The Company Earns It, the Company Spends It—Don't Think of Taking a Single Point Home

"[Folk Taboo: Night-Shift Mountain Peddler] clearance report..." Zhang Anzai filled in the name of last night's explored instance on a report form that already had a set format.

Their pay was indeed based on work performance. There was no base salary, and leading players through missions paid the most each time. Miscellaneous smaller jobs, such as forum moderation and work reports, earned a little extra too.

Those jobs did not necessarily pay poorly. The main issue was that the amount was not fixed, more like a bonus system. If they judged that you had achieved something worthwhile, they would give you a little payout.

The small change Zhang Anzai had on hand before came from muting dozens of foul-mouthed forum users in a row.

That job was fine, since it was voluntary. Writing work reports was more troublesome. You needed genuinely useful information to receive a bonus, and the most annoying part was that even if the information was not valuable enough for a bonus, you still had to write one every time you completed a mission.

Even if it's pointless, you still have to do it. Whether the bosses read it or not, that's just workplace routine.

Thinking that, Zhang Anzai typed with considerable enthusiasm. The reason was simple: he knew this work report would be different.

"Submit... Just as I thought, I'm the first person to clear this instance."

A massive, intricate instance archive appeared on the screen, containing countless instances their company had encountered internally.

The player side did not even display instances they had already visited, but they were a company, so things were different. Not only did they keep records, they had also arranged and categorized them all according to the classifications in their names.

Zhang Anzai had already seen several of them.

For example, Dao Seeking was the middling-to-low-rated instance they had completed last week after matching with a wild player. They had needed to steal pills from a Daoist temple hidden inside an office building, built by some mysterious wealthy man.

That category covered content related to the Daoist sects.

There were also Folk Taboo, Folklore Oddities, ghosts and monsters, evil spirits and demons, Martial Turmoil, wars and combat, and so on.

To earn bonuses from work reports, they had to fill gaps in the archive, such as detailed information on different instances or, at the most basic level, a successful clearance.

"A blank-slate newbie knows nothing about the situation, yet once the instance begins, they have to sneak the entire time. Either hide in the storage room at the side immediately, or deal with the Mountain Peddler in that cramped bedroom.

"Once they reach the first floor, the place is as big as a supermarket and filled with random clutter that is easy to bump into. Any little noise can draw the monster over. The enemy cannot be killed, can teleport, and uses psychic attacks."

Zhang Anzai summed up the instance's difficulties. "There's no way an ordinary person could clear this on their first encounter."

Precisely because of that, once he submitted it, the archive showed that he was the first case of successfully leading a player through it, along with all sorts of newly discovered Mountain Peddler traits. "Settlement bonus: 200 Employee Points."

The first clearance was worth one hundred, while all the various details added up to another hundred. That was equivalent to leading players through two low-rated instances. Given how long each run took, the income was already quite good.

Once the archive was submitted, the job had little to do with him anymore. Further matters, such as instance ratings, were the team leader's responsibility. They would determine them before submitting everything to the archives department for review and filing.

This rating was different from the fortune or misfortune displayed when matching with an instance. It was an internal ranking established by comparing instance difficulty against players' strength at different stages.

There were Entry-Level instances, which newbies could handle; Advanced instances, which players who had experienced three to five instances could manage; Nightmare instances, which only high-level players who had completed over fifty percent of their own inheritance could possibly clear; and the even stronger Purgatory and Abyss.

When multiple people teamed up, it was possible for lower-level players to tackle higher-level instances. At the same time, players at low levels might also be matched with instances one tier above their own abilities.

That was when the archive's value became clear. Even after an instance had been cleared, other people could still match into it, and the information gathered by previous explorers became extremely useful.

"I'll need to check the archive more often when I explore in the future, but... tsk, could they be any stingier?"

Zhang Anzai looked through the other records and found that they could freely search through all sorts of instances across seven categories and five levels, but they had to pay.

Entry-Level cost ten points, Advanced cost one hundred, and so on.

Hearing his complaint, Lin Zhao unconsciously turned her head. Seeing that he was browsing the archive, she immediately understood what he meant. "Isn't it a scam? I matched into an instance someone had already cleared before, so I've seen it.

"Apparently, once you get promoted and your authority rises, you can view them freely. For example, full employees in Teams One through Five can freely view Entry-Level instance materials. But we basically still have to pay, and we also need to buy items that let us relay the information to players."

Lin Zhao clicked her tongue. "Why is communicating with players so inconvenient? It would be great if we could use voice chat. Then they'd find out what real pressure feels like."

That reaction alone told him Lin Zhao had been quite the seasoned trash-talker before joining.

Zhang Anzai said nothing, though. After all, he no longer needed to worry about that. He only needed to see any information once, since he personally entered instances to explore them.

"Big Brother, save me! What do I do?!" On the screen, a complete newbie from the northeast listened to the strange rustling noises outside and trembled beside the kang bed.

It was still Monday, but already afternoon. The hunger-satisfying effect of the Ox-Horse Pill Zhang Anzai had taken last night seemed to be lingering, so he had opened an instance in the morning and had not even stepped away during lunch break, keeping his eyes on the screen the whole time.

The instance before him was [Secret: Spirit Snake Debt Collection] (Ordinary). Its era was unclear, but it was set in the countryside.

The player was a farmer who occasionally caught snakes for a living. During the day, he had chopped off most of a white snake's tail, only to watch the supposedly dead snake crawl away as lively as ever. That was when he realized it was a snake demon.

He had been so frightened that he did not even pick up the severed tail, instead running home to hide. Yet after nightfall, it had still trapped him inside his house. The mission requirement was to survive the night or kill the snake demon.

Honestly, the difficulty was not high. It was Entry-Level.

The snake demon was merely larger and harder to kill. If they had someone with a physical-combat talent, they could probably grab the woodcutter's knife and iron hook from the house and kill their way out. Even if only its head remained, it could still live, so they just needed to mince it into filling.

Of course, that required some foundation. For an ordinary person, it was much like bravely fighting an armed criminal. Having a weapon in hand would not necessarily help.

Perhaps because half a month of work experience had steadied him, or perhaps because he had personally entered an instance once himself, Zhang Anzai was much calmer this time. He bought a third-tier Shadow Paper for fifty yuan that allowed five conversations, then slowly communicated with Big Brother.

"Don't panic. Take a deep breath. This is an Entry-Level instance, so that snake won't get in that quickly. Look through the cabinets, jars, and containers in the house. Since you catch snakes normally, there should be plenty of useful things around."

Zhang Anzai discovered that experiencing an instance firsthand was quite useful for leading players through them. Before, he had not paid attention to the mental state of newcomers. This time, he deliberately calmed the man down before watching him search the room.

Inside the not particularly sturdy wooden hut with its thatched roof, Big Brother carefully rummaged through cabinets and wooden shelves.

Zhang Anzai spotted the key items at a glance. "That wine jar on the third shelf, take it down. The small packet of medicinal powder in the cabinet, the orange-yellow one—take as much as you can. And that red bracelet by the bed, take it down and smash it."