After closing his personal information interface, Zhang Yang continued rummaging through the containers in the room, putting the most valuable items in his backpack and replacing the lower-value loot taking up single slots.
After searching half the room, Zhang Yang came to the dean's desk. He pushed aside the broad chair and spotted a square, old-fashioned chest with a heavy, solid look just by lowering his head.
So this was what the game's big safe looked like.
A system prompt appeared. Zhang Yang chose to interact, and the next moment, he pulled a delicate set of lockpicking tools from his pocket.
As the lockpick slid into the keyhole, Zhang Yang instantly felt the sense of touch in his hands grow exceptionally keen.
At the same time, five empty squares appeared before him. The four edges of the first square were flashing with a faint white light.
"Click... click... click... clack."
With that clack, Zhang Yang suddenly knew in his heart that this was the spot.
He gave the lockpick a slight turn with his right hand, and a green check mark appeared in the first square before him.
Right after that, the border of the second square began to flash.
"Opening a safe isn't so hard after all."
Zhang Yang thought smugly.
As the clacks rang out one after another, Zhang Yang soon had five check marks.
The five check marks filled the empty squares, and the bolt slid back. A crack appeared in the door of the tightly shut safe.
Zhang Yang put the lockpicking tools back in his pocket and casually pulled the door open. The safe's search interface popped up.
He took a quick look. There was one 1×1 item and one 1×2 item.
"Ding!"
"Ding!"
Two soft chimes sounded, revealing the loot inside the safe: two gold items.
"Gold, Merit Medal, value 80,229."
"Gold, Heding City Academy Map-1, value 10,759."
They weren't red items, but Zhang Yang wasn't disappointed. If red items were that easy to get, they wouldn't have their own inspection animations. Two gold items from a big safe was worth the price of admission.
Besides, there was something interesting about this academy map.
"Gold, Heding City Academy Map-1"
"Value: 10,759"
"Information"
"0.05 kg, 1×2 slots"
"The first part of the Heding City Academy map."
The description was simple, but it brought something else to Zhang Yang's mind.
Tidal Prison Map-1.
It was a gold item in the game, took up 1×2 slots in a backpack, and was worth just over ten thousand. The sort of thing not even a dog would want.
But its sibling, Tidal Prison Map-4, was a 1×2 red item worth over 300,000.
And now, Zhang Yang knew that red items had special effects.
"Better hold on to this for now. Maybe it'll have some kind of synergy later." With that thought, Zhang Yang put Heding City Academy Map-1 into his secure container.
He finished looting the big safe and was just about to stand up and search the remaining containers when he heard a click. The door swung open.
"!"
Zhang Yang didn't move a muscle, but M14 appeared in his hands in an instant.
With a weapon in hand, Zhang Yang felt a little more confident.
He used the broad, sturdy desk in the dean's office to conceal his six-year-old body, then pricked up his ears and listened carefully, ready to seize a chance to catch someone from behind.
While Zhang Yang held his breath and focused, two men and a woman entered the dean's office one after another.
Standing in the doorway, the three looked around the room as if no one else were there.
"So this is the dean's office at Heding City Academy? Why does it look so shabby? It's not even as nice as a private club room."
A man glanced around the office and curled his lip in disdain.
"It's a school, after all. They don't have power or money. How well could they decorate it?" a woman explained.
Seeing that the two still had time to chat, a steady male voice cut in. "All right, hurry up. If we drag this out any longer, someone's going to find us."
With that, he headed straight for the desk. The other two stopped talking and began searching the nearest containers.
Behind the desk, Zhang Yang heard the footsteps drawing closer and gripped M14 tightly.
The newcomer glanced over the files on the desk and dismissed them as worthless, then walked around the side.
"Creak~"
The broad solid-wood chair was in his way. He casually pushed it aside, revealing Zhang Yang, who had been hiding behind it...
And the dark muzzle of M14, already aimed and ready to fire.
"!"
"Bang!"
A gunshot rang out. The man took a bullet straight to the face and was sent flying backward.
"What!"
The other two in the room turned around in shock at the sudden noise, just in time to see their leader fly back and crash hard onto the floor.
Soul Power burst forth, and their Martial Souls appeared in their hands.
The next moment, a dark gun barrel emerged from behind the desk, followed by a still very young face.
"A child?" The female Soul Master furrowed her brows in disbelief.
The male Soul Master didn't care that Zhang Yang was a child. He charged at him, swinging the long staff in his hand.
"Bang! Bang-bang!"
Three shots rang out in quick succession. The male Soul Master's Martial Soul vanished, and his body slumped to the floor.
"Ahhh~~~"
Seeing her two teammates die before her eyes, the female Soul Master broke down.
The Martial Soul fell from her hand. As if trying to flee from reality, she raised both hands and turned her head away.
It seemed that if she just didn't look, she might escape her fate.
"But..."
"Bang!"
The gunfire gradually died away, and Zhang Yang stood up from behind the desk.
Zhang Yang showed no mercy to enemies who had already lost the will to fight.
Who could blame them for not giving the signal?
And what if they didn't have guns, so they couldn't give the signal...
So what?
Zhang Yang dragged the three loot boxes behind the desk, climbed back down, and began wolfing down the spoils.
"Oh, a 20-slot backpack. Five slots bigger than mine. Delicious."
He switched backpacks and stuffed the most valuable things from their boxes into it.
He also spotted dog tags in their boxes.
Dog tags meant they weren't bots, but enemies who had respawned at other spawn points.
After finishing, Zhang Yang stood up and surveyed the dean's office.
The filing cabinet had been opened, its files scattered all over the floor.
The storage cabinet was open, too, its neatly arranged contents now piled up in a messy heap.
At the sight, Zhang Yang tilted his head and said, "I remember these containers weren't supposed to be interactable."
Zhang Yang remembered clearly that the storage cabinets and filing cabinets near the door hadn't been interactable before.
In other words, the containers other teams could search weren't necessarily the same as the ones Zhang Yang could search.
"I wonder how big the difference is. Can they search none of the containers I can, or can they search some of the ones I can open?"
He couldn't figure it out for now, so Zhang Yang simply made a note to look into it later.
After looting the rest of the dean's office, Zhang Yang glanced back at an ordinary-looking door before leaving.
It was a keycard door. Zhang Yang tried to interact with it, but a prompt said he needed the "Academy Dean's Office" keycard.
For no particular reason, Zhang Yang suddenly thought of Old Sai's "East Building Manager's Office."
Could this be another red keycard? When would I ever get one?
If I could open it right away, with the loot luck I had in my first beginner match, maybe I'd get another red item inside.
Thinking of this, Zhang Yang couldn't help shaking his head regretfully. Then he turned and left the dean's office.
His next stop was the academy cafeteria.
After all, he'd just found an "Academy Restaurant Storage Room" keycard. It would be a waste not to go and use it.
Before you continue