Chapter 152: Ota Bank and Ota Coins
Two seconds after the Old Town Mayor spotted the long line of vehicles stretching outside the town and let out a sharp, startled cry, his rationality finally kicked in.
He realized that the vehicles were actually waiting in line.
But what were they lining up for?
To buy something.
The Old Town Mayor: “…”
“Mom was right. When you live long enough, you really do get to see everything.”
Muttering to himself, he hurried toward the town entrance. Seeing Mishar and her family moving so frantically that they were practically leaving afterimages behind, he cautiously glanced at the vehicles waiting nearby before calling out:
“Hey! Need a hand?”
An hour later, practically every townsman who was at home had gotten to work. They dug out whatever stored meat they had in their homes, while the town’s only blacksmith was working himself to the bone.
He was actually more skilled at repairing weapons, but right now, he was frantically making one charcoal grill after another.
This ordinary little town on the Broken River Wasteland was filled with the aroma of grilled sausages for the entire day.
Then came the second day.
Then the third…
Even after most of the vehicles had already left the Broken River Wasteland, there were still Blue Sea residents with combat ratings below 65—people who could only operate within the Broken River Wasteland—who would make the long journey there, carrying the corpses of mutated beasts and mutated plants on their shoulders and lugging various heavy weapons with them, all for the sake of buying a single Moon Silk Star grilled sausage.
By then, in the mouths of the Blue Sea residents, Biluotian Town had already become Grilled Sausage Town.
And the town quickly spawned several restaurants, taverns, and inns as well.
As the saying went, where there is demand, there will be supply.
Although the people of Moon Silk Star all said that the New Humans were stupid and that their brains were inferior to those of the Old Humans, this incident alone was enough to show that the New Humans of Moon Silk Star were actually quite clever.
The reason they lived their lives in a numb, monotonous routine, day after day, was because they simply had no opportunities to change anything.
But when an opportunity to change their lives finally appeared, there would always be someone who stepped forward and seized it.
For example, besides the establishments mentioned above, all sorts of small businesses had begun popping up in the town: tanners who processed the hides of mutated beasts, weaponsmiths who polished and customized weapons, and even massage therapists whose techniques weren’t exactly professional, but whose prices were cheap—and whose massages, at the very least, left customers feeling somewhat relaxed afterward.
The Broken River Wasteland was simply too vast. Even Blue Sea residents who were restricted to operating within this area couldn’t possibly make the trip back and forth to a Safe City every single day.
Technically, they could sleep inside their vehicles, or stick a pole into the ground and hang themselves from it while sleeping. But now that the towns were offering all these services, most Blue Sea residents were more than happy, after an exhilarating battle, to enjoy a good meal and some drinks before sleeping in a clean, well-maintained stone house.
After Grilled Sausage Town… no, after Biluotian Town made a profit by doing this, the other towns quickly followed suit and began imitating them.
Blue Sea’s original plan had actually been to send people to the various towns and establish Blue Sea-operated service centers.
But after seeing how things developed, Blue Sea changed its decision. Instead, they simply opened a bank in each town, specifically for purchasing and exchanging the nuclear crystals or useful prey that the residents brought in.
For the time being, Blue Sea had dubbed this phenomenon the “Grilled Sausage Effect.”
Every time Cheng Qisheng saw the Old Eighths seriously discussing the “Grilled Sausage Effect,” she would suddenly get a tremendous craving for grilled sausages.
Clearly, the Old Eighths felt the same way. Whenever the various departments finished one of these meetings, quite a few people would head straight to the cafeteria to buy themselves a grilled sausage.
Yes, ever since the grilled sausages of Moon Silk Star had become wildly popular locally, the chefs in Blue Sea’s various cafeterias had quickly learned how to make the local-style grilled sausages and added them to the daily menu.
At this very moment, another meeting was underway, analyzing the changes taking place in the various towns across the Broken River Wasteland.
Previously, because of Moon Silk Star’s bizarre history, Blue Sea had been extremely cautious about how it treated the local people.
But they soon discovered that the people of Moon Silk Star—at least the New Humans of Moon Silk—were, in fact, simply ordinary people living through an apocalypse.
Of course, there were some bad people among them, but most were ordinary civilians from the very bottom of society.
And, moreover, they were the strongest naturally born humans among the native populations of all the worlds they had encountered.
Perhaps it was the harsh environment that had tempered them. Or perhaps all those with weaker combat abilities had simply died off. Either way, the Moon Silk people living in the Broken River Wasteland, even without any mutations, could reach a combat rating of around 50 as long as all four limbs were intact.
However, because of their short lifespans, the Moon Silk people’s combat abilities couldn’t improve dramatically through accumulated experience. They were essentially a type with a low ceiling but a high floor.
After discussions among Blue Sea’s various departments, they felt that perhaps they could bring some of the Moon Silk people living on the Broken River into the fold. Even if they weren’t made into residents, they could at least become affiliates of [Ota].
