Ashes And DustCh15 - Encounter

The twelfth plane, the capital

Zhai Xiaoyi didn’t reply. He didn’t even look up, but kept reading the contract instead. When he finished, he didn’t sign it directly, but reached for the other pile. 1I64dC

‘They’re both the same thing. You’re free to read them over of course, I’m just saying this because all of our basic player contracts are pre-printed.’ Nan Zhi rested his chin on his palm as he looked at the boy seriously reading each paragraph over and over again.

He wanted to laugh, but in the end he only just returned to the previous topic, ‘It’s gonna go cold if you don’t drink it.’

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Zhai Xiaoyi didn’t pay him any attention. After he finished reading, he put the stack of paper back on the table and began to methodically sign them. His movements were steady and practiced, and he was done with the entire process in less than ten minutes.

‘Done.’ He pushed both piles back in front of Nan Zhi, who only sighed as he organised the contracts again. ‘One of them is yours, make sure to keep good care of it. You’re going to need it if you ever plan on resigning.’ G5oXHS

He handed back one of the stacks to Zhai Xiaoyi, who didn’t try to put them in his wet backpack. He only folded it in half as he asked, ‘I can actually resign?’

‘Huh? Of course you can.’ Nan Zhi was already standing. It seemed that he had nothing else he wanted to discuss.

‘When?’ Zhai Xiaoyi felt like there had to be a catch, otherwise he wouldn’t have been put through the things that had happened to him in the past few days.

‘Any time.’

LNdeEg

‘Like right now? Today?’ Zhai Xiaoyi still didn’t stand up. He watched as the other walked to the door to open it. He spoke just when Nan Zhi was about to reach for the handle.

Nan Zhi took his hand back and turned towards him. ‘Of course. At any time, as I said. If you have the experience points to compensate the main system for the loss of your labor.’

There it was. Zhai Xiaoyi pursed his lips slightly and asked, ‘How many?’

Nan Zhi was tapping on his folded arms as he replied. ‘About two hundred. But the rules could have changed since I last checked.. After all, it was a long time ago.’ He nodded at Zhai Xiaoyi as if asking an indirect question, ‘You can check your balance once you get HH installed. The IT department is on the minus twentieth floor.’ JnPdK2

He opened the door to let the boy out. It was clear that he didn’t want to deal with him anymore.

Zhai Xiaoyi didn’t mean to overstay his time either. He stood up and nodded at the other, ‘Thank you. I’ll be going then.’

As he was leaving the lounge, he heard Nan Zhi’s voice from behind himself, ‘And don’t forget to add me! Otherwise I’ll have to send you letters.’

Zhai Xiaoyi hummed and walked to the elevator. He heard the double winged doors close behind him as he pushed the ‘down’ button. Hx68c0

The elevator took longer to arrive this time. The phone in Zhai Xiaoyi’s pocket buzzed.

‘I’ll be there soon. Where are you?’

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

‘I’m almost done. Have to go to the IT dept before leaving. Go to the reception and they’ll tell you what you need to do.’

‘Thanks. Wait for me after?’ 1C6skB

‘Sure.’

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His gaze swept across the screen of her phone and saw a chat window. The messages were running with such a speed that even extremely quick readers would have a problem trying to catch even a sentence. The woman was constantly typing too, her fingers basically flying over the screen as they tapped. 4EPKTw

Zhai Xiaoyi bowed his head as he observed the rest of the small space from the corner of his eyes. The panel told him that there were fifty floors above ground and about seventy more below street level.

The light over their head gave soft sizzles and almost gave out a few times as they reached the first couple of floors below ground. The elevator swayed slightly as it descended.

Zhai Xiaoyi gripped the handle behind his back. The elevator shook one more time before coming to a stop on the minus eleventh floor. The doors opened, and a dark concrete corridor came into view on the other side.

This place looked nothing like the floors above. The door didn’t close, and there was no one on the outside. The end of the corridor was shrouded in darkness, and a light breeze came from somewhere. 5TaWhu

The woman next to him still didn’t look up. She only shifted her position so that the metal wall of the elevator would block the cold breeze from reaching her. They stayed like this for a couple of minutes. The woman’s typing and the low hissing of the pipes running along the walls were the only noise on the floor. They were extremely conspicuous in the silence.

The brightness inside the elevator made it seem like it and the corridor outside were part of two different worlds.

