blow air manually. Two people can operate one kiln in shifts, and soon we will build the second one. This means that it will require four people! Transporting materials from the construction site requires at least four, and the remaining wall and building repairs requires at least eight."
Chu Guang calculated mentally.
This meant that they would need at least sixteen people.
At present, the food reserves in the outpost were only enough for seven people, including himself, to eat for a week. If the population suddenly tripled, he didn't know if the food would be enough.
Chu Guang hesitated, but eventually made up his mind to take the risk.
It was already the 9th of this month.
Nearly one-third of September had passed. If he didn't work hard, it would be difficult to complete the outpost before winter.
"Okay, I got it."
Nodding, looking at the two players, Chu Guang continued.
"I will request for support from my superiors. Three days later, a group of new members will wake up from dormancy and come to the surface to join us."
Upon hearing these words, expressions of joy appeared on the faces of Old White and Ample Time.
With the addition of newcomers, their infrastructure plans would be much easier to execute than it was before!
Moreover, Ample Time's conjecture had also been verified.
This NPC was not just an ordinary NPC. He could even affect the process of the game's testing.
This made Ample Time unable to help but think of the setting of online games in some web novels——
[The game runs on a supercomputer with unlimited computing power. The game company has formulated a worldview framework, and the content is completely dynamically generated by AI. ]
Maybe Wasteland Online was like this!
Ample Time became more excited the more he thought about it.
He felt that he understood more about this game.
...
With a carpenter and a chef, the players' working conditions and quality of life visibly improved.
With the help of [WC_really_has_mosquitoes], the construction team consisting of Old White and Ample Time obtained molds for making bricks, and Gale and Night Ten also improved the fishing traps.
He even made a wooden toilet seat that was more comfortable with a tree stump.
Now, everyone could finally sit down in the toilet.
It was just that not everyone liked this type of toilet.
Such as Gale.
This guy seemed to have OCD. Even in the game, he couldn't accept the toilet that others had used. He stubbornly dug a hole next to the original toilet and made another cubicle.
Thanks to this, the outpost now had a second toilet.
But compared to these trivial things, the most surprising thing was the fishing plan of this guy and Night Ten.
With the help of the improved trap, the two finally caught the first fish before the evening.
And it was a big fish!
According to its appearance, it should be a catfish.
The reason for saying "should" was because its wide lips and head were massive and bizarre, dark blue patterns decorating its body splattered with white spots, sporting coral-like red whiskers to top it all off.
Obviously, this was also a mutant.
Seeing the "big guy" twisting in the trap and trying to escape, Gale and Night Ten were so excited that they almost cried.
Three days!
Three full days!
They finally caught one!
Before the big bird hovering in the sky and the beasts by the lake discovered them, they hurriedly dragged the big guy with the trap from the lake to the shore, cruelly beating it to death with steel rods.
It wasn't until it was completely dead that its head and tail were tied to a steel bar with ropes. Then the two carried the dead fish that was still twitching back to the outpost.
"Brother Scrambled Egg, look, can we eat this stuff?"
"What the heck? What is this?"
Staring at the catfish that Gale and Night Ten threw on the ground, [Tomato_scrambled_eggs] who was a smoking meat rack, was shocked.
He has been cooking dishes his entire life, and it was the first time he had seen such a big catfish with his own eyes.
Just the fish head could already fill a basin.
If this thing was thrown into the lake, could other fish still survive???
Catfish eat meat after all!
"It should be a catfish," Gale said.
"Of course I know it's catfish," Scrambled Egg squatted down and opened its lips to look at it, then he tugged it and said, "My goodness... This one is at least 50kgs!"
Night Ten asked quickly.
"Can you make smoked fish?"
"Who uses catfish to make smoked fish..." Scrambled Egg was speechless, but then he continued, "This thing is very fat and has moisturizing mucus on the surface. It is quite troublesome to handle. I don't know if it can be dehydrated."
"So what should we do?" Gale asked.
"I haven't tried it before, but let's first try..." Scrambled Egg fell silent after a glance at the fish rack that he had been constructing for a long time.
This fish might be too heavy for this rack.
He could only make it again...
...
At dusk.
Brother Scrambled Egg took the place of the administrator and stewed a pot of fish head soup for the players, using his actions to prove that this thing was indeed edible.
And the taste was surprisingly good.
Although there was no tofu as a side dish, and no onion, ginger, garlic and cooking wine to remove the fishy smell, Brother Scrambled Egg still used his superb cooking skills and only used salt and soy sauce as seasoning to make a pot of fish head soup that was fresh but not greasy.
The players were almost in tears when they tasted the soup.
Brother Scrambled Egg and Mosquito were surprised by the taste in the game, and the other four players were moved by finally eating a bite of normal food.
‘Wuwuwu, it's really not easy...'
The players went offline at 6 o'clock in the evening that day, which was 6 o'clock in the morning in reality.
The closed beta players had just gotten out of the game and had yet to log into their chat software, but the Bull and Horse Club group exploded with messages.
Quit_smoking: [Holy shit! Quick! Look at the official website! ]
This_lord_is_arrogant_what_can_you_do: [You still haven't given up yet...]
Hold_the_sword_execution: [What happened to the official website? ]
Quit_smoking: [Alpha 0.2 version major update! The official website will once again give 24 players access to the game! The number of closed beta players will be expanded to 30! ! ! ]
Hold_the_sword_execution: [For real? ]
This_lord_is_arrogant_what_can_you_do: [Hehe, they start to sell the access, right? How much is it? Let me see if it's enough for the police to set up a case. (Picking_nose.jpg)]
Quit_smoking: [I think it's free. The announcement did not mention the charge! Haha, I will definitely get one this time! ! ! ]
Garbage_pickup_level_99: [You are thinking too much, the number of applications has already broken a hundred. With 24 additional players... the probability is one-quarter to one-fifth, right?]
Quit_smoking: [Broken a hundred? ! What the hell, we had that many people in our group? ? ? ]
Garbage_pickup_level_99: [Uh, not everyone is from our group... I saw a lot of game groups discussing this game last night. ]
Hold_the_sword_execution: [Other groups. (Shock!)]
No_one_understands_love: [Mhm, I just checked it. The number of applications has already reached to 111. ]
Quit_smoking: [Fu**! ]