This would allow Blue Sea to develop the Broken River Wasteland more quickly while also yielding greater returns.
“It would be better to get them involved. If we purchase goods from the Moon Silk people and hire miners in the name of [Ota], they’ll naturally develop a certain degree of attachment to and willingness to protect [Ota].”
“But that’s still not enough.”
The social welfare and development planning expert looked at the map, where one little point after another had lit up. Each point represented a local shop owner who had voluntarily opened an inn, hoping to make some money from the “Ota Survey Teams.”
“Exchanging goods for supplies is already a way of life that the Moon Silk people are accustomed to. If we offer them a good price, they’ll be very grateful to us. But if one day we disappear, they’ll certainly feel disappointed, yet it’s not as though they won’t be able to accept it.”
“After all, at worst, they can simply go back to living the way they did before, being exploited and squeezed from every direction. Such a life may be difficult, but their ancestors have lived that way for generations.”
The Moon Silk people would continue venturing out everywhere to collect goods and heading into the mines to dig for ore. They might occasionally miss [Ota]’s management, but they wouldn’t develop much of an urge to resist.
“But once the Moon Silk people develop a new economic model because of [Ota], everything will be different.”
The experts pointed toward the little points of light scattered across the map.
“They’ve already entered an entirely new mode of living. The influx of outside consumer spending will stimulate local small-scale businesses and industries, driving a small commercial cycle within the region. We and the people of the Broken River will become a community bound together by shared material interests—or at least, that’s how it will look from the perspective of the people living here.”
Take the inns, for example.
Once an inn opened its doors, Blue Sea residents would come to stay there. Room fees, food, boarding services for domesticated mutated mounts, laundry services, and so on would all provide the inn with a direct source of income.
And of course, the things inside an inn couldn’t simply appear out of thin air. The owner would need to purchase food ingredients and feed for mutated beasts from other people in the town.
When it came to cleaning the rooms, some owners would do it themselves, while others would hire local workers to clean and do the laundry. Some inns might even have an eight- or nine-year-old orphan running errands, doing odd jobs, or carrying messages to guests.
When an inn needed repairs, temporary laborers would be needed. The materials required for those repairs would have to be purchased from other people as well. And if someone in town raised mutated riding beasts, the inn could even partner with them and recommend their mounts to guests.
“Every industry will begin to flourish, and the hunting work of some local hunters will also become considerably easier than before.”
What kind of conditions had local hunters had when they ventured out in the past?
Every trip outside had been a gamble.
If they stayed too close to home, there wouldn’t be any valuable prey nearby.
But if they went too far, they risked being unable to make it home before the Eternal Night descended.
The harsh environment had driven trust between people to an absolute minimum. The various towns across the Broken River Wasteland were far from close-knit. Townspeople would only take in outsiders who were related to them by blood. Everyone else could forget about finding a place to stay in town.
Even if a town was willing to take them in, the hunters themselves wouldn’t dare enter.
What if the entire town was in on it, working together to kill them and take their possessions?
The environment of Moon Silk Star made disposing of corpses incredibly easy. After killing someone, all you had to do was find one of the Corpse-Disintegrating Grass patches that grew everywhere and throw the body onto it. The beautiful four-leaf plants would immediately wrap themselves around the corpse.
By the following morning, there wouldn’t even be bones left.
—As an aside, Blue Sea was currently planning to use the liquid extracted from Corpse-Disintegrating Grass to manufacture corrosive warheads and thermal acid guns.
In any case, the situation of local hunters had improved considerably after Blue Sea residents began moving around the region and stimulating the economies of the various towns.
When the Eternal Night suddenly descended, they could quickly flee to the nearest town, spend some [Ota Coins], and stay in a safe and comfortable inn.
When they ran out of stamina, they no longer had to stubbornly push themselves to endure it. They could simply go to a nearby town, buy a bottle of replenishing fluid to quickly restore their strength, and then grab a meal at one of the food stalls.
And if they were injured, they no longer had to grit their teeth and treat the wounds themselves. The doctors in the various towns had gone from previously “only treating people from this town” to “I’ll treat anyone who pays.”
Their methods were still extremely crude. Some doctors would heat a metal blade until it was red-hot and then press it directly against the wound to cauterize it.
But the hunters were already accustomed to this kind of treatment. At least they didn’t have to worry about infection.
Of course, some hunters simply couldn’t bear the pain and chose to go directly to an Ota Bank to purchase medicine instead.
Not every hunter would go out and buy medicine, but the existence of Ota Bank let them know that when they were injured, they now had a safer option.
Speaking of which, Ota Bank had also played a significant role in helping hunters successfully stay in the various towns.
The townspeople all knew that the “employees” at Ota Bank were powerful mutants. Not only could they fly, they also had access to a large arsenal of weapons.
