The road chase is still ongoing while Xü Beijin was talking to the young man.
Yet, along the way, when Scapegoat checks the rear-view mirror, he suddenly yells in shock, “the car is gone!”
Nobody responds.
Not that it’s unexpected——Look at everyone present on this car. One Lin Qin who’s popular like this. One Selfish, One Trash.
Scapegoat is feeling pretty hopeless by this point.
It’s going to fall to him to carry them or what?
“Keep going,” Mu Jiashi is the one that couldn’t take this dead atmosphere anymore, and he adds, “try and see if there are any other scenes to explore. There are no clues so far in the corridor and on the road.”
Scapegoat goes ‘phew’ as he maintains a steady speed.
Where did the man in black go?
Xü Beijin has a guess, and when he turns the stream back to the bedroom, it is filled with screams just as expected.
“Fuck! What’s going on?! Why is there someone else here?!”
“Shouting out ‘three’ was incorrect… Why…”
Just now, when the third “Number off!” was ringing in their ears, Laosan quickly said “Three” in response.
Yet, the moment he said that, the wrathful male voice chastises them even louder than before, “you trash can’t even number off properly!”
The Missiontakers are looking at each other nonplussed in the pitch dark room. Why is ‘three’ wrong? Aren’t you supposed to number off going 1, 2, 3, 4?
Before they can discuss what this means, the shy woman suddenly yelps.
“What?”
She says with a trembling voice, “some… someone… someone is touching me.”
“What?”
“We’re all away from you!”
In a Nightmare, never casually approach other Missiontakers is an unspoken rule. This is to eliminate suspicions of Carddealers stealing cards.
The shy woman says with a really anxious tone, “no, no, I mean… someone, suddenly appeared!”
The next second, the familiar tone coldly chuckles——the tone of the man that told them to number off——who then goes on to say, “a useless piece of trash that can’t even count properly can just go to hell!”
Then the man starts randomly swinging his big machete everywhere.
The four Missiontakers wanted to dodge, but they can’t see a thing in this pitch darkness. They do not know where the weapon is coming from or whether they are about to be slashed next. They don’t even know whether the person next to them is friend or foe anymore.
The woman is yelling out in pain while crying in desperation.
The three men are trying to fight against this man that suddenly appeared, yet it is as if he has some kind of cheat. He can dodge all their attacks, but his machete keeps swinging accurately at their heads, their torsos, their arms and legs.
Soon enough, the room is filled to the brim with the sickening smell of blood, but they are still alive.
They will die eventually, but not yet. This is a slow torture until death. Blood continues to flow out of the wounds on their exposed skin. Their clothes are completely drenched.
They haven’t any strength to resist anymore, and yet, it seems the man knows as well. He continues to chuckle along merrily and cruelly as he slows his pace down. The big machete is still slashing down their skin, slash, by agonising slash.
Laosan is gritting his teeth. He can faintly hear the shy girl crying, and his dulled mind is wondering if they are all about to die. Can’t it be quicker? This torture… this torture…
His nose is chock-full of the stench of blood. He wants to puke.
His body is already overtaken by a sense of weakness. Somebody has already fainted next to him, it seems. He is glad he can’t see the terrifying scene in the room clearly. In this dark, completely unknown space, plus the wounds on his body and the smell of rusted iron, he could go mad.
When suddenly, a voice shouts out besides them yet again, “count off!”
Laosan is blanking out wondering if this is his hallucination before death.
His fingers are already growing stiff and cold. The man that was swinging the big machete… Is he even in the room anymore? Did he disappear as quickly as he appeared?
Laosan can barely hold himself up. His vision is red. Just red. It is probably the blood from his head covering his eyes.
Crimson——Darkness——Crimson——Darkness. It’s so damned dark.
He lightly whispers, “four.”
Then he holds his breath, waiting for the voice that might ring out in the air… Then, he sighs in relief. It seems he was correct.
… One, two, three four. One, two and four are correct. Why is only ‘three’ incorrect?
Is this counting error going to keep happening after that? What number is it besides ‘three,’ anyway?
He is trying really can’t focus due to the pain and weakness. Why is the man gone? Are the other Missiontakers still alive? Are all of them just hurt and not yet dead?
He coughs. His throat is full of blood too. He tries to speak up, even if his voice is but a whisper, “is anyone awake?”
No answer comes.
