Volume 3 - CH 50.1

Value for Money

Third run of the Nightmare.

Sitting behind his bookstore counter, Xü Beijin is deep in thought.

… This is the Nightmare once assigned to his ex-neighbour?

So, quick question – Did a new Actor get assigned this Nightmare and be its owner, or… Could that female Actor who has once lived next to him, returned to the bottom floor of the Tower?

The Missiontakers do not know that the Tower residents are also just designated human players, so both possibilities would be functionally the same for them – That female Tower resident who once moved away is back.

In some sense, Actors take the role of an NPC in-game exactly. The Missiontakers only ‘know’ the NPCs; the Tower residents have always been Tower residents. Their countenance and personality never change, because only the Actor beneath it all changes (TL: Rather obscured plot point here – Tower residents can have their appearances changed at the whim of the Server by virtue of the role they are assigned to; this point doesn’t do anything else in the future as far as I remember, but it’s such an underutilised and interesting writing potential).

So obviously, the Missiontakers who do not have all the information, will assume that it is the same person moving around.

However, for Actors who are in-the-know, so to speak, like Xü Beijin, two possibilities emerge – could the Actor wearing the resident’s skin have changed, or not?

The first possibility is, well, just that, a new Actor has come to take the role of this Tower resident. It’s the common occurrence. In this case, besides the Tower resident and the associated Nightmare, everything else could change.

Like their house’s address, the Difficulty in the Nightmare, and even which floor of the Tower they are on, and so on.

Apparently a Missiontaker once ran into this exceedingly rare situation. After achieving a True End in a certain Nightmare on the bottom floor of the Tower and going up to a higher floor, he meets that exact Tower resident, (possibly with a different Actor underneath the skin), and their associated Nightmare again, and with information he already has, he managed another True End.

What else could one say… But that he must have been the God of Fortune in a past life.

Meanwhile, the second possibility, that the exact same Actor is back on the bottom floor… Is what confuses Xü Beijin.

An Actor dumped back onto a lower floor and reassigned the role of a Tower resident they have once Acted as?

Xü Beijin has never heard of such a thing.

Missiontakers ending up with Bad Ends on higher floors could be forced back down, but Actors are not part of the system.

Also, if that Actor has already been to a higher floor once, then she already has some experience from that success; could it have been intentional that she opened her Nightmare this one?

So many questions now occupy Xü Beijin’s mind.

He sighs in exhaustion. Really, his life has become so much more complicated after picking up this streaming system.

… Not that it was even his to begin with; like he said, he picked it up.

And that… game streamer? Ever since the first Nightmare, Xü Beijin has never met the person again, but Xü Beijin still has some deep-seated anxiety regarding him.

When the streamer left the game, it must have been some bug that dumped this streaming system——Or rather, a data access point for a stream?——behind in this game, ‘Escape,’ to be picked up by Xü Beijin.

This brings with it a new question. If that streamer can enter this game, then couldn’t others also potentially enter?

Earth… The viewers in the stream knows about Earth as well. They are also humans. Then, that streamer that once appeared in the Tower, was he also Earthian?

However, if they all were, then why, during the stream, would his viewers not know about these people in the Tower being trapped? For that matter, why are they trapped and unable to leave the game?

The viewers also implied there were many other games like ‘Escape,’ too, where normal players cannot enter… Why?

If a normal player cannot enter, how could that streamer, or other hosts, even stream them?

If normal people have heard of, or have even seen these streams, why are they unaware that they are trapped in the game and not voluntary players inside?

What actually happened… outside?

Xü Beijin, so worried, can only sigh in exasperation and frustration.

He has always been averse to thinking about these questions, because the world outside the Tower post-Tower-entry has always been both a source of curiosity and frustration for Xü Beijin.

All the helplessness piled up and, after enough time, Xü Beijin went numb.

Just like all the residents who have truly become lost in the Tower, their minds are muddled, their countenances unremarkable. He didn’t want to think about the future, or harbour nostalgia for the past, or even grasp the present.

