Chapter 34: Spoils of War

Chapter 34: Spoils of War

"How can that be?" Qi Chanyang furrowed his brows deeply, "I've never heard of a player being able to bring an NPC out of the instance! This ability is quite unique, and generally, NPCs are stronger than players. If someone truly managed to bring an NPC out, this player can't be a nobody!"

Gu Shanshan asked, "But if an NPC dies within the instance, they would be automatically restored when the instance restarts, right?"

"Yes."

Gu Shanshan looked at her wrist.

On her right hand, she wore Lu Xiaoqin's hair tie. Due to the fight with the mire and the first opponent, the hair tie had snapped in the middle. Gu Shanshan carefully tied a knot in it, making it fit perfectly on her wrist at this moment.

Gu Shanshan's gaze became icy.

"There's very little information available about this instance. In the end, we managed to clear it only by relying on Brother Jie dismantling the entire hospital. Brother Qi, do you think a level one instance... no, even a level two instance, would be this difficult? How many people could, like Brother Jie, casually demolish a hospital when they say they will?"

Qi Chanyang was momentarily stunned: "Very few."

He also realized that something was off with this level one instance. It wasn't just about the difficulty level... no, it was more than that.

Qi Chanyang regained his composure.

In comparison to novice players who have a staggering 90% mortality rate in a typical level one instance, Qi Chanyang, a seasoned player who has cleared instances six times, should feel like a fish in water, with at least a 30% assurance of survival.

Yet in this instance, Qi Chanyang couldn't help but self-question: could nine other seasoned players like himself clear it?

No.

The overwhelming strength of the NPCs left decryption as the sole avenue to a successful clearance.

However, they had spent three days in the instance, and the clues they could find were sporadic and woefully insufficient, yet the restrictions placed upon them were exceedingly numerous.

Gu Shanshan took out paper and pen, and her handwriting was projected onto the screen through the projector.

"The NPCs in this instance can be categorized into four groups: one being the doctors, including the Dean, Han Qi, and He Xin; another group consists of the patients, numbered one to nine. There is also a group that performs specific functions, like the faux Ge Juan, the kitchen NPCs, and the security personnel. The remaining group, or rather, an individual who is almost entirely separate from the hospital, is Liu Hanyue."

Gu Shanshan dispersed the four groups into separate corners and then wrote 'players' in the center.

"The doctors harbor hostility towards us consistently, desiring for us to consume three pills, before intending to devour us as food."

"The specific function NPCs are also hostile towards us, with the faux Ge Juan setting a rule for our murder. The kitchen NPCs emphasize not wasting food, which likely hints at another rule for killing, and as for the security personnel... though Brother Jie killed him on the first day, he had been drooling while staring at us when we arrived, clearly perceiving us as potential food."

"Liu Hanyue has been conveying messages to us during the day without ever showing herself, which suggests that she cannot emerge during daylight. At night, however, she viciously hunts down anyone who enters her room. Therefore, we can deduce that she is aligned with us during the day, when she possesses no offensive capabilities, but becomes hostile towards us at night, her power escalating sharply."

"The patient NPCs operate in the same manner."

After jotting this down, Gu Shanshan continued, "On that final day... NPC number six, that is, Wang He, almost killed me until I shouted the names of him and his wife. He reacted, but quickly reverted back to his deranged state."

"Therefore—"

Gu Sansan gently tapped on the paper marked with red arrows, indicating hostility.

"At night, all the NPCs in this hospital are hostile towards us. During the day, the patient NPCs who harbor goodwill towards us stand no chance against the doctors, and Liu Hanyue cannot come out."

"To put it bluntly, our strength in this instance is at a complete disadvantage. Without Jie-ge, if we were a team of new players without any capabilities, we would be restricted to the first floor during the day — we have searched the first floor for clues already, only finding Wang He's diary, Liu Hanyue's papers, a hospital introduction, and a few notes. At night, we must obediently take medicine and sleep. If we refuse, we would be attacked by patient NPCs. Even if we manage to escape, we would be targeted by the fake Ge Juan."

