The discussion between Jin and Lynn felt like a distant memory as that was the few times they interacted alone as a couple. In the next couple of weeks, they had been running around the store and coordinating for the PandaVerse Festival. What was more shocking was how time had gone by and they were only a day before the official PandaVerse Festival.
Jin had never been more tired in his life and yet so satisfied with the burden of work on his shoulders. As he laid lazily on his office chair within the Dungeon Maker, the System was going through the entire PandaVerse schedule once more with him to ensure that he was not adding any additional stuff into the chaos.
Oh and that National Dungeon Supplier Symposium? Jin could not even get out of the store because of the issues he had to settle personally as well as problems that were erupting non stop from the big headache coordination. In the end, the Demon Exorcists employed under him went since there were exactly four tickets given to him by Ke Loong.
While Jin felt a little disappointed that he was not able to personally attend the National Dungeon Supplier Symposium, he felt it was a decent alternative to let the Demon Exorcists try things out. Unlike him, they had no title under them, no obligations and most importantly, no one recognised them well enough. Jin believed that if he were to walk into the Symposium, he probably would cause some commotion that would not end well for his upcoming PandaVerse Festival.
“If it’s you, I do not think you will come out of the Symposium unscathed. You are like Peppers, a walking timebomb.” The System also stated that it was the better solution to let the Demon Exorcists enjoy the work of other Dungeon Suppliers. They then can have a better objective of how the rest of the country’s Dungeon Suppliers could compare up to Jin.
Suffice to say, they continued to prefer Jin’s dungeon instances more as they could feel how stale the atmosphere was in most of the dungeon instances they attended during the Symposium. However, Rong, the Ox Demon Cultivator, did say that there were some good snippets of the story theme from some of the Dungeon Supplier but all of them had stated that this was their first few products with story themes in it.
Unbeknownst to Jin, he had indirectly influenced the Dungeon Supplier community with the advent of storytelling within their instances. Even the big names were trying their hand onto this intricate storytelling theme but apparently, their servers and hardware did not have the capacity to run them well enough. Some even thought that was why Sea Mesh worked very closely with Dungeons and Pandas as the two had shared some new age technology that allowed them to have the cutting edge. But even their corporate spies were unable to get any information about it since people who they tried to bribe or the systems they tried to hack were to no avail. There’s simply a blank space between them and the Panda Clan affiliates.
The streaming of Dungeon Instances had also become a rather hot topic and it was pretty obvious that the Symposium was trying to get onto the trend as fast as they could, but sadly not fast enough. Unlike Jin who had already invited some of the major streamers to attend the PandaVerse, the Symposium was still an old dinosaur going for traditional media coverage. Their live conference was all about bringing in a few media critics to talk about the possible new trends of dungeon instance exposure as well as the change of themes among dungeon suppliers.
Even Su Zhen, the White Snake Demon Cultivator, who was well known for being studious among the four of the Demon Exorcists had reported that the conference was ‘boring af’ and a total waste of time. There were a lot of people who got disinterested minutes into the talk that they just walked out of. While it was quite a common sight for the Symposium conferences to have their halls empty, this year’s walkout rate was exceptionally high when some of the audience asked questions with regards to Jin and his store. No answers were given except for some passive aggressive threats or negative remarks with regards to his attitude towards the Dungeon Supplier community.
“They emphasised that the community must stay strong and not be an outlier like certain dungeon supplier blah blah blah. You get the story, they are trying to blacklist you but they can’t yet because of your royal status and the people supporting you. I suggest you look out for sabotage with Agent Kong Rong.” Su Zhen nearly yawned as she gave her summary report to Jin who was still keeping tabs on the Symposium even though he was in a mess of his own making .
Separately, there was a Dungeon Supplier instance competition where the audience could try out the hardest instances each supplier could ever create and if they could emerge victoriously, they would earn a small token. Collecting a certain number of these tokens would yield them a consolation prize but beating each and every available dungeon instance would achieve the grand prize of various merchandise. From the always out of stock Playbox 5 to the incredible Xstation 027, there were a slew of gaming accessories and household gadgets available for grabs. What’s more they even throw in an extremely high end Zony wide screen television which cost at least six figures and an electric car into the mix for the first person who completed it.
However, it was a first come first serve kind of win.
For the first ten participants who were able to get it done would get five of such merchandise largely thanks to their benevolent sponsors and the subsequent runner-ups would only receive one of such merchandise until the prizes were all gone. And without a doubt, the four Demon Exorcists were rushing the entire dungeon instances to compete to see who could win the top grand prize of that electric car.
It’s not like they needed the car but rather that’s the only excitement they could get in this National Dungeon Supplier Symposium which had overhyped to be the best one yet in this century. They obviously know that that would only happen if Jin was in it. And since this Symposium had wasted enough of their time, it’s time to plunder the rewards to compensate for their ‘losses’.
(Hint: They did win the first four prizes including the electric car and Rong was not particularly happy that a certain demonic horse cultivator got it just because he got lost to the prize redemption counter.)