After a couple of minutes, the faint sound of high heels knocking on the ground could be heard. Sometimes it sounded from closer and sometimes it came from far away, getting a little bit closer every now and then. Zhai Xiaoyi stuck his head outside, but there wasn’t anyone there.

Just as the sound was only a couple of steps away from them, the elevator finally gave a high ‘ding’ sound and the doors closed slowly. It started to descend again. S3Oj7H

The elevator shook, and the LEDs gave in for a moment. Darkness fell, and the woman’s phone served as the only source of brightness for the time being. She was still typing madly, as if she had no concern towards the strange things outside her phone.

Zhai Xiaoyi noticed something strange from the corner of his eye. He turned his head, but just as he was about to look, the bright lights came on once again. He had to shield his eyes for a moment before being able to look again.

Something had changed in the short time between the moment he had closed his eyes and when he reopened them. It wasn’t just the two of them in the lift anymore.

There were a pair of crimson shoes not even a metre away from him. Two pale ankles were almost completely covered by a long red dress. As his gaze travelled upwards, he met a pair of unfriendly, completely black eyes. nBVKEN

The woman scowled at him and averted her gaze. On the elegant line of her neck dozens of bright red dots gleamed like precious gems. Her long hair looked as if it had once been put up into a graceful bun, but it seemed somewhat dishevelled at the moment.

The roots of Zhai Xiaoyi’s ears reddened as he realised that the woman thought that he was staring at her for a different reason than he actually was. He wanted to say something to make the situation less awkward, but nothing came to his mind. In the end, he just bowed his head again to look at the floor.

He didn’t raise his head until they reached the minus twentieth floor. The doors opened once again, and he let out an inaudible breath as he finally stepped outside.

This floor looked nothing like the minus eleventh, but it didn’t resemble any of the floors above ground either. The wall to his left was covered in lines of dark blue lights, while the other side was simply painted black. NOb8xP

The floor was made out of a glossy matter, and the bright lights reflected the route to the office entrance. The corridor was completely void of any unnecessary pieces of furniture and even lacked necessary ones.

The only other person outside was the woman who stepped out of the lift with him. She finally put down her phone for a moment as she pushed the black doors open. She didn’t wait for Zhai Xiaoyi, and the doors almost closed by the time he walked to them.

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A strange world came into view as he opened them again. He didn’t know what he imagined the department to look like, but it was certainly nothing compared to reality.

This room wasn’t as dark as the corridor outside. There was a faint brightness, although he couldn’t make out where it came from. The entire room had a greenish hue. Although this was supposed to be an office, it looked nothing like one. 64uEX7

The island-like arrangement of desks was the same as on the forty fourth floor, but here a strong metallic net was installed to the sides to each of them, allowing the workers to have more privacy while doing their job.

Most of these nets were covered by photographs or documents. Some had posters glued onto them, while others had more practical shelves or cases which their owners could use to keep important documents in or objects by their sides.

It was a lot brighter than outside, but it was still very dark compared to the upper floors of the building. It wasn’t as quiet as on other floors either, the buzz of computers and all kinds of little noises filled the air and laughter and incomprehensible words could be heard from left and right.

Zhai Xiaoyi almost knocked into someone as he was standing by the door, or to be more exact, someone ran straight into him. The person didn’t even bother apologising as he kept talking to the one next to him, both of them soon disappearing from sight. XA7p8O

He came out of his daze as he held onto a desk to gain his balance back. Someone rolled backwards on their chair as they turned in his direction with a questioning gaze.

It seemed that the department’s workers were not obligated to dress professionally. The girl looking at him had high, bright red ponytails and a wide smile. She asked him, ‘Can I help you with something?’

Zhai Xiaoyi took back his hand. ‘Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I was told that I had to come and get an app installed..’

The girl made her chair roll even further back, and pointed in the direction of a dark corner of the room. Occasional loud cheers came from the desk-islands there, and at least a dozen workers were crowded in front of a small wire-cubicle. eJCZkQ

She sighed as her fingers flew over her keyboard. She wrote something before standing up, ‘Wu ge is responsible for handling new players. I’ll take you there, you probably wouldn’t even be able to get close.’

She raised her long skirt with a hand as she stepped over a couple of cables on the ground, and spoke as she evened her sweater. ‘It’s not like this on normal days. It’s just that there is a big event today..’

Zhai Xiaoyi followed her to the other side of the room. He hadn’t seen it well from the entrance, but the commotion seemed even greater from up close. The people were crowded before a desk with six monitors placed over each other in two rows. All of the screens showed something else, but with closer inspection it was apparent that they were all parts of the same live stream.

