Love NPC in Nightmare Game - Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Nightmare City

‘Nightmare City’ has only one beginner village, and in the early stages, all players do quests here. Currently, there are no reports of anyone leaving the beginner’s village, because the required points to leave the beginner village are too high, and no one has been able to reach that standard yet.

In a building somewhere, a pale pink door with patterns suddenly began to distort and warp, with a gray vortex appearing in the middle.

A moment later, two people walked out from it.

Ke Li stepped out of the vortex, stretched lazily, and his tense nerves relaxed, with a wave of fatigue surging over him. Xue Li, who followed right behind him, frowned and looked at her own hands, then towards the gray vortex behind her, “Where’s Zhou Zhou?”

With his lazy stretch halfway done, Ke Li casually said, “Wasn’t Zhou Zhou in…Oh, yeah, where is he?”

He put down his hand and looked around, “Where is he?”

“Weren’t you holding his hand?” Xue Li asked.

“Weren’t you also holding his hand?”

Xue Li turned and walked towards the gray vortex, intending to go in and find Zhou Zhou. They had clearly gone in hand-in-hand, so how did it become only two of them coming out?

The gray vortex, which they had previously been able to enter and exit freely, now seemed to have a transparent barrier. Xue Li could see the vortex but could not go in.

“Maybe he came out first and went offline to go home.” The game did not allow logging out during a quest, but once out of the instance, players could log in and out at any time.

Ke Li thought it was possible that after they entered the vortex, Zhou Zhou had some urgent matter and directly logged out.

“That shouldn’t be the case. If he was leaving, why didn’t he tell us? And it was just a blink of an eye, I didn’t even feel when he went missing,” Xue Li said.

From the moment they stepped into the gray vortex until they came out, it was just a brief moment. They didn’t feel at all when the person whose hand they were holding disappeared.

“Could it be that the game lagged, and he’s still inside and hasn’t come out?” Xue Li stared intently at the gray vortex, trying to find a trace of Zhou Zhou inside. She felt that someone like Zhou Zhou, if he really wanted to log out, should have told them. He wouldn’t just leave without a word.

Ke Li looked at Xue Li as if she were a fool. “Games don’t lag like that. This is an official game, and the entire operating system is controlled by ‘Zeus.’ If the game had a bug, our empire would be in chaos.”

Xue Li asked unhappily, “Then where did he go?”

“Isn’t it possible that he had an emergency at home? Okay, okay, we’ll wait for him here. If he doesn’t come out or logged out due to something urgent, he’ll probably come here to find us when he returns,” Ke Li quickly compromised when he saw his sister glaring at him.

He also wanted to see Zhou Zhou again. They hadn’t added each other as friends in the game before, so now they had no way to contact him. All they could do was wait for him here.

Ke Li leaned against the corridor wall and opened his quest panel.

The Love Academy game had been settled, and all the data and points had come out.

Ke Li immediately saw his score of 6,800 points, which was a very good result for a beginner.

“Xue Li, check your score quickly,” Ke Li said excitedly. He had thought that based on his performance in the game, his score would be low, but it turned out to be much better than he had expected.

Xue Li also opened her quest panel, showing 7,000 points, 200 more than Ke Li.

Hearing that his sister scored higher than him, Ke Li felt a bit disgruntled. “Why is yours higher than mine?”

Xue Li snorted twice. “Why don’t you mention that we coasted through the whole game, and you even passed out?”

Ke Li silently looked at the other data.

The game data in Nightmare City was different from other games, containing a lot of very professional data related to spiritual power. Ke Li studied it for a while and found that after just playing one game, his spiritual power had increased by three points.

Although it didn’t sound like much, in the Interstellar Empire, most people’s spiritual power not only didn’t change after adulthood but even declined with age. So even a slight increase was a good thing.

Ke Li was even more excited than before and nudged his sister. “My spiritual power went up by three points!”

“No way.” Xue Li looked at her quest panel. Hers had also increased by two points.

