God's Imitator

Everyone gathered in front of the vending machine.

Under community rules, thirty percent of Lu Bingjun’s earnings had already been automatically deducted and added to the Community Development Fund. Now he donated the remaining seventy percent as well.

Before pressing the donation button, however, Lu Bingjun paused briefly and said, ”It’s a shame the community rules don’t allow donations to be made in a deceased player’s name.

”All we can do is carry it in our hearts: this precious immunity voucher was bought for us with Deng Xiao’s life.”

Lu Bingjun pressed the button and completed the donation.

Deceased players no longer appear in the machine’s records, so although the donation was made in Deng Xiao’s name in spirit, no corresponding record could be entered. The transaction was logged under Lu Bingjun’s name instead.

Lu Bingjun’s previous donation record had stood at roughly 340,000. The total earnings from this game came to 410,000, and with the community rule that donations made by the community leader are recorded at one hundred and thirty percent of their value, his cumulative donation record jumped to as much as 870,000 in a single stroke.

Ye Lin, for her part, had had thirty percent automatically deducted after the Pain Game, amounting to around 20,000, and her donation record stood at 240,000. She now found herself left well behind by Lu Bingjun.

With the donation completed, the Community Development Fund crossed the 900,000 threshold as a matter of course.

Shen Bowen reminded everyone, ”There should be a new item unlocking. Let’s take a look.”Lu Bingjun nodded and opened the item page on the vending machine to search through it.

[Immunity Voucher cooldown permanently reduced by 7 days]

[Price: 80,000 minutes of visa time]

Seeing that item entry, everyone went quiet for a moment, their expressions difficult to read.

Lu Bingjun was silent for a long time, then let out a somewhat regretful sigh, ”If only we had donated the Community Development Fund to 900,000 sooner.”

The others clearly all arrived at the same realisation: they had missed it by just that little.

If they had pushed the Community Development Fund to the 900,000 threshold earlier and unlocked this item, they would have scraped together whatever it took to buy it without a second thought.

And 80,000 minutes of visa time was not an unacceptably large sum.

Had they done so, the immunity voucher would have had enough time to finish its cooldown before ’A Single Word to Settle a Case’ began.

Lu Bingjun could have confessed outright and used the immunity voucher to protect himself, and Deng Xiao would naturally have survived the game as well.

But because no one had known that pushing the fund to 900,000 would unlock such an item, the immunity voucher had ended up falling just short of finishing its cooldown.

The item still held considerable value even now, since permanently reducing the cooldown by seven days only became more worthwhile the longer time went on. But the moment when it would have mattered most had already been missed.

Qin Cheng thought for a moment, then offered some comfort, ”I don’t think anyone should be too disheartened about this.

”There’s a great deal of chance involved in how things played out.

”Based on our earlier discussion, the reason the Imitator included that special solution of ’one confession to clear the game’ was very likely because they had access to certain information about us.

”If we had unlocked this item earlier and activated the immunity voucher, the Imitator might well have designed it as ’two confessions required to clear the game’ instead.

”Ultimately, we still know far too little about the Imitator, and we have no way of knowing through what channels or what kinds of information they can obtain.

”Dwelling on something like this risks falling into exactly the trap the Imitator may have set: perhaps it was a purely impulsive design decision on their part, and it becomes our community’s lasting obsession as a result.”

Lu Bingjun considered this for a moment, then nodded, ”Yes, Qin Cheng is right.

”There’s no point letting something like this drag us into pointless self-recrimination. What’s done is done, and regret serves no purpose.

”Whatever else is true, the Imitator is still our greatest enemy.

”Should we go ahead and purchase this item now?

”The immunity voucher is about to finish its cooldown regardless, but since we’d have to buy it sooner or later, it makes no difference when we do it.”

Everyone nodded in agreement, ”Yes, let’s buy it.”

Lu Bingjun moved quickly through the steps, first purchasing the item that permanently reduced the immunity voucher’s cooldown, then immediately buying the immunity voucher itself now that its cooldown had finished.

The total came to 380,000 minutes of visa time.

Even so, seeing the immunity voucher return to an active and usable state put many players considerably more at ease.

Lu Bingjun looked around at everyone, ”Alright, let’s wrap up the discussion here for now. Everyone has worked hard.”

Before the group dispersed, however, Qin Cheng raised one more point, ”Brother Lu, there’s still one thing we should confirm.

”The specific mechanics of the ’restocking’ system.”

On the vending machine, the purchase limit for both medications still showed ’0/10,’ and the screen still displayed the same simple notice.

[Purchase limit depleted. Please restock.]

Qin Cheng had not spelled it out explicitly, but any player with a reasonable degree of sharpness could quickly grasp what he meant.

The only players to have survived the game this time were Lu Bingjun and Lin Sizhi.

Those two were not likely to restock.

On one hand, they presumably had no inclination to do so at the moment. On the other, the suspicion would be far too narrowly focused: if either of them restocked now, the finger would point squarely at the two of them, a pool so small it was essentially playing with an open hand.

So regardless of their individual reasons, there was no possibility either of them would restock right now.

But that was precisely what made this the ideal moment to get to the bottom of the restocking mechanics.

Because Lu Bingjun and Lin Sizhi were unlikely to have coordinated their story in advance, whatever information they provided now could be trusted as accurate.

If the matter were left until a later game, when more players had become eligible to restock, the mechanics they reported at that point might no longer be reliable.

Lu Bingjun nodded, ”Let me take a look.

”For both medications, I can restock up to ten bottles of each. I don’t see any restocking time limit.”

He turned to Lin Sizhi, ”Lawyer Lin, come and check yours as well.”

Lin Sizhi stepped up to the vending machine, ran through a quick check, and said, ”Same for me. Ten bottles of each, and no time limit that I can see.”

Qin Cheng’s brow furrowed, ”That many?

”The initial stock was ten bottles of each, twenty in total. And now, between the two of them, forty bottles can be restocked.

”With that number, there are two possibilities.

”The first is that after each game, the total restocking quota increases by twenty, meaning the default starts at twenty across both medications combined, becomes forty after one game, sixty after another, and so on, divided equally among all surviving players.

”The second is that after each game, every surviving player is individually entitled to restock twenty bottles, so the more players who survive, the more can be restocked in total.”

Huang Shengjie added, ”There’s also the possibility that after each game, the total restocking quota doubles: twenty by default, forty after the first game, eighty after the second.”

Qin Cheng gave a slight shake of his head, ”That would be the worst-case scenario, but the numbers would spiral out of control so quickly that it would essentially be the same as having no limit at all. I don’t think it would go that far.

”But even by the most conservative estimate, the quantity of medications available is already beyond what we can realistically control.

”It looks like buying out the entire stock of medications after every game is no longer a realistic goal.”