Chapter 64: The Players' First Night! _2
The Big Guy: "By the way, do you guys know what the Sixth Street Gang does?"
Brother Ni: "From the description, they sound like rednecks. Anyway, they do all kinds of illegal activities without missing a beat, but I just gotta rant about the name of this damn exoskeleton paint job. There are so many names to choose from, why choose this one? It's damn abstract."
Potato: "America is like this. We haven't even entered the city and it's already chaotic. How about we bring dozens of rocket launchers inside; if it doesn't work, just throw them away."
Brother Ni: "No way, according to the setting, Night City has a weapons ban, prohibiting many heavy weapons from entering the city. Rocket launchers are practically skirting the edge of the ban. Bringing too many will violate the regional regulations, and taking them out might get you flagged as a wanted criminal. It's like GTA, you'll get a two-star wanted level."
Potato: "What should we do then? This mission's penalty is so damn severe. If we go in empty-handed and can't manage, what do we do then? This is a level five monster zone, and wild monsters must be stronger than Night Wanderers."
At this point, the players faced a situation that looked fatal due to strict rules, when the 'idea man' Big Guy suddenly suggested: "I have an idea. Since we can't bring rocket launchers, can we bring other things? How much money do you have left?"
After finishing the tunnel battle, the players could say it was a fruitful session. In this aspect, Lin Miao was never stingy. Quite a few of them have upgraded from peashooters to cannons, and there have been quite a few distributions of green prosthetics.
Unlike the locals who worry about cyberpsychosis, players have no psychological burden or stress about equipping prosthetics. Phantom pain doesn't exist, and prosthetics equipped via a modification chamber won't trigger immune system resistance. As long as the body stats are sufficient, they can equip more; every point in body stats represents the upper limit for prosthetic equipment.
Like Wildman's seven body points, which can reach seventy percent body prosthetic conversion.
Of course, it's not easy for players to increase their attributes. Every point requires a lot of effort, and it becomes more difficult as they progress.
Apart from prosthetics, they've swapped their guns for new ones, and there are plenty of attachments that allow the players to customize their weapons. However, even though veteran players generally have reached LV5 in Basic Firearms Mastery, it doesn't mean they understand the function of every part of the gun. To customize guns on their own, proficiency is required at least.
Moreover, the smuggled goods include many electromagnetic weapons and a few smart weapons and their attachments, but their prices are several times higher than conventional kinetic weapons. Smart weapons are more than ten times more expensive, and their ammunition is not interchangeable, each more costly than the last.
Even Night Wanderers can't bear to use them and wouldn't dare use them, since they're the boss's goods and eventually benefited Lin Miao.
Lin Miao must find a way to get players to spend most of their earnings within the in-office shopping system. Only by doing this can he keep running smoothly in the long run; otherwise, the office's economic system is likely to face collapse.
No matter how much money every player appears to have, in reality, Lin Miao doesn't have that much money. It's all just virtual numbers.
But fortunately, players die quickly, and their prosthetics wear out fast, after all, this isn't a world where equipment doesn't break.
In battle, compared to their lives, these prosthetics tend to break first. Players swap them frequently, sometimes trading used gear among themselves.
Therefore, Lin Miao rarely holds anything back. Whatever good stuff he has, he puts it in the shop, causing players to become reliant.
Brother Dao: "I've got over a thousand left in my hand, what do you want to do?"
Natural Curl: "I've got two thousand three."
Wildman: "I've got eight thousand in my hand."
Everyone was shocked: "How do you have so much? Bro, is your wallet made of iron? How can you resist not spending?"
Wildman shrugged: "Saving money for an exoskeleton, used it last time and found it really useful, so I bought a light subcutaneous armor this time, still using the old equipment for other stuff."
The Big Guy: "We don't need that much. Let's pool together about six thousand and it should be enough. We'll go to the shop, buy some stuff, and then ask Big Ears Tutu to help us build it. Just give him a handiwork fee, and it won't cost much."
He gathered the other seven players together.
"Based on what we currently know about these things, we can basically confirm..."
......
With the Old Captain's connections in the NCPD, entering the list of a batch of migrants into the city's population system is ridiculously easy. Plus, Night City is originally a gathering spot for migrants, so whether it's dozens or hundreds, no one cares.
The discrepancy between Night City's officially reported population and the actual population might be unknown.
With this crime rate and wealth disparity, without extra population, they really can't sustain their game.
When the players drove their trucks to Night City's road checkpoint, they were stopped by dozen fully-armed NCPD officers conducting checks individually. This was one of their additional income sources.
This was the first time players saw NPCs resembling police. In Evil Land, law enforcement is carried out by corporate military personnel, combating smuggling.
Of course, this is just talk. In reality, corporate military personnel don't care about law enforcement; combating smuggling is mainly for graft. They use various reasons to seize your goods, and you'll inevitably suffer their extortion if your connections aren't strong enough.
Based on data found by the players from the trash dump, they have barely outlined several differences between this police system they've heard about but never seen and actual United States police.