"However, if we don't venture out at night, we won't find Ge Juan's remains and that ring. This clue only appears at night. If this is a decryption-type instance, this vital clue is something that the players must find, meaning, we must be able to go out at night."

"Here comes the problem — how can a team of new players, after enduring the assaults from transformed patient NPCs at night, manage to defeat the fake Ge Juan and successfully obtain this clue?"

Gu Sansan drew a question mark beside the players.

"The Hospital Director, Han Qi, He Xin, along with the functional NPCs are out of our reach for negotiation, yet they are the strongest entities in the whole hospital. The patient NPCs, we can persuade. Their power after transformation is considerable. But how do we handle their loss of sanity during the night? Perhaps the third floor holds clues to preventing their loss of sanity, but the door is locked. How can a team of new players reach the third floor? The same goes for Liu Hanyue."

"But what if, at this moment, there is an NPC who can be won over by us, either possessing remarkable strength, capable of holding her ground against the doctors — similar to Jie-ge's situation, enabling us to search the first and third floors for clues at night. Or she has a special identity and knows how to prevent the patients from losing sanity after transforming. Is there anyone in this hospital capable of doing this?"

Xue Kai realized: "Ge Juan! She's a deputy chief physician! Even if she's not as strong as Han Qi, she should not be weaker than the intern He Xin! Moreover, as a doctor, she definitely knows how to control patient NPCs! She, she is different from Han Qi and He Xin! Patient NPCs all like her, it's conceivable that she must be a good person!"

Gu Sansan noted down Ge Juan's name next to the players, drawing a green arrow representing goodwill from her to the players, and then changed the red arrows representing the post-transformation patients to green ones.

On the paper, the players' strength took a tremendous leap all of a sudden.

"Not only that, in this instance, Ge Juan can be said to be omnipresent."

Gu Sansan continued marking on the paper.

"Among all the NPCs we have met, the Director is suspected to be her lover, Han Qi and He Xin, the kitchen NPCs, the security guards are all her colleagues, the fake Ge Juan is her daughter's class teacher, and she has been the most popular among patient NPCs for three consecutive years. Liu Hanyue is her daughter, and the only normal person, Liu Hanxi, is her son. But such an important NPC... turns out to be a counterfeit. Is that possible?"

Qi Chanyang was also studying the paper.

An instance without Ge Juan is like a jigsaw puzzle without a reference picture, the clues are all in disarray.

But once Ge Juan is added —

"With Ge Juan, not only can we gain the support of patient NPCs, but we also fully understand the experiments conducted by the doctors, the consequences of consuming the pills, who the director is, how to defeat him, the secret behind Liu Hanxi's control of the mud... All the mysteries of the instance lie with Ge Juan; she can answer them all. But we... are precisely missing her. We're not lacking Han Qi or He Xin, not lacking patient NPCs, but missing the most core NPC."

"In terms of strength, Ge Juan is not stronger than the Director, who is the final boss. Why would the person who took her away not take the director with higher combat power, but took Ge Juan, who is at the center of all the clues?"

"Not to mention, our success in clearing this instance this time... can be attributed to... Jie-ge being too powerful, which allowed us to survive."

"How did the last team that cleared the instance manage to do it? Assuming they also had someone as strong as Jie-ge, their survival rate should not be much lower than ours."

"But Qi-ge, you mentioned, the current highest survival rate for the instance is only forty percent."

"So, without a player like Jie-ge who vastly surpasses the instance in strength, they must have relied on decryption to clear the level. But without Ge Juan, how did they decrypt it?"

"Therefore, I conclude that the team of players who cleared the level did have Ge Juan with them at that time. She disappeared after they cleared it, but if Ge Juan had died in the instance, the system would automatically repair it. Only by taking her away, which the system cannot repair, could a substitute be found to replace Ge Juan."