It was exactly as Dai Wu said – he’s already gone on to treat this game as his ‘first life.’ He let it happen, because he was powerless. He couldn’t do anything.

The streaming system, brought him a ray of hope.

Yet, is this light ray good, or bad?

The Server… NE. Does it know he is streaming right now?

Xü Beijin closes his dried eyes, and rubs between his eyebrows. He is tired, both physically, and mentally.

After staying quiet for a moment, he opens his eyes back up and turns his attention back to the stream.

With his mood thus dampened, he doesn’t even feel like taking another walk outside, even though there’s another hour until the Missiontakers can leave their apartment units.

A long, arduous hour.

Jiang Shuangjie and Jiang Shuangmei are both frustrated over their incomplete investigation.

They have already realised that, among the facilities gone rogue in the Luoke Apartment, not all of them harbour pure malice for humanity.

Many certainly are, like the bathtub and the Roomba and the air-con and even the electronic door lock that wanted Jiang Shuangmei dead; there are others, like the curtains in Jiang Shuangjie’s apartment unit, that is merely cold.

And in fact, in Room 408, of Muscular, the light fitting on the ceiling is even friendly to humans.

Therefore, the Jiang sisters have made the logical conclusion that they must attempt to communicate with these sentient pieces of furniture. At this point, the only device that can ‘talk’ that they know of, are the elevators of the apartment building.

More importantly, at this stage, they do not yet see the elevators holding explicit grudges towards humans. They seem to prefer teasing and trickery. That said, one resident has died because of a trick-induced cardiac arrest. They can’t help but be wary.

Who knows if that was really just another tease, or a premeditated murder?

There are six elevators, so they are also unable to immediately identify which ones are good or bad.

Of course, that aside, they still had to make a move somehow; it was only that, when they were going to make a move, the Nightmare restarted.

What happened?

Jiang Shuangjie is slightly worried. She is definitely not a fan of these sudden incidents, just like how Jiang Shuangmei’s unexpected death caused the Nightmare to restart in the first run, any unknown deaths in the Nightmares always cause commotion to take root in the Missiontakers’ minds.

Though…

Jiang Shuangjie touches the inside pocket of her clothes and sighs in relief. No matter what, she’s found both utility cards again. That is a good thing for sure.

In contrast to her joy, Muscular is certainly irate right now.

The moment the Nightmare restarted, he touched his pocket to realise his two stolen utility cards have disappeared already, and only the few he brought along to this Nightmare originally are still with him. He ‘tch’s.

Damn. They actually found them.

Yes, the one in the bathroom’s toilet cistern wasn’t too difficult, but he’s hid the other one stuck to the inside of the lamp shade with duct tape. How could anyone have found it so quickly?

He glances up skeptically at the lamp.

The round lamp is giving out light peacefully, as always.

Failing to see anything weird, the man just sighs and gives up, kicking the sofa in his frustration, then turns around and tells himself that, hey, he’s got information that nobody else know now, hasn’t he?

Just that piece of news makes this trip in the Nightmare worth it.

… Though, it was originally two utility cards plus one piece of information, and even several utility cards lying in wait just for him, and now he is only left with one piece of information… Muscular can’t help but think that it’s his loss.

Standing there, he tries to persuade himself to stand down. Safety comes first. It is a good thing he could leave the Nightmare.

However, he still keeps involuntarily looking up at the light, and at the bathroom. He’s getting more frustrated by the minute.

The more he thought about it, the more angry he got; the more he conceded, the more he is going to lose.

In the end, his eyes are turning red as he paces about his apartment unit, muttering, “shit, my utility cards…”

Even though they were Jiang Shuangjie’s utility cards, but after stealing them, he just assumed ownership of them.

He’s so angry he is breathing heavily and gripping his fist. A moment after, he walks next to the entrance to wait for the hour to pass——He has thrown his original intentions out and decided not to stay inside his apartment unit.

He has decided, he will go retrieve ‘his’ utility cards!