Love NPC in Nightmare Game - Chapter 57

Chapter 57: Deep Sea Creature 13

While everyone was still stunned, a passenger came walking from the back, passing through the players’ bodies, heading straight forward, it seemed he was preparing to go to the bow of the ship. His thin body was dressed in a faded white shirt.

And this person was the first dead person they had seen in that dim blue glowing area at the bottom of the sea.

At this moment, although thin, his eyes were full of vigor and his expression very lively, which was in stark contrast to the wide-open eyes and resentful look he had underwater.

It’s unknown if there were other passengers calling him from behind, but the man suddenly stopped and turned around, his gaze passing through the players and looking back, not knowing what he saw or heard, he suddenly smiled.

The players who had been scared by his pale, hollow face at the bottom of the sea, were now startled by the man’s smile. Although it was just a slightly shy and gentle smile, it still gave them a chill down their spines.

“What’s going on here? Didn’t they all just die?” a player asked in disbelief.

“And the ship is back to normal too,” another player looked around the environment with a complex expression.

The players present were all silent. The original joy of “seeing daylight again” was gone when they saw the intact ship and passengers. A sense of eeriness was spreading in their hearts, and no one knew exactly what had happened.

One player suddenly took big steps towards the side of the ship and stood there, touching the outside with his hand. The others looked at him.

He tried several different spots, and finally said gravely, “Still can’t get out.”

The others also walked towards the side of the ship, and wherever their palms touched, there was still an obstruction. This ship was enveloped by an invisible barrier. Although they didn’t know what was going on, everyone had the same thought – they were trapped on this ship.

The quest panel still hadn’t issued any quests, so everyone gathered together, no longer as relaxed and leisurely as before, and discussed the situation they were now facing.

“Could it be that everything we saw before was an illusion, and nothing actually happened?”

“It’s possible. After all, we weren’t able to touch any of those passengers, so it would make sense if it was all an illusion.”

“There’s another perspective. Zhou Zhou said earlier that the people on the ship had died, but they didn’t know they were dead, so they kept repeating the last part of their journey.”

As these words came out, everyone looked at Zhou Zhou.

Zhou Zhou was squatting there listening to everyone talk, supporting his face with both hands. Noticing everyone looking at him, he blinked, “What’s up?”

“Zhou Zhou, what do you think?”

Zhou Zhou continued supporting his face, his gaze shifting from the player who spoke to a male passenger on the deck. This passenger was dressed magnificently, with his chin raised high and an expression of displeasure and disdain as he looked at others. As he passed by other passengers and crew members, he even covered his nose with his hand.

Zhou Zhou looked at him very intently, and the others followed his gaze towards the male passenger.

“He’s going to trip over that rope soon, and the water in the bucket will spill on him,” Zhou Zhou suddenly said.

The others were puzzled, wondering how Zhou Zhou knew that, when they suddenly noticed there was indeed a rope and bucket not far from the man’s feet.

And just as Zhou Zhou had predicted, the man did trip over the rope, which was tightened by a bucket placed right under it, causing the bucket of water used for swabbing the deck to spill over him. His originally clean and expensive magnificent clothes were completely soaked by the dirty water that had not yet been emptied from the bucket.

The man angrily got up, and they could see his mouth moving constantly, probably cursing based on his expression. Then the man smelled his wrist, looking disgusted, and rushed hurriedly towards the passenger cabins, probably to change clothes.

The players stared wide-eyed, looking at the puddle of dirty water on the deck and then at the calm Zhou Zhou.

“Is this clairvoyance? A prophecy?” the players asked in shock.

Zhou Zhou sighed, frowning at the others with a troubled look, “I saw this yesterday.”

The players: “…”

He had seen it yesterday, and the same thing happened today, so Zhou Zhou’s previous guess was correct. The passengers were unaware that they were already dead, endlessly repeating their final day, while the players who had entered the ghost ship were also unable to leave, forced to experience the same process.

“Does this mean tonight we’ll encounter the pirate ship again, sink to the bottom of the sea, and then float back up to repeat this day?”

Zhou Zhou nodded, “Probably.”

“I’d rather just get thrown into the sea and be eliminated cleanly at this point.”

“Oh, that’s right, didn’t a ghost come aboard yesterday trying to push us off the ship? If a ghost comes aboard today and we don’t resist, just let it push us off, maybe we can leave this ship then.” One player suddenly said.

The others looked at each other, and all felt this plan was feasible. There was no point just staying on the ship doing nothing, they might as well leave and look for other ships or islands instead.

While waiting for the ghost, the others also noticed that the passengers’ actions were repetitive. Although they didn’t observe as meticulously as Zhou Zhou, they had been on the deck for a while and recognized certain behaviors from the passengers that were happening again today, further convincing them of their determination to leave this eerie ghost ship.

