Volume 8 - CH 139.5

Xü Beijin hates NE to the core, perhaps it stems from his own death, the many years of imprisonment, or, simply due to his instincts as a human.

The fundamental reason, though, is that, NE stands against them.

While it is a game Server, and so it ultimately wishes for players to win, which was an innate drive written into its code when created, but, the question becomes——Does NE wish for one person to clear the game, or, for all of them to?

As the game’s Server, another of its innate motivation is to wish for ‘players coming to play this game.’

NE is simply a mechanical, artificial being.

He can judge emotionlessly that all the memories and emotions Xü Beijin had as a human is useless;

He will, after determining players are losing motivation to continue going through the game, raise the odds of the rare cards appearing, and even siding with humans to help them.

Is it even possible that he will allow all human players to leave the game?

The Missiontakers and Actors have never considered this question, perhaps.

After one human has successfully left the Tower… will NE still help them after that?

No way. NE will want this game to continue, want more players to continue participating in the Nightmares, and not all humans to be able to escape.

So, while NE is currently on the human’s side, it can change in the blink of an eye.

He just needed the Ultimate Nightmare open and allow the human players to achieve an Ending——that is his goal.

To that end, he has transferred authority to Xü Beijin, and facilitated players entering the Ultimate Nightmare.

As for whether humanity can leave the Tower? None of his business. In fact, he will never allow all the players to leave the game.

Is NE helping humans? Yes, for that matter.

Is NE helping humans to escape the Tower? No.

He is simply expecting some players to reach a conclusion in the game.

That’s it.

Which is why Xü Beijin never placed any hope on NE——the way the other Missiontakers was hoping that NE was malfunctioning and letting them out of the Tower.

It is impossible.

From the very beginning, Xü Beijin, and all the humans, had only themselves to count on.

Counting on NE is a lost cause.

In fact, the moment humans threaten to achieve their own goals, NE will become the first obstacle on their way, the first enemy, the first to overcome, the AI that they thought was helping them.

It would be tragic news if any Missiontakers or Actors learned about it.

They certainly weren’t expecting to fight the game’s master in the game itself right now.

Fortunately for them, Xü Beijin isn’t counting on them to do that.

——For Xü Beijin will be the person to truly ‘kill’ NE.

Through a certain means, he will be able to bring ruin to NE’s programming. It’s not technically killing NE entirely, since NE runs on outside electricity, or whatever ‘they’ have for ‘electricity,’ but at least, he can guarantee, that NE will lose the capability to continue managing the game.

All thanks to NE having given his authority to Xü Beijin, thanks to NE mistakenly judging Xü Beijin to be his same kind, to also be an artificial intelligence.

Even in spite of Xü Beijin’s clear stance——That rather than an AI, he identifies as human. He is never his same kind.

NE cannot comprehend Xü Beijin’s thoughts, the same way Xü Beijin will never be on NE’s side.

Xü Beijin is still watching the blinking lights on the wall, reflected the same way in his flickering eyes.

Then, he suddenly breaks into a smile.

“Good luck, then, NE,” Xü Beijin says politely, “and to me, too.”

Then he leaves the top floor of the Tower behind, the highest floor in this Tower, that is entirely empty, cold, deserted.

He didn’t tell Lin Qin the whole story.

For example, the ‘stairs’ he will be taking, is actually a sort of boundary that surrounds the Tower. It is for NE’s use, so it is narrow, to put it mildly.

Since NE isn’t at all a grown man like Xü Beijin, but a stream of data. He is accommodated without needing space, really.

So in the cramped boundary shrouded in total darkness, Xü Beijin has to carefully, horizontally manoeuvre himself downwards to ensure his safety, that he isn’t stepping into any edges bleeding into other areas of the game’s memory.

The good news is, the road is shorter than Xü Beijin thought it would be;

The bad news is, he is moving barely faster than at a snail’s pace.

Then he suddenly stops, with cold sweat erupting all over him.

There is an almost imperceptible sharp spike that, if it were not for the control panel’s dim lights refracting weirdly off of it, he might have stumbled into it without a second thought.

This is really too dangerous, thinks Xü Beijin.

If only Lin Qin were also here with him.

Thinking so, he carefully positions himself so he avoids that spike.

On the following way down, despite his immense attention to his surroundings, he still ended up suffering a slash on his left arm. He furrows his brows.

Normally, you might expect bleeding as a consequence of being hurt in the game. But, this small boundary surrounding the Tower, means he is wounded by becoming corrupted – not bleeding, not even feeling the pain.

There is just the telltale sign of the graphics on his arm acting up, looking like some strange layer of mojibake covering his arm.

It is also spreading out with a slow, but unstoppable pace.

This is terrible. If his body becomes entirely shrouded in this mess——

Not even the whole body. Even if it just covered his left arm, he probably won’t be able to use it again, in the game.

It’s difficult to say that, if, in the game, his brain has already registered his left arm as crippled, then would his consciousness be able to recover back in reality.

Xü Beijin sighs and settles his thoughts. Walking in this damned boundary alone, he ought to expect some injuries.

Fortunately, he is halfway through the path. He should be able to reach the Tower before his left arm is done for.

Back inside the Tower, he can use the control panel to turn his left arm back into a normal, bleeding, but healable wound.

Though the little apple will probably look angry and worried again.

It saddens him to imagine so, too, and he is worried as well.

He continues downwards through the narrow boundary. The further he goes, the more sharp, imperceptible spikes there are, and his pace slows further and further. He really wish he could be a shapeless collection of data right now.

He would be able to just zoom from the top to the bottom floor in the blink of an eye.

Xü Beijin is trying to distract himself with happier thoughts, because another mess of mojibake has covered up his right ankle; that was slashed by an edge he really couldn’t have noticed at all.

This game… is such a rage-inducing thing.

Finally, not long afterwards, a blanket of light that represents his target appears in front of him. Still carefully manoeuvring his way past the sharp edges, he lets himself sink into the light, and finally, brightness returns to his perception.

He is back on the bottom floor, and at the same time, he is in so much pain he hisses.

He’s normalised both wounds on his limbs immediately, which turns them from numb things he couldn’t feel a thing about, into extremely painful wounds.

His right ankle isn’t doing too poorly, as it was wounded at a really late stage, but the slash on his left arm has rather escalated into a severe gaping wound from his left shoulder all the way down near his wrists.

The blood has already drenched a sizable part of his white shirt.

Looking at his left arm, Xü Beijin feels like it actually looks even worse than it is hurting.

And more importantly, how is he going to explain to the little apple——That this is the stairs he just promised him was safe and free of danger?

But the pain is worsening by the second – Xü Beijin already has his right arm up, but he doesn’t even know where to begin suturing the wound.

So he just puts his hand down, abandoning any futile attempts, and calls out to Lin Qin, “little apple, I’m at Respawn Avenue. Come get me.”

His voice is a little stressed, which makes Lin Qin somewhat concerned. He has a bad feeling about it.

But he already said he’s on the bottom floor, so he doesn’t ask and quickly heads for it.

While waiting for Lin Qin, to kill time, and also to escape from reality a bit, Xü Beijin takes a look at the stream he’s ignored all this time.

Then he realises that the Ultimate Nightmare is going quite badly.

The comments are in an uproar because of what’s happening on the stream.

Xü Beijin is able to immediately pick out the key information from it.

“wheres Beibei?! oh gods! there are mad people coming from the doors in the fog!”