Chapter 92 Buying a House
Fang Zhuo pushed open the door to the real estate agency office. It was a small room of less than 50 square meters, with four agents sitting lazily inside.
The woman who had just complained was sitting at a workstation near the door. Above her shoulders was a huge abacus, and she could only make sounds by tapping the beads together, which was why her voice was so hoarse.
Seeing another customer rush in without stopping, she impatiently pulled over a floor plan and read her opening remarks in a completely flat tone:
"Welcome to Hengke. We are the largest property developer in the wireless dungeon. Would you like me to show you some apartments nearby?"
Fang Zhuo: "I don't want to buy an apartment. Instead, help me find rooms inside the thirty most popular office districts in this city."
Suanpan shook his head and earnestly suggested, "Excuse me, would you like me to call the nearest mental hospital for you? It costs 999 ghost money for a course of treatment, and if you have comprehensive medical insurance, you can get 80% reimbursed."
Fang Zhuo: "..."
She pushed up her glasses, which were resting on the abacus beads, and could barely make out that the man in front of her showed no signs of having a mental breakdown.
But that's not necessarily true. In all her years as a real estate agent, she's seen clients who seem well-mannered but then break down and vandalize the office after learning about housing prices, as well as people who are dirt poor but have been coming every week without fail to haggle for over three hundred years.
She tossed the beads aside and pushed the verification equipment over:
"We will verify your funds based on an estimated total price of ten times the intended purchase price."
To avoid wasting her time, she simply set the verification amount to eight million yuan in ghost money. The device would only light up green when the customer's account balance exceeded this amount.
Judging from the man's appearance, he was clearly a player who hadn't saved enough money to redeem the boss status yet, and she simply didn't believe that such a person would have spare money to buy a house.
She picked up a velvet cloth from the table and began slowly wiping her abacus beads.
The man across from her placed his wristband on the device, but instead of a red light or a flashing green light, the device turned a dim blue.
What's going on?
Is the instrument malfunctioning?
The abacus put down the velvet cloth and turned to his colleague, saying:
"Honey, my verification machine is broken. Can I borrow yours?"
My colleague came over and touched the hidden bracelet on his wrist to the device on the table. As expected, the device flashed red.
"You're lying to me again. It's not broken at all. It's perfectly fine. Wait a minute, let me check the instruction manual for you. I've never seen this blue light before."
Suanpan, half-believing and half-doubting, also placed his hidden bracelet over and found that the device also lit up with a red light. Judging from this, the device seemed to be working fine.
My colleague took a thick booklet and started looking through it, item by item:
"I've got it. It says the blue light is because the user's balance of ghost money exceeds the device's detection limit. Let me see... the limit for this device is... ten million ghost money?"
For a moment, the entire office was so quiet that even the sound of a mosquito buzzing around was exceptionally clear.
The four of them turned their gazes to the calm-looking man on the sofa, and the same thought flashed through their minds—impossible, this is too crazy.
Suanpan chuckled and put away his capital verification equipment:
"Haha, I told you my equipment was broken, boss. I'll take you to the dedicated equipment room, where there are enterprise-grade commercial testing instruments."
Her three other colleagues had never seen anything like this before, and they all sat up from their workstations. The group spent half a day in the equipment room debugging, confirming that their wristbands all flashed red when placed on the equipment.
After fiddling with it for a while, they called in a professional maintenance technician to check the reliability of the equipment. After confirming that the company's large-scale asset verification equipment was indeed working properly, they then called the customer over.
The moment the man's wristband was placed on the testing table, they all held their breath.
Blue, or rather, blue light.
Suanpan could barely hear her own voice as she asked the equipment maintenance worker with difficulty, "Brother, what is the maximum verification limit for this vertical testing instrument?"
The maintenance worker's voice trembled as he said, "One billion ghost money."
She took a deep breath.
One billion?! Is this even Chinese anymore?
Did some big shot come down to inspect our work? She deserves to die.
This balance is terrifyingly large; even the permanent bosses of S+ level high-difficulty dungeons might not have this many ghost coins.
If this money were in paper currency, it could kill her by smashing it.
The big boss had an amazingly good temper; he even cooperated with her in verifying her funds.
Recalling what she had just said in the office, she wanted to shut her sharp tongue.
"Big boss, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. It's all my fault for not recognizing your greatness. How about I kneel down for you? My kneeling posture is perfect."
"Here is a list of the city's most popular dungeons. Which room would you like to see first? I'll drive you there."
After saying that, Suanpan hurriedly ran to the refrigerator and prepared a whole plate of fruit slices for the reception, arranged various exquisite low-sugar cakes on the rotating table, and asked his colleagues to hurry up and prepare the shared business vehicle.
The abacus beads tightened around her face, turning into freckles scattered across her skin. After regaining her normal human form, she looked like a middle-aged woman in her early fifties.
"Boss, let me show you the guest room at the Dingtai Hotel in the city center first. This guest room is located next to the elevator. Because the elevator was too noisy, it was abandoned by Dingtai two years ago and the ownership was taken back by our developer."
"If you are buying the house for commercial use, you can definitely renovate it and add sound insulation cotton without affecting its actual use."
"Dingtai Hotel is also the most popular instance in our city. It can accommodate 72 players at the same time, which will definitely meet your needs."
After following the agent around the room, Fang Zhuo glanced around briefly.
