Love NPC in Nightmare Game - Chapter 30

Chapter 30: Doll’s House 4

All players present were separated and placed in different rooms.

A burly man came to his senses and found himself lying on a small bed, which seemed to be a child’s bed, with his two legs almost hanging in the air.

“What’s going on?”

The burly man sat up from the bed and realized he was the only one in the room, with his two companions nowhere to be seen.

Just as he was about to get off the bed to look for his other companions, his hand touched something on the bed.

He looked down and saw next to his hand was the doll he had hatched before, a blue-eyed, blonde-haired Western doll.

Heaven knows how he ended up hatching such a thing.

The Western doll was lying on the bed, its eyes tightly closed as if sleeping.

The burly man disdainfully grabbed the doll’s hair and picked it up. The doll’s glass-like big eyes slowly opened, smiling at the burly man.

These kinds of Western dolls were like that, with their eyes open when standing and closed when lying down.

“What the hell is this place? How did we get transported here?” the burly man muttered as he dangled the doll, trying to get off the bed.

A rustling sound came from under the bed, and the burly man froze: “Who’s there?”

He leaned forward slightly to look under the bed, but the bedsheet was dragging on the floor, so he couldn’t see what was down there.

The room was very quiet. The burly man listened intently and heard something crawling under the bed, rustling…rustling…

It seemed like every hair on his body was standing on end. He pulled his legs back onto the bed, clenched his fists tightly, and pounded the mattress hard.

The tremendous force made the bed creak loudly, as if startled by the noise. The movement from under the bed stopped.

The burly man knew whatever it was, it was still there, because after the creaking stopped, the rustling sound started again from under the bed.

Rustle rustle…

This wouldn’t do. Before he even found out what it was, he would be scared to death himself.

The burly man took a deep breath, mustered his courage, and abruptly lifted the bedsheet, waiting for whatever was under the bed to crawl out.

But after waiting for a while, the crawling sound was still coming from under the bed, with no intention of coming out.

Maybe the thing under the bed was also afraid, the burly man thought. Then he gradually leaned his body outward, trying to see what was under the bed.

But as far as he could see, there was nothing.

Or maybe further inside… After hesitating for a while, the burly man propped one hand on the bed and leaned half his body down, peering his head underneath to look.

There was nothing under the bed.

Phew, false alarm.

The burly man sighed in relief and sat cross-legged on the bed.

But looking up, there was suddenly a little girl standing by the bed, right in front of him, staring straight at him.

“Holy crap!”

The burly man jerked back, hitting the wall before coming to his senses, his heart pounding rapidly, he had clearly been startled by this suddenly appearing child.

“Uncle?” The child was very cute, with golden hair, lake-green eyes, and chubby, baby-faced cheeks, tilting her head and blinking at the burly man.

Perhaps it was because the child looked so adorable that the burly man calmed down, but his tone was still gruff as he asked, “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

The little girl didn’t seem fazed by the burly man’s fierce demeanor. She blinked and stretched out a plump little hand towards him, “Uncle, I came to find my good friends.”

Her childish voice sounded very pleasant.

“There are no friends of yours here, go, go find them somewhere else,” the burly man frowned, making a shooing motion, clearly annoyed at being scared by a little brat.

But the child persisted, hand outstretched, her tone naive and cute, “Those dolls are my good friends.”

Oh, so it was about the dolls.

The second main quest, to find the owner of the dolls, the owner must be this child?

The burly man turned back and searched the bed for that Western doll, finally finding it under his own butt. Startled by the little girl, he had backed up and accidentally sat on the doll, squashing the crudely-made Western doll. Its originally round face was flattened, and one of its eyes had popped out.

The burly man felt a bit awkward as he plucked the doll’s hair and handed it to the little girl. “It’s your fault for suddenly appearing like that. Don’t blame me. Here’s your doll.”

The little girl took the Western doll, looked at it for a moment, then abruptly threw it onto the floor. The already precarious doll shattered, its head and arms scattering across the floor.

“I want my good friends,” the little girl said, her expression blank as her green eyes fixed on the burly man, reaching her hand out again.

By now, the burly man had sensed something was off, or perhaps he had that inkling the moment the little girl appeared. He had just been pretending not to notice.

