A Senior's Guidance: The Uses of the Binding Feature

The Ancient Shadow Record Game Company cafeteria looked rather strange. In truth, it was just like an ordinary school or company cafeteria—a bright white hall with rows of tables and chairs.

But the serving area was somewhat like a vending machine.

There were indeed food service windows, but they only had screens for selecting dishes and outlets connected to pipes. There seemed to be no kitchen or staff behind them.

"Besides... the back of these windows should obviously be the outside of the building."

Zhang Anzai ordered a two-Employee-Points bowl of dan dan noodles. As he picked it up, he glanced outside.

The cafeteria hall spanned several floors, with large windows all around. Though they still could not be opened, they made it easy to see the scenery outside. As before, it was some city.

However, Zhang Anzai had been observing from time to time, so he keenly noticed, "Sure enough, it's different from last time again. This building must be moving back and forth between different cities."

The surrounding city was one he did not recognize. With no landmarks, most second- and third-tier urban districts looked about the same. They were not easy to remember or identify at a glance.

Still, he could roughly tell that this was still within the country. "Whatever. At least I haven't been abducted overseas..."

Lin Zhao had already ordered her food and picked a seat. She claimed she wanted to eat Zhang Anzai bankrupt, but she had only ordered a bowl of duck blood vermicelli soup and one flatbread each for them. It came to three Employee Points altogether.

That was one of the company's few good points. The food really was not expensive. Even cigarettes and drinks were cheap. If one was frugal, ten Employee Points a day would cover everything.

"Hello, Senior." Zhang Anzai walked over, set down his tray, and greeted her naturally.

The senior from Group Four sat across from him, beside Lin Zhao. She had short hair and looked rather young, more like a female office worker than a teacher.

"I'm not that much older than you two. Just call me Sister Wang." Sister Wang wiped her mouth while eating spicy hotpot. "Besides, even if I'm your senior, aren't you still an impressive newcomer?"

Zhang Anzai slurped up two mouthfuls of noodles. The moment the subject came up, he immediately became modest and offered a polite smile. "Not at all, not at all. I'm just average. Mainly, I happened to run into a capable player."

Lin Zhao made an expression that clearly said, "Anzai, you're being kind of disgusting."

Sister Wang said, "Xiao Zhao told me you're quite capable. You've just had a bit of bad luck. This time, you met a good player, so things will gradually get better from here on. You applied to bind with him, right?"

At the first half of that, Lin Zhao wore an expression that said, "Anzi, see how good I am to you?"

Zhang Anzai said, "Of course I applied. Probably because he's a newcomer and doesn't understand much, he didn't refuse."

Applying for a binding upon encountering a good player was practically a shared understanding among administrators.

There were thousands upon thousands of employees in the entire company, and even more players. No one could guarantee whether the next randomly matched player would be an incredible carry or an absolute disaster.

The matching in One Thought God Demon was certainly exciting, but if things went wrong, the experience was truly miserable. Especially for administrators—no matter how terrible the player was, they still had to do their utmost to help.

Doing nothing, receiving negative reviews, or leading a dungeon into a total party wipe did not matter much once or twice. But all of it would be recorded, affecting evaluations and bonuses, and could even result in demotion or other punishments.

"Speaking of that, there are some things I wanted to ask." After chatting for a while, Zhang Anzai finally got to the point. "I saw a lot of stuff on the binding page, but I don't really understand it."

Sister Wang suddenly felt a sense of shared suffering. Pressing down her short curls, she took a bite of crab stick and said:

"I was the same before I got promoted. Newcomers don't have many Employee Points to begin with. You want to spend money developing players, but there aren't many promising ones, and you don't even know what those things do."

She explained as she ate, "It's actually pretty simple if you look closely. There are mainly three categories."

Zhang Anzai had not expected to get such useful information so quickly. He practically wanted to pull out paper and pen at once to take notes.

"The first is obvious: supplies that we have access to, but the players don't. They aren't very useful, since players can buy plenty of supplies themselves.

"The main advantage is that after binding, anything bought through the binding page can be received directly by the player. If you buy it from the Employee Mall, you need to use special items to send it to them. At most, it's useful for emergencies when the player lacks currency."

Zhang Anzai nodded. He had never cared much about that, because according to the Player Forum, injuries to a player never affected their real body. Only dying in a dungeon would cause brain death in reality.

But the condition of his real body could be reflected in the player's body.

So even with items from the Employee Mall, he could simply buy them and swallow them on the spot. The effects would transfer over directly. He had not been worried about that in the first place.

"The second category is all sorts of items and skills that can be bought directly through internal channels. Those are much more useful, because the Player Mall can't be used inside dungeons, and the items there have unlocking requirements."

That was right. At first, the Player Mall had almost no products, only the most basic supplies. To buy anything else, players had to clear dungeons and achieve a certain rating to unlock them.

Players could trade on the Player Forum, but goods there were generally expensive. After all, whatever they sold on the forum was either something they had discovered themselves or something from their personal purchase pages unlocked through dungeon exploration.

Administrators were different. Their purchasing permissions were also divided by rank, but those were based on employee level. Even new hires could buy quite a few things.

"But the problem is money. The items and skills on our side aren't cheap. Many start at a few hundred. Forget newcomers—even we feel poor when buying them now."

Sister Wang's personality was somewhat similar to Lin Zhao's. No wonder they got along so well.

What she said was true. The four hundred Zhang Anzai had on hand was basically enough for only one mediocre item or skill, perhaps not even one as good as the True-Form Scissors.

Still, it would indeed be a significant improvement for players. Things were even rougher on their side, where an average rating did not unlock much.

He had looked through the selection and found that more than half of it was stuff from supermarkets, and it was not cheap either. Meat cleavers and fire axes cost several dozen, even over a hundred.

The only supernatural products were other strange artifacts from the Mountain Peddler.

For example, the Void Thread Needle had no thread, yet if it pierced more than a dozen holes in each of two objects, it could make them attract each other and eventually stitch together.

Or Flower Child Candy, which would cause whoever swallowed it to fall into extreme drowsiness and gradually lose consciousness. However, they were not very useful and were all expensive. After Zhang Anzai bought them, he would not have much Old Dust left.

"My suggestion is not to spend Employee Points carelessly. Save them up. Wait until you become a full employee before buying items, skills, and the like. Newcomers don't need them for themselves, and for players, it's easier for them to obtain those things through exploration."

That was Sister Wang's advice.

Zhang Anzai carefully took note of it. Full employees had more experience; this was all valuable information. It was not just him—Lin Zhao listened very seriously as well.

"And then there's the final category. This one is more important, so choose carefully. You can discuss it with the player and buy it for them now: personal training."