Volume 1 - CH 5

The first thing one would see on the second floor is a long, dark hallway.

The corridor that was once painted a warm brown is no more. It is marred and only adds to the weight of the atmosphere. Corners of the ceiling and the floor are visibly full of dust and cobwebs. The ill-maintained floorboards are either poking up or broken altogether. It creaks with every step.

There are two doors on each side of the corridor. The end of the corridor is a dead-end with a painting of a doll that has fallen to the ground. The once vibrant colours have been buried in dust. The subject can no longer be seen clearly.

Of the four doors, one is open, on the left of Glasses. It’s the bathroom. Just one peek and he skips the room entirely, because of the stench. The stench of human excrement.

If possible, he doesn’t want to look for eyes in that bathroom.

He turns to the other doors.

They all look similar, and are all shut tight.

He glances down at the doll, to see her little beady eyes fixed right at one of the doors; it is the door opposite the bathroom.

He thinks for a little bit before gritting his teeth, walking over and puts his hand onto the handle.

The old copper handle is so cold it made him shiver reflexively. He relaxes his stiff fingers first, before applying a force until it could go no further.

The little girl doll quietly stands behind him, tilting her head and looking at him.

He is trembling slightly. His back is growing cold. Even though he is just opening a door… Just opening a door!

With a heavy push, and the door is open.

The clearly worn hinge makes a rather noisy creak, but it, fortunately, does not wake the sleeping man within.

Yes, a man is sleeping inside.

Glasses immediately widens his eyes in surprise and relief. He quickly examines his surroundings.

It’s a bedroom. A rather small bedroom, perhaps 7 or 8 square metres at best. In the narrow space are a bed, a wardrobe and a small desk. There is nothing else.

The curtains are down, so the inside is extremely dark. Just opening the door sent murky air drifting. The man is lying on the bed with his back to Glasses. His chest is rising and falling rhythmically, deep asleep. Despite the noise from the door, he wasn’t spooked awake.

Glasses suddenly stops when he spies, on the little desk in the bedroom, some kind of notebook!

Overjoyed, he is going to go grab it…

When the doll suddenly mutters, “it’s been, five minutes.”

Glasses immediately freezes up again. He turns to tell the doll, “no no no… Wait, just a little bit more, a little bit longer… No! NO!!!”

The doll, tilting her head, says with an unhappy tone, “eyes. You lied… you didn’t find them.”

She walks closer, and raises her short, thin arms.

Smooth, white, reflective. It could almost be said to be a human arm, but devoid of blood. Now, that arm slowly extends right into his eye socket. Blood begins oozing out, leaving a trail of blood on her skin.

The doll, with her head still raised, like she is watching a dream of her desires, her aspirations, ends up disappointed by the pair of eyes; the eyeballs are bulging, widened. The pupils have dilated. It is filled with burst blood vessels.

She throws the eyeballs to the ground, complaining quietly, “I… I don’t like them anymore.”

Ponytail and Quarrelsome happen to make it to the second floor right this moment.

The doll, with her head tilt, is looking at them. Her red dress makes it uneasy to make out the blood of Glasses scattered on it. Meanwhile, Glasses is covering his face. Blood is gushing out of his eyes, leaking through the gaps between his fingers. He is making broken wails of pain, and is ignored entirely.

Ponytail is observing the doll warily; Quarrelsome is darting his gaze between her and the doll.

The beady eyes of the doll almost seem to sparkle when she mutters, “two… new pairs of eyes!”

She really does resemble a little girl that is talking about her favourite toy, full of childish charm, at least if the two eyeballs she despised weren’t on the ground right there.

Then, the Nightmare restarts.

On the first floor, all four Missiontakers have reapppeared.

Lin Qin still looks like he can’t be bothered to deal with anything.

The other three, as soon as they regain consciousness, are looking at the display cabinet in the storefront, right at the doll of the little girl in a red dress.

Glasses shudders reflexively. His eyes still hurt.

He reflexively touches them to confirm they are still in place, and sighs in relief.

In ‘Escape,’ Missiontakers do not die, or rather, they do not stay dead. Since, as soon as one of them dies, the Nightmare restarts. All the dead Missiontakers will come back to life.

It could certainly be said to be blursed.

On the one hand, they do come back to life, but the pain and anguish of the moment of their death stay with them. Can a human truly become used to death? Wouldn’t that make them a mental patient instead?

On the other hand, through death and resurrection, and the restart of the Nightmare, it increases in difficulty. Death comes easier and easier. If one ends up lost in the cycle of death, hopelessness and madness, then, they become forever succumbed to an endlessly repeating Nightmare, never to see the light of day again.

A great number of Missiontakers have entered a Nightmare, only to never be seen again.

