Little Darling was closely chasing its prey, which was the fastest and most agile it had encountered since its birth. The prey was cunning, agile, and not intimidated by the inherent passive intimidation of Little Darling. It could adapt to various situations, making use of the tiniest shadows to hide.
Moreover, this was the toughest and most resistant prey that Little Darling had encountered in its hunting career. Several times, Little Darling had entwined it with its tentacles, squeezed it tight, and gnawed off several chunks of its flesh, but the prey managed to escape due to its fierce struggle.
The prey had astonishing strength, and it even bit several wounds into Little Darling’s tentacles, even biting off one of its tentacle tips. Since its birth, Little Darling had never faced such a formidable adversary, and even its normally gentle and obedient disposition couldn’t contain the frustration, provoking a savage nature from deep within.
*Screeeeeech!*
Little Darling’s central meat mass opened its mouth wide, emitting an indescribable high-pitched screech. The fine, chaotic tendrils around its mouth twisted rapidly at a bizarre frequency, spreading this blasphemous and terrifying sound to every corner of the space.
The prey was left with no escape amidst this screeching. The tendrils accurately captured every trace it left, tearing apart and crushing the paths it tried to flee to deeper within the space, effectively trapping the prey on the 22nd-floor hunting ground.
The prey suffered unbearable agony from the impact of this screech, and the lights flickered intensely, crackling with electrical noise, while the shadows on the ground twisted and contorted.
On the other side of the floor, the players (except for Xu Yintang) also felt an inexplicable restlessness and irritability. Even though Xiao Qing was unconscious, his entire body suddenly convulsed, emitting faint, fearful moans and cries as if he were trapped in an incredibly horrific nightmare.
Only Second Treasure stopped eating and turned his head with his five eyes rolling for a while, also responding with an inaudible screech.
Xu Yintang couldn’t hear their unique waveband sounds, and he wasn’t affected by this sound. However, perhaps due to his motherly instincts, he miraculously understood what the two offspring were conversing about. If translated into human language, it was probably something like:
Little Darling: Aaaaah! I’ll eat you! Devour you!
Second Treasure: Big brother, I want to eat too!
So, Xu Yintang didn’t burst into laughter on the spot. That was the utmost respect he could show to teammates who were struggling so hard against mental contamination.
“Let’s move on,” Xu Yintang picked up Second Treasure, wiped him off on his coat, and placed him back on Xiao Qing’s head to continue recovering sanity. After eating, Second Treasure’s skill brushing speed would be a bit faster.
Second Treasure grumbled and protested that he hadn’t finished eating, so Xu Yintang used his coat to pack up the remaining limbs, half a head, and explained, “These are for your brother to eat.”
Their family followed a food-sharing system, if the older sibling ate something, they had to leave a portion for the younger sibling, and vice versa.
Second Treasure nibbled on his tail a couple of times, reluctantly agreeing.
Okay…
Without considering the bloodshed at the scene, it was truly a heartwarming scene.
After Second Treasure’s high-intensity spiritual comfort ritual, Xu Yintang’s teammates gradually became numb to Second Treasure’s presence, and even those with stronger aesthetic tolerance like Tiantian, watching Second Treasure nibbling on his tail, really saw a bit of Xu Yintang’s cuteness under the 800-meter filter.
Help…
Tiantian quickly recalled the beauty of her many celebrity husbands and wives, attempting to regain her normal aesthetic sense of the world.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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They wondered how delicious it would be…
*Sllluuurp…*
Imagining the super delicious meal his big brother would bring back, Second Treasure didn’t care so much about the food packed by his mother for his brother.
At this moment, the lights in several nearby corridors had all gone out, and it was pitch dark – the darkness was far beyond the norm, and as soon as the lights went out, they couldn’t see anything.
Considering the possibility of shadow-based creatures lurking in this space, Xu Yintang didn’t allow his teammates to use flashlights for illumination. Instead, they held hands and moved forward slowly. It was only when they reached the corner that they used the mini flashlight provided by Huahua to determine the direction.
As usual, Xu Yintang led the way at the front, but this time it was Old Wang taking the rearguard. He wasn’t afraid of the dark, and it was when he had just defeated a powerful evil spirit. He put on the homemade protective vest made of steel plates. Even if something tried to stab him from behind, he wasn’t worried.
Xiao Qing was carried by Tiantian, who volunteered, saying, “As long as I stay tense, my strength will increase. I can carry him now.”
Tiantian briefly explained her previous alienation with a special virus. She mentioned that by maintaining continuous tension in her body, her strength would gradually increase. However, if she ever ran out of energy, she would collapse and her muscles would ache as if they had been run over by a truck.
Her explosive skill is also a derivative skill of this virus. In a state of mental breakdown, she sacrifices a certain amount of sanity in exchange for combat power. In principle, there is no cooldown time or limit on the number of uses, but in Tiantian’s last dungeon, it was actually tested that she would have to be stupid to do it twice a day. Three days later, the effect of double-dose drugs was reduced by half. In that scene, she didn’t even know how she finished the Instance. When she woke up, she was lying in the ICU of the hospital.
Old Wang handed over the unconscious Xiao Qing to Tiantian, saying with concern, “If you can’t carry him, be sure to tell me.”
Anyone who has experience moving a drunken person knows that a sober person and an unconscious person are not of the same weight, the term “deadweight” is aptly applied.
Tiantian swayed a bit under the weight on her back and lightly said, “No worries, Xiao Qing is still quite light.”
This weight… it was probably around 100 kilograms.
It’s truly enviable.
On the other side, Little Darling’s hunt was finally coming to an end. After chasing half of the floor and only taking a few bites, Little Darling had become smarter. It no longer mindlessly followed the prey, blindly chasing. Instead, it learned to use the light to drive away the prey.
Little Darling observed that the prey wouldn’t enter the completely dark corridors, always running toward the light. It began to plan and systematically smash light bulbs, blocking the prey’s escape routes into other corridors. To increase the efficiency of the encirclement and pursuit, Little Darling tensed and contracted its tentacles, causing numerous pustules to burst, oozing out a thick and putrid toxin.
Little Darling swung its tentacles, flinging the toxin onto the light bulbs, which instantly corroded them into charred blobs, releasing a thick, murky black smoke. Within moments, from one corridor to another, the smoke rapidly expanded from Little Darling.
The areas contaminated by this black smoke had dim and flickering light, and the corrosive smoke quickly eroded the light bulbs until the light became weaker and weaker until it was completely extinguished. The boundaries between light and shadow were no longer distinct, resembling a winding, rugged mountain path, with options…
All the lights were extinguished, and the prey was trapped in the darkness with no way to escape. Little Darling’s tentacles extended, its mouth wide open, eagerly pouncing on the prey. The sounds of tearing and chewing could be heard from the other end of the corridor.
The way this child eats…
Xu Yintang sighed and tried to comfort his teammates, “It’s Little Darling. Its eating habits have never been great, and I’ve tried to teach it several times, but it just doesn’t learn.”
He sounded as if he saw his own child embarrassing him in public, and his tone of helplessness strangely made his teammates feel a sense of warmth. When they would fidget, spill their food, sleep in late in the morning, or stay up late, their mom scolded them in a similar tone, scolding them for how they ended up with such kids, destroying her reputation in a single moment.
No, if their mom scolded them with such tenderness, they’d be moved and think they were dreaming.
After a while, Little Darling crawled back to Xu Yintang’s side, content with its meal. In the pitch-black darkness, Xu Yintang couldn’t see very clearly, but he could smell the stench that indicated that Little Darling had dined messily. Little Darling even wrapped something in its tentacles like a treasure and eagerly offered it to Xu Yintang, wanting to show its excellent hunting results to its mom.
“Little Darling is really amazing. We’ll check it out more when I get back, okay? It’s a bit hard to see right now,” Xu Yintang cajoled Little Darling, tucking away the uneaten prey in the gaps of its tentacles, moving closer to the door and checking the room number above.
It was indeed on this corridor, but the room numbers were in random order, and as the only one who could see, he could only identify them one by one.
As he got closer, the door was pushed open a crack, and from inside came a clearly tangible peering gaze. If he turned his head to look through the gap, he could see that there was nothing in the room. Instead, he saw the same dark corridor and, just like himself, someone peering into the other side.
At this moment, when he turned his head to survey the front and back, each door on the corridor had a small gap, and from those gaps came intense, piercing stares.
[Player subjected to mental impact, value assessment in progress…]
[Successful value assessment, player’s sanity -0]
[Sanity: 82]
Compared to night shift hospital attendants, this level was child’s play.
Xu Yintang showed no change in expression, and he even couldn’t help but smile. Now, he didn’t need to distinguish each one individually to know which room was 2201 – on this corridor, there was only one room with its door still closed.
“Use your key card,” Xu Yintang said to Tiantian.
Tiantian’s hotel key card easily opened the door 2201. With the reminder sound of the door lock opening, the lights on the corridor came on simultaneously, and they had returned to the hotel corridor, even startling the cleaning staff who had just finished cleaning the room and were pushing the door open.
Author’s Note –
I roughly touched on the various routes in the 2201 scene (slightly longer).
- Eight o’clock in the evening on the first day after entering the hotel: The whole team enters the restaurant scene.
Route 1: Observe quietly and slip away – Success: Leave smoothly without causing any danger.
– Failure: Get discovered, the guests turn into a corpses.
- Successfully escape and leave smoothly.
- Failed to escape: Merge into option 2 (Find Laura route)
Route 2: Search the restaurant. Find Laura (succeed gives attacking advantage).
– Successfully communicate with Laura and get clues about Gerald, Laura and the hidden monsters in the hotel.
- Rotten corpse + female ghost battle wheel.
– If communication fails, enter the battle round directly.
- Escape from the restaurant.
- After escaping from the restaurant.
Route 1: Escape upstairs through the stairs.
– Pursuit by zombies (if the restaurant door is successfully closed, a buffer time can be obtained).
- Enter the 22nd-floor scene (if you enter a different floor, it will forcibly exit the scene and receive 1d10 sanity damage).
Route 2: Escape downstairs through the stairs.
– Pursuit by zombies (if the restaurant door is successfully closed, a buffer time can be obtained).
– Negotiate with the receptionist.
- Successful negotiation, obtain clues related to Gerald and Laura.
- Besides getting clues, can take the staff elevator to the 22nd floor.
- If the negotiation fails, increase the hotel security battle round, and if the battle fails, forcibly exit and receive 1d10 sanity damage.
Route 3: Take the elevator.
– Encounter a monster, battle round, and receive 1d20 sanity damage.
- Regardless of whether the battle round is successful, the elevator will malfunction and fall.
- 22nd floor: If a player possesses a high-level investigation skill related to mystery, the player must use Insight.
– If Insight fails or the player does not have relevant skills, they will automatically enter route 1.
– If Insight is successful, they can obtain hidden clues from the hotel (1 sanity damage) and enter route 1.
– Insight major success can lure the hidden hotel monster (3 sanity damage), and enter route 2.
Route 1: Find 2201
– Gerald appears, pursuit/battle round. Gerald will prioritize attacking the guests in room 2201.
- If 2201 is not found within five minutes or if Gerald is not killed, additional zombies will enter the battle, continuing until the players exit the scene or the group is wiped out.
- If 2201 is found and the door is opened within five minutes (any method except Laura’s key card), exit the scene.
- If Gerald is killed within five minutes, continue searching for 2201, and every 5 minutes, 1-10 zombies will enter the battle. After half an hour, Gerald will resurrect, and this will repeat until 2201 is found and the players exit the scene or the player group is wiped out.
- If a player with the relevant mystery-related investigation skill stays on the 22nd floor for over an hour and has successfully killed Gerald twice, the teammates will be forcibly removed from the scene and receive 1d10 sanity damage. The player will receive 2d20 sanity damage. If the remaining sanity is above 10, the player will be transformed, losing self-awareness, and instead of Gerald, they will forever remain in the scene. If the remaining sanity is below 10, the player will automatically brain death.
Route 2: Other players entering this route must receive 1d6 sanity damage every half hour, and players with the skill need to receive 3 additional sanity damage.
– If a monster’s traces are discovered and the lights are turned off in a timely manner, there is no need to receive additional sanity damage. In the dark environment, finding 2201 and opening the door can lead to an exit.
– In cases where the monster’s traces are not discovered and the lights are not turned off, the situation for other players remains the same. For players with the skill, if they stay on the 22nd floor for over 15 minutes, they will automatically enter route *.
…
In summary, this is a scene that is not very friendly to Xiaoqing and Tiantian, but thanks to everyone’s joint efforts, they managed to get through it successfully! Confetti!
After bringing the cub with them, they really avoided many sanity checks. The child is indeed a good baby!
As for staying in this hotel for another six days and whatnot… [Distant gaze]
It’s so cool to see the possible routes! The way the author uses dice to determine the next move is such a cool concept for writing
Thanks for the chapter!
+1 I liked being able to learn a bit about the possible routes, too.
I love that this is essentially the D&D (acting as madlibs) of writing
The author really uses dice!!! Honestly, I need to try this tactic, it may get me more motivated to actually write stories! Such an interesting concept, like single-player D&D
this really feels like a dnd campaign in book form…
Great explanation
Thank you for your translation 💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