What malicious intent could NPCs possibly have? C14.2

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Chp14. part2

Ning Ge thanked the young woman and crossed the lobby to find the convenience store. Suddenly, she noticed a row of lockers nearby, which also seemed to be free to use by swiping her wristband.

While examining the lockers, Ning Ge caught sight of the fat man and his companion approaching.

Ning Ge took two steps back, retreating behind a row of tall lockers to avoid their view.

The fat man, while picking up his things, said, “You have no idea how terrifying that dungeon was. I was the only one who survived. I still don’t know where the anchor point is.”

His companion asked, puzzled, “Then how did you get out?”

“I was the only one left alive. I stopped doing the quest. With only one minute left on the countdown, I squatted on the road waiting to die, took a picture of myself with my bracelet, and then I inexplicably appeared.”

Ning Ge: “…”

He just happened to choose the right angle for his selfie background. He didn’t even do the quest, his luck was off the charts, and he captured the anchor point on the spot.

The fat man locked the locker door and continued, “I still think she’s that NPC. Putting everything else aside, she looks so much like her.”

His companion didn’t believe him. “Don’t be ridiculous. Pretty girls all look alike. Besides, how can an NPC just walk out of a dungeon?”

“You never know,” the fat man insisted. “You know that Alpha, right? His name is Jing Yao. He said last time that if anyone saw a bug, they should tell him, and he’d report it. He’d get points and split them 20/80 with him. I saw her in the lobby anyway.”

His companion hesitated: “You want him to report it? What if it’s not her?”

“What are you afraid of? It’s not like you’ll be fined for being wrong. Why not report it?” the fat man said. “Whether it’s her or not, let’s tell him first, let him report it. If he succeeds, catching a wandering NPC, we’ll be rich!”

Ning Ge’s heart pounded.

The two of them hurried away, seemingly to find that Alpha named Jing Yao.

Ning Ge decided to change out of her overly conspicuous red dress first, then find a place to hide.

A little further ahead of the lockers was a small shop, where an elderly man wearing glasses sat.

Ning Ge didn’t know how many points she had. The old man had her scan her bracelet at the cash register, select the balance option, and glance at her over his glasses.

The cash register screen displayed two lines of text:

[Level: Beginner Player.

Balance: 50,000]

Having completed a dungeon, Ning Ge had leveled up from “Newbie Player” to “Beginner Player.” The screen didn’t show any mention of her “Beginner Lambda” status, as if it were a secret.

“You want clothes, right? You wait here.” The old man turned and left.

After a long while, he returned carrying two pieces of clothing and placed them on the counter.

It was a pair of grey fleece-lined sweatpants that were more than a size too big, and a white undershirt in a plastic bag like an undershirt.

“30,000 for sweatpants, 20,000 for a short-sleeved shirt,” the old man patted the clothes. “These are the only two cheap ones. And they’re both discounted, sold out in limited sizes. They’d originally cost hundreds of thousands.”

Ning Ge: “…”

After a gruelling dungeon run, she only earned 50,000, enough to buy just two pieces of clothing at this convenience store.

This was the most upscale convenience store Ning Ge had ever seen.

Ning Ge couldn’t help but say, “This is too expensive!”

“These aren’t the clothes you bring in from outside,” the old man said, quite displeased. “These are inner garments. Wearing them in dungeons, no matter if they get torn, ripped, or dirty, even if they turn to ashes, they’ll be brand new as soon as you leave the dungeon.”

Got it. Clothes that can automatically repair and clean themselves.

Ning Ge suddenly realised that Pei Han had been through floods and fire in the dungeon, his clothes were all wrinkled and battered, but as soon as he came out, they were clean and crisp.

His clothes were exquisitely made and stylish, they probably cost a lot of points.

Ning Ge held up her bracelet. “I’ll take it. Swipe it.”

In the blink of an eye, she’d squandered her entire 50,000-point savings.

After changing in the restroom and storing her red dress in a locker, Ning Ge felt a little more at ease.

With so many people in the transfer hall, she hoped Fatty and his friends wouldn’t be able to find Jing Yao.

