"Forget the golden rice bowl... The bureau is swamped right now, it's not as great as you think."
Chu Wei lightly shook her head at Wang Zhifan's congratulations, then continued:
"Actually, I think if you want, you could apply at the bureau. With your skills, there shouldn't be a problem."
She seemed to have a special trust in Wang Zhifan, probably because they had once fought enemies together.
But Wang Zhifan didn't see it that way.
"The problem is actually quite big; they don't really like my type of profession over there."
Wang Zhifan hadn't interacted much with the Special Administration Bureau, but yesterday's experience clearly told him that others didn't appreciate his melee-type player profession, perhaps because the mechanics of melee classes were too primitive and inherently limited.
"Is that so? I'll ask for you when I return to the bureau."
Hearing this, Chu Wei showed a hint of surprise on her face. As a relatively rare spiritualist player, she wasn't very familiar with the plight of warrior-type players like Wang Zhifan.
The two of them chatted briefly near the bus stop. Before long, Chu Wei's bus arrived, and she left first. Before parting, she made sure to add Wang Zhifan's phone contact, saying she would notify him when she found out the results.
Wang Zhifan found this girl quite nice, not only pleasing to look at but also having a relatively easygoing personality, not to mention she was a player with both strength and potential.
After this unexpected encounter, he then took the bus to Tianhua Street.
On the way, he happened to pass by the stretch of road where he had encountered the Gray Realm yesterday and found that it had already returned to normal and was open for traffic. The previous eerie influence of the Gray Realm had disappeared, which showed the high efficiency of the Dongjiang City Special Administration Bureau in not giving the invading Gray Realm any chance to settle.
After arriving at Tianhua Street without any issues, Wang Zhifan found a new player shop to deal with the common-grade pistol he had taken from the young man in the trench coat in today's instance.
Common-grade items didn't have much value in the player market; many shops wouldn't even take them. However, due to the popularity and strength of the gunner profession among players, Wang Zhifan managed to sell the pistol rather quickly.
He speculated that the common-grade pistol he sold might be bought by players not in the gunner profession, or perhaps some gunners needing dual guns, or simply because they didn't want to risk reloading during an instance and preferred to carry multiple preloaded guns for quick access from their portable spaces.
Being a swordmaster player, Wang Zhifan chose a fine-layer pistol and matched bullets to compensate for his profession's weakness, just in case he encountered situations difficult to handle in melee. However, he was also aware that firearms wouldn't be as powerful in his hands as they would be for gunner players. Until he had the opportunity to change professions, he would focus on enhancing his swordmaster skills, with firearms as mere supplementary tools.
"Maybe I should find a shooting range to improve my shooting skills; otherwise, my accuracy will be quite lacking."
Recalling how he only hit the large wild boar once out of three shots in the instance today, Wang Zhifan couldn't help but feel uncertain.
This is the issue with not having the gunner profession system support; even if he wanted to improve his shooting, there were no shortcuts, and only actual practice would help. He couldn't just choose a Skill Upgrade Scroll from the reward list and call it a day, as that's only effective for players with the gunner profession.
After a small transaction at Tianhua Street, Wang Zhifan's bank account increased a bit, totaling about fifty thousand yuan. This amount was surely not much in Xia Country, but for someone with no family to feed and who spent conservatively, it could last for about a year.
However, Wang Zhifan was not inclined to live frugally, and some of his plans did not allow him to get by on such a small amount of money.
"Dongjiang City indeed has shooting ranges, but the prices are a bit steep, and they require some permits, which is a bit of a hassle."
Thinking for a while, Wang Zhifan felt he still needed to find ways to earn more money to overcome these difficulties.
"As it stands, the only option is to run more instances and sell equipment to earn money. But this strategy is not sustainable in the long run; the longer it goes on, the more likely it is to draw attention to my issues."
After much thought, Wang Zhifan still didn't have any particularly good solutions and could only take things one step at a time.
That afternoon, after leaving Tianhua Street, he wandered around the Dongjiang City District for a while and dealt with his lunch. Then he visited several shooting ranges in Dongjiang City, eventually choosing a relatively affordable one to practice his pistol shooting for a few hours, slightly enhancing his shooting touch.
When he returned to his apartment in the evening, after taking a shower, he only browsed the player forums for two hours before preparing to go to bed early to accumulate enough energy for tomorrow's instances.
Despite the seemingly easy process Wang Zhifan had in running instances without encountering significant danger, he was not careless at all. Each time, he ensured he was in good condition and thoroughly prepared before entering an instance.
Before going to sleep that day, Wang Zhifan received a message from Chu Wei, whom he had added to his contacts earlier that morning. This girl, already employed by the Special Administration Bureau, told him she had asked her supervisor about the conditions for melee-type players to join the Special Administration Bureau and found that the threshold was indeed quite high, typically not considering those below Lv10, and even those above Lv10 needed to undergo special evaluations to gain approval.
Wang Zhifan was not surprised by this, as he wasn't very keen on joining the bureau and being subject to various constraints, so he directly thanked Chu Wei and told her not to worry about these matters for him.
Their interaction brought them closer, and they continued to chat on their phones, getting to know each other better.
For instance, Wang Zhifan learned from Chu Wei that she would be following her supervisor, Miss He, the next day to learn how to handle Gray Realm incidents, and in the future, she might also have to learn how to assist in capturing various player criminals in the real world under the bureau's system.
These two tasks were basically the main business of ordinary employees at the Special Administration Bureau nowadays. The increasingly frequent Gray Realms of various sizes appearing in reality and the rapid increase in special criminals in the growing player community were enough to keep this official institution of Xia Country extremely busy.
However, compared to foreign countries, Xia Country had an advantage: the official institutions consistently made efforts to handle matters, never allowing chaos to spread unchecked like in Mei Country, India, and other places.