His eyes are wide open, but he is practically blind. He is alive, but in this pitch black space, he is practically dead.
Laosan’s mind is digressing again.
Though his instincts are still counting in his mind, counting the time – a skill that all Missiontakers in the Tower possess by heart.
Tools for measuring time, watches or whatever, are extremely rare in the Tower, but grasping the flow of time in the Nightmare is extremely important, so all Missiontakers have to force themselves to keep time.
Some Missiontakers can even count extremely accurately, completely in step with time passed in reality, though most Missiontakers are only capable of roughly keeping an accurate time. If it goes on for too long, the inaccuracies become wild.
Laosan can do nothing in his weakness from losing too much blood. He is still counting inside, all dazed. About one minute has passed when another “Count off!” rings out.
He almost sighs in relief.
One minute.
That is the amount of time between two counts. It means they must produce one number in a minute and also think about the number to report next.
He knows one, two, three and four are actually 1, 2, ? and 4, then five…
He is hesitant.
If he is wrong, the man with the machete will probably appear again.
The man that has tortured them in this dark room for a whole minute.
This is the first run of the Nightmare, so he probably isn’t too powerful yet. It is likely to change, however. At least right now, though, the man is only here for a minute, and after slashing his way about for a minute, a new round of ‘count off’ begins, and he is gone.
It seems that he appears whenever the number is wrong as a punishment. He attacks for one full minute.
If they are able to stay alive for minute after minute, they might just finish counting off all the numbers and then achieve an ending.
But…
But how could they possibly survive another session like this?
Laosan coughs again. He is sitting on the ground while leaning on the bed behind him. His consciousness is drifting. He might be gone soon.
All the other three are unresponsive. They haven’t died yet because the Nightmare is still ongoing. They might have all fainted, though.
Laosan is smiling in bitterness. He is fearful of the number he is about to say. What if the fifth one isn’t 5? Then a fresh round of punishment begins, the man with the machete will be here…
He is trying to curl up as much as possible, but his slight movement tears his wounds open again. The pain makes his fright even greater. Still, gritting his teeth, he shakily says, “five…”
Then.
“You trash can’t even number off properly!”
“No!!!”
Laosan screams out, as the man emerges in the room again. He is coldly chuckling, and mercilessly slashing with his big machete again.
They do not last the minute.
The Nightmare restarts.
Laosan’s eyes shoot open again. They are back in the pitch darkness. He is still breathing heavily from shock.
In the stream, the viewers are all screaming ‘aaaaa’s watching the mad murderer in black under the night vision camera. They are terrified.
“BEIBEI AAAAAAAA”
“Bei, plz, my san is dropping!!!”
“this man is just a psychotic murderer… he looks so excited when he is killing…”
“urgh, is he pure npc or actor like Beibei? if hes actor… is he insane?”
“Hard to say. In fact, if Beibei wasn’t the host, I’d have assumed he was an NPC”
“someone said earlier ‘that boy is suspicious,’ does that mean… the boy is the owner? then who is the man in black? whats their relationship? maybe the boy fears him cuz this is nightmare?”
“who knows… or the boy is diff in the nightmare and grown up to become this crazy murderer? maybe he is scared of himself”
“so y r they counting in the first place?”
“? why’s everyone analysing?”
“uwuwu… that scene was too scary, u know”
“AAAAARGH im finally thinking again after swinging that scene out of my head! y did u mention it!”
“but jeez, even a scene like that wasn’t censored to oblivion? I’m guessing there’s someone behind the host hehe”
“stop with the scary ‘look behind u’ ok?! quit scaring ppl!”
“… are you even viewers of a horror game stream or not… you’re all chickens lol”
“i wanna hear the detective dalao’s analysis”
“… Watashi ga kita! Let me put this out first, since we don’t have much information, most of this is my imagination for the sake of consistency.
First, the only concrete piece of information – The Missiontakers are divided into two groups, and because Actors act as NPCs, we will not consider the Actors themselves for now.
The most direct problem with the Missiontakers divided like this is Prisoner’s dilemma – Cooperation is much more difficult at this point.
While the Missiontakers in the bedroom are still unaware of the other Missiontakers, but I guarantee that the Missiontakers over at the corridor are already cussing after this restart.
In this situation, with unequal and limited access to information from the other side, especially given this mutual pulling-your-leg in the very beginning, a True End is likely difficult; it seems even a Normal End, potentially by counting off to completion, is at least equally as difficult?