However, things didn’t go as planned. Ning Ge saw Fatty and his friends talking to a man not far away.

The man was about the same height as Pei Han, tall and imposing, with sharp, defined features. He wore an expensive, exquisitely tailored black suit and was listening impatiently to Fatty.

They were too far away for Ning Ge to hear what Fatty was saying, but she saw him place his hand flat on his eyebrows, making a gesture indicating bangs.

The man listened absentmindedly with one ear, his eyes sweeping across the room before suddenly fixing on Ning Ge’s direction.

He saw her.

Ning Ge immediately locked her locker and turned to leave.

The information desk was just ahead. Ning Ge quickly went over to the young woman at the desk and asked, “Excuse me, is it possible to skip the seven-day wait and go into the dungeon earlier?”

The young woman had never heard of such a request before. “Huh??”

The players who came to inquire nearby were all dumbfounded.

A seven-day break between dungeons was a precious opportunity to catch their breath, earned with their lives. Everyone felt it was too short, wishing it were seven months, seven years, seventy years. Who was in such a hurry to go into a dungeon again?

Ning Ge, of course, thought differently.

The transit station was only so big, and it was full of players. Dungeons were different.

There were many dungeons, and the situations were very complex. As an NPC, it was obviously easier to hide inside a dungeon.

In fact, both the transit station and the dungeons were within the system. The system was like God, trying to play hide-and-seek under its nose was hopeless.

Even without hope, one had to try. “You want to start the dungeon early?” The young woman hesitated, unaccustomed to this situation. “Dungeons are usually automatically assigned by the system, generally… Usually… there’s no way.”

She paused, then suddenly had an idea.

“But I suggest you try waiting in the departure area. Alpha usually has certain group-building privileges for dungeon testing, maybe you can beg one of the Alphas that want to run the dungeon to take you.”

Alpha again.

Today is just another day of trouble with Alpha.

Ning Ge sighed inwardly.

Ning Ge saw Alpha Jing Yao again. He seemed to be looking for someone, standing in the middle of the hall, looking around.

Ning Ge tried to avoid his gaze, sneaking around to the departure area.

The departure area wasn’t far from the arrival area, a whole row of chairs marked with numbers in white paint, lined with the typical metal chairs found in waiting halls.

Many people sat on the chairs, waiting to run to the dungeon, the road ahead was uncertain, and everyone’s expression was tense. Someone gently tapped Ning Ge on the shoulder from behind.

Ning Ge turned around abruptly.

It was Pei Han, standing casually behind Ning Ge with his hands in his pockets.

Ning Ge was puzzled. “Didn’t you go out?”

“No,” Pei Han said, pulling his hand out of his pocket and pointing to the escalator with his thumb. “I just went upstairs to take care of something.”

“Changed your clothes?” He scanned Ning Ge up and down.

Ning Ge didn’t have time to answer because not far behind him, Jing Yao also arrived, looking around.

Ning Ge took a step, using Pei Han’s tall figure to block Jing Yao’s view. Before being blocked, she saw Jing Yao raise his wrist to check his bracelet.

At the same time, Pei Han’s bracelet vibrated.

Pei Han glanced down at it.

“There’s a problem with a dungeon, and we’re urgently recruiting Alphas to take a look. The work is simple, and the pay is pretty good.” He tapped his bracelet.

Ning Ge asked him, “Are you going?”

Pei Han hummed in agreement.

He was the kind of person who didn’t care about his seven-day break.

Pei Han looked up, hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Do you want to come along…?”

Before he could finish, Ning Ge quickly replied, “Yes. I do.”

Less than an hour ago, Pei Han had been rejected by Ning Ge time and time again. This time, he expected her to say no again, but completely unexpectedly, she agreed so readily.

Pei Han paused, glanced at her bizarre outfit, and calmly deduced her purpose, then said, “If we get the system’s bounty, we’ll split it equally.”

He thought she was after the points. It didn’t matter, let him think that way.

Pei Han tapped his bracelet a few times. “You’re my friend, I’ll send you an invitation directly.”

