Volume 1 - CH 4

The doll of the little girl looks as if it has never walked before. It is shambling, unsteady.

The ten or so metres between them almost makes Glasses feel like it’s been a whole lifetime, as countless tragic scenes of death play out in his mind.

All the pain and hopelessness from once having died and come back to life again in the Nightmares rush at his mind. His feelings of fear and desperation finally reach a breaking point, and he angrily tightens his fist to yell, “what do you want! Are you going to kill me? Come on!”

The doll still slowly, unsteadily makes her way towards him. In fact, she has her head lowered to watch the way carefully.

Glasses gulps, with his fingers burying into his palm, his mind reaches a sort of clarity from the pain, and he yells, “go away!” His voice grows a little more hoarse as he continues, “don’t come here, stop coming here! Don’t… don’t kill me…”

Slow as she may have been, it was merely some distance away.

The little girl doll in a red dress is right in front of him.

With cold sweat all over his face and body, shaking, his lips tremble as they part to utter, “what… do you… want… please no…”

The doll tilts her head. Her black glass beads for eyes, like real eyes, are reflecting the man’s form.

“Eyes,” the doll says, “I want, eyes.”

Glasses, and those quietly observing viewers in the stream, all feel cold sweat form on their backs.

Suddenly, a comment barrage erupts in Xü Beijin’s stream. There are just four viewers, yet they manage to make it seem like a whole army of them.

“AAAAAAA——”

“eye protection eye protection eye protection”

“shes a cute little girl but why is she so creepy!”

“I just made a yell, embarrassing, but thank god this guy with glasses is doing even worse than I am hahahaha”

“Covering my eyes… I wanna cry. I didn’t want to see this going into the gaming section of the streaming site today”

“then leave!”

“im never watching horror streams… but this one is funny, hehe”

“really, the host never speaks, it makes me panic”

“Oh right, where’s the host?”

“quickly more comments so i can forget the doll’s eyes…”

The comments trying to summon him draw nothing but silence from Xü Beijin, mainly because there’s other people around.

Never mind Lin Qin, but even Ponytail and Quarrelsome seem to be discussing something quietly. Probably about what to do after this. Occasionally they give him a glance as well, so he can only maintain that mysterious smile on his face to sit quietly.

Naturally, Xü Beijin can’t say a thing to his audience like this.

And also… he’s actually a little bit unsure about how to explain this situation to them. The viewers think he is a player, but he isn’t a player in the normal sense of the word.

More importantly, the Server does not allow them Actors to reveal their identities at all.

The Server monitors the acting of all Actors at all times. Any word related to acting, NPC, missions, if there is a shred of suspicion whether they are potentially trying to subjectively suggest their own identity, it will silence them.

The Server is inflexible and mechanical, but it is still pretty capable in that respect.

Xü Beijin does not speak, so the viewers are also bored. One of them even leaves the stream altogether. The three remaining viewers end up looking over at Glasses instead.

Like they said, his performance really is abysmal here.

After the doll said the word ‘eyes,’ he could feel a pain in his own eyes. He doesn’t even know if it’s real physical pain, or just his own hallucinations.

He is shaking all over, gasping for breath. This big man, over 1.8m (TL: ~5’11”) tall, is trembling before a 50cm, girl doll, sweating all over.

The man gulps, and says with a parched tone, “eyes… what kind of… eyes do you want? I, I’ll search them for you!”

He’s really worried any delay and the doll will just say ‘give your eyes to me’ or something like that.

The doll, motionlessly staring at Glasses with her beady eyes, tilts her head to say, “ok. You take me, to search.”

Glasses quickly nods and shakily stands back up.

The doll continues, “quickly, quickly. If you don’t find them for me, I will get angry.”

“What will you do… if you’re angry?”

Glasses musters his courage to ask.

The doll opens her mouth to smile, and says with a cute tone that really is like that of a little girl, “da-gege (TL: Big, older brother. Used as a term of address here as an affectionate way to refer to an older male individual) has pretty eyes. I really like them.”

Glasses “…”

No, he doesn’t deserve that like…

Terrified, he is also staring at the doll with a slightly desperate, hateful look; after realising he wouldn’t be dead for now, his hopelessness has been replaced for now.

He doesn’t dare show it plainly to the strange doll, of course; his hate is directed towards those Missiontakers that withheld information in the first place. If he knew… If he knew, he would have been more careful! Or run right for the second floor already the moment the doll comes to life!

He has no time to regret, now. He can only take the doll with him to look for the damned eyes… Who knows where the eyes she want would be!

Irritated, the doll’s slow, uneasy movement only makes him more impatient.

