Assigning tasks

Finally, Wang Guangfei noticed the tension in the air. Before his girlfriend Youyou could make an even bigger mistake,

he quietly tugged at her and whispered a reminder, "Stop talking for now. Your charm item doesn't seem to work on the instance bosses in the Ladder Tower."

"Ho ho, what adorable players." The rabbit Red-Eyes looked stiff, its claws gripping its cane tightly,

as though that was the only way it could barely keep itself from smashing the players to death on the spot.

A terrifying pressure spread from Red-Eyes. Several tomato plants near the path seemed to sense the threat,

and the faces on their fruit instantly crumpled, as though they would burst into tears the next moment.

Eww~~ What a lovely sight.

Only when it saw its beloved little tomatoes suffering did Red-Eyes rein in the aura it had released.

Hearing the change in Red-Eyes' tone, the young couple abandoned their plans and finally shut up.

After that little incident, the rabbit Red-Eyes took the players around the reeking cowshed,

a chicken coop full of hens as tall as a person, with hooked beaks and sharp claws,

and a sheep pen that was empty, yet had hay and meat in its feeding trough.

The unusually colored black sheep in the Sheep Pen had gone crazy for some unknown reason and kept trying to bite Red-Eyes.

"Will you give it a rest, you beast? You bite me every time I come here! Can't you behave for a single day?!"

A rabbit calling a sheep a beast looked strange no matter how one looked at it.

The players had no time to notice that. Their attention was drawn to the flesh of unidentified creatures in the feeding trough.

Red-Eyes was very pleased with the fear on the players' faces and enjoyed the feeling, a sunny smile spreading across its furry rabbit face.

Soon, its smile froze. "You damned rats again!! Get away from my tomatoes!!"

At some point, two rats bigger than cats had emerged on the farm! They strutted down the path and rummaged through the warehouse for breakfast right in front of everyone.

Eggs the size of two palms and juicy, tender tomatoes that looked freshly picked disappeared into the rats' stomachs, bite by bite.

Zuo Cheng'an looked over. These rats were different from the other animals on the farm.

They had health bars above their heads and seemed to belong to a hostile faction within the instance.

[Steel-Toothed Rat: creatures found throughout Ladder City. They barge into residents' homes and brazenly search for food. (Go make me four dishes and a soup.)]

Watching the Steel-Toothed Rats wantonly ruin its tomatoes, Red-Eyes' eyes reddened with anger... oh, right, its eyes were already red.

Red-Eyes stamped its feet in fury.

Judging by the presence it had displayed earlier, Zuo Cheng'an felt it could wipe out these pesky rats in an instant, but some rule of the instance prevented it from attacking them.

The same went for the players. Powerful as Red-Eyes was, the players remained under the game's protection as long as they hadn't done anything wrong.

Even if Red-Eyes was about to explode with rage, it couldn't lash out.

Right, its role in Uncle Red-Eyes' Farm was that of an ordinary farmer.

And naturally, an ordinary farmer could do nothing about a rampant rat infestation and could only turn to the players for help.

Red-Eyes pointed a rabbit claw at Zuo Cheng'an. "Your task is to kill rats on the farm. Before tonight, I want to see a thousand... a hundred rat corpses!"

[Instance quest updated]

[Time limit: 1 day]

[Congratulations on accepting the hidden quest: kill Steel-Toothed Rats (0/100)]

[Time limit: 1 day]

[Friendly reminder: Red-Eyed Uncle is very gentle, but he hates slackers. !!Please complete the task Red-Eyed Uncle assigned you before the instance ends!!]

[PS: hidden quests will greatly increase your final rating.]

So that was it. Seeing the changes to his personal panel, Zuo Cheng'an understood. What he had said earlier had caught Red-Eyes' attention,

and rats that upset him had happened to appear,

so it had simply assigned him the task of clearing out the infestation.

There was another little detail: Red-Eyes had originally wanted to give him a task to kill 1,000 rats,

but the game seemed to have rejected it, so it had changed the number to 100.

Perhaps the game had determined he couldn't possibly kill 1,000 Steel-Toothed Rats and therefore refused to approve it?

From the looks of it, game instances would never give players a task they could never complete.

But... clearing out the rats is a hidden quest? Then what work was it originally going to give me?

Shearing sheep? Cleaning the house? Milking cows?

Zuo Cheng'an could see his own panel and knew he had received a hidden quest that could raise his rating.

The other players didn't know that, though. They thought Zuo Cheng'an's careless attempt at flattery had backfired.

They were secretly laughing at him.

But they soon stopped finding it funny.

After encountering the rats, the rabbit Red-Eyes was in no mood to finish showing the players around the farm,

and began assigning everyone work on the spot.

As though it had thought of something amusing, it gave a nasty smile and pointed its cane at the young couple.

"There are twenty-one sheep on my farm. Before dark, you must drive all twenty-one into the sheep pen!

"And you, go pick tomatoes. They're going to be taken away to make sauce, so they must be intact, with no rot, and you must fill the warehouse!!"

Then, after a moment's thought, it pointed at the twin sisters, Fu You and Fu Yu.

"You, go collect eggs from the chicken coop. Don't leave a single egg behind! And you, go clean the cowshed. I don't want to see a single dirty spot!"

With the tasks assigned, Red-Eyes forced an exaggerated smile onto its rabbit face and very considerately reminded them again,

"Dear players, Red-Eyed Uncle hates slackers most of all. Please make absolutely, absolutely sure you finish all your work before dark~~"

After hearing the work the red-eyed rabbit had assigned them, the other four players all breathed sighs of relief,

and couldn't help looking at Zuo Cheng'an with a little pity.

Their jobs were things like picking tomatoes and cleaning the cowshed. They might be a little dirty and tiring,

but they had invested stat points in their bodies, after all. Players qualified to challenge the Ladder Tower already counted as superhuman.

They were strong and fast. If they worked hard, they could finish.

As for killing rats, even setting aside the risk of injury, it was a job that depended on luck. Whether he could meet the red-eyed rabbit's quota before dark was still a question.

Zuo Cheng'an didn't think he had drawn an unpleasant job.

He could see the rats' health bars, and the Steel-Toothed Rats were the only creatures in the entire instance that had them,

so he could locate the rats easily without having to put any effort into searching.

Plus, the night-vision glasses he had obtained in the beginner instance let him see in the dark.

This task couldn't have been easier for him. Besides, killing hostile monsters might even yield item drops.

Given Red-Eyes' reputation among the viewers, it couldn't possibly assign the players such simple work.

There might be a whole heap of traps waiting for them.

For example, the tomatoes would spoil rapidly once they began crying.

If the picker was the slightest bit careless, they would end up with a warehouse full of rotten tomatoes.

There were also the extremely dangerous-looking hens protecting their young, and the meat-eating sheep he hadn't seen but which certainly wouldn't be easy to deal with.

So, all things considered, although his rat-killing job looked difficult, it might actually have the fewest pitfalls.

The live comments were also eagerly speculating about what traps Red-Eyes had set for the players this time.