DSMC Chapter 80.2

Yan Jiyun knew he wouldn’t get an answer, so most likely it would be another randomly issued task.

However, he really did need rest right now, and the single room should be the task reward for being promoted to senior zookeeper.

The system had released animal levels, but it hadn’t told him about employee levels. How far could he still be promoted later?

Would higher promotion levels allow him to find the zoo crisis faster?

But right now, he didn’t know what the promotion channels were. From the looks of it, it might be completing side quests, or it might be unlocking animals he could care for.

He wasn’t a real zookeeper, after all. Unlocking all animals would be somewhat difficult. What he studied in university wasn’t zoology at all. In fact, it had nothing to do with animals. Meeting Xixi had been pure coincidence. As for tigers and leopards, that was thanks to him being reborn as a cat. After understanding his own habits, he realized they were actually quite similar to him, so dealing with them wasn’t too difficult.

After getting the key, Yan Jiyun headed straight for the dormitory area.

This reward would definitely make other zookeepers envious or jealous. The vice director had truly pushed him to the forefront. But being hated by other keepers was still better than sharing a room with NPCs — he was now enjoying a room all to himself!

The dormitories were behind the administrative office, separated by two buildings in front, making the dormitory building quite quiet.

His room was 305. The third floor wasn’t exactly an easy floor to escape from.

The supervisor said he had three hours of rest. Did that mean that during these three hours he was immune to conflict, a reward granted by the system?

If that were true, then he had to rest properly. From the moment he entered until now, he’d been running around nonstop without much rest.

There were staff walking around inside the dormitory building, but he didn’t know whether they were keepers or employees from other positions. Yan Jiyun chose to rest for now. He could slowly learn more after resting. Undisturbed rest time was more precious than gathering information. If he didn’t rest well in the game and made a wrong decision with a muddled mind, he’d die faster.

Yan Jiyun pushed open the door to his single-room dormitory.

It was a fairly modern dorm room: a bed, a desk and chair, a wardrobe, and a small sofa. Though the room was small, it had everything. Compared to a double room, this was much better. Sharing a room with NPCs… who knew what problems he’d face.

As soon as he entered, he locked the door and checked whether the windows were damaged. Then he tightly shut the windows, leaving only a small gap in the curtains so he could check outside at any time.

He glanced at the system and saw a new countdown.

[Rest Time Countdown: 2h 57m 20s]

These three hours of rest really were a reward from the system, and he shouldn’t be disturbed by NPCs.

The system also knew better than to fleece the same sheep over and over.

Yan Jiyun suspected that the system in the Newcomer instance and the system in the Easy instance might not be the same. He hadn’t encountered such rewards in the Newcomer instance.

It might be a system that understood balance, deeply familiar with the principle of giving a carrot after a stick, knowing to fatten the pig before slaughtering it.

Bah. he wasn’t a pig.

From this, it was clear that he would face even more difficult challenges next.

Yan Jiyun didn’t hesitate and lay down on the bed, closing his eyes to rest.

For players in other habitat zones, as long as they didn’t want to attract visitors, they could rest at any time. But Yan Jiyun’s “cat” experience card couldn’t support him through an entire instance. Returning to the leopard zone was impossible. He could only move around the zoo in human form. Undisturbed rest time was extremely precious and very important to him.

During his three hours of rest, the other players began competing for popularity rankings. The zoo’s advertising promotion slots had already rotated through three waves of players, but the most formidable was still the Bengal white tiger player from the tiger zone.

Visitors loved scrolling short videos. After Yan Jiyun played with the tigers at the zoo in the morning, he made it into the top ten trending topics on short-video platforms. Later came the incident of hundreds of birds chasing human traffickers. The interview video of Xixi and him gained tens of millions of views. In the afternoon, visitors buying tickets to enter the zoo all came for the keeper, the tigers, and the black cat that could tease leopards.

That day, Xianghe Zoo flooded the entire short-video platform. Many visitors came because of its reputation, but unfortunately, in the afternoon they didn’t see the zookeeper who cuddled and played with the tigers, nor did they see the little black cat that teased leopards. That was why they turned their attention to the tigers instead.

The Bengal white tiger player reaped the benefits from this, watching the steady stream of popularity points roll in and feeling overjoyed. He hoped that zookeeper would visit the tiger zone more often! He really loved getting popularity points effortlessly.

The parrot zone player also benefited from the keeper’s popularity. This player rode Xixi’s wave of fame from 31st place all the way up to 2nd place, right behind the Bengal white tiger player. As long as he maintained a good relationship with Xixi, it would take almost no effort at all.

When Yan Jiyun woke up, the popularity rankings had undergone a dramatic change. He had been squeezed down to third from last. It seemed everyone was working very hard for popularity points. The two players ranked below him were probably ones who had been turned into extremely obscure animals, so their popularity just couldn’t rise.

