“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
Three rhythmic gunshots rang out, leaving ∴-shaped bullet holes on the target twenty meters away.
The topmost hole landed precisely between the eyebrows of the humanoid target sheet.
A white-haired girl wearing noise-canceling headphones stood in standard shooting posture, the smoke from the gun barrel accentuating her heroic presence.
She pressed the button beside her, and the target automatically slid toward her.
Satisfied with her three bullet holes, Jiang Yin took off her headphones, only then hearing Ning Rong’s voice beside her.
“You seem to have a real talent for shooting?”
“Of course. Back in the day, I was S Rank in CS:GO, you know. If I hadn’t started working and lost time to play…”
Jiang Yin’s voice trailed off.
She had indeed been S Rank back then, but now…
A thirty-year-old middle-aged man, playing a couple of games after work for fun, charging mindlessly with the Wild Ox or camping with the Taser like an Old Six every day, had already devolved into a C+ demon lord!
“Game skills and real-world skills are still different, aren’t they?”
Ning Rong held back a laugh.
She didn’t even know what game this was, but seeing Jiang Yin’s proud little expression made her want to chuckle.
She didn’t expect someone usually so mature to show this kind of look over a game achievement.
“But Si Beili seems to play this game too. If you have time, you can chat with her about it.”
“I’ll pass.”
Jiang Yin rolled her eyes.
“Playing games with her is like a lamb entering a tiger’s den, what’s the difference?”
“By the way, there’s a small Commendation Ceremony tomorrow. We got a collective Second-Class Merit for handling the Monster incident last time.”
“What about Squad Leader Zhang and the others? They helped too.”
Jiang Yin didn’t care about the merit.
Not to mention it’s just a collective Second-Class Merit—even a personal one is useless for a Trainee Magical Girl who only wants to hide out in the Logistics Department.
Besides, in this peaceful era, the easiest way for Magical Girls to get First-Class Merit alive is just to survive—their medals are almost standard, and if you want to use them for promotion, you really have to go fight Monsters head-on.
“They probably will too, but since they’re under a different management system, I don’t know what commendation they’ll get exactly.”
“As long as they aren’t left unrewarded.”
Those little soldiers nearly died under the Monster’s hands.
Not helping them get credited would be hard to justify.
“So, any more work today?”
“None for today…”
“Then can I get off work now?”
Magical Girls followed a flexible work schedule—as long as their assigned Patrol Mission was done and there was no emergency notice, the time was pretty loose.
Otherwise, clocking in daily would just get in the way of the kids’ studies.
Xiao Zi and Taotao, one in high school and the other in university, usually didn’t come to the Bureau unless for special incidents, just confirming Patrol Missions via the App.
So in the entire Bureau, only Ning Rong and Si Beili were real regulars—Jiang Yin, not awakened yet, didn’t count.
“Oh, and I recharged the Magic in your used Magical Device for you. It’s in your Dormitory. Remember to bring it if you go out.”
“Got it~”
Watching the white-haired girl dash away, eager to clock out, Ning Rong sighed helplessly.
She couldn’t tell if this personality was good or bad for the Bureau, but at least Jiang Yin had done her tasks well so far, so she let it go.
Saying more wouldn’t help anyway.
Old office workers are quite experienced in dealing with their bosses perfunctorily.
***
Jiang Yin’s rush to leave work was simply because talking about CS made her hands itch.
And she had a hypothesis to test.
Her CS skills had dropped sharply from S to C+ mainly because, besides losing playtime after getting a job, her physical reaction speed slowed with age, making it harder to keep up with high-level matches.
But now she’d gotten younger!
So maybe…
“Hehehe~”
The girl’s laughter rippled a bit.
This wasn’t her fault, okay? She was playing on her own account, so it wasn’t malicious smurfing~
Jiang Yin knew nothing, meow~
Just as she opened the game, ready to practice her aim, she instinctively glanced at the latest CS news—and froze on the spot.
After carefully reading the recent happenings, she slapped the table in excitement.
“Reverse scissors kick, meow!”
The CS:GO Cosmetic Item market’s insanity was well-known—even those who didn’t play CS:GO had heard about it.
A Knife sold as a bundled item for hundreds on the other side could go for thousands or tens of thousands here.
Even if they looked better, more realistic, and less plastic, wasn’t that price too much?
Anyway, Jiang Yin had never spent much on Cosmetic Items.
Her account’s set was cobbled together from box openings during her younger days.
By now, their value had nothing to do with the game skins themselves—pure speculation.
GO Seniors often joked that buying Cosmetic Items was “investment” too.
The news this time was that COGO Official had updated a new mechanism—now, using cheap red Cosmetic Items sold for a few bucks before, you could combine them into random golden items, which used to be the ultra-expensive Glove Skin and Knife skins.
This instantly caused prices of previously sky-high Cosmetic Items—going for thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands—to plummet.
For players who’d bought high, it hurt, but not fatally; for regular players, it was a huge benefit; but for traders hoarding items to inflate prices, it was a real financial disaster.
“Hurry, hurry, I want to see the air walker!”
The little white-haired one spent the whole afternoon scrolling on her phone in excitement, her cheeks flushed, forgetting to play the game—all for a taste of the freshest gossip.
But she hadn’t forgotten her Magical Girl duties.
Noticing the issue, she forwarded it to Ning Rong and explained the possible fallout in detail.
“Truly a troubled time lately.”
Ning Rong quickly arrived, understood the situation, and sighed softly.
“I’ll go write a report. There are bound to be places concealing the seriousness. Investigators are in for more overtime.”
“I’ll check with Taotao and see if anyone at her university got caught up.”
Once such a large-scale online incident occurs, it’s endless overtime for the Bureau.
Every potential ‘grievance’ target needs to be guided in person to eliminate the chance of Monster births.
This ‘CS Items Crisis’ didn’t have a massive reach, and only affected certain groups, so a week of busywork should resolve it.
Monsters aren’t born that easily anyway.
The truly ruined, bankrupt gamblers might jump right away, but most could still be saved—if you can pull them back from emotional lows, they won’t turn into Monsters.
“I heard from seniors that after that stock market Financial Disaster back then, the Bureau nearly went crazy from overtime.
Even Magical Girls from the Logistics Department were transferred to Frontline Posts to fill gaps.”
“Wait, Eagle Sauce over there recently…”
Speaking of which, Jiang Yin remembered some international news she’d been following.
The Golden-haired Baby Dragon over there stirred up the stock market like QQ Toys—prices soared one day and crashed the next, as he devoured both bulls and bears with each tariff rumor.
Each swing bankrupted tens or hundreds of thousands of investors…
“So, lately, there’s an Internal Order—Magical Girls are forbidden from going over there. It’s too chaotic.”
Jiang Yin: “….”
Truly worthy of the Black-bellied Rabbit.