"You’re finally back..."
Inside the ticket booth, as soon as Gu Mian opened his eyes, he saw the NPC—the ticket seller he had slapped not long ago—who seemed significantly worn out. His face was especially pale, like a sheet, and his eye sockets were sunken in.
"What happened?" Gu Mian immediately looked around, realizing he had unknowingly exited the door. "I just entered an instance. Why do you look like you’ve aged several years?"
"You have the audacity to ask..." The NPC retreated a few steps. "I just received a notification... saying one of the players matched from my station caused a major incident... said they collapsed the instance! Collapsed it!"
"I thought about it long and hard, and realized, aren’t you the only one from my booth? So, I waited here for you to come out of the instance."
"Sure enough, not long after the notification came, you emerged." As he spoke, he glared fiercely at Gu Mian, as if trying to bore a hole through him with his gaze.
Gu Mian stroked his chin thoughtfully. "But I didn’t do anything?"
"Let me ask you," the ticket seller clutched his chest, "the instance you matched into was Haunted High School, right? What was the main quest?"
Gu Mian pondered for a moment. "To be a teacher and uncover the truth behind the entire class’s deaths."
"Then what in the world did you do in that instance?!"
"Be a teacher, uncover the truth behind the entire class’s deaths... save the sealed wayward girl, resolve the misunderstanding between the teacher and the girl, annihilate 28 evil spirits, and, due to some indirect reasons, accidentally burn down the school."
Hearing this, the NPC grew agitated and started banging on the table. "Don’t you think you’re a bit too outstanding?"
"Finding the truth would have been enough! Why did you have to save anyone? Why burn down the school?!"
"Now look, the 28 evil spirits are gone, and you burned down the school. What do you think can be done with an instance that has nothing left?"
This NPC was remarkably expressive, almost like a real person.
Gu Mian suddenly leaned in, startling the man, whose chest ached with righteous anger, causing him to step back.
He stared at the NPC. "Isn’t this a game? Can’t the data be restored?"
The NPC looked at Gu Mian and said sullenly, "Who told you those were data?"
"So you’re saying none of that was data?" Gu Mian stroked his chin.
The NPC snapped. He forcefully pulled Gu Mian up and pushed him towards the entrance. "Go, go, go! Don’t let me see you again! Don’t match instances from my place anymore! Do you know we have performance quotas too? My quota explodes every time you show up!"
"By the way, what was your name again?" he asked while shoving Gu Mian towards the door.
"Good, I know now. Hurry up and leave." The NPC pushed Gu Mian out and then hastily returned to the ticket booth.
Gu Mian had no choice but to turn and walk away. After a short distance, he looked back and saw the NPC furiously hanging something by the entrance.
He looked closer and saw it was a plaque that read—
"Gu Mian and Dogs Not Allowed."
Gu Mian then turned to look at his surroundings.
This was a familiar road, not far from Lianhua Hospital. To the south, the hospital wasn’t far; to the right, the road led directly to the suburbs, with a driver examination center in between.
Normally, this road bustled with traffic and pedestrians, but now it was a scene of utter chaos. Some people had been dragged into the ticket booth for forced instance matching while they were driving. Driverless cars then sped off wildly. Not far ahead, Gu Mian saw five cars involved in a spectacular pile-up, creating quite a scene. A few other cars had crashed headlong into the outer wall of the ticket booth. The impact scraped the already dilapidated booth even further, sending dust puffing into the air.
Aside from the chaos of the cars, the pedestrians on the road also looked panicked. Gu Mian saw another ticket booth not far to the north. That one was quite busy; people would periodically run out of it in a fluster, their legs trembling like waves, their condition as alarming as, if not more so than, the epileptic patients in the hospital.
The people in his field of vision were running around chaotically. They definitely didn’t want to go back to work now; they were probably all trying to get home. Some even took out their phones, seemingly trying to make calls, but they couldn’t get through.
Since Earth had initiated this game, and the game had a friend communication system, humanity’s own communication methods were no longer necessary. Earth had probably blocked all signals from human technology. This was truly the apocalypse.
The atmosphere around Gu Mian, however, remained quiet and peaceful. He patted down his white coat, sat on a nearby bench, and opened his panel.
The panel was currently calculating the game settlement.
[Obtained Game Coin*10]
[Obtained Freely Distributable Attribute Points*1. Assign now?]
Of course, assign them immediately, Gu Mian thought. He was very curious to see what would happen to his attribute panel, full of question marks, once points were added.
The panel then displayed a few attribute lines.
[Freely Distributable Attribute Points: 1. Please select an attribute to enhance.]
[Spiritual Value]: ???
Gu Mian even deliberated for a moment. In martial arts, speed is paramount. Being fast is also useful for escaping. So, I’ll add to speed first.
Thinking this, he pressed the "+" sign after Speed.
But Gu Mian soon realized his deliberation had been pointless, because it seemed he couldn’t assign the point.
After pressing the "+" sign, this message appeared on the panel—
[Warning! You are incompatible with this attribute! Please abandon the current operation!]
He tried pressing the other attributes, but the result was the same for each. After trying each attribute in turn, Gu Mian gave up. I knew I was uniquely favored, but I didn’t expect it to be to this extent—even attributes aren’t compatible with me. What a truly divine intervention!
At this moment, another line of text popped up on the panel.
[Obtained Draw Attempt*1. Draw now?]
This was also a reward for clearing the instance.
Gu Mian selected ’Yes.’ "I’d like to see if this lottery system is compatible with me."
Fortunately, he could still draw. The panel displayed an explanation.
[Detecting this is your first time using the lottery system. The prize pool will now be explained.]
[The prize pool contains everything you can imagine. Please draw with caution.]
[Special Reminder: The words ’Thank you for your patronage’ do not exist in the prize pool. Please draw with confidence.]
The absence of "Thank you for your patronage" reassured Gu Mian; after all, he was well aware of his own luck.
The screen then dissolved into static, like snow on a television, with occasional glimpses of something flashing past. If he hadn’t known it was a lottery, Gu Mian might have thought Sadako was about to crawl out.
A few seconds later, the flashing on the panel slowed.
The image finally froze.
Gu Mian stared at the frozen image, an expression on his face like he had just eaten shit.
It was just as the explanation said: anything could be drawn.
[One Roll of Toilet Paper]
[An ordinary roll of toilet paper, nothing special. However, if you place it by your bedside while watching an action movie, it might just become an extraordinary roll of toilet paper.]