However, they waited for a long time, but the sea remained calm with no ghosts appearing.

The players grew impatient from waiting, but with no ghost appearing, they had no choice but to continue searching for a way to leave the ship.

Zhou Zhou stood under the mast, looking upwards.

He was waiting for the little octopus from yesterday. If what was happening on the ship today was a repeat of yesterday, then the little octopus should reappear on the sails as well.

The players stood by the ship’s railings waiting for the ghost, while Zhou Zhou looked upwards waiting for the little octopus.

The players searched all over the ship for an exit, while Zhou Zhou looked upwards waiting for the little octopus.

The players couldn’t find anything and gave up, sitting dejectedly on the deck, while Zhou Zhou was still looking upwards waiting for the little octopus.

The time when the little octopus should have appeared had long passed, but Zhou Zhou hadn’t waited for anything.

If the ghosts didn’t appear because they didn’t belong to this ship, then the little octopus had been on board for a long time, longer than these players, and had even written a thick logbook – why wouldn’t it reappear? Because it had left yesterday?

Zhou Zhou didn’t understand, but he knew he wouldn’t be waiting for the little octopus today.

Alvia and the female player seemed quite calm. They had searched the entire ship and confirmed there was no way to leave, but the instance couldn’t be a complete dead end, there must be some detail they had overlooked. For now, they just needed to carefully observe and search during the repeated process.

The group waited on the deck until night fell, and the pirate ship came again, with everything happening exactly like the previous day.

The ship slowly sank to the bottom of the sea, and the players took out various lighting tools to illuminate the entire ship, even partially lighting up the surrounding waters.

Now, almost every player doing an instance in Nightmare City carried a lighting tool, since many instances got extremely dark at night, which was also when most ghosts and monsters appeared.

The ship was wedged among stone clusters, and as the players shone their lights searching for clues, Zhou Zhou joined in the search. Ke Li had stuffed a flashlight in his hand, even though Zhou Zhou didn’t need such tools to see. But Ke Li and Xue Li didn’t know this, and seeing Zhou Zhou standing there dumbly staring into the pitch black waters with a pitiful look simply broke their hearts, so they immediately patted his head and gave him a flashlight.

This flashlight must have cost them a lot of points, as its brightness was extremely high, many times brighter than the small flashlights they had used in the Love Academy.

Zhou Zhou carefully searched among the stone clusters outside with his flashlight. These clusters were exceptionally large, so tall that even the bottoms couldn’t be seen, indicating their heights were extraordinary, practically comparable to several small mountains.

The large ship looked so tiny wedged between them from afar.

Zhou Zhou circled around the ship and found a strange creature near the hull.

Its body was exactly the same color as the stones. If it hadn’t moved slightly, Zhou Zhou would never have noticed it. The strange creature had no eyes, its entire body oval-shaped, incredibly flat despite its large area, with the grayish-black edges slightly curled, occasionally swaying a bit.

It was precisely this swaying that caught Zhou Zhou’s attention.

Shining his flashlight for a better view, Zhou Zhou carefully tried to identify what kind of fish this was.

Xue Li, carrying the same model flashlight, was searching the area when she noticed Zhou Zhou motionlessly staring at something, so she looked over as well.

“Zhou Zhou, why are you looking at rocks?”

Zhou Zhou turned to explain, “There’s a strange fish over there.”

“Really? Where?”

“Right where the flashlight is shining.”

“…There are only rocks there.”

“No, look, look closer.” Zhou Zhou swayed his flashlight a few times, and the oval-shaped strange creature’s edges rippled slightly, revealing a faint boundary line of a slightly different color from the stones.

“There does seem to be something there,” Xue Li said uncertainly. She thought she saw something moving, but upon closer inspection, it just looked like seaweed growing on the rocks, she couldn’t be sure.

Zhou Zhou was always very interested in things he had never seen before. He stared at the strange creature with perseverance.

After waiting a while with no interest in these moving rocks, Xue Li left Zhou Zhou there and went to search for clues elsewhere.

The ship began ascending again, and everyone had grave expressions, recalling the blue area they had passed through last time the ship rose. Would they have to go through there again this time?

When the ship started moving, Zhou Zhou only saw the strange creature shift a few centimeters. As the ship rose and he was about to lose sight of it, Zhou Zhou thought he glimpsed the strange creature suddenly sink down a bit.

Before he could get a better look at where that fish went, the ship continued ascending until the stone clusters completely disappeared from view.

They were approaching the blue area again. The players huddled together in small groups like startled birds, some even keeping their heads down, not daring to look anywhere else for fear of making eye contact with the dead again.

