[■■■ has launched a brand-new DLC! Available for a limited time!]
[■■■-DLC: Foggy City. A brand-new map, new NPCs, new professions/animals/plants/fish/facilities! High-freedom gameplay—earn more money and build your home!]
[*Foggy City*: A famous city of the Golden Age. Pioneers sound the horn of industry, and the mists of theology and the eerie are gradually being dispelled…]
[Load this DLC and travel to the new world?]
[No/Yes] [09:99:99]
Arna, who was busy burying her head in the task of watering her crops one by one, stopped what she was doing, feeling a bit surprised.
■■■ was a game recommended to her by a friend. It was said that a certain game manufacturer had integrated various remains of historical farming games and relaunched them as a retro farming simulation with a rewritten plot. Its main selling point was pairing new technology with an old-world setting.
After the Great Disaster, preserved information on ancient civilizations was scarce, let alone game data. Once the game was released, it immediately became a hit among game enthusiasts worldwide.
But what was the point of using a hoe to dig up weeds and farm by hand? Had she not suffered enough at work, or was she just not educated enough to prefer using remote-controlled drones?
At first, Arna hadn’t thought much of it, but now, with over five hundred hours of playtime, she felt the game did indeed have a certain charm.
However, she hadn’t expected the game to receive such a massive injection of capital to develop an entirely new historical background and gameplay style.
Since she was on vacation anyway and had plenty of time to sink into the game, she quickly scanned the various introductions in the pop-up window. Her mind slid through the long, long fragments of text before finally summarizing it into a few words.
Rich city folk, short on veggies.
New version, new map, new buildings! Awesome! Let’s go!
Arna clicked the option on the right, confirming at lightning speed. She wanted to avoid having the version update disappear because the game—which never played by the rules—timed out before the countdown ended.
Next, she skillfully opened the purchase page, scrolled to the bottom of the new game terms window in one go, skipped the long and tedious clauses, and clicked “Confirm,” “Confirm,” “Confirm.”
After three clicks, a brown progress bar finally popped up, rolling forward slowly until it turned a conspicuous fluorescent green.
[The train to London arrives in ten minutes. Are you ready?]
Heading straight to the new map?
Great! She thought she would have to start a new save from scratch!
As everyone knows, when exploring a new map, there’s a chance the original currency might not be interchangeable (after all, the new map might be some remote wilderness where people only recognize shells). While food in the backpack won’t become inedible, there might not be enough of it.
This was especially true when fighting monsters, as eating in most games was tied to health recovery.
Therefore, except for players who grinded combat and defense stats as soon as they entered the game, wise players would replace all their tools with new ones to avoid durability loss and bring plenty of food to increase satiety before leaving. This was to avoid dying on the spot and having to reload a save.
Arna was no exception.
After all, she was just an ordinary enthusiast of scavenging, base-building, and farming!
So, she skillfully ran to her warehouse and grabbed her Golden Hoe, Golden Axe, and Golden Pickaxe.
Then she ran to the fridge, packed 999 units of food, and left the other slots empty.
Don’t ask why she didn’t use the tools with the highest durability. It was because the gold was shiny and looked good.
She had hoarded an entire chest of them. She still hadn’t used them all up.
Having packed all the essentials, Arna happily hoisted her backpack, climbed the crude wooden stairs, took out a gold coin to buy a ticket, and waited for the train to arrive.
“Normally speaking,” she said with confidence, “bringing high-quality equipment to a new map should be like a maxed-out character crushing the beginner village, right?”
After all, how hard could a farming game DLC be?
It wasn’t like they’d make her build a home in a swamp and farm while fending off mosquitoes, vine tentacles, frogs, and murlocs, right?
Or mine while fighting bugs, where only special ores could till the soil there?
In the worst-case scenario, the developers might mix in some Cthulhu elements—sacrifices, octopuses, eyes everywhere—and drop her Sanity Points to scare her.
It didn’t matter; she had brought plenty of flower tea just in case! It was a comprehensive, three-dimensional defense against the manufacturer’s little tricks!
***
“Tickets, please! Thank you!”
“Could you please have your tickets ready in advance?”
Outside, the ticket inspector’s loud reminders could be heard. Inside the carriage, Arna stared blankly at the table in front of her, which was crammed with food, and her backpack, which had been forcibly reduced in capacity. She said nothing.
…Damn it. Not only was the currency not universal in this new map, but it also wasn’t compatible with her 999 stacking mod.
She hadn’t brought much flower tea, so that was still holding up, but most of the sandwiches she had packed had dropped out. Dozens were laid out on the table, while others had vanished to who-knows-where, likely lost to some bug outside the carriage.
She squeezed further into the carriage, trying to trigger a clipping bug to pick up her dropped items. She even checked the floorboards for any sandwich-stealing monsters, but found nothing.
Dammit, the sandwiches—she had spent a long time making them—
Even more worrying was where she could find something to hold the sandwiches still piled on the table.
Use the remaining slots in her backpack?
No, a smart player would find another way, such as using local materials or exploiting a bug.
Arna looked around the carriage but found no clues.
Great. No trash cans to rummage through, no curtains to tear down.
The next second, the carriage door was pulled open. Standing outside was a tall, thin man, probably in his thirties or forties—clearly the ticket inspector.
Arna’s gaze instantly sharpened.
