At his old loading job, he only had one day off a week. It was backbreaking work, and sometimes he even had to work overtime—without a cent of overtime pay.
Forget nine types of insurance and two housing funds; they would not even buy him social insurance.
The dormitory environment there was abysmal, smoky and foul, but over here? They directly provided him with an apartment.
Seeing that Zhou Wen had stopped sending messages, Mu Rufeng ate his dinner in peace and began reviewing the relevant materials Zhao Dayong had sent over.
First, they introduced the origins of the Oddity Instance Game.
About five years ago, in 2018, the Oddity Instance Game suddenly appeared in countries around the world.
At first, there were very few participants. Though the mortality rate was high, the deaths were all classified as ordinary cases, and the authorities basically knew nothing about the oddity instances.
Even those who cleared an instance and returned to the real world would not report it to the authorities.
Later, as more and more people entered instances, someone holding a fairly high position within the system entered one as well.
After that player cleared the instance and emerged, he reported it to the state immediately. From then on, the instance game drew the nation's attention.
In the end, the Relevant Department was established around that player, with vast resources poured into it.
The Relevant Department was not under the jurisdiction of any other department and answered only to the highest authority.
By now, the Relevant Department had entered its fifth year.
In the past, there had been relatively few players entering instances, making them easy to manage.
As time passed, however, more and more players began entering the instance game.
The higher-ups even speculated that an era might come when everyone entered the instance game.
But that was only speculation. No one dared be certain. The one certainty was that the number of players entering instances was indeed growing.
As for the origins of the oddity instances, not a single person knew.
At the same time, even after an oddity instance was cleared, it still remained and could allow the next player—or the next batch of players—to enter.
Thus, instance walkthroughs came into being, and naturally, the authorities possessed the greatest number of them.
With that in mind, the claim that they could improve a player's chances of survival within an instance was no lie.
Of course, not every instance had a detailed walkthrough. For example, instances that had never been cleared, or those where even with a walkthrough, there was still a great risk of dying.
Most importantly, new instances appeared from time to time. And whenever a new instance appeared, players had to use their lives to uncover its walkthrough.
The Scarlet Preferred instance Mu Rufeng had cleared was a newly appeared instance.
Zhao Dayong had also told Mu Rufeng to write down the instance walkthrough whenever he had the time.
Every seven days, one had to enter another instance. Not a day early, not a day late, because entry into the instance was mandatory.
If one possessed a specific medium, there was no need to observe the seven-day time limit and one could enter an instance directly.
At the same time, once one reached Level 3, this interval became once per month.
Of course, there were methods to delay the time of entering an instance.
However, only LV1 and Level 2 players could do so.
As long as one spent one hundred Soul Coins, one could delay it by one week.
Of course, even if one had enough Soul Coins to keep delaying it, one still had to enter an instance at least once every month.
For example, if your instance entry date was the fifth and you wanted to spend four hundred Soul Coins to delay it by four weeks, that would be twenty-eight days.
But twenty-eight days would already take you into the next month, so for that month, you could spend at most three hundred Soul Coins to delay it by three weeks.
In other words, as long as you had enough Soul Coins, you could completely manage to enter an instance world only once a month.
If your level reached LV5, you only needed to go once every two months.
If you reached LV7, entering an instance once every three months would suffice.
The higher one's level, the stronger one's strength—but the more dangerous the instances one entered, and the higher the chance of death.
"It's already been around for five years. Does that make me lucky or unlucky?" Mu Rufeng rubbed his chin as he pondered.
Mu Rufeng continued reading the materials.
The background and origins had already been explained. Next came the instance ranking system and some basic knowledge.
First, the player level system ranged from LV1 at the lowest to LV9 at the highest.
When ordinary people entered an instance for the first time, they were not considered true players. They could only be regarded as prospective players.
Only after clearing their first instance could they become official LV1 players.
The levels here were not calculated according to experience points, but by the number of instances cleared.
For an LV1 player to advance to Level 2, they needed to clear two more instances.
For a Level 2 player to advance to Level 3, they needed to clear another three instances.
The later levels followed the same pattern.
If the earliest batch of players to enter instances had not died, then it seemed they could at most have reached Level 7?
When he checked the official materials, the player who had established the Relevant Department seemed to still be alive.
Although the higher the level, the greater the strength, the instances one entered would also become more dangerous, and the probability of death would rise.
Mu Rufeng did not know the highest current level in the country, because the materials did not mention it.
At LV1, Contract Slots and the Item Inventory could be unlocked.
Contract Slots could be used to form contracts with oddities, thereby gaining the oddities' power.
Contract Slots played an important role in a player's survival rate within the instance game.
With every level gained, both Contract Slots and the Item Inventory could be expanded.
At Level 2, one could have two Contract Slots.
At Level 3, one would have three Contract Slots, and so on.
As for the Item Inventory, every level gained added three more inventory slots.
"Contracting oddities?"
"Then Zhou Wen's ability to immobilize my body earlier, and the flames that forced back the bandages, should have been the power of contracted oddities?" Mu Rufeng pondered inwardly.
Using two abilities at once—did that mean Zhou Wen was already a Level 2 player who had contracted two oddities?
What levels were Qu Lianhong and Cheng Youlin? What oddities had they contracted?
Mu Rufeng continued reading.
He gained an even deeper understanding of the instance world.
The instance game was divided into two modes.
They were single-player mode and multiplayer mode.
Single-player instances were naturally ones like Scarlet Preferred.
Multiplayer instances involved multiple players entering the same instance.
Mu Rufeng had previously heard Qu Lianhong say that Cheng Youlin's first instance had been a multiplayer one, and Captain Zhou Wen had participated in it as well.
If he ended up in a multiplayer instance, then there would be a risk of his cheat being exposed.
"Forget it. If I really enter a multiplayer instance, I'll just take it one step at a time. At worst, I'll expose it outright. What the hell am I afraid of?" Mu Rufeng could not be bothered to think any further.
When the most dangerous moment truly came, at worst, he would be a good man again eighteen years later.
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