So that’s how friends are used.

Ning Ge’s bracelet vibrated: [Accept friend’s invitation for the dungeon quest?]

Ning Ge clicked confirm, and the bracelet gave the next instruction: [The system reward points for this mission will be split equally among the team members. Please proceed to the C13 departure area immediately.]

Ning Ge walked past him, looked behind him, and didn’t see Jing Yao, she didn’t know where he was.

Without further ado, Ning Ge urged him, “Shall we hurry up and go?”

The faster the better.

“Wait a minute,” Pei Han said, “I also called Owen. My permissions in this dungeon only allow me to bring a maximum of two people.”

Owen arrived quickly, it turned out he hadn’t left the transit station either.

“I was drinking at the bar up there, I hadn’t even finished my drink, and you’re leaving again?” Owen asked.

Pei Han replied, “There seems to be a problem with the timeline of one of the dungeons. The system puts a bounty on this mission to check if it’s really something wrong. We’ll split the reward among the three of us.”

Owen said, “Oh,” looked Ning Ge up and down, and chuckled, “Changed your clothes? That red dress suits you better. This outfit… um…”

Ning Ge also glanced down at herself.

She was wearing an oversized white blouse and baggy sweatpants, her long legs casually rolled up, as if she were about to plant rice seedlings. Luckily, there was a drawstring at the waist, so they wouldn’t fall down.

Ning Ge said, “This is called ‘boyfriend style,’ you wouldn’t understand.”

This boyfriend must be broke; her clothes scream poverty.

Owen chuckled, “I, a design student, don’t really understand. So this is what boyfriend style looks like.”

He knelt down, lowered Ning Ge’s pant legs, and carefully rolled them up again for her. For some reason, even though he rolled up the pant legs, the effect wasn’t quite like planting rice seedlings.

Owen stood up and surveyed the scene, quite satisfied with it.

Pei Han glanced at Ning Ge’s trouser cuffs. “Let’s go.”

Owen looked at him, then suddenly tapped his bracelet and asked, “You really are not buying this photo? The price is negotiable.”

The bracelet screen displayed Ning Ge and Pei Han’s stage kiss, seemingly staged.

Pei Han ignored him and turned to leave.

Ning Ge thought: He’s already kissed her for real, why would he pay for that staged photo?

The C13 starting area was right next door. Pei Han didn’t turn back, stepping into the starting area first and disappearing instantly.

Ning Ge followed, silently praying: This time, it has to be a beautiful, scenic, fun, and complex map perfect for hiding NPCs.

In that instant of teleportation, Ning Ge suddenly saw Jing Yao.

He was also heading towards C13, fiddling with his bracelet as he walked.

Ning Ge felt a sense of unease.

He’s an Alpha, he must have received the system’s recruitment message, too. Could he be coming to this dungeon as well?

Before she could think further, the transfer station vanished in a flash, and the scenery before her abruptly changed, becoming a ceiling and light strips.

Ning Ge felt as if she were lying down.

Her body felt slightly strange.

She looked down at herself.

She was much shorter than usual, with tiny arms and legs, she was barefoot and only wearing a simple, oversized linen robe.

Ning Ge suddenly sat up. “What happened? Where are my clothes? Where are the clothes I bought for 50,000?”

Pei Han and Owen, who were also now small and lying next to her, were speechless.

Owen looked utterly impressed. “Is that the point? Shouldn’t the point be that you’ve shrunk?”

Pei Han sat up too. “Don’t worry about your clothes, you’ll change back once we go outside.”

His eyes were still dark and deep, but his face was much more childlike, and his voice was clearer than before, making him look like a seven or eight-year-old boy.

Owen still has his slightly longer, brown curly hair.

Ning Ge touched herself, she still had bangs, a blunt cut, her hairstyle unchanged.

She also had something extra on her.

On the back of her left hand was a bluish-black QR code, as if printed on, with a bold, dark number above it—KW0221.

Owen laughed. “Interesting, have we become children again?”

The place they were in really was a children’s bed, with guardrails on both sides, and the pillow was a large metal pouch big enough to fit one’s head in.

