Li Qing strode swiftly through the silver-white corridor, his hard-soled ankle boots leaving a trail of crisp footsteps across the gleaming floor.
"Chief Li!"
The corridor bustled with people, but almost everyone-or every nonhuman being-stopped to greet Li Qing when they saw him.
-Li Qing, employee ID S-A9B08F013, one of the Death Instance World Maintenance System's twenty S-rank employees and head of Division One's Maintenance Team.
Within the system behind the creation of all the death instances, Division One handled the technical research and development of the instance system. Li Qing's Maintenance Team primarily dealt with the subsequent upkeep of those instances.
In plain terms, once an instance welcomed all sorts of players, it inevitably strayed from its original design. The greatest influence on an instance came from certain individuals known as "Children of Destiny."
Every plane had its share of "Children of Destiny." Few followed the rules; most preferred to rely on their luck to do whatever they pleased inside the instances.
As a member of the Maintenance Team, Li Qing was generally called an "administrator." One of his main duties was to visit instances with abnormal data, identify the source of the anomalies, and clean up the messes left by these "Long Aotian types."
Faced with colleagues of every bizarre shape imaginable, Li Qing remained cool and nodded politely in response, but never stopped walking for anyone.
He headed straight for a door deep in the corridor, labeled "Technology Department."
Three knocks rang out, evenly spaced and equally forceful, before the door was pushed open with a bang.
The slightly chubby man in glasses jolted, nearly leaping out of his office chair, then closed the porn video on his computer screen at lightning speed.
Zhang Qin, head of the Technology Department, turned around furiously. When he saw who had come in, his expression instantly shifted into an awkward smile. "Chief Li, uh, why didn't you let me know you were coming?"
Li Qing stood in the doorway and said evenly, "I knocked. And based on past experience, there's an 89.85% probability that you're slacking off and won't hear me knocking. Coming straight in is faster."
Zhang Qin wiped nonexistent sweat from his forehead. "But there's still that 10.15% chance..."
"That's a theoretical probability. In my judgment, ignoring it won't cause any problems."
Zhang Qin had no answer to that.
Li Qing had no intention of making small talk. He simply placed a chip on Zhang Qin's desk.
"During my last maintenance assignment, the navigation system in my Administrator Console malfunctioned. It couldn't locate the target, and completing the assignment took ten hours longer than estimated."
Zhang Qin picked up the chip and turned it over in his hands. "That's impossible. Did you upgrade to the latest version?"
Li Qing said, "It is the latest version."
Zhang Qin said, "All right, I'll take a look. When's your next maintenance assignment?"
"Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?!" Zhang Qin's jaw dropped. "You're not even taking a day off? You put model workers to shame..."
"How can I earn money if I don't work? How can I buy a house without money? How can I retire early without buying a house?"
With his exquisitely ethereal face and air of detached serenity, Li Qing delivered that thoroughly worldly declaration. Ignoring Zhang Qin's stunned expression, he added, "I'll pick it up before work tomorrow morning," then turned and left the Technology Department.
The next day, after retrieving his Administrator Console chip, Li Qing swiped his employee badge and prepared to head to his next assignment.
[Assignment description] Instance name: D0821-Extreme Roller Coaster Rank: D+ Actual survival rate: 88.9% (expected value: 70%) Issue description: Actual survival rate far exceeds the expected value. Data anomaly detected, cause unknown. Administrator, please verify and resolve the issue.
Li Qing glanced over the assignment details and entered the teleportation command.
Amid the familiar spinning sensation, his surroundings had already changed.
Amid the familiar spinning sensation...
Spinning...
-Why hadn't the teleportation ended yet?!
With the wind battering his face, Li Qing barely managed to open his eyes, then nearly threw up.
He was sitting on a roller coaster hurtling along at high speed!
Though Chief Li was normally as composed as a machine, his physical body was, after all, that of a delicate technician.
As the roller coaster plunged and soared, Li Qing discovered for the first time in his twenty-year career that he suffered from motion sickness!
Hadn't the Technology Department fixed his console? Why was its positioning still off?!
Just then, an exaggerated cry suddenly rang out beside his ear. "Surprise!"
A face covered in greasepaint thrust itself in front of Li Qing.
The Clown grinned widely and shouted cheerfully into Li Qing's ear, "It's quiz time! What's the square root of 1,628,176, minus 77, plus 88, all divided by 99?"