All in all, I am really pessimistic about how this Nightmare will play out.”
When the detective dalao mentioned the corridor, Xü Beijin has also switched the camera source over, and as expected, the four Missiontakers all look like they’re doubting the value of living.
Scapegoat is cussing, “damn it, all four of us were still alive, why did it restart?”
Selfish sneers and says, “must be Missiontakers in the other scenes that were so incompetent they held us back.”
Mu Jiashi is murmuring, “no way, why are there two groups? There are definitely cooperative elements, then, but we didn’t even meet each other… Were they in the service area or…”
The mention of the service area makes Selfish super irritated, saying, “we were almost inside too, now we have to run away again! Dumbasses! We wasted a run.”
They drove along the road the last time and the entrance to the area was already in sight. Then, the restart drops onto them like a cold blanket.
It sure makes them pissed as all hell.
And that spiteful language from Selfish makes everyone uncomfortable too.
Selfish and Scapegoat hate each other, Mu Jiashi wants to have nothing of it, and Lin Qin is silent the whole time.
Both the bedroom and the corridor teams are in rather bad shape at this point.
The stream is applauding the detective dalao’s analysis again——As he thought, the corridor team is already lambasting the other team.
And given how inactive Xü Beijin has been this entire stream, that new audience even types, “i feel like the dalao is even more of a host than the host?”
“lolol, Beibei ur just the director who changes cameras”
“hahaha, btw Beibei, gonna go explore this round?”
“everyone else’s nightmare: thrilling escape and chases; Beibei’s nightmare: a casual stroll”
“Beibei ‘the lazy salted fish'”
“Beibei, you’ve been pretty quiet… You decided to change the camera to the bedroom earlier from the road, right? What led you to that decision?”
The detective dalao’s comment makes Xü Beijin think a little.
When he realised the car of the man in black was gone entirely, he wagered something must have happened in the bedroom, that’s why he changed the camera over.
He didn’t talk about his thoughts because, well, he’s used to it and also… he’s also interested in hugging the detective dalao’s thighs.
Though normally viewers wouldn’t look too kindly at that. It would look just like Xü Beijin is a noob host that has zero presense even in his own stream.
While this audience is more tolerant thanks to Xü Beijin’s appearance, but he has been too quiet nonetheless.
Xü Beijin rubs his nose and hangs his head in shame, realising that he didn’t even try to adjust to being a newbie host. In the last stream, there was someone in the bookstore most of the time, so it was reasonable to avoid talking and focus not on the stream but on the Nightmare.
Yet, it is he who wants more information on the outside world from the audience, so he should be much more proactive.
He is definitely not a natural extrovert, and because he looked so antagonistic, he was avoided a lot. And after all this time spent idly in the Tower, to try to fish out information from unsuspecting strangers in their interactions…
Sure sounds like mission impossible.
Though he still has to try.
On the surface, it looks like Xü Beijin mulled over it for a few seconds before apologising, “I’m really sorry, everyone. I was too quiet.”
“lol its fine, Beibei you can keep being you, I like the TV drama experience [doge emoji]”
“Beibei, you can start by talking with our comment barrage!”
“is this genuine kindness i see u guys displaying? no! u merely lust for our Bei’s body!”
Xü Beijin’s face is flushing at this point. He quickly says, “I understand now. I will try to talk with the comments more from now on,” then he ponders a little before saying, “would you like to hear my own thoughts about the Nightmare?”
The detective dalao types to cheer him on, “Beibei go go! I also want to hear what you think about the Nightmare”
Xü Beijin then begins speaking after a few seconds, “in the road chase just now, the man in black disappeared abruptly, that led me to suspect something has happened in the bedroom.
And… if I could confirm that the bedroom had an incident and the man in black stopped chasing the Missiontakers on the road because of that, that would suggest the man in black cannot appear in both locations at once.”
The detective dalao agrees, typing, “That’s right! If the man in black could only be on one side at a time, then that would give a lot of leeway to the Missiontakers. The problem now, though, is whether they can work with each other in the first place.”
Xü Beijin sighs to say, “also, there really is too little information at this point.”
As an extra, he really knows nothing…
Really, he’s not even much different to the Missiontakers in this respect, besides having way more limitation than them.
Suddenly, Xü Beijin recalls that young man he saw earlier.
