God's Imitator

Zheng Chunhua’s expression carried a trace of melancholy, ”Chen Guangming actually said much the same thing to me. He didn’t convince me.

”But hearing it from a Doctor and from a patient is a different matter entirely.

”Chen Guangming is a player acting in bad faith. Not letting someone like him get what he wants in a game like this, I’d say that comes from a basic sense of justice, and I fully accept that as a reason.

”But those patients who would rather believe Chen Guangming than believe us, are they really worth this kind of sacrifice on our part?

”We’re players too. None of us is free from the pressure of visa time.

”In this terrible place, simply not using an Advantage Identity to do harm is already a fairly high standard of conduct. We’ve already done more than enough. We’ve gone above and beyond.”

Qin Cheng was quiet for a moment, then said, ”Uncle Zheng, I know what you’re trying to say.

”You’re saying this is just a game, and that even if players really do develop drug dependence, even if some of them really do die, much of it is beyond our control.

”But isn’t that precisely the outcome the Imitator wants?

”Think about it carefully. Why did the Imitator design a game like this?”The ultimate goal is still to harvest everyone’s visa time.

”And what Chen Guangming is doing is essentially helping the Imitator accomplish that.

”If everyone thinks this way, then this game truly becomes unsolvable, and the Imitator achieves their ideal ’perfect crime’ without any resistance.

”But looked at the other way, the more players there are like us who hold the line, the fewer victims there will be, and the less visa time the Imitator walks away with.

”You can only catch fish in murky water. The clearer the water, the harder it is to pull anything off.

”If all the players give in quickly and accept the game’s terms, and play along with them, that only gives malicious players and the Imitator more room to stir things up. The chance of us exposing a malicious player or even the Imitator drops to almost nothing.

”But if most players can hold on, malicious players and the Imitator will be pressured into making bigger moves, and may well expose themselves.”

Qin Cheng paused briefly and continued, ”Either way, I’ll still hold to my position until the game ends.

”I will only give patients Type M.

”I wasn’t chosen as the core player for this game in our community, so my preferences and requests carry no authority. Uncle Zheng, the decision on what strategy to take is entirely yours.

”Whatever you decide, I won’t hold it against you.

”If you can hold on the same way I am, that’s wonderful. If you can’t, then you’ll simply be making the choice that most players would make, and that’s nothing I can’t accept.”

Zheng Chunhua let out a conflicted sigh, ”Alright, I’ll keep at it a little longer. Let me, let me think it through some more.”

At the same time, in his room, Huang Shengjie tipped a Type I tablet out of the bottle, preparing to take it.

After obtaining the Type O medication from Qian Li in the fifth round, Huang Shengjie had taken it for three consecutive rounds, and at the start of the ninth round, he had been able to confirm through the level of pain that he was no longer ’Infected.’

Having returned to Standard Pain, he naturally no longer needed the precious Special Medication and was back to taking the basic Type I tablets as before.

The game had now reached the twelfth round. The intervening time had been uneventful, with the players in the Lounge exchanging only scattered, aimless conversation and putting forward nothing particularly constructive.

By this point, Huang Shengjie had spent a considerable number of Medical Points with no prospect of earning any back in sight.

This game was almost certainly going to be a pure loss.

But then he reminded himself that he had just walked away from the edge of death, having come close to dying from the agonising pain without Special Medication, and decided that the loss was entirely acceptable.

”The game is nearly into its third hour. I wonder whose luck runs out this time and gets picked as the Infected player.”

Each hour, the system would select one player from the zone to become the new Infected player.

But by now, identifying an Infected player had become very difficult, effectively impossible.

Because all the players had obtained Special Medication and could achieve complete pain relief even as an Infected player, making it nearly impossible for others to judge by their physiological reactions or expressions.

During the second hour, from the seventh round onward, someone had certainly become Infected, but Huang Shengjie had no way of telling who.

All he could do was minimise his own trading activity to reduce the chances of being infected again.

But just then, Huang Shengjie suddenly felt something was off.

”Strange, why does it still hurt so much?

”This doesn’t feel the same as the Standard Pain at the start.

”It feels similar, but the intensity has noticeably increased. When did it start getting worse?”

Type I medication could not fully eliminate Standard Pain. After taking one tablet, there would still be a mild residual sting and burning sensation, and taking a second tablet made no meaningful difference.

Ordinarily, this level of sting and burning was well within tolerable limits, so Huang Shengjie had not paid much attention to it.

But now he suddenly noticed that the pain had grown noticeably sharper.

Or one could say that the analgesic effect of the Type I medication had weakened.

”The game rules specifically mentioned that without complete pain relief, Standard Pain will keep worsening and eventually become Special Pain.

”Is this what that worsening looks like?

”Which means that in the rounds ahead, even without being selected by the system as an Infected player, and even without being passed the infection by another player, I could still become Infected at any time just from Standard Pain worsening?

”And trading medication causes cross-infection, so the demand for medication is almost certainly going to increase sharply.”

Huang Shengjie’s brow furrowed deeply as the worry crept back in.

The basic Type I medication could not achieve complete pain relief, which meant that even ordinary pain would, over time, slowly worsen into Special Pain, turning players into Infected without any direct transmission event.

On top of that, with Special Medication now available, players would inevitably let their guard down and become less careful in their trading interactions, meaning Infected players could still spread the condition without anyone noticing.

When that happened, Special Medication might well run short again.

”If I could see the Doctor and buy Special Medication at a more reasonable price, stocking up a little more at once might not be a bad idea.

”But then again, why has the Doctor consistently refused to see me all this time?

”What is he thinking?”

There were still many things about this game that Huang Shengjie could not make sense of, and this was one of them.

Over these past several rounds, he had continued sending requests to the Treatment Room, sometimes offering more Medical Points, sometimes less.

But no matter the amount, the Treatment Room door had never once opened, and every batch of points had been returned to him.

He could not work out why, and under the current mechanics of the game, it seemed there was nothing he could do about it.

Before long, the pain faded, and the next round was about to begin.

Huang Shengjie felt somewhat lighter, stood up, and did as he had done before, sending a request to the Treatment Room first. When no response came, he made his way to the Lounge.