Teleportation Gone Wrong

Getting killed and sent back to town didn't matter. What mattered was whether he'd dropped any loot.

That was basic gaming knowledge. Most mobile games didn't have loot drops, but who knew whether this Immortal Realm game did?

Shen Bing opened his inventory again. Everything was still there, including the little cat demon he'd just acquired.

"Ah, what a shame about this Pet. Where am I supposed to take it to level up? ...I'll take it out and have a look first. This kitten's pretty cute."

Shen Bing tapped the Little Black Cat's icon.

"The Pet has not accepted an owner or been named. N/A actions are available!"

"Damn... I'll call it Doudou, then!" Shen Bing typed the name into the window as he thought of it.

"Name already taken. Please choose another!"

Taken, my ass!

Shen Bing found that ridiculous. Was this game popular? Were that many people playing it? He certainly hadn't seen anyone else.

Unless it was because the plague god's Cat Demon was also called Doudou?

"Little Doudou!"

"Owner accepted. Naming successful!"

Shen Bing brightened. There was always a way around a problem. Any gaming veteran knew that.

If Little Doudou had been taken too, he could have tried Big Doudou, Long Doudou...

One way or another, Shen Bing was sticking with Doudou.

He tapped the kitten's icon again, and another window popped up.

"You may retrieve/teleport the item. Please choose."

What the hell? Shen Bing felt as if this game was driving him insane.

Retrieving the item was easy enough to understand: the kitten would come out and become his little sidekick.

But what was teleporting supposed to mean? Sending it somewhere else? He'd only just gotten it. Only an idiot would do that.

Footsteps sounded outside the door. A tall, skinny guy walked in carrying a basketball. Judging by the sweat on his forehead, he'd just come from showing off on the court.

"Old Shen, where's Old Wang? How long does it take to meet your future mother-in-law? Don't tell me he ran off with her." The guy had a vicious tongue.

"Cough, cough..."

Shen Bing choked on his spit and accidentally tapped "Teleport" with his thumb. A progress bar appeared on the Screen: Teleporting...

But Shen Bing didn't notice. He looked up and glared at the guy. "Old Sun, that's a pretty twisted thing to say."

"It's not me. Old Wang's the one desperate enough to go for anyone!" Sun Li chuckled.

A wicked glint flashed in Shen Bing's eyes before he looked back at the Screen.

Teleporting? What the hell?

Damn it! Sun Li had made him mess up. Where was Little Doudou going to be sent?

"Monkey, I'm going to beat you so badly you can't take care of yourself!" Wang Bo roared from inside the bed's mosquito net. He couldn't take it anymore.

Sun Li ducked his head, but he was the sort who never knew when to shut up. "Oh, the man himself is here. Guess your future mother-in-law wasn't tempting enough."

"Ah..." Wang Bo leaped out of bed and lunged at Sun Li.

Both had energy to spare. They grappled and tumbled onto the bed, creating a sight Shen Bing didn't dare look at.

"Do whatever you two want, but don't drag innocent bystanders into it!" Shen Bing said with a trace of glee.

He moved away and sat on a stool in the corner, staring in frustration at the progress bar on the Screen.

It advanced at a snail's pace. After half a minute, it had moved barely five percent. Worse, Shen Bing couldn't do anything else on the Screen.

"This is the worst game ever made. What was the designer thinking?" Shen Bing fumed. Who would sit there staring at a Screen for minutes just to teleport one thing? What an idiot!

He pressed the back button, intending to return to the home Screen and uninstall the garbage game. It had been nothing but trouble from the start...

But more than ten seconds later, Shen Bing realized something was wrong. He couldn't exit.

"So you're forcing me to use the big guns!" Shen Bing pressed and held the power button.

Ten seconds later, Shen Ice expected to see the shutdown interface. Instead, a window popped up on the Screen.

"Item teleportation in progress. Please do not turn off your phone."

Shen Bing stared at it, utterly baffled. Could a game really do that? Even a nasty virus shouldn't be able to stop him from turning off his phone.

Yet there it was. Ice had no other option, and his phone's battery couldn't be removed.

Life was like being raped: if you couldn't fight back, you could only accept it. So Shen Bing reluctantly gave the power button a quick press and turned off the Screen. At least that worked.

Wang Bo and Sun Li's wrestling match had also come to an end. Sun Li, despite being an athlete, had lost to the hulking Wang Bo and was pinned beneath him.

Wang Bo sat on Sun Li's stomach, holding him down with both hands. Panting, he asked, "Give up?"