He must also have been an Actor, and he was probably in this same service area, seeing how he was able to come that early.
Xü Beijin closes his eyes to think. His memories span out like a large painting, with scenes in the past still vividly visible on them. His memory has always been pretty good, even though he rarely tries to recall past events.
Suddenly he murmurs, “the supermarket…”
“?”
The viewers all type question marks in response on the comments.
Xü Beijin sees as soon as he opens his eyes and explains, “that Actor from earlier was wearing the clothes of a supermarket cashier,” he explains how the Actor must also be in the service area, and then hesitantly asks, “we could check on the Missiontakers’ progress. If they aren’t coming over to the service area for a while, we could go chat with the cashier if you want to see it?”
“owo sure!”
“Beibeis gonna go for a walk? lets go!!”
“he could know more info too! Beibei fight!”
While the detective dalao is still absorbed with analysing the truth of this Nightmare, the rest of the audience are cheering… Well, ‘the rest,’ meaning 3 among a grand total of 4 viewers.
Xü Beijin isn’t any less enthused himself, though, and knowing that horror game streams are apparently not popular on the outside, being able to win 4 followers (with his handsome face, but never mind) is already good enough for a first ever streamer.
He then turns his attention back towards the camera. The four people in the corridor should be escaping now, but he realises that, in fact, in this short period of time the corridor team has actually already run into the bedroom team!
He can see all eight people yapping on the screen. The scene is quite chaotic.
Xü Beijin listens carefully with furrowed brows and finally understands what happened. After the Nightmare restarted, the bedroom team decided not to number off immediately first, but to try to leave the bedroom. And they actually succeeded.
In the last run, after they gave a “one,” the bedroom door was locked dead; this time, they directly tried the doorknob and succeeded. The exit led into a corridor, and they saw the other four people immediately.
Laosan here is really surprised.
He really thought there were only the four of them in the entire Nightmare.
The three brothers walked into the ‘door’ to the boy’s house, so naturally they were together. It was already surprising that there was another shy girl besides them, but four other Missiontakers here… Aren’t there way too many Missiontakers in this Nightmare?
Each Nightmare has a minimum and maximum number of participants possible. Some are purely solo Instances for one person only, and some are required to have at least some number of people.
At night time, all Tower residents sleep——barring Xü Beijin——and doors can now be opened to enter Nightmares.
During the night, as long as a resident is still asleep, Missiontakers can step into the door and wait for the Nightmare to start.
If the maximum number of participants is reached, the Nightmare starts early; otherwise, it will continue to wait for new Missiontakers until some time before dawn to start.
If the number of Missiontakers waiting does not even meet the minimum requirement, the Nightmare will not start.
They might end up wasting a night, of course, but for Missiontakers, they are actually unconscious when ‘waiting’ for a Nightmare to start, as if they are sleeping, and they wouldn’t notice the passage of time at all.
An implication of this is that unless a Nightmare starts and they can see each other, nobody would know exactly how many Missiontakers are in a Nightmare and who they all are.
This modus operandi that is no different to randomly grouping irks many Missiontakers who swear it forces them to relive the terrible experience of being assigned a terrible teammate in certain games before everyone ended up in ‘Escape.’
And now, Laosan is exhausted watching everyone argue in front of him.
Yet his meek personality means that when he sees them——By them, he mainly refers to Selfish, Scapegoat and his own Laoda——viciously bickering, he is but helpless.
According to what they just said, this is the first time any of them ever entered this Nightmare. None of them have heard a useful thing about this Nightmare in the Tower. Yet, despite this severe lack of information, they still have time to keep pointing fingers at others and chastising.
Selfish is accusing the bedroom team of sabotaging their efforts with almost intentional timing; they were almost at a key scene, but they died and the Nightmare restarted.
Laoda retorts by asking how there is, quote, “any fucking way” they can know their progress, and then questions Selfish back——Where were they and what useful things were they doing when their team was being slaughtered by the man in black in the bedroom?
Scapegoat is just furious at everyone. Whenever someone scolds someone else, he argues in favour of the scolded person, fanning the flames on both sides and pissing everyone off.
Meanwhile, Mu Jiashi glances at the merrily arguing trio, then back at the door from which the bedroom team exited. The door has already gone back shut now. He hesitates for a moment before walking forth to try to open the door.
It wouldn’t budge.
