Volume 8 - CH 146.2

Before Shen Yünjü has more time to think about it, Mu Jiashi announces, “we’re here. The elevators are working.”

They go in and push the button for 11.

That reminds Shen Yünjü of that Nightmare, of an office Tower, with malfunctioning elevators and absolutely unhinged people… He glances at Mystic.

She has also been to that Nightmare.

All three of them have been to that Nightmare, where apparently Mystic’s daughter was in.

And they guessed that Mystic was the game company’s employee from the Nightmare… huh?

Mystic used to work at that game company?

Shen Yünjü made the connection quite late.

And, there was that game design document.

Huh, they did end up largely ignoring Mystic’s past identity on Earth.

She used a utility card, whose ‘price’ changed her entirely.

And the Nightmare ultimately being her daughter’s, meant they ended up ignoring Mystic’s role in the Nightmare. They focused on her daughter about halfway onwards, but not Mystic herself.

Strictly speaking, the Missiontakers didn’t have concrete proof that Mystic really was the little girl’s mother, especially since Mystic behaved even less coherently back then.

Assuming she is, then the clues that point to her past, suggested that, for example, she once left her own young daughter behind on a floor;

While she speaks in riddles, she oftentimes can clue other Missiontakers in through them.

So looking at those facts, Mystic probably used to be a clever and insightful woman. It’s just that the utility card has buried all that in her.

And also, that made them forget Mystic had connections to the game company.

They were busy learning about the Apocalypse, about Nightmares, about the Tower, about the grey fog, and this line of thought just sat on the sidelines the whole time.

However, they learned in the end that what was happening to the building was a game prototype based on Mystic and her daughter, which gave rise to that Nightmare her daughter has.

Well, ‘her daughter,’ whose Actor was unlikely to have actually been that little girl that was once trapped in an office building.

It’s quite possible she was an Actor who have lost herself in the little girl’s Nightmare.

And… can he assert that Mystic was the same? She ended up assuming the role of the mother in that game, like the other women in that office building.

Maybe they weren’t actually mother and daughter, but they both succumbed to a Nightmare.

Their role as Actors and Missiontakers became irrelevant, as they will identify as the character in that plot, and that the plot was what was going on.

There was certainly a mother-daughter pair; the mother worked at the game company, and her coworkers made a game about a mother looking for her daughter in the Apocalypse, basing the main characters off of them.

Shen Yünjü is feeling something odd about all this once again.

That office building and the Tower. That game and this game. They were already implying something, but could it be… Reality and fiction; the truth and the veil concealing it.

A game that happened in a building… Separated close ones… the building, the Tower’s AI, whose purpose was to protect the Tower’s survivors…

A game design document. And another one.

He remembers that, in Xü Beijin’s Nightmare, when he revisited the empty and thus safe office space of the floors below, and discovered the game design document, no mention of any building like the ‘Tower’ was there.

It outlined a game which tasked players with investigating tragedies occurring in the Apocalypse, but didn’t actually talk about what the game’s visuals should look like. It was actually only focused on the game’s core loop, per se.

And the building, of the little girl’s Nightmare, was where the game of the mother and daughter took place.

The mother left her daughter behind, trapping the little girl in a building, after the Apocalypse, to look for her mother;

And, that floor the little girl was in, was the mother’s last act protecting her daughter.

That ‘floor,’ was ‘protection.’

Every floor in the Tower was entirely safe, under the protection of the AI;

Unless they ventured out into Nightmares, into areas afflicted by the Apocalypse.

Shen Yünjü is entirely absorbed in his thoughts, as if becoming emotional has also kick-started his thought processes.

The elevator is still rising steadily; electricity is still available at this point, although it might cut off at any point.

Shen Yünjü suddenly calls out, “Mystic…”

She looks at him, bewildered.

Shen Yünjü observes the woman who spoke in riddles from head to toe. She was never quite an active player in their team. She’s almost like a mascot.

Mu Jiashi is also curiously looking at him, wondering what Shen Yünjü could want to ask.

Shen Yünjü asks, “do you remember your past? Back on… Earth?”

Mystic seems surprised he’d ask, but she smiles, perhaps meekly, and says, “of course. I had a daughter.”

“No, I don’t mean…” Shen Yünjü interrupts her; since that Nightmare, her daughter is all she would talk about, even though there was no definitive proof of such.

Maybe she could be her daughter, but why… why would Mystic only recall her daughter at that moment?

Even if her memory was wiped like theirs were, but he can’t imagine her daughter not having been born until the Apocalypse occurred. Otherwise, the little girl would still be a one-year-old infant.

Shen Yünjü says, “your daughter, in the Tower, is already tall as a grown woman.”

Mystic doesn’t seem to understand.

Though Mu Jiashi is furrowing his brows now. He might have caught on.

Shen Yünjü asks, “are you really sure, that she is your daughter?”

Mystic seems affronted, “of course! Of course I am! I have a daughter…”

“Is that Actor really that daughter?”

Mystic looks deeply unsettled.

Mu Jiashi asks, “what are you really trying to say?”

Shen Yünjü takes a deep breath and says, “I wanted to ask… I apologise for being so blunt, but what I really wanted to ask is——If you really are the mother of the little girl, then, I believe you must be an employee of that game company.”

Both Mystic and Mu Jiashi widen their eyes in amazement.

“The game company!” Mu Jiashi says to himself, shocked, “I absolutely forgot to consider that…”

Mu Jiashi himself has been to that little girl’s Nightmare, but he didn’t manage to figure out the real truth behind the Nightmare, or what information there were beneath the 9th floor.

Fei and Wu Jian told him about it briefly after the Nightmare was over, but they didn’t go into detail about Mystic’s identity and Mu Jiashi didn’t think more deeply either.

Even though he did hear about Mystic and her new ‘daughter’ afterwards, he didn’t connect the dots.

Put simply, everything happened much too quickly. There were too much information for them to accept in such a short period of time, and so they couldn’t give each piece of detail the detailed analysis due.

For example, to this day, Mu Jiashi still hasn’t had the time, to discuss the True End of Su Enya’s Nightmare with her.

There should definitely be one, in theory, but they were all busy, so busy trying to learn about the Apocalypse and resolve key Nightmares, that Mu Jiashi completely forgot.

They knew about Mystic finding a new daughter, and how she once abandoned her on an empty floor somewhere, and finally, they reunited here.

But they never saw Mystic’s daughter themselves, and even though all the relevant information was known, they all ended up ignoring this Actor in particular.

They knew as far as what happened to this mother-daughter pair, but most didn’t… didn’t recall the game company’s connection with them.

So when Shen Yünjü suddenly brought up the connection Mystic must now logically have with the game company, Mu Jiashi realises the problem, and shoots a gaze at Mystic.

Mystic seems to still be blanking out; before she answers, the elevator door is already open.

Though while she’s still recalling, her expression turns subtly more complex.

“Do you remember something?” Shen Yünjü seems more agitated than she is, “were you really working for the company?”

Mu Jiashi glances at Shen Yünjü. The ‘zombie’ really did become quite overtly emotional in this hospital.

But he doesn’t point that out once more. So far, it seems it has been a positive influence more than anything else.

His energised thought processes allowed him to reexamine their experience in that Nightmare’s building.

And, he also realised the problem surrounding Mystic’ identity.