Volume 2 - CH 26.2

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.