This place is about 30 square meters, not very big, but it's definitely enough as a temporary shelter for a few players.
He didn't plan to buy too many assets in the first batch. He hadn't yet experimented with how to use the safe house link card provided by the system, and planned to buy a few dozen small rooms to test the waters first.
Before coming, he carefully studied the original text and the information sent by the tattooed man—due to the overall poverty and stinginess of the players and bosses, real estate in the dungeon world was not expensive.
Since the next dungeon run only yields a few hundred ghost coins, most people are scrimping and saving.
They usually use the ghost money they painstakingly save to exchange for functional items and special abilities, or some people will go to the casino to gamble for the possibility of getting rich overnight. Outside of the dungeon, they generally try to save as much as possible on daily expenses.
Most people rent "wall-mounted rooms" for a daily rent of eight to twelve ghost coins. These rooms are rarely more than thirty square meters in size and usually have shared bathrooms. Spending extra money to buy a house is really too extravagant for them.
As for meals, they were outrageously frugal, making do with a big pot of mixed vegetable leaves, and occasionally drinking a couple of sips of artificially sweetened water was considered a treat.
There was even a story about a gecko-shaped dungeon boss cutting off its own tail to cook food, which made this type of renewable mimicry popular in the dungeon boss world and rise to become the most cost-effective mimicry choice.
If managed properly, the lifespan of the dungeon bosses here is theoretically infinite. They could have easily bought up properties and rented them out to make money. However, the high danger of the dungeon world perfectly fills this gap. No one knows which time they will leave and never return, so the rent-to-price ratio here has never been high.
The rent-to-sale ratio in the dungeon world is stable at around 1 to 400, with an average price of just over 3,000 ghost coins per square meter. Using dozens of properties to test the waters is a price that Fang Zhuo can afford.
He showed the real estate agent three small apartments, leaning back in the middle row of the van, and glanced at the details sheet the agent handed him:
"No need to look at the rest, just these thirty sets. Give me a price."
Suanpan felt so moved that she almost cried.
Having worked as a real estate agent for over a hundred years, this was the first time she had ever encountered such a straightforward client.
That's a full ten houses, equivalent to half a year's worth of sales in the past... She wouldn't dare to buy so many even when playing Monopoly.
She took out her calculator and quoted a total price: "It's 7.2 million ghost money in total."
She herself felt unfamiliar with the price when it was mentioned, but the expression on the other party's face when swiping the bracelet made it seem as if they didn't care about such a small amount of money at all.
She sniffed hard, trying to draw in some good fortune.
The devout woman made a sincere wish, hoping that wealth would spread.
Then she realized that she could get a commission of over 700 ghost money from this deal, and she was so happy she almost fainted on the spot.
"Boss, which high-difficulty dungeon do you usually play? Could I have the honor of watching your live stream?"
After signing the contract, Fang Zhuo waved goodbye to Suanpan: "I'm a player from Huitong Design Company."
He ignored the other person's surprised look and turned to walk into his room at the Dingtai Hotel.
When he bought the property this time, he triggered the system's multi-property discount benefit, and the actual cost was only 6.95 million ghost coins. The savings weren't much, but they were still better than the 50 yuan discount coupon for a Maybach. Every little bit helps.
He dragged the electronic contract into the floating screen displayed on the wristband, and then selected to use the safe house link card in the system.
The next second, everything went black before his eyes.
The entire surrounding space seemed to be undergoing a silent upheaval, with all the lines within sight twisting wildly.
With a loud "boom," he found himself in a two-story building, where each floor was about forty square meters in size.
The second floor has two four-person rooms with bunk beds, while the first floor has a double room and a very small squat toilet, as well as a relatively cramped reception area.
Although the space utilization is still dense, the exquisite decoration here is comparable to the penthouse suite of the Dingtai Hotel, and the comfort level is much higher than that of the dormitory of Huitong Design Company.
For players who are driven to desperation by bosses or dungeon mechanics, there's almost nothing to complain about here.
The description of this space appeared before him—
[Name: Infinite Dungeon Safe House]
[Instructions for use: The host can freely define the amount of security deposit that players need to pay when entering a safe house for refuge.]
[Currently linked properties: 30]
[Note: The size and additional features of this safe house will increase with the number of linked properties.]
[Current number of safe house rooms: 3]
Total number of beds: 10
This safe house mechanism can ignore the size of the original property and the surrounding noise, which is good news for him. It also means that he can try to buy small rooms that no one else wants.
To take it a step further, he could even buy a separate storage room of five or six square meters, which would greatly reduce the cost of building a safe house.
After studying the mechanism of the safe house, Fang Zhuo adjusted the direction of the outer door to face Huitong Design Company, pushed the door open, and walked out.
At 2:30 p.m., he walked out of the equipment room inside the company, much to the astonishment of the eight-eyed fat man and the three players.
The fat man was startled and for a moment wondered if he was hallucinating.
He's been stationed in this instance for years, and the door to this equipment room has never been opened.
How come he just saw the God of Wealth off at the company's main entrance this morning, and now he's coming out of the equipment room?
We can't stay here any longer; this instance is being hacked.
The shock wasn't limited to just a few people within the company. The instant Fang Zhuo stepped into the dungeon, his previously blacked-out live stream automatically restarted, revealing thousands of unsuspecting viewers in the chat room.
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