Dozens of these cribs were neatly arranged in the room, each containing a child dressed in a cloth robe.

They were all sleeping soundly, motionless.

Two women, dressed in identical linen, hurried over.

One was around thirty, the other older, in her fifties or sixties. Both had their hair tied up, and both wore the same kind smile.

“The babies are awake?” The older woman casually patted Ning Ge’s head.

Ning Ge: “…”

The younger woman checked the large metal bag at the head of Ning Ge’s bed, taking out a small gold card. “The first stage of language and common sense has been successfully introduced.”

She then checked Pei Han and the others, looking satisfied.

“Babies,” she said, “you’ve been sleeping since birth, and while you were sleeping, you’ve learned a lot. You can understand what I’m saying now, right? We are your nanny. Welcome! Wishing you a happy life!”

Ning Ge: Happy life?

“This is the first time I’ve heard of blessings like this. It feels a bit strange.”

“Silent as ever, this little girl seems to have quite a personality. It reminds me of my childhood, those were truly wonderful times,” the older aunt remarked.

Following suit, the boys and girls on the other beds also woke up.

Ning Ge immediately recognised someone.

It was Jing Yao. The Alpha who had been tracking her at the transit station.

He had just sat up in bed, now appearing to be seven or eight years old, with jet-black hair and features far beyond his years, sharp and defined. He wore a black bracelet on his left wrist, with a QR code on the back of his hand.

His gaze swept over Ning Ge.

Ning Ge turned her head away, no longer looking at him.

The bracelet, silent until now, finally vibrated.

[Welcome to the dungeon world.]

After sending this message, there was a moment of silence, then another message was added.

[Actually, there’s nothing to welcome you with. You probably didn’t really want to come, did you?] 

Ning Ge: “…”

The bracelet slowly emitted messages, one by one:

[Warm-up Task: Pass the Healthy Baby Check.]

[Failure Penalty: Do you really want to know about that cruel thing?]

Ning Ge muttered, “Isn’t it the one from the last dungeon who was on stimulants, all those kissing? Has it changed?”

Pei Han explained, “The last one was the old version of the intelligent customer service, this is the newly upgraded, more somber version.”

Okay.

The young aunt clapped her hands, drawing everyone’s attention. “All the children who have woken up have to participate in a Healthy Baby Checkup to see who grew the best and healthiest during their sleep!”

There really was such a checkup.

“What kind of checkup?” Ning Ge asked.

“Don’t worry. It’s just measuring height and weight, things like that,” the older aunt reassured her gently.

Her saying don’t be worried only made people more afraid.

Everyone obediently got out of bed.

The robe was extremely long, and Ning Ge could only hold it with her hands. Along with thirty or forty other children, led by two aunties, they filed out of the room.

Outside the room was a corridor, lit entirely by overhead lights, with no windows.

She wondered how big this dungeon was. If it were only indoors, it might be too small to hide comfortably.

Jing Yao followed Ning Ge and the others by a few meters. Ning Ge tried her best to avoid looking back at him.

Owen turned around and whispered to Pei Han, “Jing Yao’s here too? Coming to steal your business?”

Pei Han snorted.

So they knew each other.

Owen looked again. “Jiang Jin’s here too? She’s teamed up with someone like Jing Yao? Impressive.”

Ning Ge instinctively knew who Jiang Jin was.

Beside Jing Yao was a girl with short, neat hair, cold eyes, and an expressionless face, exuding an aloofness.

All the children lined up and went into another room.

It resembled an infirmary, with beds, curtains drawn, desks and bookshelves, a clock and an eye chart on the wall, and a scale for measuring height and weight against the floor.

Waiting there was an adult man, also dressed in plain clothes.

“Are all of them awake today?” the man asked the two older women.

The older woman nervously clenched her hands. “They’re all absorbing the nutrients well. I hope they all pass. They should pass, right?”

The man didn’t answer, but gestured with his chin for the boy at the front to step onto the scale.

He picked up something that looked like a handheld barcode scanner, scanned the QR code on the back of the boy’s hand, and then slammed the height-measuring scale down on the boy’s head.