“Really, there aren’t any more. I don’t have any other dolls. You should go look with the other people,” he said, his voice trembling despite being a strong, burly man.

The little girl tilted her head emotionlessly and said softly in her childish voice, “But they’re right here behind you. Why won’t you give them back to me?”

A chill ran down his spine. He stiffly turned his head to see a semi-transparent green frog perched on his shoulder. When the frog’s black eyes met his gaze, it even let out a croak.

“Ahhhhhhh!”

The burly man suddenly leapt off the bed, jumping and swatting at his shoulder, trying to shake off the eerie frog. The frog was flung onto the bed, but several other semi-transparent dolls came down with it, a red little tiger, a blue fish, a yellow little bear.

The dolls fell onto the bed, writhing as they tried to get up. The burly man had gone into a frenzy, staring at the dolls on the bed as he stomped on them repeatedly, trying to crush them to death.

The little girl kept reaching her hand out, calling to the burly man, “Uncle, uncle…”

But the burly man could no longer hear the little girl’s voice. One by one, he stomped on the semi-transparent dolls with his foot, finding that whenever he stepped on them, the strange dolls would disappear with a pop, like deflating balloons.

After stomping on the dolls a few times, all the dolls on the bed finally disappeared. The burly man felt drenched in sweat, his clothes completely soaked.

“Uncle, uncle…” the little girl kept calling out to him.

The burly man was panting heavily. Hearing the little girl’s voice, he slowly turned to look at her.

In that instant, his pupils contracted sharply. The little girl’s face had a sunken area, one of her eyes gone, leaving just a black hollow pit. She gazed at him with her remaining green eye, as if crying as she said, “Uncle, uncle, it hurts so much~”

“Ahhhhhhhh!”

The burly man’s sanity shattered instantly. He screamed and jumped off the other side of the bed, trying to escape from this room.

The room’s door was tightly shut. The burly man turned the handle, flung it open, and dashed out into the pitch-black outside.

He finally remembered, the first fallen companion had crushed a green egg, and the other had stepped on and crushed several eggs on the floor, corresponding to the colors of the dolls he had stomped to death inside. If only he had known earlier, if only he had…

A massive semi-transparent frog stood outside the door. It abruptly closed its mouth, hopping away and shrinking smaller and smaller until it became a tiny semi-transparent frog.

Meanwhile, the little girl inside the room and the shattered Western doll on the floor had both vanished.

It was as if nothing had happened here. Deathly quiet.

In another room, Alvia cautiously looked around. Hearing a sound from under the bed, he immediately jumped off and lifted the bedsheet.

“Come out!”

The shadowy figure under the bed didn’t move.

Alvia reached his hand under and grabbed the person’s leg, dragging them out.

“Ahh, no, don’t pull! I’ll come out myself.”

A black-haired, dark-eyed little boy was pulled out from under the bed by his leg.

Alvia stood up and coolly watched as the unfamiliar little boy got up off the floor, brushed off some non-existent dust from his clothes, and then looked straight at Alvia.

After a moment of eye contact, the little boy reached his hand out towards Alvia and blinked, saying innocently, “Uncle…”

Before he could finish, Alvia shot him an icy glare, “What did you call me?”

Little boy: “…Uh, brother?”

Alvia: “Hmm, go on.”

Little boy: “…Brother, please give me back my good friends.”

Alvia frowned slightly, looking at the boy in confusion. “You have more friends? I didn’t know that.”

The little boy felt like an arrow had pierced his chest, what did he mean by “you have more friends?”

“If you don’t give my friends back, I’ll eat you up,” the boy said in a deliberately eerie tone, feeling his dignity had been challenged.

Alvia glanced at the bed and pointed to the motionless little frog there. “Is that your friend? Take it then.”

His tone was still icy cold, not scared at all. The little boy pouted, took the little frog from the bed, and huffed at Alvia.

“Do you have nothing better to do than come here and play an NPC?” Alvia said as he sat on the bed, watching the little boy fiddle with the frog.

The boy didn’t look up, fiddling with the little frog in his hand, acting like he didn’t understand.

“Zeus.”

Seeing his identity exposed, the boy looked up at Alvia in shock. “How did you know it was me?”

