Chapter 84: Admission Ticket (Second Update)

[To celebrate the arrival of the Divine Birthday, our company has specially launched the Divine Birthday Festival. We hope you all enjoy yourselves!]

The moment Yi Shou entered the game, this so-called Divine Birthday Festival announcement immediately filled his screen. The name "Divine Birthday" struck a chord of familiarity. Yi Shou quietly searched his memory, and at last, the answer surfaced. Earlier today, while browsing online with Black Snow, an ad had popped up—a snippet of local news.

It mentioned that today marked the legendary birth of a deity revered in a small eastern village of barely a thousand inhabitants. In that village, only about fifty people followed this deity. These fifty wished to hold a celebration, but the other nearly one thousand villagers opposed them, deeming it a waste of manpower, materials, finances, and various resources.

In the end, the conflict escalated into a brawl. Despite the overwhelming numbers on one side, not everyone was so zealous, not all were fighters, and certainly, not all had the time. So, the sides ended up evenly matched, battling for over an hour until the police arrived and brought the farce to a close.

And that was all—just a brief promotional blurb, easy to overlook if one wasn’t paying attention. It was clear that this so-called festival event was intended as compensation from the Digimon Corporation.

Perhaps, unable to find a better excuse, they simply latched onto this "festival" as a pretext. Maybe, when the planners were brainstorming names, someone happened to see that ad...

Regardless, this Divine Birthday Festival was clearly a form of compensation. Having reasoned this out, Yi Shou turned his attention to the rules of the event.

All the background lore and datacards aside, the gist was simple: a massive dungeon had appeared in the sky, called the Zodiac Dungeon, housing twelve bosses.

There was no limit to the number of participants. All entering players were automatically teamed up, and friendly fire among teammates was disabled. Furthermore, being defeated by a dungeon boss would not result in account deletion but would instead trigger a Digimon-like resurrection. Resurrection would not cost any experience points, for players or for Digimon alike.

The dungeon’s rewards were also considerable. The bosses had extremely high drop rates, and all loot was exclusive—whatever you saw, you could pick up. What others saw was different from what you saw, and they could only collect their own loot.

With the dungeon’s arrival came a leaderboard, ranking players by the damage they dealt. The higher one’s ranking when the event ended, the richer the rewards. It was, in essence, a treasure mountain, simply waiting for you to dig.

However, entering the dungeon was not so simple. Although the festival started at noon, the dungeon itself would not open until midnight—a twelve-hour gap.

This interval was set because there was something else to do: acquiring tickets. Yes, entry required a ticket, and each entry consumed one.

At noon, when the festival began, special Wizard Digimon and their variants started spawning in leveling zones near all the small towns across the map.

These Digimon carried the tickets. Defeating a Wizard Digimon guaranteed a ticket drop. Once obtained, players simply had to wait until midnight to enter the dungeon.

As previously mentioned, in the dungeon, teammates could not harm each other. Only the bosses could defeat players, and being defeated meant an unharmed resurrection in the login space. To re-enter the dungeon, one simply needed another ticket.

Thus, tickets were consumable, and everyone would need more than one. There were three ways to obtain tickets. First, as mentioned, by defeating Wizard Digimon. Second, since tickets were not bound to their finders, they could be traded—though, at present, few were willing to sell, and prices were steep. Third, if you defeated another player carrying a ticket, there was a chance it would drop. However, since this event was meant as compensation, the developers would likely punish such behavior. So, realistically, there were only two reliable methods.

Yi Shou’s timing was quite fortunate. Though it was already past eight in the evening, more than three hours remained before the dungeon opened—and the Wizard Digimon would continue spawning for that duration. In other words, he still had time to hunt for tickets.

Next, Yi Shou entered the marketplace. There, he discovered his guild’s insignia hadn’t sold, and having exceeded the listing time, the marketplace had returned it to his mailbox, where it now lay.

But that wasn’t his main purpose for visiting; he wanted to see how many tickets were for sale and what prices they commanded.

A glance revealed that most sellers were offering only one or two tickets each. As there were many sellers, the overall supply was decent, but each ticket cost no less than ten gold coins—meaning a thousand yuan apiece.

In the real world, most concert tickets didn’t cost a thousand yuan; tickets reaching four figures were reserved for superstar-level events.

Clearly, these sellers were simply hoping some fool would pay. After all, anyone who found a Wizard Digimon would get at least one ticket, making it unnecessary to buy them. Besides, after the event, tickets would likely become worthless.

Then again, everyone had their own way of thinking. Who could say what others might do?