The road chase is still ongoing while Xü Beijin was talking to the young man.
Yet, along the way, when Scapegoat checks the rear-view mirror, he suddenly yells in shock, “the car is gone!”
Nobody responds.
Not that it’s unexpected——Look at everyone present on this car. One Lin Qin who’s popular like this. One Selfish, One Trash.
Scapegoat is feeling pretty hopeless by this point.
It’s going to fall to him to carry them or what?
“Keep going,” Mu Jiashi is the one that couldn’t take this dead atmosphere anymore, and he adds, “try and see if there are any other scenes to explore. There are no clues so far in the corridor and on the road.”
Scapegoat goes ‘phew’ as he maintains a steady speed.
Where did the man in black go?
Xü Beijin has a guess, and when he turns the stream back to the bedroom, it is filled with screams just as expected.
“Fuck! What’s going on?! Why is there someone else here?!”
“Shouting out ‘three’ was incorrect… Why…”
Just now, when the third “Number off!” was ringing in their ears, Laosan quickly said “Three” in response.
Yet, the moment he said that, the wrathful male voice chastises them even louder than before, “you trash can’t even number off properly!”
The Missiontakers are looking at each other nonplussed in the pitch dark room. Why is ‘three’ wrong? Aren’t you supposed to number off going 1, 2, 3, 4?
Before they can discuss what this means, the shy woman suddenly yelps.
“What?”
She says with a trembling voice, “some… someone… someone is touching me.”
“What?”
“We’re all away from you!”
In a Nightmare, never casually approach other Missiontakers is an unspoken rule. This is to eliminate suspicions of Carddealers stealing cards.
The shy woman says with a really anxious tone, “no, no, I mean… someone, suddenly appeared!”
The next second, the familiar tone coldly chuckles——the tone of the man that told them to number off——who then goes on to say, “a useless piece of trash that can’t even count properly can just go to hell!”
Then the man starts randomly swinging his big machete everywhere.
The four Missiontakers wanted to dodge, but they can’t see a thing in this pitch darkness. They do not know where the weapon is coming from or whether they are about to be slashed next. They don’t even know whether the person next to them is friend or foe anymore.
The woman is yelling out in pain while crying in desperation.
The three men are trying to fight against this man that suddenly appeared, yet it is as if he has some kind of cheat. He can dodge all their attacks, but his machete keeps swinging accurately at their heads, their torsos, their arms and legs.
Soon enough, the room is filled to the brim with the sickening smell of blood, but they are still alive.
They will die eventually, but not yet. This is a slow torture until death. Blood continues to flow out of the wounds on their exposed skin. Their clothes are completely drenched.
They haven’t any strength to resist anymore, and yet, it seems the man knows as well. He continues to chuckle along merrily and cruelly as he slows his pace down. The big machete is still slashing down their skin, slash, by agonising slash.
Laosan is gritting his teeth. He can faintly hear the shy girl crying, and his dulled mind is wondering if they are all about to die. Can’t it be quicker? This torture… this torture…
His nose is chock-full of the stench of blood. He wants to puke.
His body is already overtaken by a sense of weakness. Somebody has already fainted next to him, it seems. He is glad he can’t see the terrifying scene in the room clearly. In this dark, completely unknown space, plus the wounds on his body and the smell of rusted iron, he could go mad.
When suddenly, a voice shouts out besides them yet again, “count off!”
Laosan is blanking out wondering if this is his hallucination before death.
His fingers are already growing stiff and cold. The man that was swinging the big machete… Is he even in the room anymore? Did he disappear as quickly as he appeared?
Laosan can barely hold himself up. His vision is red. Just red. It is probably the blood from his head covering his eyes.
Crimson——Darkness——Crimson——Darkness. It’s so damned dark.
He lightly whispers, “four.”
Then he holds his breath, waiting for the voice that might ring out in the air… Then, he sighs in relief. It seems he was correct.
… One, two, three four. One, two and four are correct. Why is only ‘three’ incorrect?
Is this counting error going to keep happening after that? What number is it besides ‘three,’ anyway?
He is trying really can’t focus due to the pain and weakness. Why is the man gone? Are the other Missiontakers still alive? Are all of them just hurt and not yet dead?
He coughs. His throat is full of blood too. He tries to speak up, even if his voice is but a whisper, “is anyone awake?”
No answer comes.
