24 New Players! Reinforcements Arrive!

September 12.

6:00 a.m.

After the closed beta qualifications had been handed out, three agonizing days of waiting had finally brought them to launch day.

Following the tutorial on the official website, Du Mingdao put on the helmet, lay flat on his bed, and closed his eyes.

Come to think of it...

Was that really all it took?

Yet the moment that thought crossed his mind, a beam of light pierced the darkness before his closed eyes and shone in front of him.

Even though he had not opened them yet...

Du Mingdao sat up from the damp cultivation pod and looked around. The dazed look in his eyes was gradually replaced by intense shock.

This...

Was the game world?!

The metallic walls and floor tiles, the sleek pod doors brimming with sci-fi flair, wisps of steam evaporating from his shoulders and slowly carrying away his body heat.

He took a deep breath of the game world's air and vaguely caught a faint, unpleasant smell.

Du Mingdao had no idea whether everything before him was real.

But the one-hundred-percent immersion had already left him too stunned for words.

This feeling—

It was freaking awesome!!!

Just then, the hibernation pod beside him suddenly opened. A creature with a lizard-like mouth and dark green scales covering its entire body sat up inside.

The instant their eyes met, Du Mingdao jumped in fright.

"Holy shit?! What the hell is that?"

"What do you mean, what the hell is that..."

"Who the hell are you? An NPC???"

"What NPC? I'm a player! ID: Junk Collector Level 99... I should be asking you! Who the hell are you?"

"You're Junk Collector?! I'm Spare Him Under My Blade! Damn, you're that newbie who joined the group a few days ago? Why the hell are you so ugly?!"

"You're the ugly one..."

His amber pupils widened into circles. The lizardman looked utterly bewildered, clearly still not understanding what was going on.

But soon, his gaze fell on his own dark green, scaly skin, and terror gradually filled his confused eyes.

He hurriedly lowered his head and looked himself over from side to side, his claws groping frantically all over his body. His tail twisted along with him, making him look exactly like a lizard that had fallen into a mud pit.

Then, his eyes suddenly froze on the space between his legs.

A moment later, he let out a miserable wail.

"Fuck! Why don't I have that thing?!"

Du Mingdao nearly spat out blood.

"You look like that, and that's what you're focused on?!"

"That's gone, and that's gone too! Fuck! Those damn devs lied! If I can be a lizardman, why can't I make a female character?!"

"If you don't want to be a lizardman, we can switch."

"Fuck off."

The hibernation pod was connected to a body-scanning device that allowed them to view their attributes and level. This was all information publicly available on the official website.

Junk Collector Level 99 raised his index finger and tapped the interface. Soon, an attribute panel was projected onto the screen.

ID: Junk Collector Level 99

Gene Sequence: Variant · Lizardman

Level: LV.0

--Basic Attributes--

Strength: 8

Agility: 7

Constitution: 8

Perception: 8

Intelligence: 2

Talents:

Cold-Blooded (Better stealth, sluggish movement in low-temperature environments)

Syndactyly (Greater endurance, difficulty operating complex machinery)

Flesh Regeneration (stronger regenerative ability; genetic sequence level is difficult to raise)

Holy shit?

These stats had some serious punch!

Junk Collector vaguely remembered the official website stating that the baseline attribute value for a normal adult male was 5, fluctuating within ±2.

He was clearly not measured by the standards of an adult man. Other than his slightly lower Intelligence, his other four attributes were ridiculously high.

The key was, he didn't think he was stupid either.

So what if his Intelligence stat was a little lower?

It didn't affect his ability to show off in the slightest!

Realizing this, Junk Collector was so delighted he couldn't stop grinning, and he stopped making a fuss.

Du Mingdao, sitting in the cultivation pod beside him, looked at the lizardman giggling foolishly to himself and asked with concern.

"Are you... okay?"

"Haha, I'm better than ever! Come on, let's get out of this room and meet up with the other players first! We shouldn't keep the Administrator waiting!"

With that, Junk Collector flipped over and leaped out of the cultivation pod.

He discovered that being a lizardman had another advantage: he didn't need to wear clothes. It didn't matter whether he took off his pants or not—there was nothing that needed covering!

Du Mingdao stared at the lively lizard, his face filled with an odd expression.

Then, he suddenly noticed what seemed to be a note stuck to the guy's butt.

"There's something on your ass."

"Where?"

At that, Junk Collector also felt the foreign object on his backside and reached a claw behind him.

It was his first time controlling this body, so he was still unaccustomed to it. He scraped around with both claws for quite a while before finally managing to remove the note.

The paper was waterproof, so it hadn't gotten wet.

However, the writing on it was neither Chinese nor any language he recognized.

Junk Collector scratched the top of his head with a claw, completely baffled.

"What the hell does this say?"

