Chapter 817 Extra: Pandawans' Dinner
The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary
"Ahhh what a bummer." Yue Han yawned a little after ordering food at the Restaurant Train instance. "Here I thought we could finally see Boss Jin's true fighting skills. He is avoiding us as usual and his schemes are getting more cunning with each passing day."
"Hahaha! Don't be that upset. That's our boss and why we like and hate him that much at the same time. At the very least the dungeon raid was mega awesome, and at the rate we are going, I might probably need the adrenaline rush for exams in the future. And don't forget all the juicy rewards!" Bu Dong tried to encourage his best friend as he looked at his own Pandawan Shirt once more and felt a little proud of this achievement.
Despite the muddy fights at the defensive platform, he had been able to enjoy a good shower at the Luxury Recovery Instance.
The feeling of gushing hot water running down his entire body after a battle was extremely satisfying and the soap was surprisingly soft and comfy. Not too feminine either which made Bu Dong secretly hope Jin could sell that in the future. The other Pandawans had also rested up in the Luxury Recovery Instance before meeting up for a celebration dinner.
The Shopkeepers, on the other hand, had decided to stay at the Luxury Recovery Instance for some rest before they proceeded back to prepare to open their shops for the next day.
"By the way, Xiong Da, are you planning to buy the Gentlebear tickets from the shopkeepers?" Luo Bo asked as they occupied a private room of the Restaurant Train Instance courtesy of Xiong Da's generosity. Since Jin had paid him back with free credits to spend after his generous donation, he saw no reason not to treat his comrades.
"Hmmm, not really. Remember how we gathered a bunch of keys from the various dungeon instances and raids? I'm pretty sure the ticket would serve its purpose only with the keys, and they might disappear after using them once. No point collecting more tickets when we have to farm all the various keys once more." Xiong Da said.
"This is definitely an evil plot to make us go through all the past dungeons again to get those keys!" Yue Wen complained as she opened her storage ring and took out all the keys while they were waiting for their orders to get served.
"Oh, so we are comparing keys to see which ones we are missing?" Jing Ru asked while she was cleaning her rifle waiting for time to pass and her friend nodded.
"We've been a little busy with our part-time job to get some money so we might have missed some keys. Here I thought Xiong Da should have the full compilation of keys." Yue Wen deduced.
"Hahah. If the rumours are true, we could possibly earn a lot of money from converting the medals we might get in the Gentlebear instance into real money. Though I do not see how this would be profitable for us. Could be just a cashback scheme to retain even more customers." Shi Hui said as she walked around the private room and checked out the decoration pieces and the interior design.
"Can you imagine if there was a true blue way to earn a decent salary just from fighting? I would quit school and do just that in a heartbeat." Bu Dong stated nonchalantly, and Se Lang shook his head.
"If the real world was that forgiving, I would not have worked so hard." The wolf claimed as he leaned back and checked his message logs for any shift openings for the subsequent days.
"Blame yourself for having two girls to manage. I, on the other hand, can spend my extra money after my personal expenses on Supa Robot Wars." Deng Long teased his buddy and even smacked his friend's back (totally not super jelly).
"Actually, we could do that if Boss Jin sponsored us to become a guild." Shi Zuo pointed out as he too spread his keys out on the table to compare.
"Guild? Don't you mean clan? I thought we were all already in some sort of clan based on the roots of our families?" Kong Xian interjected as he munched on the complimentary peanuts that had been served on the table to keep his mouth busy.
"Nah. Some major Dungeon Suppliers have their own guilds which they use to fight in competitions."
"Ah, those interstate or even international Dungeon Sparring Competitions?" Bu Dong asked as he had watched some of those before. He might have been a local bigshot in terms of conquering dungeon supplier stores, but he would not even dare to think of competing in those when he was merely a Grade 2 back then.
"Oh! Oh! That reminds me, I've heard that this year's National Dungeon Symposium would be held in Shenzhen. Isn't that the place where a variety of dungeon suppliers come together to exhibit their dungeons for people to try out." Ruo Ying recalled seeing an advertisement on it.
"Yes, that Symposium determines which dungeon supplier would have the honours of getting their store to compete in the interstate Dungeon Sparring Competition." Shi Zuo added, and Bin Yong looked at them. "If Boss has the intention of joining, we can actually ask if we Pandawans could form his guild."
"But I remember there are a lot of high-grade cultivators joining it. Do we even have a chance?" Bu Dong asked as he recalled how spectacular some of the matches are.
"There are some mid-grade level competitions as well if I am not wrong." Ruo Ying wasn't quite sure, so she grabbed her cellphone and tried to look it up on the web.
"Haha, that sounds fun, but that would consume a lot of time from us. Doing full-time plus a competitive guild already sounds exhausting. I do not know if Bin Yong and my schedule could even fit something like that it. We already have a hard time trying to meet deadlines so we can play at this place." Jia Le shared their troubles, and Bin Yong nodded in agreement.
"Well, the improvement of cultivation did help us become more productive at work, so they gave us more leeway as long as we complete the work." Bin Yong shared since he and his dungeoneering colleagues had been working approximately 21-23 hours a day during a crunch when the rest could only manage 14 to 16 hours at most.
The improvement in cultivation clearly showed that they have acquired better concentration and lesser fatigue accumulation which started to make some of their own colleagues envious. (but most importantly, clocking overtime hours meant additional pay.)
"Well, we can ask Jin about it. Though I can already picture him claiming that 'it's too soon to be in the National Dungeon Symposium!'." Xiong Da mimicked Jin's voice, and the others all laughed. "Then after a while, he should change his mind and train us worse than commandos to reach the top."
"If you are aiming for something, might as well aim for the top." Ruo Ying chuckled, and the whole group could imagine Boss Jin saying such things.
"His earnestness would betray him." Bin Yong shook his head.
"More like his innate greed. He could actually be a tsundere towards business." Luo Bo added, and the Pandawans couldn't agree more.