Volume 6 - CH 100.1

Apocalypse Now

Translated by boilpoil

Edited by boilpoil

Fei’s arrival is a big relief to Wu Jian.

Although now he can’t help but worry about the two Missiontakers that took off to the south.

He Shujün and Ding Yi are still not yet back… what’s wrong? Did they run into some difficulty?

Or maybe they still haven’t learnt of the time constraint in this Nightmare, or possibly have yet to investigate their location properly, so they’re not in a hurry to come back?

Though soon enough, he decides to put the worries away.

Regardless, when this run of the Nightmare is over, they will have plenty time to talk the next run.

He calms himself down and then briefly tells Fei and the others the discoveries in the library.

Then Fei tells him about the Space Agency.

“So…”

They simultaneously utter, and then keep looking at the other person blankly.

They’ve realised, that the other person has understood what this can only imply for what truly happened.

Finally, with trembling lips, Fei is the one to say, looking like she doesn’t know whether to smile or cry, “so, it was that kind of Apocalypse…”

First, this whole year of some sort of madness that came out of nowhere, and then, a natural disaster, civilisation-ending class, that fell out of the sky.

That is how they lost everything, and end up trapped in the decrepit, eerie Tower, never able to leave.

Wu Jian’s fingers are trembling as well, but he’s trying his best to hide it from the others.

He quietly says, “after that Apocalypse… what could have happened?” He then wonders, “how did we end up in the Tower?”

Compared to that, Fei is more interested in something else.

She asks, “have you noticed it yet?”

“What?”

“This Nightmare.” Fei whispers, “why did it suddenly come to our attention? Why is this truth laid bare to us?”

“It’s because…” Wu Jian almost immediately answers subconsciously, but then he stops and thinks for a bit before mumbling, “because, that Tower resident, returned from a higher floor!”

Yes, this Nightmare is from the higher floors.

How many Nightmares are there on the higher floors?

Nobody knows. They don’t even know how many floors there are in total.

So naturally, if this Nightmare was one of those Nightmares on the higher floors, nobody would have paid close attention.

Of course, it’s possible they might stumble upon it by pure luck and try to go through it──or fail to do so.

Regardless, for Fei and Wu Jian, they may never have ended up in that Nightmare.

Because they’ve already missed it. While they were on whatever floor that Nightmare was on, they did not enter it, and after they left that floor, it is very unlikely they would have gone back for this Nightmare alone.

They returned to the bottom floor of the Tower for that Nightmare with the ruins on purpose because that Nightmare had the suspicious property of ‘forgetting.’

Then they stayed on the bottom floor thanks to the continuous waves of rumours; the other Missiontakers for those of the ‘Ultimate Nightmare,’  but Fei and Wu Jian, for those of the ‘Apocalypse.’

In any case, they’ve finally come face-to-face with this one Nightmare.

If this Nightmare didn’t end up on the bottom floor at such a timing, they probably wouldn’t have paid any special attention to it too.

Even when Mu Jiashi has already experienced it, even if he also seemed to have come to know something intriguing because of what can be seen in this Nightmare, and this is evident because, before Fei and Wu Jian had doubts about the identities of Tower residents, Mu Jiashi himself failed to glean any useful information from Su Enya’s suggestive words.

Fei and Wu Jian didn’t know about the Apocalypse, and Mu Jiashi didn’t know about the Tower residents.

How big of a coincidence did it have to be, that they met, and pieced together the truth?

All the coincidences; when so many coincidences had to pile up for something to happen, can it still have been coincidental?

It’s almost unfathomable, enough that they have to suspect, whether there is an invisible hand moving something along behind-the-scenes. Yet, who could have such power to arrange for all these coincidences?

Fei can feel a storm battering her thoughts asunder in her mind, until all the clear and logical thoughts have become much more muddled.

She shuts her eyes, feeling overwhelmed, before saying firmly, “never mind all that then. We have to get this Nightmare dealt with first.”

Wu Jian nods.

He has also realised, that just now, they might have touched on some possibility they never ever would have considered before.

Who could be so omnipotent in the Tower that they can dictate circumstances for them to discover the truth through countless coincidences?

NE.

When the letters pop up in Wu Jian’s mind, he manages to frighten himself.

He reflexively looks around in fear, in fear of his thoughts being seen.

Seen by whom?

By NE.

NE is the ruler of the Tower. It can erase memories, and can certainly control the mind.

It is an invisible tyrant, an invisible hand. It is the only possibility, and nothing else.

But how could that even be possible?!

Wu Jian gulps; what he was thinking must have been absurd.

Then he shakes his head to chase the thought away, and gets back into the library along with the other Missiontakers.

By now, Buzzcut has already convinced Xü Beijin to take them to the staff’s office on the fifth floor.

Fei and the others are also here, so they’re naturally going together as one big group.

Xü Beijin is leading them, with Lin Qin naturally taking the place by his side. Plus the Missiontakers and the teenager dressed like a student behind them, it was quite the company. Everyone is keeping thoughts to themselves too.

When Fei saw Xü Beijin, she certainly blanked out for a moment.

Not long ago, when she walked past the bookstore on the street outside, she was wondering if the bookstore owner might be in this Nightmare. Unexpectedly, he is really here, but not as the owner of the bookstore.

He’s the librarian instead.

Even now, Fei is still curious about what Xü Beijin’s Nightmare could be.

When Xü Beijin has made it clear time and again he would not let others in, and Fei understood that Tower residents are humans just like them, she has stopped pursuing the matter.

Not to mention it was Xü Beijin who ultimately revealed to her that Tower residents have more to them than the eyes can see.

That said, Fei also has hypotheses.

Bookstore, library… with Xü Beijin’s mysterious identity and his tendency to speak in riddles, Fei is sure he is holding important secrets.

A bookstore of the bottom floor of the Tower… A bookstore… Fei, looking at the countless collections of books in this library, and thinking about what Wu Jian said about that book containing secrets of other Nightmares, is now trying to link it to an entire bookstore worth of books that Xü Beijin has.

This Nightmare contains elements of other Nightmares.

And just now, Wu Jian also said, with this peculiar tone, about how Xü Beijin referenced their experience in the last Nightmare, talking about those mad people in that building the last time.

He knows about the Nightmares, and he showed them how Tower residents are not just what they seem.