Chapter 104: Hero Yang, Celebrated Across the Land

This second main storyline mission title once again made the six players fall silent.
No real mission at all in this beginner instance?!

As he was thinking, a prompt flashed across the screen:

Quest Description: Erin has recently fallen ill with a strange condition. She keeps feeling as if something is crawling all over her, very itchy and unbearable.
You, who have had the deepest exchange with Erin so far, would never simply stand by in this situation, right?
Help Erin, ease the itching, and restore her health.

Mission countdown begins:
48:00:00
47:59:59

Wen Nan: (...)
Something was wrong.
This map, this mission description—everything felt terribly off. He stared at the lines of text and sank into thought.

At that moment every guild member in the room watched his face with a strange look.
Wen Nan blinked. “Did I write the answer on my face?”

Huang Yan raised his hand and pointed toward the lit screen above his head. “Boss, this mission… seems unrelated to us. It’s almost… tailored for you, isn’t it?”

Not to mention the other five had handed their soul-dolls to the guild master; besides the guild master, who now possessed six romance targets, the rest of them had not a single one left, so none of them could really help with “itching.”
Even if they had kept their own soul-dolls, the mission text explicitly names “Erin,” which means it has nothing to do with the other objectives and must be about helping that character Erin alone.
That Erin was exactly the target the guild master had claimed from the beginning.

“After all, this must be a proper quest for the guild master,” Guo Xiaofu nodded in agreement with Huang Yan.

Hu Jiayao couldn’t help but snort and then said, “Master, this quest looks like as long as you go out there and do some smoothing over, that’s all it takes? Besides cheering you on, we probably can’t do anything.”

Listening to their teasing, Wen Nan gave a helpless smile.
“You really think a main task in one instance would be set to work only for one player? If that were the case, why invite six players in from the start? They could have called only me.”

He had a point.
All previous missions had always been for every player. There was no reason it should suddenly become a solo game here.

Then the others, who had been joking, pulled back and wore expressions of confusion.

Wen Nan shook his head and said bluntly, “The Erin named in this mission description is definitely not my CEO romance target.”
If not, then who?

“Erin Group,” Guo Jingxing said softly.

Hearing that, everyone remembered.
During the first mainline mission they had only been busy scanning the map and collecting gear, and hadn’t paid attention to the map’s background lore. Naturally, they had not considered that the company where they now stood shared its founder’s name with Erin.

That said, this second mainline quest, setting aside those suggestive lines on the surface, was in essence about finding the current hazards in this company and rooting them out, wasn’t it? “Workplace reform?” The youngest among them, Guo Xiaofu, a true post-2000s, had his eyes light up. “That’s my specialty!”

“Hah.” Huang Yan looked at Guo Xiaofu with open disdain. “You really think it’s that easy? Then tell me what’s wrong with the workplace at Erin Group and why it’s itching.”

Why a workplace would itch—
That question was so strange Guo Xiaofu went mute and could not answer.

Wen Nan, lost in his own thoughts, suddenly heard a system notice in his mind:

9527: It is now 8:36 a.m. Your company’s clock-in time is 9:00. Being more than fifteen minutes late counts as absence and will cost you the best chance to meet again with your direct manager, that is, your chosen romance target. Please be aware.

Wen Nan: ...
Right, I almost forgot about this damn commute clock-in too.

“Let’s go to the company first. We’ll discuss the rest in the guild chat.”
Wen Nan gave the order.
The others immediately replied in chorus.

After they left one by one, Wen Nan stood in the center of the living room and, with his right hand, straightened the sleeve hanging on his left side.

“Your left hand is all right, isn’t it?”
Yu Shujun appeared from the bedroom without warning and, in a low voice, pointed at Wen Nan’s wrist.

At the first mission settlement countdown, a soul-thread had wrapped around his wrist and dug into the flesh, nearly making him miss settlement.

Yu Shujun had come and severed it, preventing Wen Nan’s left hand from being fully taken over by that tiny puppet.
Still, the soul-thread effect had sunk deep into his bones. Wen Nan’s left hand was now completely without strength; even lifting it was difficult.

“It’s fine.” Wen Nan gave a small shrug and smiled. “Hero Yang became famous only after he lost an arm. The left hand not working doesn’t stop me from making them bow to my divine right hand.”
Yu Shujun naturally ignored the suggestive implication in the second half of that sentence and asked, “Who is Hero Yang?”

Wen Nan made no effort to explain. He only pointed to the little doll still stuck on the tip of Yu Shujun’s sword. “Would this count as damaging public property? Could the game world punish me?”
“Don’t worry.” Yu Shujun lifted the blade, casually removed the little doll pinned there, and handed it back to Wen Nan. “Damaging a character soul-doll does not count as breaking game rules.”

Wen Nan gave a brief start. “So you mean that even if the soul-thread is triggered, if I can destroy the soul-doll in return, I can prevent the reverse-celestial backlash?”

“Destroy it?” Yu Shujun repeated his words with a little teasing inflection, as though he had told a fine joke.
“Mm,” she nodded lightly. “You can try it.”

Wen Nan furrowed his brow, watched Yu Shujun’s figure disappear back toward the dormitory, thought for a while, then could not resist taking up the CEO soul-doll, inserting his finger into its small central cavity, and poking.

Though it was only a toy, when his finger went in, he somehow felt that its pair of hollow button eyes looked at him with a little more pity.

At once, a message from the system rang in his mind:

Female Demon: When you come to the office, bring me a box of painkillers.

Thanks to the Demon God Emperor’s tips! Thanks to all the lords for your votes!

(End of Chapter)