"I give... I give!" Sun Li was out of strength and knew better than to keep fighting.

Only then did Wang Bo get up. He flexed his muscles in warning and sneered. "You're not ready to take me on! I feel much better now, though. Feel free to ask for it again next time."

"We're civilized people. We settle things with words...!" Sun Li tried to salvage his dignity, but when Wang Bo raised a fist, that dignity vanished without a trace.

"Why isn't Old Yang back yet? He must be at the Library checking out girls again." Sun Li changed the subject to avoid further humiliation.

No one responded. Old Yang was the fourth member of their dorm and a top student who spent most of his time in the Library. Sun Li, however, insisted he only went there to look at girls.

"Little Bing, didn't you have an interview at Storm Technology today? How come you're back here playing games?" Wang Bo asked. He'd been so wrapped up in his own misery that he'd forgotten about everything else.

Shen Bing grimaced. "Don't ask. The guy in charge of hiring was a complete creep. He gave me a nasty look the moment I walked in. But when Wang Yanxi went in, he couldn't do enough for her. He even saw her out personally and asked her to start work soon."

"Damn. What a creep!"

"You think they had a lie detector in the interview room?"

Sun Li's question came out of nowhere, but after four years of sharing a dorm, Shen Bing and Wang Bo immediately imagined the same exchange.

"Would you accept certain... arrangements?"

"No."

"Beep..."

"Excellent. You're hired."

All three wisely dropped the subject. Wang Yanxi was a force to be reckoned with in their year. She was stunning and exceptionally capable, and she took part in nearly every group activity the university held.

She wouldn't have had any trouble landing a good job, lie detector or not.

Shen Bing hadn't told them about seeing Young Master Lin pursue Wang Yanxi the night before. His friends wouldn't have sympathized; they'd have been "jealous" that the campus beauty had come anywhere near him.

Just then, the dorm door opened. A thin young man wearing large black-framed glasses came in and said calmly, "You're all here. Perfect. Let's go out for a meal. I happened to make ten thousand yuan just now."

Sun Li and Wang Bo had been ready to tease Old Yang, but Wang Bo immediately put on a shameless smile. "Old Yang, you're a good man. You knew I needed cheering up today."

"Got dumped again?" Old Yang struck straight at Wang Bo's sore spot without raising his voice.

For the sake of a good meal, Wang Bo let it go.

"Enough, enough. Let's eat! Just thinking about Romantic Fish Restaurant's crispy fish makes my mouth water!" Wang Bo declared, pushing Old Yang toward the door.

Skinny Old Yang couldn't match Wang Bo's strength. He set what he was holding on the table and was swept out of the dorm.

The four headed off campus and straight for Foodie Street.

Foodie Street had originally been called Flavor Food City. But with every kind of delicious food on offer, food lovers could always find something they wanted there. Eventually, the name Foodie Street stuck.

Because Foodie Street was close to the University of Electronic Science and Technology, its tens of thousands of students were regular customers. They accounted for roughly half the street's business.

Shen Bing and the others walked into Romantic Fish Restaurant, chatting and laughing. It was only just noon, but the restaurant was already eighty percent full. Most of the customers were students, and nearly all of them were couples.

Once they'd found a table, Shen Bing went to the restroom.

As he walked in, he took out his phone out of habit.

He pressed the power button and found the game still on the screen. The teleportation progress had reached ninety-eight percent.

What kind of ridiculous game was this?

He pushed open the stall door. No one else was in the restroom. The moment he closed the door behind him, the teleportation progress finally reached one hundred percent.

"Let's see where you've sent it," Shen Bing muttered.

The words had barely left his mouth when something soft and furry brushed against his foot.

"What's that?" Shen Bing looked down and saw a tiny black kitten on the floor, no bigger than his palm.

"What's a cat doing here? Huh? Why does the little thing look familiar?"

"Meow..." The kitten gave an affectionate cry and kept rubbing its little head against Shen Bing's foot. It clearly recognized him as its owner.

Shen Bing's mind went blank. Then a possibility occurred to him, and he glanced at his phone.

"Teleportation successful!"

And that was it. The game still showed him on the same floating island. The only change was that Little Doudou had disappeared from his inventory.

Little Doudou... Little Black Cat!

"Ah!" It wasn't the sort of scream a grown man wanted to make, but Shen Bing made it anyway.

Luckily, Ice hadn't screamed very loudly, and the restroom was well insulated. Otherwise, someone might have gotten the wrong idea about what he was doing in there.

Please bookmark the story and support it with recommendation votes...