The Legendary Janitor

Chapter 18: Efficiency

Di Tou sat stunned for a moment, trying to digest the information he just got before it clicked in his head.

Jumping out of his seat Di Tou frantically looked around the room trying to find a rag or a cleaning tool of some sort. Eventually, he found himself in front of one of the two dressers in the room and when he opened it he found a slew of fancy robes and undergarments and… one rattan looking dress.

Staring at the dress that looked oddly shabby compared to everything else Di Tou felt a shiver go down his spine. Hehe… Who the f*ck were you trying to trick putting in one rattan dress in the middle of a bunch of nice cloths. This was clearly what they called a instant-death flag option. Having learned his lesson Di Tou decidedly ignored the dress, in fact making sure he didn't touch anything within a foot of the dress, instead picking around the robes to find one that had a few holes in it before taking it out of the cupboard.

"Old Mu won't be too mad that I took one of his cloths to use as a rag right..?" For a second Di Tou could imagine Mu Di Bai glaring at the back of his head, whipping his head around, Di Tou confirmed that there was no one there, "Hehe… I'm sure he won't mind, after all he sent me here and told me to be him… It's not like I have any clothing or stuff of my own anyways so surely he won't mind the fact that I'm using it." Seemingly having convinced himself Di Tou tried to rip a corner off of the bottom of the robe only to find.

"F*ck! What is this robe made out of? I can't rip it at all."

Sighing, Di Tou decided to make do with the entire robe instead. In fact, this was probably a better idea now that Di Tou thought about it, as one set of clothing being a bit dirtier seemed… less conspicuous than a square being ripped out.

Coming back in front of the table, while still staring at the "Reflection page" Di Tou started wiping down the table methodically, trying his best to get into every nook and cranny.

Just as he had started thinking that his conjecture was wrong and had stopped to think for a moment, he noticed that something changed.

<-( )=======================( )->

Strength – 0.545 (+0.005)

Dexterity – 0.38

Intelligence – 0.94

Spirituality – 0.05

<-( )=======================( )->

The previous addon had disappeared, and in it's place a new one had appeared by the status [Strength]. Focusing on the new information…

"2.5% efficiency in activity [rubbing down table], paltry feedback obtained."

"F*CK, THIS LAOZHI IS GOING TO GO SUPER SAIYAN!"

For the next hour and a half or so, Di Tou ran around like a madman, looking for anything in the room that seemed even the slightest bit dirty or messy and cleaning it up. He had re-folded the cloths in the dresser (although he still avoided the one dress), rubbed down the mirror in the corner, dusted the chairs, made the bed, tidied up the papers on the desk, did his best to clean out the spiderwebs in the corners of the room, before finally plopping back down into the chair.

Of course in this period of time he had not managed to do everything that could be done in this little room, as there were some things that were much more time consuming, needed some more planning, or he just wasn't ready for mentally. But, the room had nonetheless come to look much neater and Di Tou's joints were starting to ache again.

One other thing he had discovered while cleaning the room was a couple of spiders that he had chased away, the spiders had been moving at a normal speed, so it seemed like this smaller version of the scroll did not have the effect of stopping time, which seemed to make sense to Di Tou, although he was a little bit disappointed that he didn't have a loophole cheat. After all, who the f*ck cared about a system where you had to work hard to get stronger when you could just freeze time, stab them, stab them again, pull out a cigarette and sunglasses, and unfreeze time while blowing out smoke rings to emphasize just how easy it all was for you.

Then came the moment of suspense, just how much had his status changed…

"HUH? How did I only get so little?"

<-( )=======================( )->

Strength – 0.55 (+0.005) (1)

Dexterity – 0.38002 (+0.00001) (1)

Intelligence – 0.955 (+0.015) (2)

Spirituality – 0.06 (+0.01) (2)

<-( )=======================( )->

Taking a closer look at each of the returns he got…

"3% efficiency in activity [folding cloths], paltry feedback obtained."

"Sub 1% efficiency in activity [cleaning treasure mirror], minimum feedback obtained."

"3% efficiency in activity [dusting chairs], paltry feedback obtained."

"7% efficiency in activity [tiding bed], minimal feedback obtained."

"4% efficiency in activity [arranging papers], paltry feedback obtained."

"2.5% efficiency in activity [cleaning spiderwebs] paltry feedback obtained."

"Hiash, I'm going to be worked to death… For a job that doesn't give me any pay, or any retirement plan. I'm going to get worked to death, ah?" Hehe, dear reader please do forgive Di Tou, this could be considered one of the greater traumas of his generation. With job security going down, and greater and greater difficulties with social mobility, many people find it difficult to be in a financially stable situation by the time they're 60 or 70, and end up having to work up into their old ages. Unfortunately, most jobs nowadays will also try to cycle out the old workers for younger ones, as they can start the pay lower and reduce the likelihood of higher retirement packages. Of course, this is often a rather short sighted decision, as an old hand is still an old hand. Someone who's been working at the industry for a couple of decades is often times able to do the work of three or four fresh hires, but that's a problem for another day. These older individuals would often find it difficult to find new jobs at their age, and could only find work as street sweepers, custodians, and such and are stuck working a laborious job into their old age.

As for the reason Di Tou got such low rewards. To put nicely, he was a twenty year old young man. To put it crudely, he sucked at cleaning. While it was true that he was able to make a place look like it was tidy, as to how clean it was…

As some clever readers may have guessed from the notice of efficiency and the different types of feedback Di Tou is receiving, the more efficient, graceful and effective the cleaning is, the better the reward. As for Di Tou, the only thing he did half decent was making his bed. Now you may be asking, he did it half decent and it was only 7% what the hell were these standards? The answer is, the scroll did things by the standard of the Divine, so the expectations were more then a little bit higher then what we realistically do on a day to day basis. Even a professional cleaning staff on earth might not be able to get higher than 25% on their first few tries, while a professional sanitation system in a laboratory might only reach up to 40% or 50%. As for the element of "grace," you can consider it this way, the path Di Tou was on was becoming a "Legendary" janitor. The word "Legendary" represents a lot in this world, but at bare minimum it can be considered a figure of some status, so their actions must be elegant, not just efficient.

As for how much of this information Di Tou had managed to figure out… Hehe, we'll just have to see.

Sighing, Di Tou accepted the fact that his would be a long and arduous journey and looked to the last option available with a gambler's mentality.

"Please… There has to be something good in here…"