Shelter Residents' Hall.

The space, which had originally been fairly spacious, was now packed full with the newly arrived players.

All sorts of people stood there, their faces unanimously filled with bewilderment, surprise, excitement, and curiosity.

Before this, almost everyone had assumed that this so-called "fully immersive virtual reality game" was probably just a prank put together by a few bored gaming enthusiasts.

Even after receiving the helmets sent by the game company, most people had remained skeptical.

But now, all their doubts had vanished into thin air.

If they had to name a game more realistic than this one, it was probably only "Earth OL" itself!

When "Junk Collector Level 99" walked out of the room through the automatically opening and closing door, he caused quite a stir.

At first, everyone thought he was an NPC. Only after asking did they learn that he was also a player—and very likely one of the legendary "hidden classes"!

Basking in everyone's envious gazes, Junk Collector seemed to have completely put the fact that he had no little brother behind him. He grinned rather proudly.

Was having that thing important?

Not at all.

"Bro, stick with me from now on. I'll look after you."

Junk Collector arrogantly patted Brother Dao, who stood beside him, on the shoulder with his bull-like snout. The latter merely rolled his eyes speechlessly and couldn't be bothered with him.

His starting stats were only a tiny bit stronger, that was all.

Du Mingdao, who had come out of the room with him, also drew quite a bit of attention.

Unfortunately, his genetic sequence was merely the ordinary Strength type, with nothing particularly exceptional about it.

While the players in the hall sized the two of them up, Du Mingdao was also secretly observing the other players in the hall.

Aside from Brother Junk, most of the players seemed fairly normal. At least, there was nothing visibly different about them.

Judging by their builds, most of them were probably Strength- or Constitution-type, though there were also a small number of Perception-, Agility-, and Intelligence-type players.

What surprised Du Mingdao most was that there were actually two female players among them?

One was 180 centimeters tall, with a curvy figure that stretched the shelter uniform taut. She was probably a Strength type.

The other was somewhat shorter, probably only a little over 150 centimeters tall. She looked entirely unremarkable, and it was impossible to tell what type she was—though she didn't look much like a Strength type, at least.

Du Mingdao had studied civil engineering and worked for many years. His visual estimates were very accurate, especially when evaluating distance and size, and he generally didn't make major errors.

The two had come out of the same room and seemed to have had some sort of conflict. Their auras were faintly at odds.

"Who's this little runt? Have you even been weaned yet?"

"You! So what if you're tall! You're probably a shrimp in real life!"

"Hehe, anyone who says something like that is obviously pretty young in real life. Don't tell me you're an elementary schooler?"

"Hehehe, unfortunately for you, big sis here is a director at a fashion design company. I'm plenty grown-up. Unlike you, who can only find a sense of presence in games."

"Hehehehe, just a director? I thought you were the CEO of some big conglomerate. Which company does little sister work for?"

"Hehehehehe, none of your business!"

Du Mingdao: "..."

He had the distinct feeling that both of them were elementary schoolers...

Of course, those two were far from the only noisy ones.

After waiting so long and finally getting their closed beta slots, the players who had just entered the game were all bursting with excitement. Their mouths never stopped moving as they touched this and examined that, unable to stay still for even a moment.

Some rammed their heads into the wall. Not only did they not cry out in pain, they clutched their heads and giggled foolishly.

And that was considered relatively normal.

Others grabbed the players beside them and begged for a slap, wanting to find out what getting hit felt like so they could mentally prepare for fighting monsters later.

Du Mingdao felt his scalp tingle.

Had he entered a game world, or been locked in a mental asylum?

Just as someone took off their pants to take a dump—and was even about to do something more eye-searing—a commanding voice rang through the residents' hall from the direction of the main entrance.

"Quiet."

In an instant, silence fell.

That authoritative voice seemed to carry a peculiar pressure, making the players in the residents' hall stop their racket without realizing it. Pair after pair of eyes instinctively turned toward where the voice had come from.

Du Mingdao was no exception.

The moment he saw the person standing in the doorway, excitement flashed across his face.

An NPC!

The opening cutscene!

This had to be the legendary Administrator!

Although this was his first time playing the game, he had been following the posts by "Long Days Ahead" on the official website, so he was quite familiar with the game's setting.

The other players were the same, all holding their breath as they waited for the story to begin.

When selecting players, Chu Guang considered not only the professions they listed on the registration page, but also their forum posting history, online hours, and activity level. He did everything he could to filter out those "elementary schoolers" with broken thought processes, as well as the little idiots who spent all day arguing for the sake of arguing.

They were better suited to hauling bricks at construction sites than being here.

Sweeping his gaze over the players in the residents' hall, Chu Guang continued in a calm, solemn voice.

"Welcome to Vault 404."

"I am the Administrator here."

"Codename—Dawn."