Most of the time, they stayed in the bank and went about their work. But whenever the town encountered any kind of danger, these employees would step in to protect [Company Assets].
This gave the townspeople the confidence to allow unfamiliar hunters into their towns. If anything went wrong, the “employees” would definitely intervene.
After hunters caught their prey, they could simply carry it to the nearest town, where the local tanners—who practiced every day and were becoming more professional with each passing day—would give the mutated beast a thorough skinning and offer them a decent purchase price.
The mutated beast’s meat and the nuclear crystals inside it could also be taken directly to Ota Bank and exchanged for those shiny Ota Coins. Those Ota Coins would then circulate through the other shops in exchange for substantial amounts of supplies.
And if they didn’t want to haul a huge amount of supplies with them on the journey home, they could simply tuck their Ota Coins safely into a leather pouch. Once they returned to the town where they lived, they could spend them there just the same.
Lightweight Ota Coins were far more convenient than carrying several tons of prey and trudging all the way home from some distant place.
The hunters were happy.
Blue Sea was happy too.
The Blue Sea experts brought up the data showing the increase in nuclear crystal purchases, their voices rising slightly with excitement.
“Ever since a self-sustaining economic cycle spontaneously emerged across the Broken River, the amount of nuclear crystals we’ve purchased from the locals has increased dramatically as well.”
Local hunters who could now confidently rest in the various towns had the courage to venture farther afield. They could also replenish their strength along the way, so naturally, their success rate when hunting mutated beasts increased.
And with Ota Coins becoming widespread throughout the Broken River Wasteland, the hunters’ first reaction upon obtaining nuclear crystals was now to exchange them for Ota Coins.
As for the fact that everyone outside the wasteland dealt in nuclear crystals and that nobody would recognize Ota Coins, the hunters didn’t care.
To them, as long as Ota Coins could be exchanged for supplies, they were more useful than nuclear crystals.
Blue Sea was practically swimming in nuclear crystals.
The Broken River Wasteland of today no longer resembled the barren, lifeless place it had once been.
Farmland was being cultivated everywhere. The ground that had once been covered in wild poisonous weeds had been trampled into roads by passing vehicles, one after another.
Every so often, travelers would come across landmarks erected along these roads. These weren’t built by Blue Sea. They had been put up by local townspeople who wanted hunters and survey teams to come to their particular towns.
Out in the wilderness near the Broken River Wasteland, a Moon Silk vehicle was speeding along.
“My lord, are we really going to the Broken River? Won’t it be dangerous there too?”
“Don’t worry. The Broken River is the most remote place there is. Information travels slowly there. No one will discover us.”
“That’s not right, my lord. It looks like someone’s chasing us from behind!”
The two people inside the vehicle didn’t have any particularly dramatic backgrounds. They had simply offended someone important and were now fleeing for their lives.
Neither of them had expected their pursuers to catch up even here. They hadn’t even managed to escape into the Broken River before their whereabouts were exposed, so they could only accelerate, hoping to shake off the people chasing them.
But after the vehicle crossed into the Broken River Wasteland, they were astonished to discover that their pursuers had actually stopped.
It was as though they didn’t dare enter this remote region.
Had some terrifying new mutated beast appeared in the Broken River Wasteland during this period?
But with wolves ahead and tigers behind, they had no choice but to keep going.
The two people exchanged a glance inside the vehicle, cautiously slowing down as they observed their surroundings.
But the farther they drove, the more astonished they became.
There were broad stretches of roads, expanses of farmland growing freely, and people working peacefully in the fields…
This place didn’t look like some remote wilderness at all.
It practically looked like the cities surrounding a Central City.
How was that possible?
When he’d come here two years ago, this place hadn’t looked anything like this.
High above, a cleric who had been hiding along the edge of a cloud while studying the written language of Moon Silk Star suddenly turned his head toward the unfamiliar vehicle.
At the same time, Cheng Qisheng’s attention shifted over as well.
She only diverted a portion of her mental power toward the vehicle. Another portion was still inside Blue Sea Safe City.
Expert Xicao from the Duxi Civilization were looking at the data displayed on the enormous screen in front of them. One of them announced:
“It’s done. This process can remove at least half of the toxicity from the seawater you’ve stored.”
In truth, they were only supposed to remove one-third of the toxicity for Blue Sea. That had been the process the Duxi Civilization had decided on from the beginning.
But Blue Sea had treated the children of the Duxi Civilization far too well.
Xicao could tell that Blue Sea genuinely treated these children as if they were children of their own civilization.
Returning a favor was also one of the Duxi Civilization’s defining traits. Even though it was no longer technically part of humanity, that principle still remained.
Expert Xicao turned toward the visibly excited Blue Sea personnel beside him.
“Congratulations, Blue Sea. You now have a little ocean of your own.”
