Love NPC in Nightmare Game - Chapter 80

Chapter 80: Nightmare City 16

Zhou Zhou: “???”

He looked down again at their joined hands, didn’t that count? But the other person’s tone was too calm, as if holding hands was no big deal, just normal between friends.

And he even asked when? Did this need to be separated into different times? Wasn’t it an unspoken understanding? Otherwise, why would he keep holding hands, and he didn’t refute it when the drivers asked.

Zhou Zhou got angry, he had never met someone like Al before.

In games before, if they weren’t dating, the NPCs would absolutely never hold hands with each other. But Al was the first to reject him after he confessed, then didn’t let him date others, and now he was holding hands while pretending nothing happened.

Zhou Zhou abruptly let go of his hand, then shifted in his seat to the window side and stared at the scenery outside, not wanting to talk to Al anymore.

Alvia looked at his hand that had been let go, his gaze shifting to Zhou Zhou’s hand, only then noticing there was a red ring of finger marks, from him gripping too hard, but Zhou Zhou hadn’t complained about pain.

Alvia gazed at the other’s sullen profile, Zhou Zhou glaring out the window, noticing his gaze and even turning to glare at him before looking away again.

Alvia had woken up from the memory, not getting angry at being glared at, but spacing out while looking at Zhou Zhou’s side profile, feeling some things should be prepared immediately.

Driver 7 saw the two quarreling through the rear-view mirror, unable to resist starting to gossip.

“Hey, you there, the tall one, let the person go a bit, good-tempered boyfriends like this aren’t easy to find nowadays.” Driver 7 had just been blending into the crowd this whole time, but saw everything happening between his companions through the mirror.

Not only did Zhou Zhou not discriminate against them, he also unhesitatingly went to the illusion world to rescue people at the crucial moment, this young man seemed very good.

“If not for him, you’d be in the hospital now. And what did I just hear from you two? He wants to date you but you’re unwilling? You lucked out with such a good young man, what’s there to be unwilling about? How many people want to find a partner like this but can’t.”

The driver, different from his earlier irritability when dropping off passengers, passionately chattered like a community aunty.

Zhou Zhou felt the driver made a lot of sense, he did have many good points, so why was Al unwilling?

Alvia looked at Zhou Zhou seriously nodding from the driver’s praise, and couldn’t help but ask: “What about Ke Li and Xue Li?”

Zhou Zhou looked at Alvia earnestly: “Right now the only ones I’m dating are those two, even if I add you it’s only three, although there will be more people in the future, but I take the same serious attitude with each person, I’m not joking around, I’m seriously dating, why do you keep rejecting me.”

The driver, while driving, chimed in: “Yeah, listen to him, the only ones he’s dating right now are…”

He slammed on the brakes, nearly driving into the ditch, pondering Zhou Zhou’s words, his eyes gradually widening.

Seeing Zhou Zhou through the rear-view, his gaze became incredulous, this was clearly a good-looking and well-mannered young man, how could he be so brazenly a scumbag?

The middle-aged driver noticed, the man being scummed on wasn’t even angry, instead had an amused look in his eyes, as if finding Zhou Zhou’s scumbag words funny.

Driver: ……Is our planet too remote to keep up with the trends? Or are young people nowadays just too wild?

Forget it, he’d better not get involved, just drive his car.

The driver finally stopped talking and silently drove.

Zhou Zhou still hadn’t realized that the driver who was helping him speak had completely changed his impression, still insistently waiting for Al, wanting an answer.

Alvia had already noticed Zhou Zhou’s view on dating had issues, and only wanted to confirm his real thoughts now.

“Do you want to date all the people you met in the previous instances?”

Zhou Zhou nodded: “Yeah, but only the ones I added contact info.”

Although he met many people in the instances, there were some he disliked, and he wouldn’t add the ones he disliked.

“How many have you added so far?”

Zhou Zhou hadn’t counted, but adding them up it was probably a few dozen.

“Not too many, maybe twenty or thirty.”

“Whew~” The driver sucked in a breath, noticing the two looking over, and quickly pretended to be driving seriously.

“What if you could only choose one person to date?”

One person?

Zhou Zhou was very puzzled: “Why only choose one person? Can’t I have them all?”

“Oh mama~” The driver shook his head with a sigh, feeling he had really broadened his horizons today, you can’t judge a book by its cover.

Seeing Zhou Zhou’s confused eyes, Alvia wanted to sigh too.

“Dating can only be with one person, you can’t date multiple people at the same time.”

Zhou Zhou reflexively frowned in thought: “If I only dated you, what if something happened to you, then I’d be alone? But if I dated a lot, if something happened to you I could go find someone else, wouldn’t that work out perfectly.”

“Tsk tsk tsk…” The driver was truly at a loss, not knowing how to refute that lunatic logic.

Alvia rubbed his forehead with another sigh, it was precisely because of this that he didn’t know how to seriously discuss this topic with the other.

Alvia rubbed his forehead, the driver shook his head and tutted, the two people in the car reacting differently to his words, and it seemed neither was a good reaction.

Zhou Zhou blinked in a daze, did he say something wrong?

After that the two didn’t speak anymore, even when Zhou Zhou asked what was wrong with his answer, the two would just give him a strange look but not answer his question.

Soon after, they arrived on Xuan Le Street, the moment they got out of the car, the instance quest completion panel also came up.

Zhou Zhou wasn’t very happy because of the two’s strange attitudes, they clearly knew something but wouldn’t tell him.

Seeing the completion panel come up, Zhou Zhou opened the quest panel with a pout.

The first thing he looked at was the score tally, and when he saw his score, Zhou Zhou couldn’t help widening his eyes, wondering if he was seeing wrong.

