With his new ability and practical combat skills, the dungeon was finally no longer a deadly challenge. Now he had a chance to clear it through sheer strength.
But Zhang Anzai didn't let his guard down. "A deadly challenge means a nine-in-ten chance of dying. Even an ordinary challenge has to involve some danger to your life. I may not be one of those clueless newbie players, but this is the Reflected World. Even a lucky run would still mean fighting for my life before I could clear it..."
The longer you worked as an administrator, the better you understood the Ancient Shadow Records' ways. It loved setting traps that got people killed.
The senses of his other body had gradually come online, so Zhang Anzai tried operating on two fronts with the Dexterous talent.
The results were pretty good. His player body operated normally, while his real body could still take in information from its surroundings and make out all the details on the screen.
But this ability was only meant to make it easier to do two kinds of handiwork at once. Processing information was about its limit. If his real body tried to do anything complicated, like operate a page, his player body would start to suffer.
Still, it was progress, no matter how you looked at it.
Thinking it over, he took in his surroundings. He stood at the entrance to a space that looked like a factory building, with a massive roll-up door behind him.
Before him stood row upon row of enormous steel storage racks, four or five meters high, bolted to the floor and piled with all kinds of odds and ends.
There were old-fashioned suitcases stacked neatly on the shelves by the wall, along with all sorts of faux-antique metal items, like incense burners and candlesticks.
There were porcelain bottles and jars of all sizes, a jumble of wooden tables, chairs, and stools, large and small appliances, flags, statues, straw mats, carts, and weapons of every kind.
A single glance revealed an overwhelming assortment of things. Many were strung up with rope and hung from the sides of the racks or even dangled from the steel beams overhead. Garlic and chili peppers, for example, or lanterns and scrolls tied together in bunches.
"Could this be..." One glance was enough for Zhang Anzai to roughly figure out where he was.
"All this random junk must be props, right?"
He looked down at his own outfit: a white T-shirt and jacket, cropped pants, plain sneakers, and the clear-eyed look of someone with no life experience. He looked like a college student at a glance.
The familiar sight gave Zhang Anzai the feeling that he'd returned to his youth.
"I feel... I feel like someone's watching me." Before Zhang Anzai could remember anything about his college days, he turned around.
A long-haired golden retriever was sitting a few paces away, beside one of the racks. He didn't know when it had appeared.
The dog looked old. It had not only a lot of fur, but also sagging skin on its face. It was completely still, sitting quietly and watching him, yet it still gave off a distinctly elderly air.
Old dogs were quiet. They didn't move much or bark often. That was perfectly normal.
And yet, for some reason, Zhang Anzai felt that something was off as the dog stared at him.
"It's about time to turn off the lights. Let's get to work." Just then, a voice came from behind the dog.
Zhang Anzai looked up toward the voice. He still didn't know what sort of dungeon he was in, and his bewildered expression suited the image of an innocent college student perfectly.
A young man had emerged from between the shelves at some point. He stood behind the dog with his arms folded.
He was thin, wearing a striped shirt. His hair was longish and curly like instant noodles, his face pale, and his eyes slightly weary, as if he often stayed up late.
At first glance, Zhang Anzai was startled. The man's white striped shirt was speckled with red stains. From their color and appearance, they looked like blood.
The man glanced down at his clothes, then calmly explained, "You're bound to get a bit of stuff on you when you make props. If you're going into this line of work after graduation, don't make a fuss over nothing."
As he spoke, he waved a hand and headed deeper into the factory building. "I'm going to turn off the lights. You get ready to start your rounds."
Watching him and the old dog walk farther inside, Zhang Anzai tried to absorb the information and patted himself down.
"Phone... keys... flashlight?" He wasn't surprised that he didn't have much besides his phone. What else would a college student carry around, unless he smoked?
But a whole set of keys and a flashlight?
"Bzz..." The lights around him suddenly flickered.
He looked up. The rows of enormous, warm-toned floodlights inside the factory building flashed, then went out.
The only light left came from the little green exit signs on the walls.
The green light vanished before his eyes: "You are an ordinary student majoring in theater, film, and television design at a second-rate college. You feel quite lost about your future.
"During your senior-year internship, you faced setbacks at every turn. In the end, you found an opportunity at a prop warehouse in a film and television studio outside the city. Mr. Li, who runs the place, is a prop maker, a stage designer, and the owner. He is a model of success in your field.
"However, despite running the place by himself and even setting up a prop-making workshop inside, he has only given you a job patrolling the factory building at night.
"Still, it's related to your major. Do a good job, and keep at it until dawn."
Zhang Anzai gradually understood everything. "So that's how it is. I've become a student again, but this time I've skipped thirty years of detours."
In a big company, they might call a warehouse attendant a BA. Put simply, it meant a security guard.
Why else would he have so many keys and a flashlight for his rounds?
Since he knew how dungeons tended to work, he didn't act rashly. Instead, he stayed where he was and checked his phone. As expected, there was no signal, probably because he was out in the suburbs.
That was standard practice in dungeons. Even if there was a signal, they wouldn't let players connect to the internet normally.
He checked the few apps on his phone. The only useful contact in the messaging app was Mr. Li, of course. Their entire chat history was saved there, and it filled in a lot of details about the job.
For example, the lights had to be turned off at night to save electricity. And the reason he hadn't even been given a baton was that there was nothing valuable here. The main concern was the stray cats and dogs, snakes, insects, and mice nearby.
For another, plenty of students had done this part-time job before him. But Mr. Li complained that many college students treated it as a short-term or summer job, then left after only a little while.
And Mr. Li's prop workshop mainly made masks and bodysuits.
There was also something more tangible: a floor plan of the factory building that he had already saved to his photo album.
"It's huge..." Zhang Anzai took a look. As expected, the factory building before him wasn't the whole place.
After entering through the main gate, there was a restroom on the left, along with several interconnected inner rooms.
There was a costume and prop room for all kinds of clothing, a warehouse specifically for storing props like paint and pastels, and a display room with finished sets where production teams could see how they looked.
The right side was a little smaller, with several workshops of different sizes. Some belonged to Mr. Li, while others were rented out.
All told, the place covered several thousand square meters, about the size of a soccer field.
"So the question is, where's something going to happen?"
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