Chapter 87: Role |
Chang Xu opened his eyes just as the clock tower in the distance struck four.
He sat bolt upright in bed, his entire body feeling as if it had been taken apart and poorly reassembled. A suspicious ache pulsed through his back and waist, the kind of soreness one gets from spending a night hunched over on a hard wooden bench.
Confused, he tilted his head slightly and saw Qi Si sitting on the adjacent bed, his gaze fixed downward as he fiddled with the watch on his left wrist.
Standing awkwardly nearby were a man and a woman: Zhang Hongfeng and Liu Yuhan.
For a fleeting moment, Chang Xu wondered if he was still dreaming. Why else would he open his eyes to find a small crowd gathered around him?
He maintained his composure and turned to Qi Si. "What happened last night?" he demanded. "What did you do?"
His experience in the *Rose Manor* instance had already taught him a thing or two about Qi Si's brazen methods.
His first instinct, therefore, was to assume Qi Si had already discovered part of the instance's solution and put a plan into motion without him.
Qi Si looked up, tilting his head with a brilliant smile. "A lot of interesting things certainly did happen last night," he declared. "And I did, in fact, figure out the underlying rules of this instance..."
Only to hear the young man let out a soft "tsk." "Unfortunately," Qi Si added, "I don't plan on telling you."
"..." *Was that something a human being would even say?*
Sensing the tension, Zhang Hongfeng quickly stepped in to mediate. "Si Qi must have his reasons for keeping quiet. I’ve heard that with some things, the more you know, the more danger you’re in."
Liu Yuhan added, "Si Qi saved us last night. Without him, Uncle Zhang and I wouldn't have made it through."
Chang Xu had a gut feeling that the three of them were hiding something from him. He was almost certain they'd made some kind of deal behind his back.
But without any concrete evidence, he couldn't very well press the issue.
Something about the situation felt off. Chang Xu fixed his gaze on Qi Si, his tone firm. "You didn't drink the Sleep Aid Soup last night. You tricked me into drinking it first so you could go off on your own while I was asleep."
Qi Si grunted in affirmation and casually tossed a recorder to him. "Haven't you seen the summaries on the forums? The Weird Game rarely stakes a player's life on the whims of a single NPC. Forcing us to suck up to Yuna for that Sleep Aid Soup couldn't possibly be the only solution."
"I had a few theories about how to get through the night, and I wanted to test one. If it worked, great for everyone. If it failed, well, it would only be me who died. Plus, I'd get to disrupt the Sila Guild's plans. What's not to like?"
Chang Xu's head snapped up, his eyes glinting. "Why take such a massive risk? You had the soup. You could have just looked out for yourself."
"What are you thinking?" Qi Si said, lowering his gaze with a sigh. "I was just trying to figure out the lore and boost my performance score a little."
Everyone defines the value of life differently. For Qi Si, if he couldn't control a situation with absolute perfection, he might as well be dead.
To everyone else, however, it looked like a classic, melodramatic act of self-sacrifice.
For a moment, Chang Xu felt he had deeply misjudged Qi Si. Perhaps the man wasn't as devoid of a moral compass as he had first believed.
He was just about to say something, but Qi Si had already risen to his feet, walked straight to the door, and stepped out.
Zhang Hongfeng and Liu Yuhan had only come to seek shelter. With the immediate crisis averted, they couldn't overstay their welcome. After offering their thanks, they too departed.
Chang Xu stood there in confused silence for a moment before hurrying to catch up, silently falling into step behind Qi Si like a shadow.
Compared to the first day, the players were up quite early. The clock had only just finished its fourth chime, but a line of people already stood in the hallway.
Several of them looked visibly drained. Their eyes were sunken, dark bags hanging beneath them, and they looked as if they might collapse into sleep at any second.
Whether it was the stuffy air or the contagious nature of exhaustion, after standing in the hallway for a moment, Qi Si was belatedly struck by a wave of fatigue. He let out a long, slow yawn.
"You didn't sleep last night," Chang Xu noted. "Are you going to be able to manage?"
Qi Si narrowed his eyes, offering a grim joke. "I'll have plenty of time to catch up on sleep when I'm dead."
The words sounded ominous. Chang Xu sensed an undercurrent to them and raised an eyebrow. "Did something happen? I have more experience with the supernatural than most. If there's trouble, I might be able to help."
Qi Si's smile was icy. "Sleeping such short hours every night, Chang Xu... aren't you tired?"
"I'm not," Chang Xu replied, missing the implication but answering earnestly. "I go to sleep at the tenth bell and wake at the fourth. In a twenty-four-hour cycle, that's twelve hours of sleep. Most adults only need seven to nine."
Qi Si's smile turned peculiar. "You have amazing stamina."
As they spoke, Lu Li emerged from his room, leaning on the long-haired young man for support.
He had changed into a fresh suit, and the bleeding from his leg had been staunched. Aside from his pale complexion, he showed no other obvious signs of injury.
Once he was steady against the wall, he scanned the players gathered in the corridor, his brow knitting slightly. "We're missing someone," he announced. "Hansen hasn't come out."
