September 12.
6:00.
After three excruciating days of waiting since the closed beta qualifications were issued, it had finally arrived—the day the servers opened.
Following the tutorial on the official website, Du Mingdao put on his helmet, lay flat on the bed, and closed his eyes.
However...
Is that really all it takes?
Yet, just as this thought crossed his mind, with his eyes still closed, he quickly saw a beam of light piercing through the darkness, shining in front of him.
Even though he hadn't opened his eyes...
Du Mingdao sat up from the damp cultivation chamber, glanced around, and his dull gaze was gradually replaced with intense shock.
Is this...
the game world?!
Metallic walls and floor tiles gave off a sci-fi vibe, streamlined cabin doors added to the effect, and wisps of steam evaporated from his shoulders, bit by bit taking his body heat with them.
Taking a deep breath of the game world's air, he caught a whiff of an unpleasant smell.
Whether what was in front of him was real or not, Du Mingdao wasn't certain.
But the hundred-percent immersion had already rendered him speechless with astonishment.
This feeling—
It's freaking awesome!!!
At that moment, the sleep cabin next door suddenly opened, and a fellow with a lizard mouth and a body covered in dark green scales sat up from the sleep cabin.
At the moment their eyes met, Du Mingdao was startled.
"Holy shit?! What the hell is that?"
"What do you mean, 'what the hell is that'..."
"Who the hell are you? An NPC???"
"What NPC, I'm a player, man! ID: Pick up trash 99 level... I was just about to ask you, who the hell are you?"
"You're Pick up trash?! I'm Spare people under the knife! Damn, are you that newbie who joined the group a few days ago? Why the hell are you so ugly?!"
"You're the freaking ugly one..."
With amber pupils dilated, the Lizard man was clearly bewildered, obviously failing to grasp the situation.
However, quickly, his gaze fell upon his scaly dark green skin, and a look of horror seeped into his confused pupils.
He frantically lowered his head, looking left and right, clumsily groping his body with his claws, tail twirling with his body, much like a gecko that had fallen into a pit of mud.
Then, suddenly, his gaze stuck to what lay between his legs.
He let out a piercing wail.
"Damn it! Where's my thingy?!"
Du Mingdao almost sprayed out a mouthful of old blood.
"You look like that, and your concern is about that thingy?!"
"That's gone, and that's gone too! F**k! Damn dog planners, all lies! If you can become a Lizard man, why can't you make a female character?!"
"If you don't want to be a Lizard man, let's swap."
"Screw off."
The sleep cabin was connected to a body scanning device that could show your attributes and level, details that were public knowledge on the official website.
Junk Lord lifted his index finger and flicked at the interface, and soon, the attribute panel was projected onto the screen.
ID: Pick up trash 99 level
Gene Sequence: Heterogeneity·Lizardman
Level: LV.0
——Basic Attributes——
Strength: 8
Agility: 7
Constitution: 8
Perception: 8
Intelligence: 2
Talent:
Cold-blooded (Greater stealth, slower reaction in cold environments)
Polydactyl (Greater endurance, difficulty in operating complex machinery)
Physical Regeneration (Stronger recovery, difficult to increase gene sequence level)
Holy crap?
These attributes are something special!
Junk Lord vaguely remembered reading on the official website that the standard attribute baseline for a normal adult male is 5, fluctuating within ±2.
And clearly, he wasn't based on an adult male's standard; except for his low intelligence attribute, the other four dimensions were exceptionally strong.
The key was that he didn't feel unintelligent at all.
So what if the intelligence on the panel is a bit lower?
Doesn't affect his ability to show off at all!
Realizing this, Junk Lord immediately couldn't stop grinning, and his fuss was over.
Du Mingdao, sitting in the adjacent cultivation chamber, looked over at the Lizard man giggling foolishly and asked with concern.
"Are... are you okay?"
"Haha, couldn't be better! Let's go, let's get out of this room quickly and meet up with the other players! We don't want to keep the Manager waiting!"
Saying that, Junk Lord somersaulted and leaped out of the cultivation chamber.
He found another perk to being a Lizard man; there was no need to wear clothes because it didn't matter if he put on pants or not, there was nothing that needed to be covered up!
Staring at the lively lizard, Du Mingdao's face was etched with weirdness.
At that moment, he suddenly noticed that there seemed to be a piece of paper stuck to its butt.
"There's something on your butt."
"Where?"
Upon hearing this, Trash King also felt the foreign object on his butt and reached back with his claws.
Being unaccustomed to controlling this new body, it took a good while of scratching with both claws before the piece of paper was finally scraped off.
The paper was made of waterproof material, so it hadn't gotten wet.
However, the text written on it wasn't Chinese, nor was it any language he recognized.