His eyes are wide open, but he is practically blind. He is alive, but in this pitch black space, he is practically dead.
Laosan’s mind is digressing again.
Though his instincts are still counting in his mind, counting the time – a skill that all Missiontakers in the Tower possess by heart.
Tools for measuring time, watches or whatever, are extremely rare in the Tower, but grasping the flow of time in the Nightmare is extremely important, so all Missiontakers have to force themselves to keep time.
Some Missiontakers can even count extremely accurately, completely in step with time passed in reality, though most Missiontakers are only capable of roughly keeping an accurate time. If it goes on for too long, the inaccuracies become wild.
Laosan can do nothing in his weakness from losing too much blood. He is still counting inside, all dazed. About one minute has passed when another “Count off!” rings out.
He almost sighs in relief.
One minute.
That is the amount of time between two counts. It means they must produce one number in a minute and also think about the number to report next.
He knows one, two, three and four are actually 1, 2, ? and 4, then five…
He is hesitant.
If he is wrong, the man with the machete will probably appear again.
The man that has tortured them in this dark room for a whole minute.
This is the first run of the Nightmare, so he probably isn’t too powerful yet. It is likely to change, however. At least right now, though, the man is only here for a minute, and after slashing his way about for a minute, a new round of ‘count off’ begins, and he is gone.
It seems that he appears whenever the number is wrong as a punishment. He attacks for one full minute.
If they are able to stay alive for minute after minute, they might just finish counting off all the numbers and then achieve an ending.
But…
But how could they possibly survive another session like this?
Laosan coughs again. He is sitting on the ground while leaning on the bed behind him. His consciousness is drifting. He might be gone soon.
All the other three are unresponsive. They haven’t died yet because the Nightmare is still ongoing. They might have all fainted, though.
Laosan is smiling in bitterness. He is fearful of the number he is about to say. What if the fifth one isn’t 5? Then a fresh round of punishment begins, the man with the machete will be here…
He is trying to curl up as much as possible, but his slight movement tears his wounds open again. The pain makes his fright even greater. Still, gritting his teeth, he shakily says, “five…”
Then.
“You trash can’t even number off properly!”
“No!!!”
Laosan screams out, as the man emerges in the room again. He is coldly chuckling, and mercilessly slashing with his big machete again.
They do not last the minute.
The Nightmare restarts.
Laosan’s eyes shoot open again. They are back in the pitch darkness. He is still breathing heavily from shock.
In the stream, the viewers are all screaming ‘aaaaa’s watching the mad murderer in black under the night vision camera. They are terrified.
“BEIBEI AAAAAAAA”
“Bei, plz, my san is dropping!!!”
“this man is just a psychotic murderer… he looks so excited when he is killing…”
“urgh, is he pure npc or actor like Beibei? if hes actor… is he insane?”
“Hard to say. In fact, if Beibei wasn’t the host, I’d have assumed he was an NPC”
“someone said earlier ‘that boy is suspicious,’ does that mean… the boy is the owner? then who is the man in black? whats their relationship? maybe the boy fears him cuz this is nightmare?”
“who knows… or the boy is diff in the nightmare and grown up to become this crazy murderer? maybe he is scared of himself”
“so y r they counting in the first place?”
“? why’s everyone analysing?”
“uwuwu… that scene was too scary, u know”
“AAAAARGH im finally thinking again after swinging that scene out of my head! y did u mention it!”
“but jeez, even a scene like that wasn’t censored to oblivion? I’m guessing there’s someone behind the host hehe”
“stop with the scary ‘look behind u’ ok?! quit scaring ppl!”
“… are you even viewers of a horror game stream or not… you’re all chickens lol”
“i wanna hear the detective dalao’s analysis”
“… Watashi ga kita! Let me put this out first, since we don’t have much information, most of this is my imagination for the sake of consistency.
First, the only concrete piece of information – The Missiontakers are divided into two groups, and because Actors act as NPCs, we will not consider the Actors themselves for now.
The most direct problem with the Missiontakers divided like this is Prisoner’s dilemma – Cooperation is much more difficult at this point.
While the Missiontakers in the bedroom are still unaware of the other Missiontakers, but I guarantee that the Missiontakers over at the corridor are already cussing after this restart.
In this situation, with unequal and limited access to information from the other side, especially given this mutual pulling-your-leg in the very beginning, a True End is likely difficult; it seems even a Normal End, potentially by counting off to completion, is at least equally as difficult?
