Bai Zhi stared at the bus as it rapidly departed the station where he stood. He bowed his head in silence for a moment, then turned and walked into a nearby public toilet.
In the same way a certain Trash Boss* could never truly die, Bai Zhi felt like he would never truly get on the bus he wanted... as if he had been hit by Gold Experience Requiem**.
Yesterday, instead of getting on the bus to the orphanage like he had planned, he had gotten on a bus to the Underworld instead, but even after surviving all that, he couldn't catch a break. He had intended to make it to the orphanage today, but right after he bought a new ticket and was about to board the bus, up popped a notification from the System about a new Mandatory Quest.
Considering the panic that his sudden disappearance from the bus might cause, Bai Zhi solemnly decided to turn around and tear up the ticket he had just bought, dumping the pieces into the trash.
If only he had known about the upcoming Mandatory Quest! There was a world of difference between Players who joined large organizations and those who worked alone, not least because organizations offered their members resources and backup not afforded to lone wolves. Nevertheless, there were pros and cons to each side, and neither could be said to be definitively the wrong choice.
Bai Zhi had been prepared for the Concerning Department to come looking for him ever since the supernatural incident at his school, and to that end, he had even prepared the speech he would use to turn them away, but ever since that Wu Hua guy gifted him with one million yuan, nobody else from the Department had shown up, even after a long time...
Players may have been a small percentage of the population, but there were certainly a lot of them, and from what Bai Zhi had seen the last time they abducted a neutral creep before his eyes, they seemed to have done it plenty of times before.
Thus, it was hard for lone wolves to survive when the major organizations held all the resources, but perhaps that was exactly why the major organizations did not bother actively recruiting them.
Bai Zhi felt that there was much more to this than met the eye.
After entering the toilet and picking a cubicle to occupy, Bai Zhi checked the notification again.
[ Mandatory Quest ]
[ Type: Regular Quest (Co-op) ]
[ Name: Life's Hard Disk ]
[ Objective 1: Guide all normal persons safely out of the rooms. ]
[ Objective 2: Uncover the six(6) hidden sources of unnatural energy and take care of them. ]
[ Time Limit: None ]
[ Reward 1: No. of survivors x 100 Coins ]
[ Reward 2: No. of survivors x 100 EXP ]
[ Reward 3: Random Rare Item x 1 ]
[ Note: Final reward may vary depending on Player performance, ranked from D to S, with S being the highest. ]
[ Player appearance shall default to last saved avatar. Note: Players may spend 100 Coins to make modifications, but no changes may be made to body shape. ]
[ Players shall be transported to quest instance in five minutes. Please use the time to prepare. ]
[ 1 : 56 : 43 ]
...If only the notification had appeared a few minutes earlier, it would have saved me from wasting my money on that damned ticket.
"A quest with no time limit..."
Bai Zhi squinted at the countdown on the notification, and with less than two minutes to go, he decided to transport himself to the quest instance immediately.
Under the searing rays of the midday sun, puffs of warm air, baked to desiccation, rose from the ground. An empty lot surrounded by wild countryside in the middle of nowhere. The crisp crunch of rocks and gravel could be heard with every step.
Bai Zhi surveyed his surroundings as soon as he opened his eyes, his gaze finally landing on a large building just left of where he stood. An involuntary shiver ran through his body at the sight, because the building looked just like an abandoned orphanage.
Yesterday, he had been taken on a detour and sent back to his starting point, while today, ironically, he had been transported directly to his desired destination.
Bai Zhi frowned slightly as a thought occurred to him. Hmm, I guess it wasn't a total waste of a ticket... Wait, the quest objectives are inside the orphanage? Did some supernatural incident occur there too?
He also noticed several unusual points about the surroundings, compared to what he had expected from the notification. For starters, it was mid-day but there was nobody to be seen around the orphanage. Even the old security guard was not at the guardhouse, and everything was eerily silent.
Besides, it was supposed to be a co-op challenge, so where were the other Players?
Just as Bai Zhi was furrowing his brows in thought, he felt a sharp pain coming from the back of his left hand. Looking down with some alarm, he found a thin cut on the back of his hand that hadn't been there before.
Thankfully, the wound was just a light scratch, the kind that would have quickly healed on its own without any intervention.
"Feels like the challenges have been getting weirder and weirder lately..."
After giving the scratch on his hand another look, Bai Zhi made his way toward the orphanage.
As he passed the guardhouse, he paused briefly and looked inside.
It may have been called a guardhouse, but in reality, it was no more than a small room, barely big enough to fit a table and a couple of chairs. On the table was a cup of tea, still steaming-hot, and a half-opened newspaper... The scene looked completely mundane, except for the lack of any actual guards.
Finding nothing more of note, Bai Zhi continued toward the main building and soon found several other figures gathered near it.
It was close to the end of the countdown when I transported... Does that make me the last person to join the group? he wondered.
One, two, three...
Including himself, Bai Zhi counted seven people who had entered this instance.
As he walked up to the group, a slender young man wearing gold-rimmed glasses looked him up and down. Pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a finger, the youth said,
"Good, looks like no more Players will be joining us. Since it's a co-op challenge, in the name of cooperation, why don't we show each other our Player handles and levels?"
"Since you suggested it, I think it's only fair you show us yours first," said a tall, long-haired girl. "The more people are required for a mandatory quest, the harder it is. With seven of us here, who knows if even half of us will survive until the end?"
"That goes without saying. Only by working together can we gain the upper hand against the supernatural entities."
Flashing a nonchalant smile, the youth with the gold-rimmed glasses proceeded to reveal his information to the other Players.
[ Traveler: Level 6 ]
*Refers to Muzan from Demon Slayer. He's seen by Chinese netizens to be needlessly cruel and cowardly, hence "Trash".
**From Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. The ability resets time, creating an endless loop.