After resting for three hours, all the stamina he’d expended in the morning had been fully replenished.

The single room for a senior zookeeper also had its own private washroom. He freshened up and changed into the uniform placed in the wardrobe. It was a brand-new uniform, and after putting it on, he couldn’t exactly “blend into the crowd,” because its color was different from Uncle Man’s and the others’.

Uncle Man’s uniform was gray, while his was light blue. The color of the uniform changed with employee level after promotion.

Yan Jiyun checked the in-game time. It was 4 PM, so he had rested for exactly three hours.

He hadn’t forgotten that before his break, the supervisor mentioned there would be important work waiting for him in the afternoon. It was probably another goddamn trap task.

He still hadn’t found the zoo’s crisis. All the tasks he’d done today were side quests, and then the level system was triggered. He didn’t know whether the animal level system or the employee level system would be more helpful for finding the crisis.

[Rest Time Countdown: 3s]

2 seconds—

1 second—

As soon as the countdown ended, the walkie-talkie on the desk rang again.

For a moment, Yan Jiyun wanted to complain. Why didn’t the system give him a phone? Was it afraid he’d ask visitors for help? Or was the system unable to monitor what he did with a phone?

There had been phones in the previous instance too, but he’d used the experience card less back then, and the phones in that instance were all twenty-year-old smartphones. Even whether they had full signal was a problem, so he hadn’t really used modern communication tools like phones in that instance.

When he had the chance, he had to get himself a phone. As a human, how could he not have a phone?

“Xiao Jiang, you’ve rested enough, right? It’s about to rain. Go to the wolf zone now and look for the little wolf that was just frightened. We saw on the surveillance that it seems to have fallen and gotten injured. Once you find it, immediately send it to Dr. Peng for treatment.”

Wolf? The wolf zone?

He really wanted to ask one more question: are wolves dangerous?

He’d dealt with dogs, but not wolves. Wolves and dogs shared ancestry, but they still carried wildness.

Yan Jiyun asked, “Where is the little wolf located?”

Supervisor: “Don’t know. It’s hiding now. It might have run to the neighboring elephant zone. Look around yourself.”

Yan Jiyun wanted to try asking whether he could switch tasks, but the system immediately popped up a task issued specifically for him.

[Side Mission: “Find the Injured Little Wolf”. Within one hour, finish the mission. If the player fails to complete it within the specified time, a demotion penalty will be applied; after completing the mission, the player may choose a points reward or a rest-time reward.]

So the appearance of the level system was for punishment?

He guessed that his missions might be related to employee level. When he was still a junior zookeeper, he needed senior staff to lead him. Now he could go on missions alone, and the tasks were even time-limited.

His rewards had also been upgraded, and there was an additional rest-time reward option. But it didn’t really feel like an upgrade; it was more like exchanging points for rest time.

Following this progression, the higher the employee level, the harder the tasks, the more upgraded the rewards, and the higher the survival rate in the instance?

When Yan Jiyun left the dormitory area, he ran into two keepers who were returning to rest. When they saw Yan Jiyun’s uniform, their expressions became a bit subtle.

After Yan Jiyun walked farther away, the two whispered to each other.

“A newbie who hasn’t been here long gets promoted. Does he have someone backing him?”

“If you could get into the tiger zone and play with parrots, you could get promoted too. But don’t worry, someone will deal with him soon enough.”

“True. Why bother worrying? We probably won’t see him tomorrow.”

This was the second time Yan Jiyun had heard someone say he wouldn’t live past tomorrow. Could something happen at night in the zoo?

He rode his little electric scooter toward the wolf zone.

It was now after 4 PM. The sky was turning dark and oppressive. The wind rustled through the zoo’s small woods, eerie and gloomy, just like a torrential rain was about to fall.

‘Please don’t rain.’ He didn’t want to experience that kind of downpour like the day Yiping went to ask her father for money.

He had to speed up to find the little wolf. If it rained, not only would the little wolf be miserable, he’d be even more miserable. Furry animals all disliked rain. Annoying.

And at this moment, the viewers in the livestream were extremely anxious!

[Want to be Human] livestream channel: 

“Kitten, don’t go! That injured little wolf is the alpha wolf’s son. Taking it away is basically suicide! The alpha will kill you! Fuck, I’m freaking out!”

T/N: I think a lot of you already know that the whole alpha wolf thing is based on a very flawed research on (stressed) wolves in captivity. In the wild, the leader is a bonded pair. And “lone wolves” are actually newly-adult wolves kicked out from their original pack (discourages inbreeding) so they can make a new one or join a new one.

But, this instance is placed in a zoo, plus it’s a “game” designed to make the players miserable, so the biology isn’t going to be accurate…