Trash King was utterly confused, scratching his head with his claws.
"What the heck is written on this?"
...
Residents' lobby of Shelter No. 404.
The originally spacious room was currently crammed full with the newly-added players.
A diverse array of people stood there, their faces uniformly blanketed with confusion, astonishment, excitement, and curiosity.
Before this, almost everyone had thought this so-called "fully immersive virtual reality game" might just be a prank by a few bored game enthusiasts.
Even after receiving helmets sent by the company, the vast majority of people were still skeptical.
But now, all doubts had vanished into thin air.
If one had to pick a game more realistic than this one, it would probably have to be "Earth OL" itself!
When "Pick up trash 99 level" stepped out from his room, passing through the automatically opening and closing door, it caused quite a stir.
Initially, everyone thought he was an NPC, but after asking, they found out he was also a player and might even possess the mythical "hidden profession"!
Basked in the envious gazes of others, Trash King seemed to have pushed the fact that he lacked a certain bit behind him, beaming with what could pass as pride.
Was that thing really important?
Not at all.
"Brother, stick with me from now on, I've got your back."
Trash King slapped the shoulder of the man standing next to him, Du Mingdao, with his snout turned sky high. The latter just gave him a speechless glance, disinclined to bother with him.
It was just that the initial data on the attribute panel was a tiny bit stronger.
Exiting the room with Trash King, Du Mingdao also attracted quite a bit of attention.
Regrettably, his gene sequence was just a common Strength Type, nothing particularly impressive.
As the players in the hall sized up the two of them, he was also covertly observing the other players inside the hall.
Aside from Trash King, most of the players seemed comparatively normal, at least on the surface there was nothing to differentiate them from others.
From a physical perspective, most appeared to be mainly Strength Type and Constitution Body Type, but there were also a minority of Perception, Agility, and Intelligence System players.
What surprised Du Mingdao the most was that there were actually two female players among them?
One of them was 180 tall with curves in all the right places, straining the seams of the shelter uniform, likely a Strength Type.
The other was a bit shorter, probably just over 150, unremarkable, with no clear system affiliation, at least not resembling a Strength Type.
Du Mingdao, born and bred in civil engineering and with years of work under his belt, had accurate estimations, especially when it came to gauging distances and sizes, and was seldom off the mark.
The two women had emerged from the same room and seemed to be embroiled in a disagreement, their auras butting heads.
"Who's this little squirt? Are you weaned yet?"
"You! Think you're so great just because you're tall? Who knows how short you might be in real life!"
"Heh, anyone who says something like that must be pretty young in reality. You aren't a primary school student, are you?"
"Hehehe, as it happens, I'm the director at a fashion design company, quite grown-up really. Unlike you, needing to find a sense of presence in a game."
"Hehehehe, a mere director, and here I thought you might be some big corporate CEO. May I inquire which company has had the pleasure of your employment, sister?"
"Hehehehehe, none of your business!"
Du Mingdao: "..."
He invariably felt both characters were quite primary schoolish...
Of course, they weren't the only ones quarreling.
After the long wait, finally obtaining access to the beta test, the players who had just entered the game were excited, blabbering non-stop, touching this, looking at that, incapable of staying still.
Some were head-butting walls and then, instead of yelping in pain, they held their heads and cackled goofily.
And these were the relatively normal ones.
Others were grabbing nearby players, begging them to give a good slap just to try out the feeling of getting hit, mentally preparing for the eventual monster battles.
Du Mingdao felt his scalp tingle.
Had he entered into a game world, or had he been locked into an asylum?
Just when someone started to pull down their pants, ready to do their business, even potentially engaging in more cringing actions, a commanding voice cut through the chaos of the residents' hall from the direction of the main entrance.
"Silence."
In an instant, all was quiet.
That commanding voice seemed to carry a unique pressure, causing the players in the hall to instinctively halt their clamor, and everyone's gazes involuntarily followed the direction of the voice.
Du Mingdao was no exception.
Excitement lit up his face the moment he turned to look at the figure standing at the doorway.
NPC!
Open of story sequence!
This must be the legendary Manager!
Although it was his first time playing this game, he had followed "Long Days Ahead" postings on the official website, so he was quite familiar with the game's settings.
The other players here were the same, all watching breathlessly, anticipating the beginning of the story.
When Chu Guang selected players, he also considered the professions filled out on the pre-registration page, as well as forum history, online duration, and activity level, attempting to weed out those "primary school students" with unsound thought processes, and the little fools who seemed to only know how to argue.
They were better off moving bricks on a construction site, not here.
Scanning the players in the residents' hall, Chu Guang spoke again in a calm and stern voice.
"Welcome to Shelter No. 404."
"I am the manager here."
"Code Name—Dawn."