Being an Extra Actor in an Escape Game Volume 2 - CH 39.3

Mu Jiashi, observing close by, finally understands now.

Ding Yi’s grue hair, her introverted, rather business-unfriendly countenance, and the unique way she enamours people..

A Trick card.

Modify cards and Fusion cards might change Missiontakers’ appearance too, but they do not last for a long time. Meanwhile, the Necessities Merchant, Ding Yi, has always had this signature grue hair colour ever since she became a well-known name.

Such a long-lasting, unnatural appearance can only have been caused by Trick cards.

One Use of the Trick card allows one attempt at deception, with success hinging on a check between each other’s ‘charm’ value. In general, double or above the opponent’s value would be a guaranteed success.

However, as the quantified charm value is only visible to the person in question via their information panel, and because Infocards do not give exact numbers on others either, so it mostly comes down to luck, really.

Of course, Missiontakers can also choose to collect Charm cards that temporarily or even permanently increase their own charm value, which would raise the probability of success when using Deception and Trick cards.

No matter what, though, these types of utility cards relating to charm, including Deception, Trick and Charm, are cards that unlucky Missiontakers hate the most.

Though if Mu Jiashi could see the Trick card’s information on Ding Yi’s personal information panel, then he will definitely be sighing and questioning why even escape games like ‘Escape’ has to become a test of everyone’s fortune?

‘Card Name: Unconditional Trust

Finally, when the boy is smiling and nodding firmly, like a promise to live his life well, that gender-neutral voice from the Server, NE, coldly seeps into the Missiontakers’ ears.

“Congratulations on achieving the Nightmare’s True End. Please choose whether to ascend to a higher floor: Yes/No”

Alongside the voice is the scenery of the Nightmare turning into grey fog and dispersing. The forms of the Missiontakers and the Actors disappear among the endless fog one by one.

Some are headed to floors above. Some are staying behind on the bottom floor.

Just before this happened, Dai Wu, standing right next to the flowerbed in the centre of the service area, glanced over at the boy’s form as he disappears.

He muttered, “congratulations. Your wish came true.”

The boy heard that, though, and turned to gloat at him, before disappearing entirely.

Before the Nightmare began, the Actor, the little boy, had heard about Lin Qin gathering drinks. He recalled how his Nightmare had a supermarket, and so, he made a gamble.

Although the Missiontakers managed to somehow bumble into a True End in the end, but really, by the seventh run, even the boy himself had given up. With the man in black no longer in play, the True End he had in his script was then out of reach – A True End, with Lin Qin beating the breathing sunlights out of the man in black, until he suddenly went poof and disappeared——Because, this man in black, wasn’t even really a ‘person,’ but just a phantom, a ‘face,’ with an Actor.

If this powerful dalao Lin Qin would just use a bit more force, the man in black would have been forced to despawn (not ‘die’), which would technically be him having overcome the monster that dwelled and plagued him in his Nightmares.

It’s really a rough improvisation, but the boy believes it could be enough to achieve a True End. Even if worst comes to worst, he just has to be quick on his feet and come up with some nice Acting to lead these dummies for Missiontakers on, and pull the rugs right out from under the Server.

In fact, when he reflexively yelled the moment he had entered the service area earlier as the man in black was trampled under Lin Qin’s foot——The Missiontakers thought he was scared, but it was more out of surprise.

It was truly a shame Lin Qin still held back, back then, or they would have reached a True End by that time.

Thank goodness the rest of the Missiontakers were not too incompetent.. Or not. Really, when the Nightmare crumbled the fifth and sixth run, they were still basically relying on Lin Qin’s strengths entirely. It would be foolish to assume they could have resolved the Nightmare through the intended means.

The intended means being – opening the door to the dark bedroom, which forces the frozen time to flow inside the bedroom, and also forces the boy’s journey to link up to the man in black’s.

In the last few runs, the man in black was going through the rigmarole of escape after his ‘mother’s death. The police have not discovered the boy hidden in the wardrobe yet, which was why it was locked.

Yet, by the fifth and sixth run, because outside the bedroom the police have already issued a warrant, they must clearly have also found the crime scene before then and, logically, the boy.

Therefore, by this time, the normally locked wardrobe door would be unlocked the moment the bedroom door was opened. Numbering off was no longer necessary.

The Missiontakers could have taken him directly to the service area, with an ample five minutes provided for them. Then, using the property that the man in black disappeared as soon as he arrived in the service area and saw him, that ‘totally unsolvable conundrum’ would be resolved.

The useless Missiontakers only thought about hugging dalao’s thighs, though.

Although he, the boy himself, was also hugging his thighs to go to a higher floor.. But so what! He will gloat at Dai Wu! Finally, now he’ll get to go to a higher floor! Ha!

Dai Wu says to himself in the last moments, “hmph, a higher floor..”

Then, a cheery smile emerges on his face.

A higher floor, so what?

In the Tower, everyone is always a prisoner.

Xü Beijin opens his eyes to find himself face-to-face with his empty, lifeless bookstore again.

The stream is pretty lively, in contrast, with the viewers still discussing the Nightmare that just ended. They are discussing how much of a coincidence this was plus how smart the Missiontakers must have been to finally achieve that True End.

Many normal Missiontakers would have been totally helpless just trying to stop the indiscriminately slaughtering man in black already.

The Difficulty?

The Difficulty, is in somehow figuring out how to dislodge the gears that were running smoothly along, obeying their own rules, by the time they learn that the murderer has already been arrested and taken offscreen in the seventh run after making it through runs five and six.

Somehow, they must force the gear of the boy, forever stuck in the tragedy of his mother’s death and locked in place in the timeline, to match with the gear of the time in the ‘present’ where the murderer has already been sentenced to death, or possibly even been put to death already.

They have to make him realise that, all is over now. He should move on.

The Nightmare really is a nightmare in the sense that it is the childhood trauma that the boy could not overcome, even when the source of this nightmare, the mad man who killed his own wife, the boy’s mother, like some kind of unrestrained beast, has long gone.

Xü Beijin’s thoughts digressed for a moment, before he said his goodbyes to the viewers in the stream and ended this long streaming session.

Light is coming through the windows. Another unremarkable day is to begin.

Xü Beijin is having a hard time deciding between three choices – taking a walk, blanking out and reading a book.

Suddenly, there is knocking on the door.

While visitors outside cannot walk inside through the strange ways the doors operate, but people in the house can still hear knockings from outside normally.

Xü Beijin raises his head to look, and the moment he realises who was knocking, he is completely shocked.

.. The moment he’s out of the Nightmare, Lin Qin already ran over?!