One of the screens showed a chatroom with an overwhelming barrage of comments. Zhai Xiaoyi noticed the woman from the lift standing in the front, staring at the monitors too. Was this the same chat as hers? ldZ1km

One of the other screens was divided into dozens of small rectangles, while another was dedicated to only one in its entirety – those were the streamers. It seemed that this event was a significant one. The young man on the screen in the middle of the lower row must have been the person the people crowded over here were rooting for.

The fourth screen showed a middle aged uncle and a young girl looking like they were in the middle of an argument. They both spoke swiftly and loudly over each other, apparently analyzing the situation on the other screens.

‘Jupitersfall gains advantage in the tenth quarter and he is so close to finishing in the top five! If he manages this it will be in no time that we can see him in DA’s Armageddon this year! A promising young star as I’ve said before, he definitely won’t disappoint us..’

‘Right, he’s a relatively new face in the scene but he manages to surprise the audience every time. I’ve been saying this for some time now, but it doesn’t really matter whether he wins today or not. As long as his fans are here to assist, ZK Entertainment won’t leave him without a much deserved contract..’ VZHS6o

It seemed that there was a sort of championship going on today. Zhai Xiaoyi never cared much for this kind of thing, but although he didn’t understand most of what was going on, some aspects were pretty obvious. The other two screens showed a popular online game from different angles.

This was what these streamers were competing in. Zhai Xiaoyi had played this game before, so he wasn’t completely ignorant to the level of difficulty it possessed.

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It wasn’t one of the shooter games that didn’t lose any of their popularity in the last few decades, but it was a newly developed platformer that focused on the players’ quick thinking and problem-solving skills instead.

The higher levels could be said to be extremely difficult to pass, while after each level the players had to solve puzzles based on different mathematical theories. The time for these puzzles decreased as the number of levels got higher. KCnP6Y

The screen with the countless small streamers showed them constantly changing and switching places with each other, some even completely disappearing from the screen to give place to new ones rising in rank.

This championship didn’t only seem like a great opportunity to gain new fans, but also a platform for smaller creators to gain acknowledgement from companies that specialised in online broadcasting. It was evident that all participants would try to show their best sides.

In the vast sea of players, one small window with red lights in the background was extremely conspicuous. It appeared from out of nowhere and climbed the ranks with ease, even skipping some of them.

The young man who had his own screen in the cubicle was visibly sweating. It seemed that he was the one the commentators referred to as Jupitersfall. He had a hard time finishing the later levels, and his small window changed places with the one behind him, the sixth place constantly. FeiqIo

The young girl’s voice suddenly got at least two octaves higher as she cried out, ‘A new player in the top ten, I repeat, there’s a new player in eighth place, no in seventh, he is about to..’

The middle aged uncle cursed. ‘This new kid, how is that possible? All of the players in the top ten are here from the last championship but I’ve never seen this ID before! Asterium, what do we know about him? Someone quickly!’

The girl cut him off. ‘He’s about to overtake Moonaren, he’s going for the top three! Can he do it? A rising star, folks, we’ve got a rising star!’

Jupitersfall fell back to seventh place. He made the mistake of glancing at the ranks screen to see what the commotion was about, and after seeing that someone had pushed him outside the top five, he visibly paled. It seemed that the momentary loss stupefied him causing him to completely lose his rhythm, and he soon fell even further. ibL8MX

On the other hand, as he was struggling, the small red window took over third and then second place. The game must have already been going on for a long time, but it seemed that Asterium had only joined shortly before.

The man sitting in the cubicle had no guilt in his expression as he switched the monitor in the middle to show the red window with a row of swift clicks. The redness filled the screen and painted the outlines of those in the crowd a bloody shade.

The screen showed a boy looking around twenty years of age with delicate features. There wasn’t the slightest sign of stress in his expression, and it seemed that he even found the time to smile and make small talk with his followers in his private chat.

It appeared as if he didn’t take this championship seriously at all, and only used the chance as a warm-up for the later games in his stream instead. LC2mPn


The author has something to say:

I had just way too much fun writing the second half of this chapter. Asterium is a recurring character of this little game show of ours; Which Character Will The Author Superfocus On Tonight? This is his introduction. I think I did pretty well trying to make him seem cool. I entrust the readers to take good care of him.

Another thing.. apologies for the late update.

9BlP8R

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