Chapter 12: Locked In

Chapter 12: Locked In

"HEY! Who do you think you are giving me commands? My boss? F*ck even if you were my boss I'd quit before listening to your sh*t. Who the hell do you think you are sending me to this place without asking me first HUH? F*ck, your grandfather, I, still haven't charged you rent for living in my head for so long, and then you kicked me out of my life? Do you think I won't sue you for kidnapping?"

Pausing for a moment to take a breath. Di Tou huffed. nOvE(1b-1n

"And what the hell is this cryptic bullsh*t? Do you think you're a great author? Do you think you're Confucius now? Just because you can manifest a giant f*cking scroll doesn't mean that you're a good writer."

With an evident difficulty maintaining his breathing and with a cherry red face (we should forgive him for this, we must remember he is an old man now) Di Tou continued on his spiel, yelling at this point.

"AND WHAT THE HELL IS THIS JANITOR SH*T HUH!? Can you not f*cking tell I only agreed because I had no other options? F*ck, if you're going to send me to this place you might as well give me a proper cheat."

"I want to be a millionaire!"

No response.

"I want to be an emperor!"

No response.

"I want to become the strongest person in the world!"

No response.

"I want to become a legendary craftsman!"

And this time... You might have guessed it, there was no response.

"F*ck!"

At this point Di Tou had mostly calmed down. Rationally, he could accept the fact that someone, or something, that could send him across the world and into the body of an old man probably wasn't something he could reason with. Hell, he should be happy that he was alive and got a cheat at all. But emotionally... Steady and mature as Di Tou may have been, he was nonetheless still a young man just shy over twenty. As if the shameless old Mu Di Bai wasn't enough, now he had a freaking floating color eating scroll telling him what he was going to do, and the voice... That voice that was more of a pest then the paparazzi were to Tom Cruise, or the creepy uncle across the street is to a young girl, the damn voice that wouldn't leave him alone, and when he finally *finally* responded to it decided to send him, WITHOUT CONSENT might he add, to another world. Hiash. Life could really be hard sometimes.

Let us all applaud Di Tou for keeping his head to this point.

But yes, Di Tou had mostly calmed down, and most of his exclamations were mainly to vent some of the stress and trauma he had experienced over the last few hours and had to keep in his heart for fear of offending the pesky old Bai next to him. After that, he figured he might as well try his luck, but it seemed like... It seemed like this janitorial position was the type of position a compulsive gambler might be in after defaulting on their debt a couple times. You either take it, or you take it, or we'll break your arms and then you take it.

As for running away...

Hehe.

"Alright you win, I'll be a janitor."

No response.

Di Tou's face: DAFAQ?

"Hey did you not hear me? I accept, I'll be a janitor."

No response.

"..."

"Look, I think I'm already being very understanding here, could you give me a response already?"

No response.

"Brother... Have you ever heard of the phase 'going too far' because I need to tell you, it was too far when you sent me here, it was much too far when you pushed a janitorial position on me, and you might as well be in outer space right now with how far this joke has gone, just let me take the damn position and get out of here already."

Di Tou didn't know it, but he wasn't all that far off in saying that the voice was in outer space.

And of course, the obligatory:

No response.

Aiya, this could be considered the classical example of evolving the technology, but not evolving the designer. Here we had a scroll. A magical scroll that floated in midair and needed almost no power consumption, as it was able to maintain itself through the energy (color) of the environment around it. In fact, it even had time stopping powers attached for no additional cost! The tech was really there, but the designer forgot to include the most important part. How to use the God damn thing. It was like buying a brand new microwave, and finding it had functions for popcorn, fish, pork, rice, frozen, and so on, all these options that are technically helpful, but realistically never used, but the button to operate it was for some reason was inside the refrigerator. This is a joke of course, this sort of thing would quickly go bankrupt, but it is necessary to consider the impracticality of some designs as they evolve with greater and greater technology. This scroll for instance, was rather old fashioned in the way it needed to be used...

Di Tou, at this point, realizing that this scroll couldn't really be spoken too started to walk towards the scroll to see if maybe he needed to touch it only to find...

The bloody scroll was moving with him!

F*ck!

Was he going to be trapped staring at a scroll for the rest of his life?

Just then he saw a rather rounded and fist sized stone and the ground, and he came up with the brilliant idea of throwing a rock at the damn thing.

As he was kneeling down to pick up the rock (it was hard to bend down directly as an old man), he heard,

"The Decree has been accepted."

Di Tou's face: DAFAQ?

And here we have an example of going about it the entirely wrong way, and yet coming to the correct answer. Of course, in reality, 99% of the time when such a situation occurs, it's because one has consulted their dear friend the internet, and found the answer before writing down nonsense for their reasoning. This Decree was rather old fashioned in that one had to kneel to accept it, as Oracles and Kings had done in the past to accept messages and blessings.

Before Di Tou's eyes, the scroll began to roll itself up, before rapidly charging towards Di Tou, disappearing on contact.

Then over the course of the next minute or so, colors began to seep back into the environment around them, and once everything was back to normal, time resumed.

And the moment things returned to normal...