Volume 2 - CH 34.1

Everyone’s eyes are fixed on this supermarket cashier.

“You’ve seen him?”

Laoda is the first to ask with a dumbfounded tone.

Laosan, Ding Yi and Mu Jiashi all exchange glances before their gaze ends up on Selfish whose expression has clouded over.

The three of them have concluded that, given Dai Wu knew the little boy, the question of what Selfish knew has become of paramount importance.

The atmosphere surrounding the Missiontakers is now downright eerie.

“I have seen this… big gege,” the boy whispers, “the day daddy killed mommy… I saw, you.”

Some of the Missiontakers have their jaws on the floor now.

Dai Wu says in a panic, “oi oi, brat, don’t go spreading lies, now.”

“What actually happened?” Mu Jiashi asked sternly, “what did you conceal?”

“Nothing…”

“You saw this family the day of the murders?”

Dai Wu scratches his face before frustratingly owning up, “sigh, I did, alright… I didn’t dare to tell anyone. It wasn’t anything to do with me anyway, but who knew that madman would kill his wife after going home…”

Laosan urges him to continue with furrowed brows, asking, “what really happened?”

He has an inexplicable sense of urgency in time. The missing man in black is feeling like a time bomb.

This Nightmare’s time has always been tight.

From being chased by the man in black, to going back and forth between the scenes, to the one-minute sharp interval between yelling out numbers, to the effect of different cars in the car park affecting the speed on the expressway, to them having to quickly extract information from NPCs in the service area…

It all comes down to having quick reflexes and good time management skills.

And now, they haven’t faced a chase from the man in black for a while.

This is the fourth run of the Nightmare. It shouldn’t be like this. The situation should have devolved further, rather than them being able to saunter about hoping to stumble into clues and information to figure out the truth.

This should not be.

Laosan takes a deep breath to try to calm himself down first.

When the three of them entered the Nightmare, they, of course, had fantasies like maybe achieving a True End in the first run, or getting rare cards during the rewards phase… They can dream, you know.

Yet the reality is even more depressing than usual – They’ve somehow made it to the fourth run of the Nightmare while remaining mostly in the dark, in chaos, in argument.

Even now, they are still wary of each other, hiding things. Nobody knows what the Difficulty really is up to this point either.

Laosan glances back at the cashier, who is recalling and recounting,

“back then… I was working, you know. It was a normal day.

Then this family – on a trip for pleasure, I think – the wife… the one killed, made small talk when she was paying, but then her husband got all mad from that. He erupted into an argument right then and there with me and the woman. He was calling her shameless and slutty, you know.

I was just totally shocked. She just talked about the service area and asked about what route to take. We talked a little, then I told her how much everything was. Everything was just normal… Yet somehow, that husband was acting like she cheated right in front of him.

Oh, and from what my coworkers said later, that man was raging all the way outside, too. Yelling and acting like a prat near the gas station and the parking lot. All the other travellers were looking.

Someone thought that the woman didn’t deserve all this and wanted to help, but the husband then told him off for being some sexual creep who must have been ogling for his wife and had been trying to feel her up. Then he scolded her again for being unfaithful… Just, fucking speechless, you know.

Anyway, a few days after that, news came out about a wife being killed. I didn’t think about it until I saw the photo of the murderer and the dead person’s portrait in the news, when I… recalled, all this.

Sigh, but… I really don’t want anything to do with this, you know?! What the heck was it to me?

We weren’t anybody to anybody. I just scanned their items when they were shopping, and someone died because I smiled at her?! Like, what the hell, man.

So… the police didn’t come interrogate me either, and I didn’t want to tell anyone about it.”

After explaining all that, Dai Wu sighs and shows a bitter smile at the little boy, speaking with a slightly eerie tone, “I didn’t think you’d remember me, or… that it would be the day your mother passed away,” then he turns to the others to ask, “you understand my position, right?”

The Missiontakers have no time for his story, though.

From the long wall of text, they have managed to connect many clues.

The boy’s father kept suspecting his wife of cheating on him. In order to improve their relationship, the victim decided to go on a family trip that day with her husband and son.

Yet when they were resting at a service area and going shopping, because the wife made small talk with the supermarket cashier, the husband is all but convinced she has cheated on him. After going home that day, he killed his wife in his rage.

The boy’s Nightmare, besides the dark bedroom that symbolised the death of his mother, also included the car park, the expressway, and the service area and everything, perhaps because, this is his mother’s——

Road to Hell.

In the bookstore, Xü Beijin heaves a weary sigh.

He knew, or, he was at least aware, of some scripts the Actors had been assigned.

Whether it was through chatting he overheard, or from information Missiontakers unintentionally spread, he knew.

Those were all just rumours, though, the kind that leads to… “Really?” “Yeah, crazy, right?” and similar conversations.

He had a rough idea about these Nightmares, but he didn’t know them in detail.

Up until… this point.

When he has a streaming system, it means he would be able to understand the development of the entire Nightmare as a passive observer.

And he seems to have way underestimated how much evil really lies beneath these Nightmares.

He wishes these Nightmares are fake. Wishes scripts are mere scripts, not reality. He sincerely wishes for it to be so.

Yet… what about the Actors?

For many of these Actors, the Tower——And these Nightmares——are their life. Plays resemble lives; lives resemble plays.

They end up growing into their roles as NPCs. They begin to identify with the character the Server assigned them. They actually start——Becoming, that character in the script.

Like this man in black here. Perhaps, he actually thinks that, he really is the man who was overtaken by jealousy and killed his own wife. He is the man dressed in all black who holds a big machete in his hand to go after everyone in his son’s Nightmare to kill them all (TL: In case you were wondering, because the Server supposedly reassigns all roles in Nightmares randomly besides the one for the Nightmare owner – remember how Xü Beijin owns a bookstore in the Tower and keeps getting assigned as a bookstore owner? Yeah, the man in black is probably someone who keeps getting assigned as ‘psychotic murderer’ ‘killing psycho’ etc., which would explain the following sentence).

He has become the psychotic murderer.

This means, that the tragedy in the script, is no longer an artificially constructed tragedy, but it is coming to life.

Actors who, like Wu Shen, is unwilling to actually turn a six-year-old little girl into a doll, unwilling to live up to the role assigned, unwilling to do anything that contradicted basic human decency and moral ethics, unwilling to forget the fact that, he is just someone trapped in a game Acting, belong to a minority.

As for Actors like Dai Wu, optimistic, fearless, able to find their own meaning regardless, they are an even smaller minority.

Xü Beijin has been trudging along as a cold, emotionless, machine-like extra for many years. It is already impossible for him to be like the audience in the stream, who are currently lamenting the tragic fate of the boy’s family, and also cheering themselves up by reassuring themselves that this is just the setting of a game.

He is incapable of that.

All he could do, is open his eyes halfway with a tired face, ruining his handsome features with the heavy eyebags, always looking half-asleep, or like he has never slept in, well, forever.

He is always in a haze. His mind is all blanked out to the most extreme degree, feeling like it would shut down to asleep if he used his brain any slightly more intensely.

Yet, he also knows clearly, that the humans in the Tower——are over.

It’s over for them. Actors, Missiontakers, all the humans trapped in the Tower. It is all going to be over, for all of them.

Xü Beijin sits there in silence.

He wonders if it might be the drinks Lin Qin gave him, that has energised his thoughts. He is now thinking about questions he never wanted to ponder in the first place.

… Yup, he should never ever fight with Lin Qin.

Xü Beijin decides to put the thoughts aside, just as he has always done.

He relaxes himself and yawns. Because Lin Qin is sitting not far away, he carefully tries to make this yawn as elegant as possible.