My Players Are So Fierce

1067: 362.

New Handyman at the Adventurer Guild

1067: 362.

New Handyman at the Adventurer Guild

Teacher Li returned home that same night, as he had classes to teach the next day.

Being a physical education teacher at a high school is probably the most “relaxed” job in the world; if he wanted, he could slack off within “reasonable” limits without incurring the dislike of his colleagues.

But there are these incredible beings called “student athletes,” and a significant part of Teacher Li’s daily work involved training and supervising them.

In any case, he couldn’t be idle, but as long as there was time to sleep, he could satisfy his desire to play “Real Different World.” After all, for a middle-aged, single man with no attachments, nights were always hard to get through; he might as well go “perform acts of chivalry” in another world.

As for his “wheelchair-bound” friend, he also received his share of the “surprise” the next morning, when he was woken up by dog barking just as the sun rose, despite staying up late with the intention of sleeping in.

Mr.

Wang Xiao, formerly a distinguished lawyer, got out of bed with some difficulty but rather smoothly, put on his clothes, pushed his wheelchair to the courtyard, and then he saw it – the square, neatly placed express box at the door.

“???”

Wheelchair-bound Wang Xiao’s eyes went round with shock; he even took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes vigorously, suspecting he might be seeing things.

He had filled out the beta test application just two hours earlier.

The reason it took so long was that he had read through the application’s memo and legal clauses from start to finish, eventually concluding that it was an invalid “disclaimer.”

Alpha Company had nearly shifted all responsibility to the testers through very crafty wording, meaning if anything happened inside the game, Alpha Company wouldn’t have to take any responsibility according to this beta test agreement.

To the layperson, this might just seem overly strict, but to the professional eye, the content of these clauses and statements was practically a joke…

He was now seriously doubting what Alpha Company’s legal department was doing.

Anyone who had passed the bar exam wouldn’t produce such a flawed set of documents unless, perhaps, there was an even more startling conclusion.

The company didn’t have a legal department at all!

Even a law student could find a template online and modify it to be better than theirs.

But that wasn’t the key issue.

The real question was, how could such a strange company boldly continue operating their only product without being investigated by the relevant authorities?

Wang Xiao spent some time searching online for information about “Real Different World” the previous night but couldn’t find any reliable sources.

It was as if the game was a sort of “urban legend.”

Discussions about it were trending in some social groups, and there was a so-called promotional CG movie for the game that was being circulated in private.

Everyone who had seen it praised it, and many were seeking the mysterious code.

Yet, in the public domain, this tag was virtually untraceable.

This was clearly not normal!

He was a professional; he knew that such a situation often meant that regulatory authorities had already intervened and implemented a wide-ranging information control.

Linking this to what Old Lee had said during his visit the night before, Wang Xiao realized that he had inadvertently stumbled into a domain that was terrifying upon further reflection.

“But, does Alpha Company have such high logistic efficiency?”

He pushed his wheelchair closer, shooed away a couple of wary good dogs, and then picked up the express box, still damp with the morning dew, examining it carefully.

There was no traceable information, not even a shred of useful data.

Inside the package was only a helmet bearing the logo of Alpha Company, nothing else, not even an instruction manual.

However, he had visited the forums last night and found detailed tutorials on how to use the helmet.

This meant that those already part of this “urban legend” had established a self-sufficient internal system, like a micro-society that could function normally without external contact.

The whole thing reeked of subtlety.

But Wang Xiao also knew that if he wanted to find some clues, he would have to put on the “no-name-brand” helmet and venture into the game world proclaimed to be “100% real.”

Although he was not a scientist and lacked a deep understanding of virtual reality technology, upon seeing the helmet, Wang Xiao still felt a trace of distrust and resistance.

Not because of concerns for his safety, but because, as he said the night before, even if his own slice of reality was no good, he still didn’t want to abandon himself to a false world in search of some sense of existence and satisfaction.

That would signify a “class decline” on the level of willpower and life, and a person reliant on illusions to move forward could hardly be called “steadfast.”

At least that’s what he believed.

“Old Lee, you really know how to cause trouble for me,” he muttered to himself in his wheelchair, then returned to the bedroom, laid back on the bed, took a few deep breaths, and fitted the helmet onto his head.

After that…

“Real Different World,” activate!

—

“Old Eugene has finally calmed down; his constant readiness to go out in a blaze of glory with the followers of the Winter Wolves Religion these past few days really spooked me.”

In the afternoon in Transylvania, while heading to the Blood Eagle Corridor, Miss Anbo, a Scout, tossed expensive fruit candies given by a student athlete into her mouth and complained to President Natalie who walked beside her: