Chapter 126: Today: Orff’s Thousand Ways to Die

Chapter 126 Today: Orff's Thousand Ways to Die

"After the seventh resurrection, I began to actively investigate who was trying to kill me. I knew the dormitory's public bathroom was dangerous, so I never went to shower again. I knew someone would put peanuts in my food at the cafeteria, so I avoided the cafeteria. I knew someone would push a flowerpot down at me from the top of the teaching building, so I skipped class and went to the rooftop ahead of time—but whoever it was seemed to have caught on to my movements. I found nothing up there..."

"And then?" Misha had never heard such an interesting story before. Seeing Orff lost in thought, she prodded him to continue.

Orff clearly wasn't used to talking to girls. Seeing Misha lean in, his face turned bright red, his eyes darting around nervously, and he stammered: "Then I... I..."

And that's when he entered the miserable cycle of dying over and over.

In the seventh cycle, after checking the rooftop of the teaching building, Orff was shoved off the building while trying to leave and fell to his death. Not only did he die, but he never even got a look at his killer—which was beyond frustrating.

In the eighth cycle, Orff pretended to go to the rooftop while secretly keeping an eye on everyone around him, trying to find the culprit who was killing him. He looked at every passerby with suspicion: students, professors, cleaners, maintenance workers... He suspected everyone and everything—except his own sketchy behavior!

Orff thought he was a regular Sherlock Holmes, but reality proved otherwise. Because his acting was so bad, no one jumped out to kill him even after he safely left the rooftop and made it back to the ground.

Brimming with suspicion, Orff decided to drop the investigation and head back to the dorm to rest—maybe if he just stayed in his room and didn't go out, he could avoid getting killed?

Immediately afterward, a javelin came flying over from the neighboring sports field and went straight through his chest, turning him into a human grasshopper on a skewer.

At this point, Orff shuddered, as if he could still feel the pain and despair of the javelin piercing through his chest while he hovered between life and death.

"I realized that whenever I went outside, I'd run into all kinds of danger. So, in the ninth cycle, I hid in the dormitory from the moment I woke up, going nowhere and eating nothing. I gave my roommate Tom some cash and told him to stay out for the day and come back tomorrow. Then I locked all the doors and windows, not letting anyone in... I actually managed to survive until the afternoon. Around four o'clock, I suddenly felt drowsy out of nowhere and dozed off without realizing it. When I woke up, I found myself in the tenth cycle."

The tenth cycle was also spent in the dormitory. In this cycle, Orff realized his sudden drowsiness wasn't a coincidence—someone had slipped drugs under the door.

But he figured this out way too late.

Starting from the eleventh cycle, realizing that staying in the dormitory would still get him killed, Orff once again bravely ventured out of his little nest, searching high and low for the real killer.

...

"Since you can't figure out who's killing you, have you tried running away?" Misha asked.

If he ran far enough, maybe the killer wouldn't be able to catch him.

Orff nodded bitterly. "Of course I tried. I can't remember if it was the fourteenth or fifteenth cycle, but I bought a train ticket to Konkard. The next cycle, I hailed a taxi on the roadside and asked the driver to take me to another city. But both times, I still couldn't escape death."

The train one—Orff had just bought the ticket and hadn't even boarded when someone came up behind him with a dagger and stabbed him in the back.

The taxi one was even worse. His car was deliberately rammed by a big truck on the outskirts, and both the driver and Orff were knocked into the icy river and froze to death.

"...I gradually realized that unless I found the real culprit, even if I ran to the ends of the earth, they'd still find a way to kill me. So, in the following cycles, I kept repeating the cycle of 'avoiding death—hunting for the killer—getting brutally murdered by the killer'..."

After failing so many times, Orff's body started showing signs of trouble. He had a vague feeling that this whole "loading a save and restarting" thing, like a game character, wasn't unlimited.

The more he died, the more intense the pain from his last death lingered on his body. For instance, in the car accident where he fell into the river, he hadn't been wearing a seatbelt and had taken a severe beating from the impact. When he restarted the next cycle, Orff saw leftover bruises on his aching lower back.

This only made him more determined to find the culprit.

But he clearly wasn't cut out for detective work. He piled up a mountain of messy clues and listed one suspect after another, yet in the next cycle, when he risked everything to use himself as bait to test a suspect, he'd find out they were cleared.

So the more he investigated, the more confused he got. The more he dug, the more questions popped up. Orff slowly started to sink into despair.

Just then, in the twentieth cycle, he happened to run into the blonde girl who'd kindly warned him about the falling flowerpot in the sixth cycle.

She and her friend were strolling leisurely across the snow-cleared campus with their backpacks. Both girls were beautiful, each with her own unique vibe and vibrant energy. Framed on their own, they'd make a stunningly poetic picture.

But what caught Orff's attention wasn't their looks—it was the blonde girl's identity.

—Damn! No wonder she looked familiar. Wasn't she Everly, the freshman who'd shattered the criminal's detonator with a "bullet of conviction" and protected countless people from the campus shooter?!

Even a shut-in like Orff had heard the guys gossiping about this freshman.

They talked smack about her behind her back, saying she was too flashy, too cold, and too arrogant—"not like a girl at all"—and that she'd eventually get burned in love. The jealousy and pettiness between the lines was impossible to hide.

But even the most sharp-tongued guy couldn't deny that Everly was one hell of a detective.

With just a few encounters, a bit of observation, and some deduction, she'd pinpointed the campus shooter hidden in the crowd, fired without hesitation, and saved everyone at the school gate.

If anyone could do it, it was this girl. Could she, like she'd solved the shooting case, find the murderer lurking around him and free him from this endless cycle of death?

Hearing this, Everly raised an eyebrow, knowing the good part was coming.

To be honest, Orff's experience sounded quite familiar to her.

She vaguely remembered a time-loop movie from her previous life, about a male college student who woke up in his dorm bed one day and found himself trapped in the same day, needing to find the person who killed him to make time flow again. It felt very similar to what was happening to Orff, including the protagonist's face and outfit in the trailer, which resembled Orff.

Everly figured the guy in front of her was probably the unfortunate protagonist of that movie.

Unfortunately, even knowing the source didn't help much.

Everly hadn't watched that movie, for a simple reason—it wasn't released in mainland China, nor was it included in the video platform's free membership viewing list. To watch it legally, she'd have to pay an extra 5 yuan on the platform.

Everly's family wasn't wealthy in her previous life. She skimmed the movie trailer, decided she didn't like it enough to be a must-watch, and couldn't be bothered to find pirated copies, so she just forgot about it.

So all her knowledge of the movie came from the trailer, which revealed only two key pieces of information: first, the killers in the movie were more than one; second, in the movie's ending, the protagonist successfully broke the loop and lived to see the next day.

Meanwhile, Orff's narration continued: "...In that cycle, Everly, I found you and tried to ask for your help. But after you listened to my series of experiences, while you didn't question the time loop, you refused to help me."

Everly nodded vigorously in her mind, thinking that was indeed something she would do.

According to the movie trailer, despite all the hardships along the way, the protagonist ultimately survived through his own efforts. Since the ending was good and Orff wouldn't actually die in the end, why should she, a completely unrelated person, get involved?

"Then you offered to give me the clue to the Fountain of Youth as payment for my help?" she asked.

Orff shook his head: "No. You firmly refused me, so I gave up on asking for your help and instead went to the campus security to seek help from the police. Unfortunately, they didn't believe what I said... Ah, in previous cycles, I also tried telling others about this, but besides you and Misha, no one was willing to take my words seriously..."

"..."

Then he really lacked perseverance. He'd thought of asking her for help, but his skin wasn't thick enough, and he didn't know how to properly "show appreciation" when asking for a favor. No wonder he'd died so many times before...

"...Shortly after leaving the campus security office, I was attacked from behind and entered the next cycle."

Then came the twenty-first cycle.

In this cycle, Orff shamelessly found Everly again.

He felt that this sharp, perceptive girl who was willing to believe in his time loop might just be the key to freeing him from his endless deaths.

Having been rejected once before, he added some extra bargaining chips this time:

Orff's family was reasonably well-off, and after entering university, he'd earned quite a bit of extra money through his impressive hacking skills. He'd also stockpiled a lot of cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. If Everly needed any, she just had to name a price—whatever it cost to save him, he'd pay!

Unfortunately, Everly remained unmoved.

The Everly listening to the story felt that her counterpart in that cycle was probably just too bothered by the hassle.

After all, she hadn't watched the original movie and didn't know how formidable the enemies Orff faced were. If helping him ended up costing her own life, wouldn't that be a loss?

Orff then introduced himself further, saying he was a formidable hacker, and from then on, whenever Everly needed him, he'd be at her beck and call, ready to do anything legal or illegal for her, as long as she could save him.

Unsurprisingly, Everly refused him again—for the same reasons as before.

Orff was out of options.

Having endured too much pressure and torment across countless loops, when his last hope crumbled, he couldn't hold it in any longer. With zero dignity, he clung to Everly's legs, bawling his eyes out, tears and snot everywhere.

"Let me guess, Everly beat you up, didn't she?" Misha's lips curled up high at this, grinning like a smug cat.

Orff shot her a resentful look, then glanced at Everly, who stayed stone-faced and ice-cold, and nodded, then shook his head.

"What does shaking your head mean? Everly didn't hit you?"

Badgered by Misha, Orff flushed red and, giving up all pretense, admitted, "Not just that—you and Everly both beat me up."

"Pfft!"

Seeing the smile on Misha's face freeze abruptly, even Everly couldn't hold it together this time and cracked up.

No wonder this Orff guy could be a movie lead; he had quite a talent for comedy. The film he starred in might well be a comedic thriller.

"And then?" Everly, rarely so eager for a story's continuation, urged him on.

"I got my ass kicked by you two, but I didn't leave—otherwise, wouldn't I have been beaten for nothing? Besides, I figured you weren't bad people and wouldn't go for the kill. So I just stuck by your side, refusing to leave no matter how you tried to shoo me away. Even when you two went to the restroom, I'd wait outside the door. And you know what? That time, I did survive a bit longer. Unfortunately, you two got annoyed with me and headed back to the dorm first, and the moment you were gone, I was killed..."