This time he got 400,000 points!

The Mirror World instance wasn’t that difficult, so why was the score so high?

Zhou Zhou wondered if the drivers miscalculated.

“No mistake, our instance difficulty should be decent, it’s just that you were too strong so it felt easy. Many people can’t even notice something’s wrong with their own companions, and not many players can find the exit to the real world from the mirror world either. On top of directly facing your fears inside the mirror, which regular people can’t do, combining all that, the clear rate for this instance isn’t actually that high. Plus you helped us out big time, so the score definitely wouldn’t be low.”

The driver explained seriously.

If not for Zhou Zhou bringing out the players trapped in illusions, they really would have had major trouble. Although the system automatically calculates and generates player scores based on performance, they did add some extra for Zhou Zhou as a small thanks. Zhou Zhou’s gloomy mood from the two of them immediately cleared up upon getting points, as now he could buy many things.

He noticed Al was also looking at his quest panel, making him recall the drivers mentioning in the instance that by bringing Al out of the illusion, he was considered eliminated, so Al didn’t get any points this time.

Originally he wanted to go console him, but thinking about his own huge score, going to console him didn’t seem quite right, leaving him hesitating.

After speaking with Zhou Zhou, the driver approached Alvia: “Originally you would’ve been eliminated, but this time your companion rescued you, had nothing to do with us, so the system didn’t judge you as eliminated, you get points and all that.”

Seeing Alvia’s calm and composed look, the driver suddenly sighed, patting his shoulder sympathetically: “You’ve had it rough too, hang in there.”

After all, for the person you like to actually be a sea king, spouting scumbag quotes one after another, unabashedly not allowing any rebuttal, anyone would find that hard to take.

After speaking, the driver waved at them before driving off in his beat-up little car.

Zhou Zhou had heard those last words too, it was great that Al wasn’t eliminated, but what did that last sentence mean?

Rough? Why would Al have had it rough?

Was it because the illusion was too tough? That was probably it.

The two watched the driver’s car disappear into the distance, then Zhou Zhou looked at Al and said: “You should head back.”

“What?”

“Log off, go see if there are any aftereffects or anything.” Zhou Zhou’s expression was serious, he knew there were hospitals and doctors in the outside world, so Al should go get checked out by a doctor now, just in case there were any issues that would be trouble.

Alvia stared at the concerned Zhou Zhou for a moment before obediently nodding: “Okay.”

Not until seeing Al log off did Zhou Zhou return to his own home.

In the real world it was already night, after logging off Alvia came out from the dark room.

He was well aware of his own body’s condition, those illusions only made him recall some past events, having no real impact on his body or mind.

The moment Alvia exited the dark room, Zeus appeared before him: “Are you okay?”

Looking up at Alvia, Zeus asked with concern.

Zeus naturally knew when Alvia fell into the illusion, watching helplessly as those instance designers had no way to deal with Alvia’s extremely high combat stats, he even wanted to go in and rescue him, but in the end it was Zhou Zhou who saved him.

Zhou Zhou is so impressive!

“I’m fine.”

Alvia answered, then looked at Zeus and asked: “Can you materialize items from Nightmare City in the real world?”

Materialize items?

“Like this?” Zeus pondered for a moment before extending his hand, immediately producing a small adorable ghost flailing its limbs.

Alvia glanced at it: “Yeah, something like that, you saw what happened in the instance as well, materialize the bouquet Zhou Zhou gave me.”

Zeus: “……” He didn’t want to materialize that.

“You can’t do it?”

“Who said that!”

Zeus blurted out indignantly, his palm immediately producing a small wildflower bouquet. This bouquet disappeared when Alvia entered the illusion, but Zeus had the ability to rewind game items, so materializing some flowers was simple.

Although these wildflowers looked freshly picked, Alvia knew this was a system-generated hologram that could only be seen and not touched, so he had Zeus materialize a small vase and inserted the wildflowers into it, projecting it onto the table.

Having been ordered around the whole time, Zeus was quite displeased, not because of the flowers themselves, but because Zhou Zhou hadn’t given him any!

In this luxurious underground palace where every item was priceless, on the gilded table sat a plain white porcelain vase holding the simple wildflowers, looking completely out of place with the room’s decor.

Alvia stared at the wildflowers with satisfaction before looking at the sulking Zeus: “Why are you still here?”

Great, just kick him out after using him!

Zeus shot him a sullen huff before disappearing from the underground palace, running off towards Zhou Zhou’s house.

Although his main body was always at Zhou Zhou’s place, the form appearing before Alvia was just a projection, but having been slapped in the face by Alvia’s cold dogfood scene, the main body could definitely feel it too.

Seeing Zhou Zhou finally back home, Xiao Jing couldn’t resist wanting to go cuddle up to him. Zhou Zhou, you didn’t even give me any flowers, how could you give some to Alvia first?

But before he could approach, the little octopus beat him to it. While he was still wallowing in self-pity over not getting flowers, that eight-legged creature went scampering over to Zhou Zhou, slithering up his leg to his shoulder in the blink of an eye, its speed truly making one sigh.

On the way home, Zhou Zhou had been wondering if his answers to Al in the car were really problematic. But he didn’t know exactly what was wrong, as the driver and Al didn’t tell him, and now there was no one to ask.

Zhou Zhou was very concerned, as it was related to his dating life, but seeing the crestfallen Xiao Jing standing before him, he didn’t know if he could ask him?

“Xiao Jing, do you know… nevermind.” Xiao Jing was a child, how could he know these things, children just need to study hard.

Xiao Jing: Hm? What nevermind? Zhou Zhou, if you want to ask something, just say it, don’t leave it halfway.