Gu Sansan crossed out the name "Ge Juan" beside the players with the pen in her hand.

"And I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the person who took Ge Juan away did it deliberately."

"He knew perfectly well the consequences of taking this NPC, yet he intentionally brought the NPC out of the instance."

"Qi Ge, you said you've never heard of anyone being able to bring an NPC out of an instance... that's the most terrifying part."

Gu Shanshan spoke in a hushed tone, "He managed to bring the NPC out in some way, but he's not utilizing these powerful NPCs... I suspect, because he can't. The NPCs he brought out... might not be alive."

Qi Chanyang froze for a moment, then suddenly felt a chill running down his spine.

"If the intention behind bringing the NPC out of the instance was to harness its power, that would be something Qi Chanyang could understand."

"But bringing out the NPC, not for the purpose of utilizing it... then what could the person's motive be, aside from preventing subsequent players from clearing the level?"

Morning Sun Guild's basement.

Ji Ge opened the basement door with familiarity, leisurely walking in alone.

Humming a tune cheerfully, the red lights overhead lit up one by one as he walked past them.

"He first encountered these red lights in a certain instance. When they lit up in the hallway on the third floor of that instance, they induced a bone-chilling sense of horror."

Ji Ge really enjoyed it.

"In reality, that instance wasn't difficult. After entering, Ji Ge and his group quickly formulated a strategy to clear it, successfully achieving a 33% survival rate - in fact, if someone were to access Ji Ge's personal profile, they'd find that his survival rates for all the initial levels range between 20% and 40%. The only instance with a 42% survival rate was greyed out, indicating its disappearance."

"This was a secret about the game known only to a few higher-ups in the Morning Sun Guild: if the survival rate in an instance exceeded 40%, it would be deemed 'too easy' and would subsequently disappear."

"But for now, only Ji Ge had managed to achieve a survival rate over 40%, making this secret known to only a few."

He happily wandered past rows of glass cabinets.

"Inside these cabinets were containers filled with formaldehyde solution, preserving a myriad of strange and varied objects."

"Most were 'people' - or perhaps could no longer be called that; some retained a human shape, while others were reduced to mere organs."

"Unfortunately, forcibly extracting NPCs from the instances wasn't easy. The 'Bubble Space' couldn't store living entities, and stuffing them in there often led to their disintegration, leaving behind only half a body as a common outcome."

"But that didn't matter; whether dead or alive, their function remained the same."

Ji Ge cheerfully approached the last cabinet, activating the 'Bubble Space'.

"Once players exit an instance, the skills acquired within cannot be used anymore. However, Ji Ge's 'Bubble Space' was different; it wasn't acquired within an instance."

"It was a reward from the National Dungeon."

"The rewards from the National Dungeon ranking were not confined to the instance and could be utilized in the base."

"Most of the time, these rewards ended up in the hands of the three major guilds, which was why they have maintained their high positions for many years, unchallenged."

"He tossed something that barely resembled a human - only a head with the organs connected below it - into a new glass cabinet."

On that head, the eyelids had vanished completely, leaving only eyeballs being tugged at in their sockets by a few veins.

"Huh? Not dead yet?" Ji Ge exclaimed in surprise.

The "person's" eyeballs twitched a few times, the teeth seemingly attempting to part for a painful roar, but lacking vocal cords and a throat, the individual's pupils soon dilated, succumbing to a silent death.

Ji Ge cheerfully took out a marker and jotted down notes under the respective cabinet.

[Serial Number: 19]

[Instance: Mushroom Forest]

[Survival Rate: 27%]

[NPC: Jiang Yulan]

[Notes: Elves really are different, this eyeball can still move, huh!]

He admired his own handiwork, sighing in satisfaction before leisurely putting away the marker, smiling as he passed by his trophies one by one.

Just as he was about to step out of the basement, something caught the corner of Ji Ge's eye, causing him to pause, before quickly turning his head.

