Volume 5 - CH 82.3

Teen is surprised to hear Fei’s conclusion.

He can’t help but wonder, if it really could be that easy to manipulate, to dictate what they do.

Wu Jian asks, not sounding too confident, “but what dalao Lin Qin did on the 15th floor doesn’t seem to fit with what you describe.”

“It’s also possible, that it is exactly the opposite of what you think?” Fei says, “the dalao threw the desk and chair away, but if I was on the 15th floor myself, it is likely I would have looked through the desk and chairs a little for clues.

By habit, I would move them into the upright position as I do so. The moment one set of desk and chair are put upright, wouldn’t that exactly replicate the scene of a set of office desk and chair inexplicably placed properly in the middle of the floor?”

When Fei finishes saying that, Wu Jian is already having the shivers.

Yes, what Fei said is entirely possible.

And of course, people like Lin Qin, who are already irritated and ends up trashing the desk and chair and throwing them to the wall, is also a ‘re-creation’ of some kind.

Though others would certainly choose to put the desks and chairs strewn about by the wall into familiar positions to aid with searching for clues possibly hidden within.

If a set of desk and chair is placed properly…

Then well, the middle of the floor wouldn’t be home to only one single inexplicably normal set of office desk and chair.

Wu Jian thinks, whether it was order or chaos reacting, it seems NE has them entirely calculated through. Whatever they do, his schemes will go through.

He falls silent.

As he looks into Fei’s eyes, he knows his companion is also now considering a similar question. Regarding… the Server, NE.

Not that they dare to say anything out loud. It’s possible that they could just worsen the situation with chaos, but that said, they, and the members of the organisation they belong to, they believe firmly that NE is the accomplice of whoever was behind all this, here to keep constant surveillance on the humans.

And they are definitely not interested in losing memories ever again.

Jiang Shuangmei looks around, slightly confused at how all the Missiontakers have fallen silent, and tentatively raises a question, “so… where do you think the Nightmare owner could be?”

The silence is broken.

Suits thinks about it for a moment, and provides an answer, “I previously thought that there could be two possibilities –

One, the Nightmare owner is still inside the building, whether trapped in one of the restrooms, on a floor we haven’t been to, or inside an elevator we’ve not yet found, they’re all possible.

Cannot be exited?

Some look confused, some others fall into thought.

Of course, some still look entirely unfazed——Specifically, Lin Qin and Shen Yünjü. The former is occasionally flashing an impatient look, the latter… merely resembles some collection of nondescript poker faces.

What Suits said has Fei somewhat unsettled, who asks, “so what you mean, is that we would have to, and it is actually the case, for us to resolve the entire Nightmare staying within this building?”

Suits nods, explaining, “from the information we have so far, leaving the building through the stairs is impossible; the elevator is completely beyond our control.

However, these ‘déjà vu’s we keep running into has me consider something else – it could be implying that we would solve the Nightmare not by leaving the building, but by actively looking for them all over, to piece together the truth of this Nightmare…”

While Suits is explaining, Fei nods along, but she is feeling very complicated inside.

Of course, she knows that is how Missiontakers from higher floor of the Tower deal with Nightmares. They settle for nothing less than True Ends, which would oftentimes require Missiontakers the dig up the ‘truth.’

From their perspective, the way the bottom floor Missiontakers deal with Nightmares, namely, dealing with things when and if they strike them, is practically heretical.

But never mind that, because this isn’t much related to what she is concerned about right now.

What she is actually thinking is that, if this Nightmare can be solved just within the building alone, then what could that mean for the burning city outside?

Is that really just some kind of meaningless background set piece?

Then what this Nightmare is implying, that ‘apocalypse’ it hints at…

In the meantime, the rest of the Missiontakers have already moved on to other topics.

What Suits said has more or less been accepted by the Missiontakers present, but that is not a short-term issue they can resolve immediately, so they are turning to more important topics.

Suits, seeing Mystic’s reactions earlier, judges her to be lucid, and asks, “what buttons are lit up in elevator Three?”

Mystic gives him a slightly paranoid look, a look that surprises Suits, but she then answers without delay, “there are four buttons that were lit up. I tried one, which led me to them, and I was… shocked… before the Nightmare restarted.”

She answers the question with a slightly distant tone.

Although Teen then interrupts them, having suddenly thought of an important point, “so this means, elevator Three that stops on the 20th floor, can bring us to the 18th floor, where elevator Two can go,

… No, I mean, like, elevator One has also been to where elevator Two probably dumped the blood on the 20th floor. This must mean… that the floors these elevators can go to is not as independent as we thought?”

Jiang Shuangmei asks with a tone of mockery, “so doesn’t that completely overturn what you suggested, that each elevator only went randomly through separate, arbitrary lists of floors they could go to?”

Teen looks at her with knit brows, but doesn’t deny it. Instead, he merely says, “it is possible this ‘list’ is longer than we all thought.”

“So long that they include all 36 floors in them?”

Teen looks positively pissed off at the repeated provocations.

Suits tries to defuse the situation, “never mind that, but we have to settle on a course of action now.”

He knows if Teen is allowed to wallow in his own thoughts, he can probably be stuck in his mind until the Nightmare restarts yet again, so switching the topic, he proposes, “looks like we will still have to split up this time.”

The rest of the Missiontakers nod in agreement.