It was only then that they realized the true value of Nightmare City. Even without points that could be exchanged for Interstellar currency, many people were still drawn to this game like moths to a flame. After all, the level of one’s spiritual power could influence a person’s entire life. Being able to increase spiritual power through a game meant that this game would only become more popular in the future.

Although the officials had previously mentioned the ability to increase spiritual power, seeing their spiritual power actually increasing made both of them very excited.

At this moment, Zhou Zhou was standing in a vast, blank white space.

They had all entered the gray vortex hand-in-hand, but as soon as he went in, he appeared here. There was nothing here, no Xue Li or Ke Li, and nothing else. The entire space seemed to be just white.

“Xue Li, Ke Li, where are you?” Zhou Zhou called out, but unfortunately, no one answered.

Was this the outside world?

Feeling the boundless solitude and vastness, even his voice did not have an echo. It was colder and lonelier than school. Was he going to stay here forever?

Zhou Zhou pursed his lips, his eyelashes trembling as he looked around uneasily.

“Beep! New user detected. Please enter your name.”

“My name? I’m called Zhou Zhou.” Suddenly hearing a voice, Zhou Zhou didn’t know what it was, but he still answered honestly, his eyes scanning the surroundings, trying to find the source of the voice.

“User registered, ***##&& new user login, Nightmare City welcomes you.”

The voice said the first half, then stuttered for a moment in the middle, before continuing normally.

Before Zhou Zhou could ask who the voice belonged to, the next second he appeared in another place.

Seeing Zhou Zhou tumble out of the gray vortex, Xue Li’s eyes lit up, and she exclaimed in surprise, “Zhou Zhou!”

Just as Zhou Zhou steadied himself, he heard Xue Li’s voice and was also delighted, “Xue Li!”

Both of them were very happy. Ke Li hadn’t expected Zhou Zhou to actually come out from the vortex either. Could the system have really lagged, or was it due to some other setting?

He didn’t understand what had happened, but at least Zhou Zhou was out.

“Alright, alright, let’s add each other as friends first, so it’ll be easier to contact each other next time,” Ke Li said.

Xue Li nodded. “Yeah, Zhou Zhou, what’s your ID? We’ll add you.”

“My ID?” Zhou Zhou blinked, hearing their question. What was an ID?

Ke Li said, “If you’ve forgotten, find it in the quest panel. It’s the string of numbers at the very top of the personal center.”

Seeing Zhou Zhou’s puzzled look, Ke Li knew he definitely didn’t remember. Xue Li didn’t like memorizing things like this either, unable to even recall her own ID number.

Quest panel?

Zhou Zhou knew what a quest panel was. Currently, Xue Li and Ke Li both had their own quest panels floating in front of them. But he didn’t have one, did he?

As soon as he had that thought, a pale blue light screen suddenly appeared in front of him. Zhou Zhou blinked and wondered if this was the quest panel.

He reached out and tapped it, and to his surprise, he saw his name on it.

Was this his quest panel?

He wasn’t clear on what was going on, but since he had this thing, did it mean he was the same as them now?

Zhou Zhou opened the personal center, and there was a string of numbers in front of his name.

He reported the numbers to the two of them and soon received two messages.

They were friend requests.

Zhou Zhou accepted them, and then two names appeared in his previously empty friend list.

After the three of them added each other as friends, they left the building, ready to celebrate properly.

In a palace somewhere in the capital of the Interstellar Empire.

A five or six-year-old child sat on a large chair, swinging his legs. He turned to look at the person processing documents by the window and said, “You haven’t told me about the game experience yet. How did it feel?”

The person by the window didn’t look up. “It’s fine.”

“So perfunctory.”

Seeing that the other person wasn’t responding, the child pouted. “Can you say more? I’m so bored.”

“Did you encounter anything interesting?”

“Tell me…”

The child suddenly stopped talking, with countless codes and data flashing in his bright black eyes.

“The game has a problem.”

This sentence successfully caught the attention of the man by the window. He raised his head, his ice-blue eyes looking at the child. “What happened?”

“Nightmare City seems to have a virus. No worries, let me kill the bug.”