Chapter 2: Handphone
"So he really did know that I wished to be a dungeon supplier. I thought I kept it secret." Jin whispered. The dungeon supplier is one of the most upcoming and lucrative jobs that a number of cultivators wished to be.
What is a dungeon supplier? A question an average commoner would usually ask when modern cultivators described their hobbies to them. The dungeon supplier profession existed ever since the enforcement of strict laws to keep the wildlife in check.
With the advent of resurrection, cultivators started to be reckless in their pursuit of cultivating. In the past, most cultivators would fight against the wildlife at their own risk. They would group and band together to fight against monsters previously impossible due to their high cultivation levels which caused a threat to the cultivators' life.
The resurrection procedure allowed them to be bolder and those rich cultivators would keep trying against those high levelled monsters to bring more riches in because of the rare resources they salvaged from the rare monsters.
However, these hunts caused a disruption in the wildlife food chain and the enforcement of laws made it illegal to hunt most of the wildlife without a permit. That's where the profession of dungeon supplier comes in.
High levelled cultivators in the past created a dimension space, which allowed them to replicate the monsters that were living in the wild. These dimension spaces gave new cultivators the chance to practice against seemingly real monsters to enhance their familiarity with real-life combat as well as help them develop new strategies. These were initially available in famous sects until someone decided to do it as a business.
Hence, the dungeon supplier profession arose. The dimension space was not per say a dungeon but it was more of an instance. Cultivators based on their experience fighting against the monsters will replicate the same monster into the dimension space.
He takes a fee for a cultivator or a group of cultivators to fight the monsters. The good thing about the dimension space was that if the monsters were stronger than the cultivators and succeeded in 'killing' the cultivators, all the participating cultivators suffered were days of unconsciousness.
As the dungeon supplier business booms, various kinds of dungeons were created to appeal to the new market. Technology started to be incorporated into the dimension spaces which allowed low levels cultivators to fight against 'rare' monsters at a lower difficulty.
Some cultivators in the business even fused the magic of dimension space with technology to create all new monsters for cultivators to fight against. Some business even gave rewards for completing the dungeon or instances. However, the market started to become diluted with more or less the same type of monsters. The fights or formulas of fighting were more or less scripted but people still like a dose of a fight to release pent-up stress.
With the current technology, commoners can even experience what it is like to be a cultivator and some even managed to awaken as one, making the dungeon supplier job a fairly lucrative one. However, the conditions to become a dungeon supplier gets harder with each year.
The use of technology made it expensive to maintain if the businessman's cultivation is low. The alternative was to get into the vocational school for dungeon suppliers which required a high cultivation and grades to learn about the dimension space. The course itself was not cheap either.
Jin wanted to be a dungeon supplier in order to get creative authentic feelings he felt fighting the dimension space Ming had summoned. Ming had much experience in the army so fighting monsters were his bread and butter. His friend gave him a scroll that contained a dimension space and Ming decided to show Jin how real monsters can behave.
The goblin Jin fought gave him jitters to this day but the experience was extremely exhilarating. It could not be compared to the current dungeon suppliers in the market. Jin even tried the 'most authentic' five stars dungeon supplier that grandfather Ming brought him to on his 21st birthday but it was still inferior.
Ming said the monsters were a reflection of the cultivator's experience. He had been fighting goblins for years when he was just an infantry soldier so he knew its strengths and weakness. "Nothing can be more authentic than the thing that is fighting desperately for the sake of its own survival." Ming had once said.
As Jin was staring into space, he had totally forgotten about the screen that was in front of him. It was blinking white and black, telling Jin to place his phone in front of the screen. Jin did what he was told taking his handphone out of his pocket and placing it on the screen.
The handphone fits nicely onto the screen. It instructed Jin to remove his hand while leaving the phone on the screen. He was a little sceptical but he believed that the Systems he read about had their own quirks. Therefore, he released his hand and the handphone was floating in mid-air while stuck to the screen.
Jin was amazed when he saw his handphone starting to change its shape slowly. It got a little larger like the latest Zamzung Note 55 but was black in colour with a carbon fibre coating along with a sleek back cover. In a minute, the screen of the phone blinked and a progress bar appeared as if it was installing something.
The installation was fast and the screen immediately asked for a fingerprint. "Jin, you can pick it up now," Yun said in his head. Jin picked the phone up and the black and white screen where the phone was being held disappeared.
He placed his left thumb on the allocated slot provided by the phone and it accepted the print. The phone subsequently asked for a retina scan and he gave the phone what it asked of him. After scanning both of his eyes, the phone restarted and showed a weird OS picture of a sleeping panda instead of the standard Ant-droid picture.
"Ehh Yun, mind explaining? What did the System do to my phone?" Jin questioned.
"Jin, the System transferred some of its capabilities to your phone for easy access and usage as you start out as a young budding dungeon supplier," Yun replied.
The phone went to its home screen and Jin did not see much of a difference but a notification appeared in front of it as if the phone was trying to communicate with Jin.
"The phone will now automatically unlock itself when you are viewing it. No one else will be able to access your phone since the phone now requires the touch of your hand and the look from your eyes. -Yun"
"So you can communicate me via the phone or through my head?"
"I can do both depending on the situation, so you will not look like a fool in public. Ming had some weird gazes back when he was using the System. It was amusing, to say the least. Hahaha!" Yun gave a smiley emoji on the phone.
"So what else can this new phone do?" Jin asked and a multiple number of messages appeared.
"A lot, firstly the specs of this phone had been upgraded to the 10 times stronger than the strongest current PC configuration in the world. It is even stronger than the computers handling the particle accelerators. It will upgrade the hardware by itself when necessary."
"You will never need to charge this phone ever again. The battery life is infinite and you do not need to worry about damaging it. The screen is of top military grade and is able to stop a bullet. You can drop the phone from 101 floors, and the cover of the phone will protect the phone."
"In the event, it gets damaged, the System will change it for you again on the spot," Yun added a happy 😀 emoji in the text too.
"What this phone ultimately does is to serve as an aiding tool for you to become the best dungeon supplier your grandfather wants you to be. You can take a look in the phone menu."
Jin noticed that there were many new apps in the phone which he should slowly go through. He felt curious when he saw an app called 'Personal Stats'.
He pressed on it and a stressed panda looking at a clipboard appeared as the starting screen for the app.
*********
Name: Xie Jin
Profession: Dungeon Supplier wannabe
Cultivation Level: Grade II
Monsters: Nil
Dungeon: Nil
**********
He looked at how pathetically empty his stats were and decided to press the home button to try another app but Yun stopped him and told him to go to the Missions App directly.
There, he saw a number of missions available for him but found two that were in red, indicating high importance. "Get your first monster!" and "Get your store up and running!"
"Looks like I will try the mission 'get your first monster!' first." Jin tapped on the phone again and a list of conditions appeared in front of him before a big red button appeared at the bottom stating Mission Start. "I guess this is the start of everything." Jin put his phone down on the table and excitedly ran into his room to get geared up.
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