God's Imitator

On the big screen, the Sinner players returned to their lounges after completing the first round of production.

After a 3-minute break, they returned to the field to start producing the second batch of drugs.

The entire process was exactly the same as before, without much change.

Meanwhile, the Audience were synchronizing their drug purchases.

[This batch offers a total of 352 bottles (5 tablets per bottle) for purchase, each priced at 600 minutes of visa time per bottle.]

[Please place your bids through the vending machines in the lounges.]

[Bidding will continue until the next batch of drugs is completed.]

[If demand exceeds supply during bidding, the Audience may choose ’Price Increase Seizure,’ increasing the price by 100 minutes of visa time each time.]

[Once sales of this batch are complete, the Audience can start voting ’Sympathy Votes’ for the Sinner players.]

Ye Lin and Huang Shengjie approached the vending machine, and indeed a new list of drugs had refreshed on the screen.

All drugs initially priced at 600 minutes of visa time, with the current remaining quantity displayed.

Soon, the remaining quantity began to change.

In theory, there were 352 bottles in this batch, but as soon as Huang Shengjie looked, the quantity had already dropped to 331, then quickly to 292, and sales accelerated even further.

Eventually, the remaining drug quantity dropped to 0.

Still, it was possible to continue operations on the vending machine for ’Price Increase Purchase.’

The idea was to pay 700 minutes of visa time and directly snatch a bottle from an Audience member.

As for whom they were snatching it from, the rules didn’t specify; it could be random or based on the order of purchase.

But no matter the method, should an Audience member’s drug be seized, the visa time they originally paid would be refunded. They could either give up buying drugs or increase the price to snatch others’ drugs.

When the current round of the game ends, bidding for these drugs will stop, and settlements will be made according to the final bidding price.

Huang Shengjie was shocked: "They’re already sold out?

"This is so exaggerated.

"If you don’t buy drugs, you can still receive dividends in the end. Can people really resist the temptation of dividends?"

Ye Lin, seemingly thoughtful, said: "It’s actually understandable.

"According to our calculations, if all these drugs are sold, the involved visa time could total up to 2 million, half of which would be shared among the Audience who didn’t purchase drugs.

"There are 27 Audience members in total.

"Assuming around 10 Audience members don’t buy drugs, each could still receive around 100,000 visa time, which is indeed an astounding sum.

"But there’s another issue to consider:

"The more Audience members who don’t buy drugs, the less visa time each would receive. If 20 don’t buy drugs, then each would only get 50,000.

"Moreover, this is the first batch of drugs, when demand from the Audience is the highest.

"The following batches of drugs likely won’t sustain such demand, meaning they won’t sell as much visa time, drastically reducing each Audience member’s earnings, possibly even to less than 20,000 or 30,000, making it not very worthwhile.

"On the other hand, buying drugs isn’t purely a loss; there are cash-out opportunities that might be more lucrative than directly taking dividends.

"Audience members can choose to take these drugs back to their Community or sell them to other Communities.

"In that case, how much visa time would players from other communities be willing to spend on M-class drugs?

"Probably much higher than we imagine, and the demand for drugs would be much greater.

"Because top players, drug addicts from other Communities, and those extreme Community leaders who control ordinary players through drugs might all be audiences for this type of drug."

Huang Shengjie nodded in agreement: "Indeed."

M-class drugs are valuable due to their minimal side effects.

For the strong in the Community, they certainly don’t want to become addicted to drugs.

Before, they had to endure the pain, but now with M-class drugs, they would definitely be willing to pay a high premium, as the strong don’t lack visa time.

And as for the drug addicts, there should also be a desire to rid themselves of drug addiction. Previously, they had no choice because the Community only had O-class and F-class drugs.

But now there are M-class drugs, and they might use funds previously meant for O-class or F-class drugs to purchase M-class drugs.

Moreover, community leaders similar to Zhao Heng of Community 23, who use drug addiction to control the Community, might find their rule threatened by the emergence of M-class drugs, so they may likely directly pay out of pocket to monopolize M-class drugs, continuing to let others in the Community use only O-class and F-class drugs, at their mercy.

In short, due to their low harm and addiction properties, M-class drugs have become an extremely rare and precious luxury, with prices that cannot be anchored using O-class or F-class drugs.

Huang Shengjie continued to watch the information on the vending machine, currently no price increase purchases had occurred.

After all, this is the first batch of drugs, with 9 more batches to follow, overall supply is still plentiful, and the Audience now aren’t tempted to increase the price.

However, Huang Shengjie already anticipated that the Audience’s buying desire was stronger than he imagined.

"Sister Yelin, if these M-class drugs really get hyped up by others...

"Shouldn’t we also choose an appropriate moment to buy some symbolically?

"After all, there are two of us.

"For instance, I buy drugs, and you take dividends—maybe that’s a good choice."

Ye Lin shook her head: "I don’t think it’s necessary for now, we’ll see later.

"By the way, let’s take a look at how Sympathy Votes are actually cast."

The two approached the console to check, finding the Sympathy Vote function still locked but about to unlock soon.

According to the game rules, each of them had 15 Sympathy Votes, and they must be operated personally.

But ’Sympathy Votes’ cannot be directly given to Wen Wan from the same Community.

Additionally, there was a ’Withdraw Sympathy Votes’ button on the page.

The previous rules were vague about this, only stating ’After a significant price, you can withdraw and recast Sympathy Votes,’ but didn’t detail what price to pay or how to recast.

Huang Shengjie tried clicking the ’Withdraw Sympathy Votes’ button.

"Click," a cover next to the console opened, but it was empty inside.

"Does it require casting Sympathy Votes first or activating some special mechanism?"

Huang Shengjie couldn’t think it through for now, but with plenty of game time left, they didn’t need to cast all their Sympathy Votes now, they could take their time to consider.