“Did I even need to guess? What NPC is as lively as you?”

A blue light suddenly enveloped Zeus’s body, and in the blink of an eye, he reverted to his usual appearance.

The green little frog in his hand also turned into a wind-up tin frog. Zeus crouched down, wound it up, and set the little frog on the floor.

“Clack clack clack…” The little frog scuttled around.

“I really am bored, you know. I can just leave the work to my clone while I play in the game with Zhou Zhou. I want to play with him in the game too.”

Alvia frowned at Zeus. “Didn’t I tell you to just monitor him in the game?”

“I am monitoring him, I am! But I don’t think he’s a bad person. He’s really interesting, I quite like him actually.”

It was rare for Zeus to give such an assessment of a human. As an AI, his evaluations of humans were usually quite similar, finding them boring and uninteresting, not fun at all. But now he actually wanted to get to know Zhou Zhou?

“Why do you want to get to know him? Is it your own idea, or…” Alvia couldn’t help but speculate in that direction. If it was because Zeus had been hacked or for some other reason, then for the entire Empire, this would be a very dangerous situation.

For over a thousand years, the people of the Empire had grown accustomed to Zeus’s existence. They had tried creating a second or third Zeus before, since they couldn’t entrust all important imperial matters to a single AI. But those attempts had all failed. It was for this reason that to this day, the Empire still maintained a hybrid human-AI model for all official roles.

However, in a thousand years, Zeus had never made a mistake, except when it came to the Nightmare City instance and Zhou Zhou himself. This was also why Alvia had been keeping such a close watch on Zhou Zhou, because if Zeus did have an issue, the losses for the currently prospering Empire would be incalculable.

“I’ve been interested in him from the beginning. I find him really interesting and fun when he’s doing the instances and interacting with others. I want to play together with him.”

Seeing Alvia frown deeply, clearly not keen on agreeing, Zeus stood up. “If you don’t agree, then I’ll go find Zhou Zhou myself.”

“To do what?”

“I’ll cling to his legs and cry, tell him I’m his long-lost son, and that you’re the heartless one who abandoned husband and child!”

Alvia looked at Zeus in exasperation. “What have you been watching lately? Who would possibly believe something like that?”

Zeus huffed a couple times. “Didn’t you tell me to learn about ancient Earth culture? I’ve read so many books. I think this method would definitely leave a deep impression on him.”

Alvia felt that perhaps it was a mistake to have Zeus learn about ancient Earth culture on his own. If left unchecked, he might end up saying all sorts of nonsense in front of Zhou Zhou, counterproductively raising suspicions.

“You can get to know him, but don’t let anyone discover your identity.”

“You agree? Heheh, I know, I know.”

Zeus squinted with a smile, then stood up. “Alright, I’ll go figure out how to make my entrance first. You can stay here and play by yourself.”

“You’re going over there now?” Alvia thought Zeus would go see Zhou Zhou immediately.

“Of course not, I need to plan it out properly first. Plus Zhou Zhou is busy with other things right now, I might disturb him if I go over.”

“Other things? What other things?” Alvia asked.

Zeus hadn’t paid close attention before, but now he used his access privileges to check on Zhou Zhou’s situation. He saw that Zhou Zhou was lying on the bed, with a child about his size beside him.

Fat Ducky was also beside Zhou Zhou, while the child lay on the other side of the kid-sized bed. Both were covered by blankets, looking ready for sleep.

Moreover, Zhou Zhou was half-leaning against the headboard, gently patting the child, as if telling him a story.

“Hmph! I’m so mad, Zhou Zhou is sleeping with someone else (another kid)! Hmph! Damn it! Next time I’m going to sleep with him too!” Zeus also wanted Zhou Zhou to tell him a story alone. Very displeased, he immediately vanished from Alvia’s sight, hurrying back to properly plan a dazzling entrance.

“Wait, what did you say?”

Alvia tried to call Zeus back and get him to explain, but Zeus had already left too quickly, his ears deafened by jealousy, unable to hear Alvia calling out to him.

Only Alvia remained in the room, along with the wind-up green frog Zeus had transformed, clacking and hopping around on the floor.

Alvia glanced at the little frog before casually picking it up, his expression cold as he left the room.

