Auntie Custer Was Really Amazing

~

"...Have I seen you somewhere before?"

Greenie, who had hurried over after hearing the news, stared at Cheng Tian, who was squatting in the Asian style, his face full of scrutiny.

"Who are you?"

Cheng Tian, who was fiddling with the Crystal Option, glanced at him before replying directly.

It wasn't just because he was wearing a hood now. Even without it, neither his expression nor his tone would have fluctuated in the slightest—

because Cheng Tian had never remembered what Greenie looked like in the first place!

Wasn't it just blue-green skin? Cheng Tian had only recently entered Space Island, yet he had already seen all kinds of otherworldly races of uncertain authenticity. He had even encountered several human-sized Avatars. Someone like Greenie, who had an ordinary human face, simply wasn't distinctive enough to him.

As for Greenie, he had actually been probing Cheng Tian as well. He didn't truly know who Cheng Tian was.

The fact that Greenie had been able to produce five white-grade pieces of equipment from entirely different instances in one go showed that he likely had one of two backgrounds.

Either he was a veteran who had already cleared several fixed Chosen Trials, or he had a community, guild, or team backing him.

Greenie belonged to the latter category. One of the jobs assigned to him by his team was to lurk in the quest hall and keep watch over several special instances, including Demon Village. This beginner tutorial quest, which theoretically could only be accepted once by each player, was one Greenie had snatched up.

Yes, Greenie had only selectively told Cheng Tian and the others part of the truth back then. He had prepared the five white-grade cold weapons knowing the blueprint of Demon Village.

The reward for being a beginner guide was completely unimportant. What mattered was the connections—in other words, the new players who could leave Demon Village alive. Every additional survivor meant a potential new purchasing channel for Demon Village-related items in the future.

Cast a wide net, and catch more fish.

Greenie's team could still afford this level of investment.

Of course, Greenie was mostly just following orders. Having witnessed what a cesspit Demon Village was for beginners, he hadn't really held out any hope. The five white-grade items were paid for by the team anyway, so he could throw them away without feeling distressed.

Yet a few hours ago, he had unexpectedly received a spatial notification that a contract had been fulfilled.

The second party to the contract was One-Ear—the college student whose ear Greenie had shot through as an example to intimidate the others. According to the contract, once the other party completed the beginner trial, the borrowed equipment would automatically be returned to the first party, Greenie himself.

When Greenie saw the weapon return, he was utterly incredulous, because it meant that One-Ear had truly passed the ultimate beginner cesspit that was the Demon Village trial!

As for the white-grade war hammer, baseball bat, and the other items, the players listed as the second parties to those contracts had all died inside the instance. The moment they died, the white-grade weapons they had borrowed became ownerless, so naturally they no longer needed to fulfill the original contracts.

Greenie could also use the results of those contracts to indirectly confirm the deaths of those second parties.

One-Ear had survived. Greenie's astonishment could be imagined. He had immediately used the player's number recorded when they made the contract to send a spatial communication, asking to meet in the square. He planned to pay for everything One-Ear had experienced in Demon Village.

But unexpectedly yet reasonably enough, One-Ear didn't even acknowledge him. After seeing the communication, he simply blacklisted Greenie.

Among his peers, One-Ear could indeed be considered flexible and resilient. Even after having his ear shot through, he had swallowed his anger and asked Greenie to lend him weapons. But that didn't mean he wasn't vindictive.

After seeing Greenie's message, One-Ear had not only blacklisted him, but also set himself a highly proactive future hit list—

if he got the chance, he would definitely take Greenie's ear apart as well!

One-Ear's blacklist caught Greenie completely off guard, but it also made him even more curious about what had happened in Demon Village and how many people had survived.

So when he heard through the grapevine that someone was selling the Knight Armor, a specialty of Demon Village, in the market district, he rushed to the scene as quickly as possible.

Greenie's appearance was his fixed avatar in the Chosen Evolution Space, equivalent to creating a fixed face in an online game. Most players, however, spent a little money to change their appearance every time they entered Space Island. Height, race, gender, and appearance could all be adjusted and changed at any time. Thus, without knowing the exact player number, Greenie had no way of figuring out Cheng Tian's true appearance.

He clearly suspected that Cheng Tian was One-Ear, but he had no evidence.

Of course, the many resellers present weren't interested only in the armor. They were equally interested in Cheng Tian, the newcomer who had crawled out of that cesspit alive.

Unfortunately, Cheng Tian seemed to have noticed something. After playing around with the four items he had just obtained to his heart's content, he packed up his stall and slipped away without a care for the crowd's wails.

Cheng Tian felt that the market value the Knight Armor had displayed was already higher than its intrinsic value. Rather than exchange it directly for money, he might as well keep it for now, first confirm his next mission, and then make an exchange request based on his needs with the next sucker.

He had reached this conclusion from Old Fan's reaction—the way he had stubbornly insisted on making the trade despite suffering a tremendous loss.

East District, Quest Area.

If he hadn't known in advance that this was the quest hall where players gathered, Cheng Tian would have thought it was a station in some major city in China.

Besides the players, there were also many NPCs who were clearly staff members bustling about. Cheng Tian directly picked one who looked pleasing to the eye, a staff member who resembled a certain Auntie Custer (don't search), and began asking questions. She was also very enthusiastic and gave Cheng Tian a series of answers.

Every Chosen Player had to complete a fixed monthly instance quest called the "Chosen Trial" during the roughly ten-day period at the end of each month.

In principle, Chosen Trials were randomly generated blueprint quests. However, as the number of Chosen Trials completed increased and the player's own rank rose, they would receive more useful information before future Chosen Trials, and might even be informed of the instance blueprint in advance, giving them more time to prepare.

Under normal circumstances, Chosen Trials did not have an especially harsh instant-death mechanism. Take Cheng Tian's beginner trial, for example. If their group had stubbornly refused to advance the main storyline and simply hunkered down for eight hours until the main quest's time limit expired, causing the mission to fail, an evacuation mission would appear afterward.

The evacuation mission mode could basically be compared to the final stage of each Left 4 Dead chapter. In most cases, players had to reach a fixed evacuation point within the time limit, then withstand an assault by an unknown number of enemies at that point until the timer ended. They would then be teleported away by the space.

Of course, they could forget about the original rewards. Pure beginners might still receive a consolation prize of a few hundred coins, since surviving as a newcomer was already worth encouraging. As for veterans, they could just wait for their pay and benefits to be deducted~

Then, what would happen if the evacuation mission still couldn't be completed?

Facing Cheng Tian's question, Auntie Custer, the staff member, merely smiled and said,

"I don't know. It's just that no one has ever seen them again."