Sure enough, in the blue area, the first thin male corpse sank down in the same posture as before, staring at the players with that same terrifying gaze.

Then the second one sank, the third one…

Aside from the players averting their gaze in fear of the corpses, Doreen and Alvia, who weren’t scared, also slightly lowered their eyes. This was an ancient Imperial custom of not directly viewing the dead out of respect.

But since this custom was quite archaic, most young people today didn’t know about it.

Seeing Zhou Zhou running all over the ship, even closely observing the corpses from merely a meter away without backing up, the others felt his heart and guts were equally large.

When the ship was finally about to leave the blue area, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

After leaving the blue area, it was a normal stretch of sea, and they could see the light shining above.

However, after rising for a while, the players stared blankly at the scene before them. One player was dazed for a long time before turning to another and saying, “Slap me, I think I’m seeing things.”

The other player also gazed blankly outside, saying in a drifting tone, “It’s not an illusion, I see it too.”

They had somehow passed through another blue area, the ghostly blue waters faintly glowing, with excellent visibility far into the distance.

The thin man sank down from above with closed eyes…then the second long-haired woman, the third, the fourth. They were re-experiencing everything that had happened in the blue area.

With even the blue area repeating now, everyone’s nerves were taut and no one spoke, the atmosphere extremely rigid.

“This time, are we going to be trapped in this blue area forever?” one player said dryly.

“Hard to say. If we’re able to smoothly return to the surface afterwards, it means the number of times the blue area appears matches our repetition cycle. But if it keeps happening, we’ll probably just stay down here, constantly repeating the sight of these corpses,” Doreen calmly replied.

Fortunately, after leaving the blue area this time, there were no more repetitions as they returned to the surface.

Gazing at the smiling passengers on board, the players felt utterly drained physically and mentally.

When the male passenger passed through the middle of the deck again, this time everyone was prepared and quickly moved aside. After all, thinking about the floating passengers in the blue area made them want to keep as far away from these passengers as possible.

“This is already the fourth day. Could it be that we’ll loop three more times, and then get sent out of the instance for running overtime?”

“Hmm? Not necessarily, maybe we’ll stay here looping forever,” one player said in a dazed manner.

“Have any of you noticed anything different from before, or any other details?”

The players sat cross-legged in a corner of the deck, wearily discussing.

“I noticed that whenever I see these passengers now, my legs feel weak. I’ll probably dream about them glaring at me.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t count. Next.”

The players looked like wilted eggplants, clearly having already suffered mental torment from just two repetitions.

Alvia and Doreen stood casually to the side, both with straight postures and expressions unchanged from before, silently listening to the players’ discussion. They hadn’t found any clues either. This instance was truly baffling, to the point they still couldn’t determine where the exit to clear it was.

Zhou Zhou sat among the players, and compared to their drooping, vegetable-like appearances, the radiant Zhou Zhou seemed out of place. He raised his left hand like a child in class, “I noticed something!”

The players silently looked at Zhou Zhou.

“I found a fish in the rock pile.”

The players: “…..”

“The fish looked really strange, big and flat, the same color as the rocks.”

“…Okay, good, very observant of your surroundings, go on, next.” The player responded like humoring a child.

Zhou Zhou raised his hand again, “I wasn’t finished, I had another observation.”

The player who first suggested everyone share their findings or details sighed worriedly, “Ah youth and their energy. What other fish did you find?”

“Not a fish. We passed through the blue area three times, and each time those passengers were glaring at everyone.”

Wasn’t that an obvious fact that everyone noticed? The passengers stared unblinkingly at the players each time.

“But the place they were staring at was different every time.”

As soon as Zhou Zhou said this, many people immediately realized something was off.

“What do you mean the place they were staring was different?”

Zhou Zhou explained seriously while sitting cross-legged, “The first time, we were all standing in the same spot and those dead ones were staring at all of us. The second time, everyone huddled in small groups and the passengers seemed to only stare at some people inside. The third time our positions changed, but they were still only staring at some people inside. The passengers floated in the same spot every time, but their gaze was directed at different places each time.”

“Did you notice that?” One player urgently looked at Zhou Zhou, understanding that what Zhou Zhou just said could very likely be the key point of the loop. “Who were they staring at?”

Alvia and Doreen also looked at Zhou Zhou, not expecting him to be the first to notice the abnormality.

Zhou Zhou stretched out his hand, pointing at four players in the crowd.

The players pointed at were all surprised, but each stated they hadn’t done anything and didn’t know why the deceased passengers would be staring at them.

“Zhou Zhou, are you sure you didn’t see wrong?” One of the accused players asked anxiously.

“Impossible, I circled the ship looking each time, and all the passengers were only staring at you few, never anyone else,” Zhou Zhou said with certainty, unsatisfied with the other person’s doubt and letting out a few humphs.

