A Damn Rip-Off of a Teleport

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

That was gaming 101. Most mobile games didn't make you drop items on death, but who knew whether this Immortal Realm game worked the same way?

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

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

Shen Bing tapped the Little Black Cat's icon.

"Pet has not been bound to an owner or named. N/A actions available!"

"Damn... I'll call you Doudou, then!" Shen Bing thought for a moment and typed Doudou into the window.

"Name already taken. Please choose another!"

Taken, my ass!

Shen Bing thought that was ridiculous. Was this game popular or something? Were there that many people playing it? He hadn't seen a single one.

Unless the Plague God's Cat Demon was also called Doudou?

"Little Doudou!"

"Owner binding and naming successful!"

Shen Bing grinned. There was always a way around an obstacle. It was a fine tradition handed down by veteran gamers.

If Little Doudou had been taken too, he'd 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 pop-up appeared.

"You may take out/teleport the item. Please choose."

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

Taking out the item was easy enough to understand. It meant bringing the kitten out to become his little sidekick.

But what the hell did teleport mean? Sending it somewhere else? He'd worked hard to get his hands on it. Only an idiot would do that.

Just then, footsteps sounded outside the door. A tall, lean guy walked in with a basketball in his hand. Judging by the sweat on his forehead, he'd just been showing off on the court.

"Old Shen, where's Old Wang? How long can meeting his future mother-in-law take? Don't tell me he ran off with her." The guy's tongue was as sharp as ever.

"Cough, cough..."

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

Shen Bing didn't notice. He looked up and glared at the guy. "Old Sun, your tastes are seriously messed up."

"My tastes aren't the problem. Old Wang's the one who'll take anything he can get!" Sun Li said with a snicker.

A mischievous 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 hit the wrong button. Where was his Little Doudou being sent?

"Monkey, I'm gonna beat you so badly you can't take care of yourself!" Wang Bo roared from behind the mosquito net beside them. He couldn't take it anymore.

Sun Li ducked his head, but he was too stubborn to back down. "Oh, the star of the show is here. Guess your future mother-in-law wasn't tempting enough."

"Ah!" Wang Bo sprang off the bed and lunged at Sun Li.

Both were bursting with energy. They grappled and tumbled onto the bed, presenting a sight best left unseen.

Shen Bing watched with glee. "You two can fool around all you want, but leave innocent bystanders out of it!"

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

The bar crawled along at a snail's pace. After half a minute, it had moved barely five percent. Worst of all, Shen Bing couldn't do anything else on the Screen.

"This is the most goddamn frustrating game ever made. What the hell were the designers thinking?" Shen Bing said bitterly. Who had time to stare at a Screen for minutes just to teleport one thing? What a joke!

He pressed Back, intending to return to the home Screen and uninstall this trash game. It had been nothing but trouble from start to finish...

More than ten seconds later, Shen Bing realized something strange was happening. He couldn't exit.

"So you're forcing me to bring out the big guns!" He pressed and held the power button.

Ten seconds later, he expected the shutdown screen. Instead, a window popped up on the Screen.

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

Shen Bing stared in utter disbelief. Could a game even do that? Even a supervirus shouldn't be able to stop him from turning off his phone.

But there was nothing he could do. Ice's phone had a sealed battery, so he couldn't pull it out.

There was no point fighting what he couldn't change. Shen Bing reluctantly tapped the power button to turn off the Screen. That worked, at least.

Wang Bo and Sun Li's wrestling match had also come to an end. Sun Li, the sports nut, had lost to the hulking Wang Bo and suffered the indignity of being pinned beneath him.

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

"I give... I give!" Sun Li was out of strength, and he knew better than to keep fighting a losing battle.

Only then did Wang Bo get up. He flexed his muscles in a show of dominance and sneered. "You're still too green to take me on! I feel much better now, though. Go ahead and try that again next time."

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

"Why isn't Old Yang back yet? Bet he's gone to the Library to check out girls again." Sun Li changed the subject to avoid dwelling on his defeat.

No one answered him. Old Yang was the fourth member of their dorm room, 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 too wrapped up in his own misery earlier to think of anything else.

Shen Bing looked like he'd swallowed something bitter. "Don't get me started. The guy handling recruitment was a total creep. He gave me the cold shoulder the moment I walked in. But when Wang Yanxi went in, he couldn't have been more attentive. He even escorted her out himself and invited her to start work as soon as possible."

"Damn... What a scumbag!"

"Do you think there was a lie detector in the interview room?"

Sun Li's question seemed to come out of nowhere, but after four years of sharing a dorm, Shen Bing and Wang Bo could already imagine the exchange he had in mind.

"Would you be willing to sleep your way to the top?"

"No."

"Beep..."

"Excellent. You're hired."

The three of them wisely dropped the subject. Wang Yanxi was no ordinary person. She was the most formidable student in their year: stunningly beautiful and extraordinarily capable. She took part in nearly every group activity the university held.

Even without that imaginary lie detector, she would have no trouble landing a good job.

Shen Bing hadn't told them about seeing Young Master Lin pursue Wang Yanxi the night before. Those lousy friends of his wouldn't sympathize. They'd just be "jealous" that the university beauty had gotten close to him.

Just then, the dorm room door opened, and a thin young man in oversized black-framed glasses walked in. "You're all here. Good. Let's go get something to eat. I accidentally made ten grand just now."

Sun Li and Wang Bo had been ready to tease Old Yang, but after hearing that, Wang Bo immediately put on a flattering smile. "Old Yang, you're a good man. You knew I'd suffered an emotional blow today."

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

For a good meal, though, Wang Bo could take it.

"Enough talk. Let's eat! Just thinking about the crispy fish on Foodie Street makes my mouth water!" Wang Bo said, pushing Old Yang toward the door.

Thin and frail as Old Yang was, he couldn't match Wang Bo's strength. He set what he was holding on the desk and found himself ushered out of the dorm.

The four of them hurried off campus and headed straight for Foodie Street.

Foodie Street hadn't originally been called that. Its name was Flavor Food City. But with every kind of delicious food available there, food lovers could always find something they craved, and the nickname had stuck.

Foodie Street was close to the University of Electronic Science and Technology, so students from the university, which had tens of thousands of them, were regular customers. They accounted for roughly half the street's business.

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

After they found seats, Shen Bing went to the restroom.

Once inside, he took out his phone out of habit.

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

What kind of ridiculous game was this?

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

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

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

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

"What's a cat doing in here? Huh? Why does this little guy look familiar?"

"Meow..." The kitten cried affectionately and kept rubbing its tiny head against Shen Bing's foot. It clearly recognized him as its owner.

Shen Bing's mind went blank. Then an idea struck him, and he glanced at his phone.

"Teleportation successful!"

And that was it. The display was unchanged. He was still on that floating island. The only difference was that Little Doudou had disappeared from his inventory.

Little Doudou... Little Black Cat!

"Ah!" It might have been embarrassing for a grown man to shriek like that, but Shen Bing shrieked anyway.

Luckily, Ice hadn't been very loud, and the restroom had decent soundproofing. Otherwise, people might have wondered what on earth he was doing in there.

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