Volume 3, Chapter 56 – The Intermediary

Since Anran did not know where Zhou Jieyu lived, she could only come to the recruit training camp to look for her.

According to the information she had gathered from the forum, all players who had just joined the Security Department had to complete a series of tasks at the recruit training camp.

Compared with Nine Songs, the Security Department was far less free.

A regular army like the Security Department and Nine Songs, which had been founded by visitors from the Empire, operated in completely different ways.

Nine Songs was more like a guild with benefits and subsidies.

Anran stood at the main gate.

A sign hung to the right: No Admittance to Unauthorized Personnel.

But that was not a big problem.

There was a soldier on guard at the entrance.

Anran went up and explained the situation to him.

Outlanders were special, after all.

The recruit did not make things difficult for Anran. After telling her that Zhou Jieyu was inside the barracks, he went in to pass along the message.

A few minutes later, Anran saw a girl in a blue uniform, a rifle slung over her shoulder, running out of the barracks.

It was Zhou Jieyu, her forehead beaded with sweat, her hair damp and disheveled.

This was a spirited, heroic-looking Zhou Jieyu.

The drastic change in her image and bearing almost made Anran think she had a twin sister.

But IDs did not lie.

…

The moment Zhou Jieyu heard the message from the recruit standing guard at the gate, she was instantly excited.

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That mysterious and powerful NPC, Anran, had actually come looking for her on her own initiative.

She definitely was not here to stage some old friends reunited scene. Zhou Jieyu did not believe Anran had that much free time. There had to be a task.

The moment she thought of the rewards from Anran’s tasks, Zhou Jieyu subconsciously ignored the process of the task itself.

An NPC had personally come to issue a task.

Could this be one of the benefits of increased favorability?

Even when issuing a task, she would first come to the person with higher favorability.

The moment that thought crossed her mind, Zhou Jieyu did not hesitate at all. The instant she saw Anran again, she did not even bother to count how many hats Anran was wearing and directly pulled out a stack of banknotes.

“Here!”

“…”

Anran glanced at them. It was ten one-hundred-Bilu notes.

Understanding at once, she smiled faintly and slipped the money into her pocket.

As a reward, she increased Zhou Jieyu’s favorability by 5 points.

This girl was getting smarter and richer by the day!

She was worth cultivating properly!

“Anran’s favorability +5!”

Huh, only 5 points?

Zhou Jieyu froze for a moment.

Sure enough, the farther along you got, the harder it became to raise favorability. She only had 26 favorability in total so far.

But those 26 points of favorability already seemed to bring quite a few benefits.

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Because Zhou Jieyu had just unlocked Anran’s secret shop.

The items sold inside seemed even more powerful, though they were a little expensive.

And on the mentor panel, the Mechanic profession had actually unlocked the Basic Mechanic option.

Required favorability: 30.

Incidentally, after unlocking the Mechanic profession, Zhou Jieyu had followed Leading the Charge’s advice and had already been focusing on leveling that profession.

After several days of recruit training, her level had risen to Level 6 again. It was much faster than when she had been wandering around aimlessly before, and she would soon reach Level 7.

“I need your help with something!” Anran stared at Zhou Jieyu and spoke with a serious expression.

Clothes made the person.

In Anran’s eyes, Zhou Jieyu looked quite striking now.

Especially the strands of hair plastered to her forehead, which made people want to brush them aside.

“Just say the word!” Zhou Jieyu declared boldly.

She was smiling brightly.

The sunny girl Zhou Jieyu was brimming with energy.

“Because of the recent movements of the Morningstar Resistance, the residents of Twinmoon City have already fallen into panic…”

Anran delivered the opening speech she had prepared in advance.

There was always a long prelude before a major event began.

As Anran spoke, Zhou Jieyu nodded repeatedly.

“So, I hope you can mobilize the power of the Outlanders and help me gather intelligence on Morningstar. Although the Outlanders are still relatively weak right now, I believe you can make your names in this war!”

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Anran solemnly patted Zhou Jieyu on the shoulder.

She found that Zhou Jieyu had quite a bit of hot-blooded youth in her.

The tasks had not even been handed out yet, and Zhou Jieyu was already giving off a clear please let me do it aura.

This girl’s awareness was really high!

So Anran issued Zhou Jieyu two special tasks.

The first: [Gather Intelligence].

Repeatable task.

Because Anran was currently Level 11, the maximum experience reward for a single completion of this task was 5,500 EXP.

For a special task like gathering intelligence, the difficulty was uncertain, so it was directly rated X. The actual difficulty depended on the importance of the intelligence provided by the player.

The game system had its own evaluation criteria. It would automatically grade the intelligence, and then Anran could distribute rewards to players based on that grade.

Experience rewards were only one type of reward. In fact, Anran could completely replace them with other items of equivalent value.

And the game did not impose many restrictions on item rewards.

Anran could absolutely post a task telling players to scrub toilets and then set the reward as a cosmic battleship.

But unless Anran had been kicked in the head by a donkey, there was no way she would do something like that.

It was just toilet scrubbing. Even rewarding them with a toilet seat would already be extravagant.

The second task: [Guide].

Repeatable task.

Zhou Jieyu was designated as the guide. After other players gathered intelligence and reported it to Zhou Jieyu, they could receive rewards equivalent to those from the [Gather Intelligence] task.

And Zhou Jieyu could also bring that intelligence to Anran to claim rewards.

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That way, Zhou Jieyu would be the only person directly interfacing with Anran, greatly reducing the risk of exposure.

Zhou Jieyu interacted with countless NPCs every day. Even if she had somewhat more frequent contact with Anran, it would not attract anyone else’s attention.

After all, no one would ever imagine that such a special NPC existed.

They would only think Zhou Jieyu was trying to grind favorability with Anran.

Zhou Jieyu was overjoyed after receiving the tasks. She was only one step away from throwing her arms around Anran and kissing her twice.

But she still restrained herself. This was an opportunity, an opportunity to become one of the standout figures among the players!

She needed to hurry back and discuss with her brother how to complete the tasks.

After saying goodbye, Zhou Jieyu slipped away at top speed and rushed back into the recruit camp in a flash.

Anran watched Zhou Jieyu leave, then checked the time. It was already lunchtime.

After going back to feed Aila, and under Aila’s forceful insistence, Anran brought Aila to the Research Center again.

The moment she entered the workshop, Anran immediately threw herself into the endless cause of mechanical manufacturing.

Meanwhile, Aila fiddled with the equipment by herself.

Crude exoskeleton armor.

That was what Anran most wanted to make right now.

Besides that, looking at her abundant Free EXP and the stack of blueprints she had already made real, Anran decided to gamble once more.

Last time, combining blueprints had given her the Flat-Type Self-Destruct Robot. What would it produce this time?

Oh, right, there were also the mechanical books in the Research Center.

Other NPCs could only use those books for study, but like the players, Anran had a chance to comprehend blueprints from them!