Everyone knows that, they’re still alive. They’re just trapped inside the Nightmare.

Trapped, forever.

Therefore, Glasses has taken off his glasses, and is still touching his eyes repeatedly, as if reassuring himself, that he is alive. This is real. Forget the death you just experienced.

If he keeps thinking about it, perhaps, he might succumb to the Nightmare. Then, he would spend the rest of his life only reliving the moments before his death.

Quarrelsome glances at him then sarcastically remarks, “what, already going mad?”

Glasses does not respond. A short while later, he speaks up, “we need to cooperate.”

After dying once, he seems to have become slightly more grounded, more mature.

His brain is still replaying his death. While annoying, it did allow him to remember some details.

After the doll took his eyes away, he was blind, but he could hear the creak of the floorboards, so that means, someone was on the second floor then.

Probably not Lin Qin, then it must be Ponytail and Quarrelsome, back from the bookstore; they already know about the second floor now.

Then it goes without saying that what follows is cooperation.

If nothing else, these two people who are working together anyway would still definitely go to the second floor to investigate. So Glasses might as well mention it himself.

No matter what, after they finally resolve this Nightmare together in the end, if they reach a True End, then all the Missiontakers may ascend to higher floors, and perhaps be one step closer to true escape from the Tower. Everyone wins.

Under this context, cooperation is an inevitability.

Glasses can only regret how, because he wanted to be careful, he didn’t choose to enter a Nightmare alone.

Now, Lin Qin is out of the question. Ponytail and Quarrelsome are together, but he has to ask to work together.

Glasses tightens his fist, as he calmly lays down his own stake, “there is a man sleeping on the second floor. There is also a notebook in the same room.”

Ponytail’s expression brightens, but before she could ask more, the first wave of dolls are assembling already, out for blood.

She quickly says “deal!”

This is already the fourth run of this Nightmare. Runs one and two were wasted, and all three were justifiably pissed about that; they found something in the third run, but still didn’t manage to get anywhere.

By run four, the dolls’ chase is going to grow harder and harder.

The duration hasn’t changed, but the dolls move slightly quicker. Originally, a lap about the streets outside would lose them for good, but now they have to run quicker and even make sure to strategically use obstacles in the road to block them.

The target of the first wave ends up being Ponytail, who runs outside without a word. Glasses then just moves his gaze over to Quarrelsome, who is also looking at him; Lin Qin has turned to leave already, and nobody dares to ask where he is going.

Though Lin Qin is just bored of the Nightmare already, so he is heading for the bookstore to try and get Xü Beijin to fight him.

Xü Beijin “…”

He puts up his most serious face to make him look as tough as possible, before answering, “I refused already.”

“That was then,” Lin Qin says, “now is now.”

Xü Beijin “…”

Oh yes, he certainly can see he is skilled in the art of sophism!

Xü Beijin rolls his eyes at him in his mind before firmly refusing again, “I do not want to fight.”

Lin Qin sits back down again, upset as always.

An awkward silence ensures.

Xü Beijin is really tired of it, so he decides ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ and turns his attention to the stream instead, spectating from afar the three Missiontakers’ thrilling and exciting exploration of the Dollmaker’s.

Speaking of, the little girl doll’s undeniably graphic act of scouring eyeballs sent the stream into chaos.

The viewers have definitely not been regularly exposed to such a direct, gory scene, and the comments of ‘AAAA’ have completely covered up the screen; their panicked screams made Xü Beijin who was himself in slight discomfort want to laugh.

The comments are still ongoing right now. The mere three viewers of the stream seem to be chatting.

Xü Beijin is watching them chat while observing the Missiontakers’ progress.

Ponytail managed to lose the first wave of dolls. After returning to the store, they waste no time heading for the second floor.

They discussed who should push the hatch on the wall open, as it might be the factor deciding the girl doll’s target; Glasses has already contributed his side of the bargain with that piece of information of these second floor, so Ponytail upholds her side of the bargain by having Quarrelsome deal with the doll.

As expected, while Quarrelsome pushes the boxes away, the doll also walks out from her display cabinet.

The pretty, but frail-looking doll following behind them really did make their hair stand on end.

But they all know there is five minutes before she goes berserk. They waste no time and quickly look for the book first.

In thirty second’s time, Ponytail has already pushed open the second floor bedroom door. After giving the sleeping man a glance, she quickly walks to the desk to grab the notebook.

It’s a really small book, about palm-sized. The corners are worn on the leather cover. It feels slightly icky to the touch, making Ponytail slightly iffy.

But time is of the essence, so she anxiously and quickly flips through this thin——diary, it turns out to be.

The first sentence is, “xiao-Chun has been missing for three days straight!”