Having spent a fair amount of time together on this instance, everyone had an understanding of Zhou Zhou’s personality. Now they all looked at those few players, “Go on, tell us what you did.”

“But we really don’t know.”

“Really didn’t do anything, I want to escape this loop and clear the instance too, why would I make things harder on myself?”

“You all think about it too, we all boarded together.”

“I’ve been with another player the whole time, so if I did something, they’d definitely have noticed.”

The four players anxiously defended themselves, seeming completely unaware of the situation.

Alvia looked at the four, his ice-blue eyes gazing at them as they stood up anxiously explaining, until his gaze stopped on one player’s finger.

“Where did you get that thing on your hand?” Alvia asked flatly.

The player questioned looked dazed, glancing down at his own hand which had a large gold ring on the thumb, inlaid with gems.

“This is, this is from the passenger cabin room,” the player said, seeming to realize something as his voice lowered.

The other three players looked like they were being choked, their defensive voices cut off as their faces flushed red. They then silently pulled things out of their pockets.

One took out a gun, another a dagger, and the third some gold coins. All four hung their heads, not expecting these items to be the cause of their entrapment in the loop.

Player: “So we’re stuck in this loop because we took these things?”

Doreen looked at everyone, “Because we took the ship’s treasures, we were cursed to remain on board forever, repeatedly cycling with the passengers. That does make sense. And there were likely signs of this early on that we overlooked.”

The players recalled everything that happened after boarding, “What signs?”

“When we were inspecting the passenger cabins, five out of the six rooms had issues, just entering or touching anything inside would bring punishment. And for those who took things without a second thought, the passengers saw them as pirates and cursed them.”

As Doreen spoke, she looked at the four players who felt ashamed, unable to help saying, “We’re really sorry, we didn’t know this would happen. Is it still possible to put the things back?”

No one knew if it was still possible, they could only try.

The four players hurried to the cabins and returned everything to its original place.

However, the loop still did not end this time, and the passengers encountered pirates again as their ship sank.

In the deep sea stone clusters, the players shone lights as they analyzed the reasons once more.

“Maybe that was the final loop, and when the ship returns to the surface this time, it won’t loop again.”

“It’s also possible those treasures weren’t the main reason, and other factors are involved.”

“Or maybe we just boarded the wrong ship, this is a ghost ship after all, so it constantly looping isn’t that strange, right?”

“You may have a point, so what should we do now?”

“If there’s really no other way, we might as well beat each other up and get eliminated together. Rather than waste time looping until overtime, we may as well go home and sleep in.”

“Yeah ~ You make sense, this instance is too torturous.”

Zhou Zhou didn’t join the players’ discussion, instead running off to look at the fish again.

That fish was still in the same spot, lazily lying there and only moving slightly every so often.

“What are you looking at?” Alvia walked up behind Zhou Zhou and asked.

Zhou Zhou immediately pulled on his sleeve to get him to look at the strange fish too.

Alvia stared at the rock Zhou Zhou pointed at and the ugly-looking fish for a while before suddenly saying, “I found the clue to clearing this.”

Zhou Zhou looked at Alvia in surprise, then at the fish again. How did he not find it?

Seeing Zhou Zhou’s curiosity, Alvia explained, “This type of fish relies on its camouflage coloring to hide from predators. They need to surface periodically to breathe, so they usually live in shallow waters. For this fish to survive at such depths, there must be air access somewhere around here.”

Not long after Alvia spoke, that fish suddenly started sinking downwards. Where it had been, there was a seabed cave of roughly the same area that the fish slipped into and disappeared.

It was an undersea cavern, about the same size as that fish, so it was perfectly concealed by the fish’s body.

“Are you saying the exit to clear this is hidden in that cave?” Zhou Zhou asked with a furrowed brow.

“Not necessarily, but the time we’ve spent at the bottom this cycle is longer than any previous one, indicating the loop has ended. If the ship remains down here, then the exit being nearby is highly likely. That cave the fish entered may have the air it needs to survive.”

Where would there be air in the deep sea? That cavern must be abnormal.

Zhou Zhou looked around to see the other players also standing uncertainly. The previous two times spent at the bottom had fixed durations, but now they had long exceeded that timeframe yet remained underwater.

Upon hearing from Alvia that a nearby undersea cavern could potentially be this cycle’s exit, no one believed it at first.

Not to mention the immense water pressure at such depths, they couldn’t even leave the ship. And the seawater was radioactive, some people’s life values and countdowns were nearly at critical levels already, venturing out for just minutes would kill them.

Moreover, to simply declare any random cavern as the exit? Given the massive scale of these stone clusters, there were likely many more undersea caverns around, were all of those exits too?