Volume 8 - CH 136.2

The last person Xü Beijin comes into contact with is the person on the highest floor among all the Missiontakers of the Tower.

He is trapped on the 65th floor.

He is completely alone, with no other Tower resident, or Missiontaker in sight.

This means he is irreversibly trapped. If there were Tower residents, he could fail in their Nightmare to go back down, but not here.

No one can follow his steps, so he has already been forgotten by everyone.

An unsung hero.

Perhaps all the Missiontakers that knew him have already forgotten, forgotten about the one among them that is the most brilliant. They do not remember him, or his glorious past.

The world has already abandoned… oh, her.

Xü Beijin couldn’t tell her gender from the name on the control panel alone, and is only able to correctly identify her after seeing her.

A young woman, and from the looks of it, she’s quite happy on the 65th floor. Keeping flowers, reading books, using lots of valuable utility cards as decoration and even poker substitute.

She’s spent countless lonely nights on that floor by herself.

Her name, according to the control panel, is ‘Xiang Chenyü.’

“Good evening, Miss Xiang.”

When Xü Beijin’s voice pops up by her ears, Xiang Chenyü is clearly spooked, looking up, left and right, but sees nothing. Then finally, her gaze turns somewhat confused.

Xü Beijin explains why he’s here.

But Xiang Chenyü reacts rather slowly, and it takes Xü Beijin waits patiently for her to react.

Some time later, Xiang Chenyü slowly replies, “so, you mean, you will open, the Ultimate Nightmare?”

“Yes…” Xü Beijin replies, “miss, you’re the only one whose answer I’m waiting on.”

Xiang Chenyü looks like she’s still blanking out for some time, until suddenly, she feels her face turn cold.

Her mind didn’t catch up with the tears already welling out of her eye sockets.

“Of course… of course!”

So, the last Missiontaker in the Tower has joined their ranks.

Actually, compared to the Missiontakers, Tower residents are far more difficult to find and convince.

Most of the Missiontakers are at least rational and communicable, but many Tower residents, like the female Missiontaker that crouched on a floor of the Tower, shuddering the whole day, has largely lost their sense of self.

They’ve become the character they are assigned, but they haven’t quite gone mad yet, at least, not so much that they can only be sent into the grey fog.

Having become a character in the game, so reasons for escaping from the Tower are no longer something that will convince them.

So, the contacts have to bring up everything from the Ultimate Nightmare to NE to elicit some form of response.

Whether they’d comply in the end, is completely unknown.

But Xü Beijin has done all he could.

In the operation, he’s practically seen every possible reaction of humans.

He once was just someone staying at the bottom floor of the Tower, observing the rolling grey fog outside through the window of his bookstore.

He imagines how the people in the Tower fare, but he cannot observe directly.

The lives of people on the bottom and higher floors are entirely different, from the mood to the environment.

On higher floors, people are visibly calmer, more rational, leading far more materially opulent lives than on the bottom floor. However, Xü Beijin thinks the peaceful atmosphere is better labelled as ‘lifeless.’

A lot of them up there, have already come to the conclusion that they might never be able to leave the Tower.

People like Ye Lan and that companion of hers, who were willing to fight back down to the bottom floor of the Tower, is a minority.

And whatever kind of hope they held will be denied – they are denying their entire past struggles when they abandon everything to return to the bottom floor.

That’s what Mu Jiashi did, even though his return wasn’t due to the rumours of the bottom floor in the Tower.

To be honest, everyone who would return to the bottom floor had to face the same ‘defeat,’ but many of them would probably call it ‘chasing after hope.’

Madness?

Madness is what lies behind the rational. On the higher floor, the atmosphere belies a rather hidden tension. Everyone’s mind is tense to the point of snapping.

They are all standing on the edge of the precipice.

The Missiontakers who headed to the higher floors from the bottom floor are that way, at least.

They head up the floors with hope, and end up seeing how the Missiontakers on higher floors are even less hopeful than they are, with far more terrible Nightmares they have to face here.

Tower residents face the other side of the same coin.

The Tower’s damp, rotten and lifeless qualities have already been imparted onto them.

The cold from what is close to death as a state of existence is the norm for them, who are unable to detach themselves from the scripts they have become used to anymore.

Even if it was NE’s demand and forced cooperation at first, but as time moved on, they became more and more familiar with the Nightmare owner in their script. They realise, looking in the mirror, their own faces have become unfamiliar.

Who are they?

Are they who they are?

When they can’t even distinguish who their consciousness truly identify as, then who are they, really?

Instead of a hope to escape the Tower, they ended up mostly convinced by curiosity towards the Ultimate Nightmare instead.

Regardless, everyone has agreed to what the contacts asked of them.

When contacts reach out towards everyone on their floors with news on the Ultimate Nightmare, never mind those who have heard of the news already, but those who haven’t, while overjoyed, is also slightly fearful.

Fearful of the hope that finally descended. They do not dare to believe it, for it may be another of those unverifiable rumours of the Tower. No one knows where they come from, or why the news is here, now, or if it would just come to pass.

But this time, their contacts give them a far more concrete time than anyone expected.

“We will all know the answer, tonight at midnight, sharp.”

Twelve at night, sharp!

Everyone is keeping track of time nonstop, counting down in their minds, using this method to try and calm themselves down, but the almost fanatical mood that’s spread throughout the Tower, is still too thick to dissipate.