A barren cabinet, left with nothing but a pool of formaldehyde solution, stood before him.

[Serial Number: 3]

[Instance: Blue Mountain Psychiatric Hospital]

[Survival Rate: 33%]

[NPC: Ge Juan]

[Notes: Wow, such grand maternal love]

Ji Ge pressed his face against the glass of the cabinet, the solution refracting his distorted visage.

He remembered this NPC!

In that psychiatric hospital, this NPC had a pair of children. During the final battle, her son controlled a mud monster to fight the final boss, and her daughter nearly got dragged into the boss's mire in an attempt to protect her brother.

The woman rushed forward recklessly, meeting her end, before Ji Ge barely managed to store her within the "Bubble Space" in her dying moments.

Unfortunately, only the flesh from her body was brought out.

Her skull should have been quite a sight.

But now, even the remaining flesh was gone.

Who! Who stole his spoils of war?

Ji Ge's eyes were fixed intently on the empty solution. He tilted his head slightly, quickly coming up with a theory—

When an instance disappears, the NPCs naturally disappear as well.

Someone, with a survival rate exceeding 40%, had cleared this instance, causing his prized trophy to vanish!

It doesn't matter, with such a high survival rate, they'll surely be keen to show off.

Once he identifies who cleared this instance, he would kill them all…

Anyone daring to touch his spoils, he would kill without hesitation!

At that moment, on his instance clearance record, the entry corresponding to "Blue Mountain Psychiatric Hospital" didn't grey out like those with a 42% survival rate in Ji Ge's records, but disappeared directly from his instance list.

Inside the cozy conference room designed like a cat climbing frame, Gu Shanshan finished analyzing this segment of the intelligence. After a moment of silence, she pulled out a new sheet of paper.

"Before discussing who took Ge Juan out of the instance, let's analyze what the next group of players should do to possibly survive until the end in this instance lacking a key NPC. Firstly, Liu Hanxi is clearly capable of dealing with the head of the hospital NPC, which is the only chance of victory. The mud monster he can control seems to have the same origin as the head of the hospital, so he is also…"

"Ah!" Sun Miao, who had been listening but not fully understanding, was flipping through his system panel with curiosity. Seeing the newly acquired item, he was the first to notice the issue.

"Uhm," he scratched his head, "is it a bug on my end? I see that in my clearance record... the instance has disappeared! … Huh? Jie Ge's name is highlighted, has he finally come out of the instance?"

A few minutes earlier.

Inside the "Blue Mountain Psychiatric Hospital" instance, as a flash of white light streaked by, not only did Qi Chanyang and the others vanish, a beam of white light also flickered onto Jie Fangcheng who was standing amidst the empty fog.

【Ding—Instance clearance detected, initiating automatic transportation.】

【…】

【Ding—Instance clearance detected, initiating automatic transportation.】

The white light of the transportation continued to flash on him relentlessly, trying to pull him back to the main hall of the base.

But it was in vain.

The pulling force of the white light could only manage to lift him halfway before faltering. Jie Fangcheng didn't want to leave; he crossed his arms and looked down coldly at the ruins below.

The not-so-intelligent system detected only an empty space where the "Blue Mountain Psychiatric Hospital" instance used to be, leaving only a lonely elevator shaft in sight, with the entire hospital having vanished.

Although this situation was relatively rare, it was common to repair after every group of players left.

Hence, from the boundless white fog stretched out thin threads resembling hair, gradually converging towards the original location of the instance.

These black threads, upon touching the ground, began reconstructing the original form of the instance bit by bit.

The first floor's reading room, cafeteria, security room; the second floor's wards and consultation rooms; the third floor's head of the hospital's resting room...

Even the phrase "I love the hospital, the hospital loves me" on the wall was perfectly restored.

Next up was the reconstruction of the NPCs.

