These strange and valuable items were all looted by Berus during his travels before he officially became the Security Guard of the Monster Apartments.
After officially becoming the Guard, he specifically asked Gu Nian for a room to store these plundered goods.
“You don’t like this one?”
Berus casually took a rocket launcher down from the wall and handed it to Xu Xingyuan.
“This rocket launcher is powerful enough to destroy a small E-Rank dungeon with a single shot. It’s super useful.”
Hearing this, Xu Xingyuan was severely tempted!
His eyes lit up, and he reached out to take the rocket launcher.
The next second, Xu Xingyuan fell flat on his butt, hugging the rocket launcher, which was a whole half-head taller than him.
“Berus, I feel like before I can take out a dungeon or an enemy with this rocket launcher, I’ll take myself out first.”
With Xu Xingyuan’s chicken-like strength, he could only drag the rocket launcher along.
Leaving aside whether he could shoulder it, just keeping his dignity intact was a serious issue.
There was a reason for Xu Xingyuan’s weak body and small strength.
When he was still in his mother’s womb, he was often cursed and verbally abused. His family was poor, and his mother might not even get to eat meat once a month.
Add to that the fact that Xu Xingyuan was premature. A few years after he was born, his birth mother passed away, and his father remarried.
Every time his father wasn’t home, his stepmother would abuse him.
She wouldn’t let him eat, and for trivial matters, she would lock him in a dark closet.
To maintain a good reputation and avoid gossip, his stepmother specifically bought a whip that wouldn’t leave marks but would hurt like hell to punish Xu Xingyuan.
Xu Xingyuan was born weak. At the age when he needed nutrition most to grow, he was tortured and abused like this, starved, and mentally gaslighted by his whole family.
It was a miracle he had survived to this age.
The rocket launcher was a no-go.
Berus then recommended many other weapons to Xu Xingyuan.
A slightly better sword weighed as much as ten elephants; Xu Xingyuan couldn’t even lift it.
“If the attack route doesn’t work, how about trying defense?”
Berus took a replica of Athena’s shield down from the wall and handed it to Xu Xingyuan.
“Try this. As long as you carry this shield, it can block any attack in dungeons below A-Rank.”
This ability sounded incredibly awesome, like a “Get Out of Jail Free” card!
Xu Xingyuan tried to move the shield, but while Berus could lift it easily with one hand, Xu Xingyuan used all his strength and couldn’t budge it an inch.
So the shield was a pass too.
Berus looked around the room.
Swords, spears, lances, Tang blades, staffs… because of the weight, Xu Xingyuan couldn’t wield any of these cold weapons.
Firearms had too much recoil and could easily fly out of his hands, so they didn’t suit him either.
It felt like staring at a pile of rare treasures but finding none of them usable—a sense of powerlessness worse than holding a pair of chopsticks.
“Forget it. Let’s go back to that first dagger.”
He found the S-Rank dagger named Silver Dragon’s Fang and gave it directly to Xu Xingyuan.
“Even inside a dungeon, this dagger can tear through space. It can only be used once per dungeon, but it can save your life in a critical moment.”
Once inside a dungeon, unless you completed the mission or destroyed the dungeon, you couldn’t get out!
This showed just how heaven-defying the dagger’s ability was.
If players outside knew that an S-Rank item, which they might struggle their whole lives for and never get, was just casually gifted to Xu Xingyuan by Berus… they would go mad with jealousy!
The two left the room and bumped right into the Doctor coming towards them.
“What a coincidence, Xingyuan. I was just about to look for you.”
The Doctor wanted to explain the details of the D-Rank dungeon to Xu Xingyuan.
Hearing it was serious business, Xu Xingyuan immediately said goodbye to Berus and went to the infirmary with the Doctor.
“Even though your identity is a Ferryman, once you enter a dungeon, there are only two ways to get out.”
The Doctor pushed up his glasses. “First, complete the dungeon’s main mission.”
“Second, kill the dungeon Boss.”
For Ferrymen, their most important task was to bring fully matured Little Monsters into the dungeon and replace the original Boss to maintain the dungeon’s stability and balance.
In a dungeon, it was the Boss’s home turf, so their strength was greatly enhanced!
Usually, players would choose to complete the main mission as the primary condition for clearing the dungeon.
Still, there were some powerful players whose primary goal was to speed-run the dungeon and seize items.
Without triggering the death mechanism, they would take all the items, skip the troublesome clue-gathering and reasoning, and just kill the Boss, bulldozing their way through.
These players were also called “Item Hunters.”
“When the Boss is about to die or has already died, the Ferryman needs to bring a new Little Monster into the dungeon within a week.”
“Once the Boss dies, the dungeon’s power loses its carrier and will collapse bit by bit, finally being completely erased and destroyed, becoming an unconstrained third force in the Infinite Flow world.”
Xu Xingyuan asked curiously, “Third force?”
“Xingyuan, although you are human, once you become a Ferryman, starting today you will no longer belong to the human faction, but to the Monster Apartments, and even the entire monster community.”
“In the eyes of those players, you have become an NPC.”
The entire Infinite Flow world essentially had three forces.
“The first force comes from humans dragged into the dungeons. They are collectively called Players, or Outsiders.”
The Doctor explained patiently: “Players have their own community, various squads, guild powers, and Safe Zones.”
“The second force is the monsters in the dungeons. People from our Monster Apartments, and even Ferrymen, belong to the foundational power of the Infinite Flow world—that is, NPCs.”
“The last force belongs neither to players nor NPCs. They have no self-awareness, mostly just wisps of consciousness. They attack indiscriminately and appear randomly in dungeons.”
Speaking of this, the Doctor’s expression instantly became very serious.
“Their existence belongs to this world, yet doesn’t belong to it. Once you encounter them in a dungeon, never fight them head-on. Find a place to hide immediately.”
Even Item Hunters, those lunatics driven by profit, weren’t willing to provoke them actively.
“We usually call them… The Remnants.”
Xu Xingyuan memorized everything the Doctor said, listening intently the whole time.
“The dungeon you’re going to this time is D-Rank.”
The Doctor handed Xu Xingyuan a piece of paper with basic information about the dungeon.
Xu Xingyuan took the paper and read it carefully.
[Dungeon Name]: Gloomy Torii Castle
[Dungeon Difficulty]: D
[Main Mission]: Who killed the Madam, and whom did the Madam kill?
[Dungeon Hint]: Little bird, oh little bird, fly away quickly. But the sky has turned into an iron cage, roses have turned into sharp knives, and the Madam cannot fly out.