Qi Si remembered Hansen. He was the Caucasian man with the heavy stubble who had questioned Lu Li's rooming proposal on the first day and argued with the long-haired man on the second. He was the type who deferred to no one and seemed to enjoy making trouble.
He didn't seem like the type to oversleep. More than likely, he was in serious trouble, if not already dead.
A few players had already reached the same conclusion. They rushed to Hansen's door and slammed against it, forcing it open in a matter of seconds.
Qi Si listlessly shuffled in with the crowd. Unlike the room where the body had been found the previous day, this one was relatively dry. The briny scent of the sea was at a normal level, something the players had already grown accustomed to. The faint, metallic tang of blood was almost imperceptible, and a quick glance revealed no visible stains. The most conspicuous things, instead, were the patches of mildew and grime marring the walls.
Hansen's body lay peacefully on the bed, as if he were merely asleep.
If the loud commotion hadn't failed to rouse him, no one would have taken him for a corpse.
Following the faint scent of blood, Qi Si's gaze drifted toward its source.
In a shadowy corner of the room, an inconspicuous iron hammer rested against the wall. Its head was still speckled with blood that hadn't been properly cleaned.
Lu Li had clearly noticed the hammer as well. The color drained from his face, and his lips began to tremble visibly.
The long-haired young man sensed his agitation and understood at once. He helped Lu Li over to the corner, then bent down and picked up the hammer.
Their movements drew the attention of the other players, who quickly gathered around. Upon seeing the blood on the hammer, they exchanged uneasy glances.
Lu Li let out a long, shuddering breath, his voice raw. "If I'm not mistaken, this is the weapon that nearly killed me yesterday. Only this type of hammer could have crushed the back of my skull from that angle."
The very culprit they had been desperately searching for just last evening was now dead. The situation was utterly absurd.
A player voiced his doubt, unwilling to accept it. "Could he have been framed?"
Someone immediately shot back, "No, it had to be him!"
Having reached his conclusion, the man continued with a logical analysis. "I should have realized it sooner. To shatter a victim's skull that quickly, the attacker would have to be taller. Not many of us are taller than Professor Lu, and Hansen was easily the strongest of that group."
This bit of hindsight-is-twenty-twenty reasoning was logical enough to win everyone over. As the players looked at the corpse on the bed again, their expressions held a new sentiment: he got what was coming to him.
Lu Li gestured for the long-haired man to help him over to the bed.
Once he was steady, he yanked back the sheet covering the body, his eyes locking onto the corpse's right side.
Qi Si moved closer, following Lu Li's gaze. The corpse's right hand was twisted at an unnatural angle, its skin mottled with the texture of wood grain, as if it weren't a hand at all, but a wooden appendage.
Upon closer inspection, he could see a fine white thread wrapped around the hand's little finger. It was pliable yet strong, identical to the strings used to control a puppet.
"The Puppet Master," Lu Li breathed, his voice trembling.
"I've had dealings with him before," he warned. "Everyone, be careful. Don't touch the puppet's body. Anyone who does risks being infested by the Puppet Threads."
At his words, the players scrambled back, some even retreating all the way out the door, desperate to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the body.
A grim expression settled over everyone's face.
As official players, even the least informed among them was familiar with the title Lu Li had just mentioned.
"The Puppet Master? How could it be him?"
"This is the worst luck," another player moaned. "I wasn't even near my deadline. I must have been bored out of my mind to queue for an instance right now!"
"Someone on that level... here? It can't be, can it?"
For most of them, the Puppet Master was the stuff of legend.
His real name, appearance, gender, and abilities were all unknown. Every detail about him was shrouded in mystery, as if he were less a person and more a codename, a symbol born of the Sila Guild.
Could a figure who had been elevated to god-like status by rumor and legend really be taking part in an instance himself?
"It's not the Puppet Master himself," Lu Li said, taking a deep breath to calm himself. "If he were really here, none of us would have survived this long."
"This is just one of his puppets. When they aren't being directly controlled, they're no different from any other player. He has thousands of them, so he won't necessarily notice what's happening here. We just need to eliminate all of them as quickly as we can."
Lu Li paused, his eyes sweeping over the assembled players from behind his glasses. "The Sila Guild usually deploys its members in teams of three for official instances. That means there are likely two more puppets hiding among us. From this moment on, you must be wary of everyone—and that includes me."
A thread of deathly silence wove itself through the stagnant air.
Five were already dead. Of the ten who remained, the enemy was hidden in plain sight, and no one could be trusted.
The pressure from the main quest and the instance's own mechanics had yet to fade, and now a new crisis, one that had been brewing in the shadows, was finally revealed. It was impossible for anyone to remain calm.
Into the silence, Qi Si's voice cut through. "How did he die?"
Nine pairs of eyes locked onto him. Seemingly oblivious, Qi Si pointed toward the body on the bed. "Hansen likely spent points to enter this specific instance, which means he must have had some information about it beforehand. So how pathetic would he have to be to die in such a baffling way?"
"Who knows?" The question hung in the air, the suspicion obvious. Lu Li adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses and sighed. "The mechanics of these instances, their bizarre rules... you can never truly fathom them all..."