Chapter 103: Civilization and the Era of Runes

Chapter 103: Civilization and the Rune Era

Plummeting from the fifth-floor window with the black kitten cradled in one arm, Su Bai caught sight of the guest rooms below.

As he rapidly fell past the fourth and third floors, then slowed his descent by the second, Su Bai noticed "people" of various ages and genders, clad in diverse outfits, standing by the windows of those guest rooms. Their gazes were hollow and vacant; some even had translucent bodies.

These were no longer humans—they were ghosts, or perhaps powerless wandering spirits.

Su Bai had overheard earlier that, despite each floor of the hotel having over twenty rooms, the number of keys given to players was limited. Initially, he assumed this was the game's deliberate attempt to scatter players across different floors.

But as he descended and saw the windows filled with these crowded figures, he suddenly realized that the hotel's other rooms…

…had been fully occupied long ago.

The clothing worn by these blankly standing wandering spirits was peculiar, resembling Western attire from a century ago in the real world, yet it felt anachronistic and possessed a style he had never encountered before.

Of course, their attire wasn't important. What truly mattered was that when Su Bai deployed his umbrella and landed on the second floor, he saw a dignified, jewelry-adorned wandering spirit standing by the window—an elderly woman who looked very stern. Apart from her clothing, she was identical to… Server Number Five, who had been in charge of the buffet earlier!

In that moment, Su Bai suddenly understood.

This was the Nightmare World, a realm teeming with strangeness and the souls of the departed.

In the Nightmare Worlds Su Bai had experienced previously, monsters and other races were never the primary focus. The most common adversaries they faced were always various types of ghosts. And this hotel, from its very inception, had been filled with countless ghosts—they might have been former guests, but… more likely, they were people who had died long, long ago due to Garan’s experiments.

When Su Bai had encountered Ghost Bride A Xi again earlier, he had mused that the existence of living people in the Nightmare World was not strange. A Xi and others like her had once lived in the Nightmare World. But, as some sages from his previous life had put it, before the Nightmare World’s architecture and culture gradually aligned with and even merged with their real world, there must have been more than one civilization. The Nightmare World might once have harbored human civilization, with sunlight and blue skies, but for some unknown reason, all of it had been devoured by nightmares and mutated under the red moon.

The Luolimasi Hotel had existed for less than a century, and the text on its emblem was identical to that of their real world. Even if the civilization from which Garan originated had vanished, the language and script of that era should still bear some connection to the real world.

However, on the marriage contract Su Bai had signed with a certain supernatural entity, the signature of that mysterious gentleman was an indecipherable rune. These intricate, rune-like scripts had also been discovered by sages in his previous life. Through ruins suspected to be a library, they had found many books written in these runes. By utilizing the occasional images and frequently appearing runic characters within these books, these sages continuously studied their contents, which was one reason players found them endlessly fascinating in the Nightmare World.

But the language of those runic scripts seemed exceedingly obscure and complex. It took the sages years to confirm that the books collectively described a civilization from a very, very distant past. Before that civilization disappeared or was destroyed, the world might have contained indescribable beings alongside humans.

Those sages directly referred to that ancient civilization as the "Rune Era."

As for more specific details, Su Bai from his previous life had no interest in them. He cared nothing for civilizations and worlds that repeatedly rose and fell—only about how to survive while burdened by the Evil Ghost Puzzle.

But the ghosts in this hotel were clearly not ancient relics from the Rune Era. Instead, they were innocent souls trapped here, likely having died due to Garan’s initial experiments.

These ghosts had been confined to the hotel for a long time, unable to leave, yet they did not seem to have become vengeful spirits, malevolent ghosts, or even fiends. On the contrary, these wandering spirits occasionally took on the appearance of servers and, despite their meager power, diligently worked to prevent players from becoming sacrifices like themselves.

This was a hotel filled with wandering spirits.

Yet, within this hotel, those who opposed the players were not the wandering spirits.

The six servers eliminated by Peng Zhen and his group were likely among these wandering spirits. As for why the eight servers always had different appearances… When this question arose, Su Bai recalled the locker room he had been in upon first entering the hotel—the server uniforms hanging on the wall and the servers who had suddenly appeared.

Perhaps because there were too many wandering spirits trapped in the hotel and the number of server uniforms in the locker room was limited, these spirits took turns appearing?

But what about the other servers in the hotel who were controlled by Luolimasi?

If the other servers were also wandering spirits trapped in the hotel, why did some try to help the players while others merely followed orders to surveil and mislead?

This question might only be answered when Su Bai met Luolimasi again, as there were many inexplicable things about Luolimasi herself.

For example, Zhu Nian had described Luolimasi as Cheng Xun’s most steadfast supporter, implying that no one had ever shaken Cheng Xun’s position in the hotel. Yet, when Su Bai had encountered Luolimasi earlier, she, from behind the door, had easily believed his reason for seeking her out, entrusted him with an important task, and even helped conceal his entry to the sixth floor.

Wasn't the entire process too smooth and too straightforward?

With these doubts, Su Bai walked along the vine-covered exterior wall of the hotel. He could hear Lian Xiangyu and Shen Donger following behind him, though his goal was to lead them back to the main battlefield without exposing himself, allowing them to join other players in occupying Cheng Xun and Peng Zhen downstairs.

Once Lian Xiangyu and Shen Donger, marked as prime experimental subjects, returned downstairs, those blocking access to the fifth floor would likely return to the first floor, giving Su Bai a chance to safely approach Luolimasi again.

This was the primary reason Su Bai had no choice but to assist Lian Xiangyu and the others.

This time, Su Bai would directly burn through the lock confining Luolimasi and carefully examine what lay hidden inside.

After walking some distance, Su Bai could already hear two factions battling in the garden ahead. He was about to turn and signal Lian Xiangyu and his companions, but as he turned, he found Lian Xiangyu’s messy blue hair right in front of him.

"Miss… Miss Number Eight! I have something to tell you!"