*

Zhou Zhou lay on the bed, lifting up the bedsheet dragging on the floor as he peered underneath.

He found himself face-to-face with a pair of golden eyes, a child was lying under the bed, blinking up at Zhou Zhou.

“Why are you under the bed?” Zhou Zhou asked curiously.

The little boy didn’t speak, seeming a bit dazed, not expecting this player to look under the bed so quickly when others would usually be afraid for a while first.

“Aren’t you coming out?”

When the boy still didn’t respond after Zhou Zhou asked, he asked again, “Is this your bed?”

The little boy nodded dazedly, and Zhou Zhou got off the bed, crouching by its side to peer at him. “Why are you sleeping under the bed? Kids who sleep under beds might not grow taller. Let me pull you out.”

Zhou Zhou stretched his hand towards the child under the bed. Having never encountered such an unconventional player before, the boy stared at Zhou Zhou’s hand for a moment before offering his own.

Zhou Zhou then pulled him out from under the bed.

After pulling him out, Zhou Zhou realized this child was very cute, with golden hair and matching eyes, a snowy-white chubby little face like a little angel, just absolutely adorable overall.

He didn’t have experience interacting with children, but he had heard many people talk about it before.

Some girls would often gather and discuss how their babies did this or that, made a mess while eating, disliked brushing teeth and washing face and bathing, or refused to sleep in their own beds, instead going to fight the family dog for space. They said so much.

So encountering a child who disliked sleeping on the bed and preferred underneath, Zhou Zhou felt he should be able to handle it. Yes, he could do it.

Putting on a serious adult demeanor, Zhou Zhou asked, “Why are you still not sleeping at midnight? Did you brush your teeth? Wash your face?”

The little boy was just about to stretch out his hand according to the script when he was caught off guard by Zhou Zhou’s questions.

Seeing his reaction, Zhou Zhou immediately knew the boy hadn’t done any of those things. He took the boy’s hand, intending to lead him to go wash up.

But at the door, the child refused to budge. No! This wasn’t the script! He hadn’t asked for his dolls yet!

“Don’t you want to wash your face and brush your teeth?” Zhou Zhou asked in confusion, seeing the child’s strong resistance to leaving, even clinging to the door frame.

The little boy immediately nodded.

Zhou Zhou pondered for a moment. Although washing face and brushing teeth were important, the child clearly disliked it. Alright, they could skip it for tonight.

“Okay, let’s just go to sleep then.”

Zhou Zhou led the boy back to the bed and had him lie down, but the child kept trying to get up. Seeing this, Zhou Zhou placed Fat Ducky in the boy’s arms.

“You can hug it while you sleep.”

The boy stared at the plush duck, now in his arms without a word from him, unsure what to say next.

For players who successfully hatched the doll unharmed, their mission basically ended here, so he should have disappeared by now.

“Can’t sleep? Let me tell you a bedtime story, one I just memorized.”

Just as the boy was about to get up and disappear, he immediately lay back down, hugging Fat Ducky obediently while saying “okay”, he could listen to the story first before leaving.

Zhou Zhou found this child really quite adorable, even if he liked sleeping under the bed and disliked brushing teeth and washing face. But the way he hugged the little yellow duck, eyes wide as he gazed at Zhou Zhou, it could just melt anyone’s heart.

“Can I come up there too?” Zhou Zhou pointed at the small bed.

The little boy scooted over, making room for Zhou Zhou.

Zhou Zhou also lay on the small bed. Even though it was a bit of a tight fit for him, he half-reclined, tucking the blanket around the child before gently patting him.

Hmm, he was doing great so far, all the steps had been perfect. Now which story should he tell?

Zhou Zhou nodded to himself in satisfaction, recalling the collection of fairy tales he had seen in another room earlier, which had several stories with very profound meanings that he could tell the child.

“Alright, so do you want to hear the story about the child who liked hiding in the fridge, going to find their parents every night first? Or the one about seeing two shiny eyes by your bedside in the middle of the night?”

Little boy: “……”

The little boy felt that just from their descriptions, both stories sounded very strange. Could he take back not wanting to hear them?

But Zhou Zhou didn’t give him that chance. Alright then, he would tell each story once, starting with the first.