God's Imitator

Zhou Wanlin read through the item description on the vending machine again: "There’s one point I’m particularly concerned about, which is this line about ’raising the upper limit on purchase quantity.’

"The initial purchase limit for both of these drugs is 10 bottles, right?

"And the rules also say that players can spend a certain amount of visa time to ’restock’, and can also ’raise the upper limit on purchase quantity’.

"What exactly is this raising of the limit for?"

Lu Bingjun seemed to have considered this question before and quickly gave his guess.

"This should be a rule set up to prevent drugs in the Community from being monopolized by certain players.

"There could be a situation like this:

"Some players have a lot of restock quota and are also relatively free, so they keep an eye on the vending machine. Once a shortage appears, they immediately restock, which could result in a de facto monopoly.

"Because once he fills up to 10 bottles, other players can’t restock anymore, so every time someone buys, they’ll prioritize buying the drugs he restocked.

"The drugs might end up being monopolized by the more idle part of the Community, or everyone might crowd around the vending machine waiting for restocks instead of doing their proper tasks. That’s probably not the scenario the Walkway wants to see.

"So that’s why there needs to be a rule about ’raising the purchase limit’. If some players feel the limit is too low and they never get a chance to restock, they can instead choose to directly raise the original 10-bottle limit to 30 bottles, 50 bottles.

"That way, it’s a bit fairer."

Zhou Wanlin added, "What exactly does raising the purchase limit consume? If it can also consume restock quota in the normal way, while using less visa time, perhaps we could treat it as another outlet for burning off drugs."

Lu Bingjun thought for a moment. "My guess is the price is about the same as normal restocking. But we really haven’t tried it yet; we can test it."

He then operated the vending machine for a while.

"It’s pretty much what we guessed.

"Spending half the standard selling price can raise the purchase limit of a particular drug by 1 bottle, same price as directly restocking.

"Everyone can also try it. Just raise the limit on the F-class drug and see whether the price changes after multiple purchases."

Because F-class drugs were cheaper, restocking or raising the limit only cost 200 minutes of visa time, so most players didn’t care about this small expense and took turns going up to operate it.

Finally, when it was Huang Shengjie’s turn at the vending machine, the purchase limit for the F-class drug had already reached 20 bottles.

He said in surprise, "Huh? It changed!

"If we raise the limit again, the F-class drug becomes 400 minutes per time.

"So it’s gone from 50% of the standard price to 100%."

Lu Bingjun nodded. "Stop there. We’ve got the exact numbers. If we want to increase the purchase limit for a drug, the price goes up every 10 bottles.

"No need to keep testing.

"Overall, using the ’raise purchase limit’ function to burn off restock uses is not cost-effective; it burns more visa time.

"This ’increase limit’ function is mainly for Communities that don’t control drugs. For us it’s useless.

"Let’s think of other plans."

Everyone went back to the long table again and lowered their heads in thought.

Huang Shengjie glanced at Wen Wan. This time she said nothing, only bowed her head in silence.

In the previous two discussions, Wen Wan had been against imposing extreme control measures on special drugs.

But this time, she didn’t bring it up again and didn’t suggest resolving it through a vote; she just stayed silent.

There were two possible explanations for this:

Either after this game, she had indeed realized the damage that drug proliferation could do to the Community and changed her mind;

Or she had realized that with Zhang Yan’s arrival, "controlling drugs" had already become a consensus and bottom line recognized by most players in Community 2. Even if she raised objections, there was no way to change that, and it might instead bring trouble onto herself.

Huang Shengjie couldn’t be sure which it was, but at least on the surface, all the players were still doing their best to think about ways to control drugs.

After thinking for a moment, Yao Yuan seemed to have a clear idea. "Since each new restock quota is evenly divided among the players participating in a game, the more often someone participates, the more quota they’ll get.

"For players like the core members in our Community, who might frequently enter games, they could end up accumulating dozens or even hundreds of restock uses. Buying all of that up is clearly unrealistic. And in general, we trust them more and don’t worry too much about them secretly restocking.

"So I’m thinking we might as well set up an exemption list, allowing players on the list to keep their restock quota without mandatory requirements, leaving it to their own conscience.

"As for everyone else, since they enter games less often and hold less restock quota, we can completely use our old method: once they get quota, they do a one-time restock and the Community buys everything, putting it under control.

"My idea is that we pick about five or six people to hold exemption quota.

"And for other players, once they gain restock quota, they restock all of it and the Community buys it up. They do earn a certain price difference from this, but since they’re the weaker members in the Community who need help, this can also function as a kind of welfare.

"If a drug leak really occurs, we’ll look for the source of the leak from within the exemption list."

Huang Shengjie was a bit puzzled. "Hm? But how do we specifically track down the source of the leak?"

Yao Yuan explained, "There is a way, but it comes at a cost.

"Although other players can’t see someone’s restock page, we can still use the number of times and conditions under which they entered games to calculate their actual restock quota.

"For example, I currently have a restock quota of 6 bottles. Suppose that in the next game the total restock quota is 80 bottles, and there are 4 participants including me; then each person can get another 20-bottle quota.

"My total restock quota would become 26 bottles.

"If I’m on the exemption list and people suspect I leaked drugs, they can force me to restock in front of everyone.

"If I can restock 26 bottles, I’m clean; if I can’t, that means I secretly restocked earlier.

"Of course, afterward Dr. Qin still has to use the public fund to buy up all those newly replenished drugs.

"But compared to mindlessly buying everything from the start, this still saves a lot of Community funds, because we only use this method when ’issues arise with players we trust’.

"If I was wronged, then the plugins gained during this period can be regarded as compensation for me.

"If I wasn’t wronged... then we can discuss what punishment to impose."

Ye Lin thought for a bit and nodded slightly. "In theory, this method is feasible.

"The problem is how to determine the ’suspect’."

Yao Yuan explained, "We can only judge based on small clues within the Community.

"For example, someone discovers that the number of drugs in the vending machine is no longer 0; or they find an empty medicine bottle in the Community; or they observe some physiological reaction in a player that’s related to the drugs...

"All of these can be used as grounds for suspicion.

"Of course, we don’t encourage everyone to report each other without clear evidence."

Huang Shengjie asked, "Then what if the players who restock and buy drugs do it carefully enough that no one discovers it and no one reports it?"

Yao Yuan spread his hands, a bit helpless. "Then there’s nothing we can do.

"In fact, this is pretty similar to catching an Imitator in the Community. Under the current rules, as long as the Imitator hides well enough, they really can’t be caught.

"This is a base-level rule of the Walkway; we can only go this far.

"And it’s not meaningless just because we might not catch them. Doing this can create pressure within the Community, forcing ill-intentioned players to spend more effort covering up their abnormal behavior. It still has a somewhat suppressive effect.

"In short, we definitely can’t buy out all drugs in the future. We can only buy out part of them, so this counts as an expedient measure."

Everyone looked at each other, then nodded one after another.

"It’ll do. We can’t think of a better solution for now anyway."

Lu Bingjun looked at Ye Lin and Lin Sizhi, and after getting their approval, he pushed the topic forward.

"Then let’s decide on a list of players who don’t need to consume their restock uses.

"The game cores we previously exempted from pain will definitely be on the list.

"We also need to select three to four people from the remaining players.

"This list doesn’t involve any benefits or rights; it only reflects everyone’s trust in these players.

"In fact, players not on this list can regularly gain extra welfare by restocking drugs."