Maybe… she should give the ticket to the inspector first, knock him out while he was looking down, and then use his clothes to make a bundle for the sandwiches?
It seemed feasible.
After all, based on her experience scavenging everywhere in games, if a player could take it, it meant the manufacturer intended for the player to have it.
With that thought, Arna handed over her ticket.
Being stared at intensely by the person in front of him, Charlie, the ticket inspector, felt a shiver as he held the ticket.
…No way. Could it be that his secret glances at the sandwiches on the table had been noticed?
It was just after one in the afternoon. Because of the bad weather this morning, he had slept in a bit, got a scolding from his wife, and missed breakfast. Then, because he had to fill in for a colleague on short notice, he hadn’t had lunch yet.
There were so many sandwiches on the table, and each one looked fresh and well-filled. Charlie couldn’t help but steal a few glances.
There was still quite a bit of time before the next station, and even then, there was no dining room selling food there. Maybe… he should ask to buy some sandwiches from this person?
Driven by his gnawing hunger, he couldn’t help but weigh the feasibility. He had been trying to find a way to strike up a conversation with this passenger.
The passenger was a young person in their twenties with pale blonde hair and blue eyes. Their long hair was tied in a bunch behind their head. They wore a faded, wide-collared shirt under a loose, coarse wool short coat, with high-waisted canvas pants tucked into long boots. The fabric was cheap, and the style was outdated; their economic situation didn’t look very good.
Maybe they’d be willing to sell him some?
With this thought, guided by the greatness of a stomach cramping from hunger, Charlie cleared his throat and used a universal phrase to try and start a conversation.
“…The weather is quite nice today, isn’t it?” He forced a smile.
Arna didn’t look at what text was jumping in the dialogue bubble; she was still waiting for the ticket inspector to look down at the ticket so she could carry out the next step of her plan.
—Should she use the Golden Axe or the Golden Hoe to attack? The opponent’s health bar didn’t look high, but what if this NPC was not as simple as they seemed and was actually a hidden boss? Maybe she should just use the sword with 9,999 damage?
Realizing the other person was responding with silence and still staring at him, Charlie immediately felt his thoughts had been read. “Alright, sorry. I wanted to ask, how much for a sandwich? To be honest, I’m quite hungry…”
The trading module on the interface lit up. Arna, who had been about to “casually” pull a hammer from behind her back, froze for a moment.
In the silence, Charlie bit the bullet and continued, “…Sir, how about one penny for a sandwich?”
The other person still didn’t speak, but they didn’t outright refuse, which meant there was room for negotiation—they just weren’t satisfied with the price.
The main thing was that he was truly starving.
He had to have one of those sandwiches today!
Still silence.
“Two pennies for a sandwich?” Charlie continued to probe.
He paused. Seeing no reaction, he offered the maximum price he could accept. He reached into his pocket with his other hand, pulled out some change, and laid it on the seat. “Three pennies for one. No more. This is all I have, and you know, for this price, you could buy two sandwiches on the streets of London!”
Arna looked at the panel and suddenly understood.
So this was the introductory storyline for the game’s new management mode?
…But to steal the player’s own rations to open a shop—that was way too stingy! And the bug had even glitched out her stock!
Seeing the price of 3 pence per sandwich on the trading panel—which was higher than the market price—Arna enthusiastically shoved a sandwich into the ticket inspector’s hand and then took his three coins.
What did this mean?
It meant she was going to be rich! Opportunities to sell ordinary items at above-market prices didn’t come often!
As it turned out, her judgment was correct.
After the ticket inspector successfully bought a sandwich, this dutiful NPC returned the ticket to her and went back to work.
Other NPCs also came running to buy sandwiches, saying things like, “The inspector said there are lots of sandwiches for sale here,” “I want one too,” and “Great, there’s actually food to buy on this rickety train.”
It was a fixed mechanism of management simulations: as long as the shop was open, customers would keep appearing from unknown corners.
She handed out the last two sandwiches that wouldn’t fit in her backpack. After serving the final customer, she closed the carriage door, intending to take a short break.
The map in the top right corner showed that they were half an hour away from their destination. Her stamina had dropped quickly while selling sandwiches, and she needed sleep to refill it.
Arna hugged her bundle, leaned against the window, closed her eyes, and fell asleep.
Meanwhile, John Watson, holding two sandwiches and carefully making his way back down the narrow corridor to his carriage, felt extremely lucky.
“Look what I managed to get, Holmes,” he said with a smile. “The last two. What incredible luck!”
Because of the case Holmes had recently accepted, they had been running around for the past two days and hadn’t had a proper meal. Their stomachs had long been protesting, and they were looking forward to a grand feast in London to reward themselves.
But before a big meal, no one would object to finding something to fill the void, right?
Watson closed the door, handed one sandwich to his companion, then sat down, tore open the wrapper, and took a bite.
He had expected the food sold on the train to be mediocre, but it was surprisingly good.
“Mmm… it’s cold, but the taste is actually quite good,” Watson said indistinctly, some crumbs catching in his short mustache. He didn’t forget to urge his companion, “Eat up, Holmes. You must be starving too.”
The companion he called Holmes held the sandwich, seemingly still thinking about the case they had just finished.
A moment later, he snapped out of it, unhurriedly peeled back the wrapping paper, and took a taste.