All in all, I am really pessimistic about how this Nightmare will play out.”
When the detective dalao mentioned the corridor, Xü Beijin has also switched the camera source over, and as expected, the four Missiontakers all look like they’re doubting the value of living.
Scapegoat is cussing, “damn it, all four of us were still alive, why did it restart?”
Selfish sneers and says, “must be Missiontakers in the other scenes that were so incompetent they held us back.”
Mu Jiashi is murmuring, “no way, why are there two groups? There are definitely cooperative elements, then, but we didn’t even meet each other… Were they in the service area or…”
The mention of the service area makes Selfish super irritated, saying, “we were almost inside too, now we have to run away again! Dumbasses! We wasted a run.”
They drove along the road the last time and the entrance to the area was already in sight. Then, the restart drops onto them like a cold blanket.
It sure makes them pissed as all hell.
And that spiteful language from Selfish makes everyone uncomfortable too.
Selfish and Scapegoat hate each other, Mu Jiashi wants to have nothing of it, and Lin Qin is silent the whole time.
Both the bedroom and the corridor teams are in rather bad shape at this point.
The stream is applauding the detective dalao’s analysis again——As he thought, the corridor team is already lambasting the other team.
And given how inactive Xü Beijin has been this entire stream, that new audience even types, “i feel like the dalao is even more of a host than the host?”
“lolol, Beibei ur just the director who changes cameras”
“hahaha, btw Beibei, gonna go explore this round?”
“everyone else’s nightmare: thrilling escape and chases; Beibei’s nightmare: a casual stroll”
“Beibei ‘the lazy salted fish'”
“Beibei, you’ve been pretty quiet… You decided to change the camera to the bedroom earlier from the road, right? What led you to that decision?”
The detective dalao’s comment makes Xü Beijin think a little.
When he realised the car of the man in black was gone entirely, he wagered something must have happened in the bedroom, that’s why he changed the camera over.
He didn’t talk about his thoughts because, well, he’s used to it and also… he’s also interested in hugging the detective dalao’s thighs.
Though normally viewers wouldn’t look too kindly at that. It would look just like Xü Beijin is a noob host that has zero presense even in his own stream.
While this audience is more tolerant thanks to Xü Beijin’s appearance, but he has been too quiet nonetheless.
Xü Beijin rubs his nose and hangs his head in shame, realising that he didn’t even try to adjust to being a newbie host. In the last stream, there was someone in the bookstore most of the time, so it was reasonable to avoid talking and focus not on the stream but on the Nightmare.
Yet, it is he who wants more information on the outside world from the audience, so he should be much more proactive.
He is definitely not a natural extrovert, and because he looked so antagonistic, he was avoided a lot. And after all this time spent idly in the Tower, to try to fish out information from unsuspecting strangers in their interactions…
Sure sounds like mission impossible.
Though he still has to try.
On the surface, it looks like Xü Beijin mulled over it for a few seconds before apologising, “I’m really sorry, everyone. I was too quiet.”
“lol its fine, Beibei you can keep being you, I like the TV drama experience [doge emoji]”
“Beibei, you can start by talking with our comment barrage!”
“is this genuine kindness i see u guys displaying? no! u merely lust for our Bei’s body!”
Xü Beijin’s face is flushing at this point. He quickly says, “I understand now. I will try to talk with the comments more from now on,” then he ponders a little before saying, “would you like to hear my own thoughts about the Nightmare?”
The detective dalao types to cheer him on, “Beibei go go! I also want to hear what you think about the Nightmare”
Xü Beijin then begins speaking after a few seconds, “in the road chase just now, the man in black disappeared abruptly, that led me to suspect something has happened in the bedroom.
And… if I could confirm that the bedroom had an incident and the man in black stopped chasing the Missiontakers on the road because of that, that would suggest the man in black cannot appear in both locations at once.”
The detective dalao agrees, typing, “That’s right! If the man in black could only be on one side at a time, then that would give a lot of leeway to the Missiontakers. The problem now, though, is whether they can work with each other in the first place.”
Xü Beijin sighs to say, “also, there really is too little information at this point.”
As an extra, he really knows nothing…
Really, he’s not even much different to the Missiontakers in this respect, besides having way more limitation than them.
Suddenly, Xü Beijin recalls that young man he saw earlier.