He is wondering what’s wrong with the doll. Why is it so slow? Not like the other dolls at all.

Or… perhaps this isn’t the normal state of the doll?

Like the usually immobile dolls that begin running madly once the chase begins. Perhaps the girl doll needs to get ‘angry,’ like she said, to be rid of this restriction from her doll body?

But why could she move in the first place?

He is pondering this undocumented situation carefully in his mind. This situation is evolving out of his control.

In the stream, the three viewers are engaged in a discussion all by themselves, perhaps to alleviate boredom.

“id bet a whole cent he doesnt find those eyes”

“i wanna know whats on the second floor… new clues maybe?”

“A new scene must definitely have new clues, but why is the host still not here to explain what’s going on? That makes no sense”

“what host, dont come cockblock our drama viewing experience! [doge.jpg]”

Meanwhile, Glasses takes one last look at the store before walking up the stairs with the doll, and notices something off.

There are not many dolls still remaining after the first and second wave of chase. This is probably all that’s left of the third wave… Right. Then why is it still not beginning?

He searched all about the first floor, and even spent some time dealing with the damned girl doll… No matter what, the third wave should have begun.

They’re not moving, because…

His gaze slowly fixes onto the girl doll, who is stumbling along, using all fours while struggling to climb up the stairs.

The doll here?

Obviously, Ponytail and Quarrelsome, still in the bookstore, waiting for the third chase, also notice what Glasses did.

They went to the bookstore because they wanted information, true, but also to look for Lin Qin.

It is either Ponytail or Lin Qin for the third wave. To know clearly who they’re after, Ponytail decided to find and stick to Lin Qin (TL: That sounds like the opposite of what she should do, but oh well).

Yet, after all this time, no doll has come after them.

Ponytail and Quarrelsome are looking at each other nonplussed.

She immediately concludes that, as all three of them are here, only Glasses could have done something behind their back. The guy that kept emphasising ‘running was useless.’

Did he discover something?

Ponytail furrows her brows, and declares, “we have to go back to the store to check! That other guy might have discovered something.”

Quarrelsome follows suit.

Lin Qin gives a bored ‘tch,’ but doesn’t move. Instead, he turns to Xü Beijin to ask, “Xü-laoban, can I sit down?”

Xü Beijin says expressionlessly, “certainly.”

“Thanks.”

And Lin Qin really does just take a seat and blank out then.

Xü Beijin gives him an odd look.

Lin Qin asks with a lazy tone, “what, wanna fight?”

“No no no,” Xü Beijin immediately shakes his head, then voices his curiosity, “why didn’t you go back to the Dollmaker’s with them?”

The question seems to make Lin Qin react more dramatically than Xü Beijin expected with him suddenly cocking his head right in his direction. It looks like Xü Beijin has triggered some unspoken feeling in Lin Qin; under the dim lighting of the bookstore, Xü Beijin suddenly realises that Lin Qin’s pupils aren’t actually black, but is actually slightly amber instead.

It really doesn’t suit this guy that only talks about fighting and brawling. Speaking of which, so is his baby face… Xü Beijin is quietly dissing in his mind.

He only dares thinking so, though. Xü Beijin can only say, under the intense stare, “I was just asking. Never mind if you don’t want to answer.”

Lin Qin continues to stare for a long time, before suddenly smirking inexplicably.

He retracts his gaze and, after sitting for a bit longer, answers, “because I’m not interested.”

Not interested?

Xü Beijin is a little confused.

If he’s disinterested, then why is he going into Nightmares at all?

‘Escape’ doesn’t actually force Missiontakers to go into these instances, these Nightmares. Of course, anyone wanting to ascend the Tower must challenge these Nightmares to do so, but if someone really does just want to repeat the eat-sleep cycle forever, then the bottom floor of the Tower is still big and sufficient enough to accommodate anyone like that.

Xü Beijin is aware, for example, of some Missiontakers that ended up abandoning all their struggling to spend their days like living corpses, acting even more like Tower residents than the residents themselves.

And while there isn’t exactly material wealth or abundance, but Lin Qin’s fighting strength means he can definitely live in comfort if he so wishes.

If he isn’t interested in Nightmares in the first place, and can live a good life in the Tower, then why does he even enter Nightmares at all?

Despite his curiosity, Xü Beijin doesn’t really dare to question him any more. He thus instead looks back at his stream.

It is still fixed on Glasses, who is now on the second floor of the Dollmaker’s. At the same time, Ponytail and Quarrelsome are back on the first floor already.

When they arrive, they see the store, in an even more disorganised mess than before, and a wide-open, hidden hatch that opens into the second floor.