【Initiating construction of key NPC Ge Juan...】

【Initiating construction of Ge Juan...】

【Initiating...】

【Construction failed.】

【Analyzing failure reason: missing necessary **】

【Selecting a similar model from the database to reconstruct.】

【Selection successful: Gu Wan】

【Reconstructing key NPC Ge Juan using similar model...】

【?】

【Construction failed.】

【Analyzing failure reason: missing necessary **】

【Selecting a similar model from the database to reconstruct.】

【Selection failed.】

【Analyzing failure reason:】

【Analyzing failure reason:】

【Analysis failed.】

【Reconstructing associated NPCs.】

【Construction failed: Chen Xiangyuan】

【Construction failed: Liu Hanxi】

【Construction failed: Liu Hanyue】

【Construction failed...】

【Construction successful: Yan Jian】

【Identity confirmed: Security Guard】

【NPC construction concluded】

【Successfully completed: 1 instance】

【Instance NPC Loss Excessive】

【Instance Damage Level: Severe. Unable to formulate a viable instance. Proceeding to reset instance data, erasing [Blue Mountain Psychiatric Hospital] instance, initiating the construction of a new instance.】

【Instance reconstruction initiated.】

At this moment, the surrounding mist began to slightly dissipate.

The fine black threads that resembled hair strands disappeared suddenly. Soon, a vast expanse of black fog emerged from an unseen distant place, enveloping the entire hospital and enveloping Xie Fangcheng within it.

Unseen by any, the individual who initially hovered in mid-air, dressed in casual t-shirt and jeans, with hair tied back with a carrot bunny hair band, underwent a subtle transformation within the dark mist.

The semi-long black hair turned white, growing down to the waist and held up by a floating red crown.

The casual t-shirt and jeans morphed into dark robes adorned with expansive embroideries of blooming Otherworld flowers.

On his forehead, a bizarre pattern stretched across, resembling a swath of thorns, akin to countless interwoven shadows of swords.

Behind him, there seemed to materialize a solemn and majestic black palace.

The black fog, which was initially intended for instance construction, hesitated for a moment, then affectionately wrapped around him, vying to enter his body.

Xie Fangcheng opened his eyes.

With one eye black and the other white, he looked further afield.

Through the distant, thick mist, he saw—suspended in mid-air, a colossal book, encircled and protected by countless instances, resembling a heart guarded at its core.

Sensing Xie Fangcheng's gaze, the book animatedly jumped twice, but was firmly restrained by numerous chains forged from data streams, leaving it immobile.

A black massive sword manifested in Xie Fangcheng's hand, plain and unadorned but for the inscription “For Manager Xie’s Exclusive Use” on the hilt.

Wielding the sword, he made a distant slash towards the direction of the book.

"Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom——"

Sword qi surged, reducing the newly formed psychiatric hospital to dust. Yet, the "For Manager Xie’s Exclusive Use", which could have cleaved everything before it into nothingness, met resistance, as if striking a cotton mass, its potency gradually diminished by a membrane of 1s and 0s, dissipating entirely in the end, leaving only an indelible sword will, the continuous sound of "instance constructing" vanished, rendering the land once belonging to the 【Blue Mountain Psychiatric Hospital】 incapable of initiating a new instance construction.

Surrounding him, the shockwave from the strike caused countless data streams of 0s and 1s to tremble, even causing the base hall to sway unstably.

But with the conclusion of the strike, the dark fog around Xie Fangcheng could no longer sustain the substantial amount of Yin energy used, spiraling into his body before ultimately disappearing.

Xie Fangcheng reverted to his appearance with black hair, and t-shirt and jeans. The manifested sword in his hand resembled shattered stars, breaking apart and scattering around, emitting specks of light upon touching the ground.

Xie Fangcheng squinted, the last thing he witnessed was the book striving to flip a page.

At the bottom of the page, amidst a series of names, text in number four Songti font read: "I am the Book of Life and Death, save me if you're a brother!!"