Li Qing said, "?"
The Clown said, "Counting down! Three, two..."
Fighting his blurred vision, Li Qing struggled to bring up his GM Commands while forcing out an answer through the raging wind. "It's... thirteen."
The corners of the Clown's smiling mouth drooped.
"Correct." Looking thoroughly disappointed, he propped his cheek on one hand and crouched on the front of the roller coaster as though gravity didn't apply to him. "As expected of Administrator Thirteen, the smartest of the lot."
Then he brightened again. "But you only have ten seconds left. Ten, nine..."
Through his dizzy haze, Li Qing suddenly remembered this instance's rules:
This high-speed roller coaster had a Death Seat.
Every time the roller coaster passed through an underground tunnel, the player sitting in the Death Seat would emerge with their head severed from their body.
At the start of every lap, the Clown on the roller coaster would ask the players a question. The answer was that round's death number.
Thirteen... Li Qing lowered his head to check his seat number.
It was number thirteen!
Through the howling wind, the Clown's increasingly excited voice reached his ears.
"...Three, two, one-"
Li Qing snapped his head up. The roller coaster was already hurtling toward the pitch-black tunnel entrance!
The instant darkness swallowed him completely, a green screen of light rose in the dark!
Li Qing gripped the roller coaster's handle with one hand while the fingers of his other hand flew across the screen, entering a command-
[Set (X,Y): 328,648]
Just as he was about to press confirm, the roller coaster abruptly slammed to a stop!
Momentum nearly sent Li Qing flying. His hand slipped, and his fingertip swept across the light button.
A soft, dim glow immediately illuminated the entire tunnel.
Li Qing had to use almost every ounce of strength in the hand gripping the handle to keep his body from flying farther forward.
When his uncontrolled forward lurch finally stopped, Li Qing lowered his lashes and instinctively held his breath.
A bloodstained piano wire reflected a chilling gleam just a finger's width from his neck.
Li Qing followed the thin wire with his eyes and looked to the side.
A woman with a blood-covered face... the Female Ghost, stared back at him.
The Female Ghost said, "..."
The Female Ghost prodded the headless Giant Bear Doll beside her. "The roller coaster stopped again. What now? The person's already in here."
The Giant Bear Doll said, "He hasn't escaped yet anyway. Let's just kill him some other way."
The Clown said listlessly, "Save yourselves the effort. Look who he is."
The headless bear said, "I don't have eyes! I can't see!"
The Female Ghost, however, sucked in a sharp breath. "It's, it's..."
Li Qing's voice was calm, betraying no sign that the speeding roller coaster had nearly shaken him into vomiting moments earlier. "Li Qing, death instance administrator. Employee ID S-A9B08F013."
He took out his employee badge and waved it before the ghost and the bear.
"What do you mean by 'again'?"
"We don't know what's wrong with the roller coaster. It's been stopping suddenly all the time lately. The players take advantage of the stops to find ways to escape. Even the few who died only fell to their deaths while escaping because the roller coaster stopped in a bad spot.
"As you know, we monsters can't just kill people outside the rules. In this instance, we can only attack whoever is sitting in the Death Seat when the roller coaster enters this tunnel."
The Female Ghost tactlessly added, "Right, right. Someone just like you, Administrator."
Li Qing nodded. "Understood. I'll fix this bug."
The Clown froze. "So you... you're not here to investigate us?"
He cheered. For the first time in his career, he showed tremendous enthusiasm for an administrator's arrival, eagerly saying, "Then you've come at the perfect time! The roller coaster's controller is right outside. I'll take you there!"
"No need, thank you."
Li Qing brought up his Administrator Console panel again. The coordinate modification command he had yet to execute was still displayed on it.
His finger pressed "Confirm," and Li Qing instantly vanished.
Li Qing appeared silently in the roller coaster's control room.
His pale eyes swept over the levers and buttons, finally settling on a port.
...There was a problem with the program settings, but it was simple. He could fix it in a minute.
He connected his tool panel to the port and began tapping away, his mood lightened by the prospect of not having to work overtime.
Just then, he suddenly felt a warm breath stir beside his ear.
A low voice, tinged with amusement, sounded almost directly against his ear, like a lover's murmur-
"...What are you doing?"
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