He must also have been an Actor, and he was probably in this same service area, seeing how he was able to come that early.
Xü Beijin closes his eyes to think. His memories span out like a large painting, with scenes in the past still vividly visible on them. His memory has always been pretty good, even though he rarely tries to recall past events.
Suddenly he murmurs, “the supermarket…”
“?”
The viewers all type question marks in response on the comments.
Xü Beijin sees as soon as he opens his eyes and explains, “that Actor from earlier was wearing the clothes of a supermarket cashier,” he explains how the Actor must also be in the service area, and then hesitantly asks, “we could check on the Missiontakers’ progress. If they aren’t coming over to the service area for a while, we could go chat with the cashier if you want to see it?”
“owo sure!”
“Beibeis gonna go for a walk? lets go!!”
“he could know more info too! Beibei fight!”
While the detective dalao is still absorbed with analysing the truth of this Nightmare, the rest of the audience are cheering… Well, ‘the rest,’ meaning 3 among a grand total of 4 viewers.
Xü Beijin isn’t any less enthused himself, though, and knowing that horror game streams are apparently not popular on the outside, being able to win 4 followers (with his handsome face, but never mind) is already good enough for a first ever streamer.
He then turns his attention back towards the camera. The four people in the corridor should be escaping now, but he realises that, in fact, in this short period of time the corridor team has actually already run into the bedroom team!
He can see all eight people yapping on the screen. The scene is quite chaotic.
Xü Beijin listens carefully with furrowed brows and finally understands what happened. After the Nightmare restarted, the bedroom team decided not to number off immediately first, but to try to leave the bedroom. And they actually succeeded.
In the last run, after they gave a “one,” the bedroom door was locked dead; this time, they directly tried the doorknob and succeeded. The exit led into a corridor, and they saw the other four people immediately.
Laosan here is really surprised.
He really thought there were only the four of them in the entire Nightmare.
The three brothers walked into the ‘door’ to the boy’s house, so naturally they were together. It was already surprising that there was another shy girl besides them, but four other Missiontakers here… Aren’t there way too many Missiontakers in this Nightmare?
Each Nightmare has a minimum and maximum number of participants possible. Some are purely solo Instances for one person only, and some are required to have at least some number of people.
At night time, all Tower residents sleep——barring Xü Beijin——and doors can now be opened to enter Nightmares.
During the night, as long as a resident is still asleep, Missiontakers can step into the door and wait for the Nightmare to start.
If the maximum number of participants is reached, the Nightmare starts early; otherwise, it will continue to wait for new Missiontakers until some time before dawn to start.
If the number of Missiontakers waiting does not even meet the minimum requirement, the Nightmare will not start.
They might end up wasting a night, of course, but for Missiontakers, they are actually unconscious when ‘waiting’ for a Nightmare to start, as if they are sleeping, and they wouldn’t notice the passage of time at all.
An implication of this is that unless a Nightmare starts and they can see each other, nobody would know exactly how many Missiontakers are in a Nightmare and who they all are.
This modus operandi that is no different to randomly grouping irks many Missiontakers who swear it forces them to relive the terrible experience of being assigned a terrible teammate in certain games before everyone ended up in ‘Escape.’
And now, Laosan is exhausted watching everyone argue in front of him.
Yet his meek personality means that when he sees them——By them, he mainly refers to Selfish, Scapegoat and his own Laoda——viciously bickering, he is but helpless.
According to what they just said, this is the first time any of them ever entered this Nightmare. None of them have heard a useful thing about this Nightmare in the Tower. Yet, despite this severe lack of information, they still have time to keep pointing fingers at others and chastising.
Selfish is accusing the bedroom team of sabotaging their efforts with almost intentional timing; they were almost at a key scene, but they died and the Nightmare restarted.
Laoda retorts by asking how there is, quote, “any fucking way” they can know their progress, and then questions Selfish back——Where were they and what useful things were they doing when their team was being slaughtered by the man in black in the bedroom?
Scapegoat is just furious at everyone. Whenever someone scolds someone else, he argues in favour of the scolded person, fanning the flames on both sides and pissing everyone off.
Meanwhile, Mu Jiashi glances at the merrily arguing trio, then back at the door from which the bedroom team exited. The door has already gone back shut now. He hesitates for a moment before walking forth to try to open the door.
It wouldn’t budge.