After a moment, the scale suddenly beeped.

The older woman visibly relaxed.

“Passed.” The man waved him off the scale. “Next.”

They really were measuring height and weight.

Ning Ge observed several children and began to feel uneasy.

There was a clear green line on the height measuring scale, and all the children who had passed, regardless of gender, had crossed it.

Ning Ge was almost the smallest and thinnest among the children, a good half a head shorter than Pei Han and Owen.

Ning Ge stared at the green line, unable to tell whether he had passed.

Pei Han had also figured it out.

“Move forward a little, let me check for you,” he said softly.

Ning Ge moved forward subtly, reaching the front of the group and standing next to the scale.

Pei Han carefully examined the thickness of the scale, then looked at Ning Ge’s head, repeatedly estimating it back and forth several times.

The man weighing them looked up, his gaze sweeping over Ning Ge.

Ning Ge immediately stepped back. Luckily, the man only beckoned to a tall girl nearby.

“A little short,” Pei Han whispered, squeezing through the crowd, gesturing with his fingers.

It was about a centimetre.

They were both barefoot, with no shoes to cheat on, and the man was watching closely, he’d definitely make sure everyone’s feet were visible when measuring height.

If she padded her hair, she wasn’t sure if she could get away with it, it seemed unlikely.

Ning Ge looked around frantically, trying to think of a solution. Her movements were too obvious, and an older woman noticed her immediately.

She walked through the crowd and took Ning Ge’s shoulder.

“Silly child,” she bent down and whispered in Ning Ge’s ear, “Back up…”

But before she could finish, her face suddenly changed.

She turned deathly pale.

She raised a trembling hand and clutched her heart, her face contorted in pain. She remained frozen in that position for two seconds before collapsing with a thud in front of Ning Ge. She was completely still, her eyes open.

The sudden turn of events stunned everyone.

The children immediately backed away, leaving only Ning Ge and the aunt lying at her feet.

The young aunt was also startled. She quickly rushed over, knelt down, and checked her breathing.

“She’s…dead,” the young aunt said.

How could she die so suddenly?

The young aunt didn’t cause trouble for Ning Ge, nor did she seem too surprised. She stared intently at the deceased.

She reached out and grasped Ning Ge’s hand, her voice choked with emotion.

“I’ve worked with her since my second day as a childcare worker. She was a wonderful person, but good people don’t live long. Others live seven or eight days, but she only lived five days before passing away so young.”

She wiped away her tears and stood up.

“Children, life is short, so we must cherish time and seize every minute and second.”

The man weighing her seemed unimpressed by her words, giving a dismissive snort.

Ning Ge glanced at the dead body on the ground, then looked up at the young woman.

Something she had just said seemed off.

“What did you mean by seven days, eight days, five days?” Ning Ge asked the young woman. “Did you mean a person’s lifespan? And what does ‘day’ mean?”

“What a silly child, that should have been taught in your common sense.”

The young woman patiently answered Ning Ge.

“A ‘day,’ of course, is one day and one night,” the woman pointed to the clock on the wall of the infirmary. “When the thick hand completes two revolutions, that’s twenty-four hours, which is one day. Our lifespan is roughly…” She hesitated, as if intending to elaborate for the children, “…almost ten days.”

Ning Ge stared at her silently.

Pei Han suddenly asked the nanny, “So, what day are you now?”

The nanny looked at him. “Don’t ask girls their age so directly in the future, it’s impolite. But Auntie can tell you, I’m on my third day. On the first day, I was just as cute a little thing as you.”

Ning Ge felt a chill run down her spine.

Ning Ge subconsciously glanced at the clock on the wall. The dial looked exactly like a normal clock, and the hands moved at the same speed.

Twenty-four hours, it really seemed to be twenty-four hours.

Then, on the “day” she mentioned, it really seemed to be a real “day.”

The young caregiver on the third day looked to be around thirty, while the caregiver who died on the fifth day was probably in her fifties or sixties.

So, in this place, a person’s lifespan is only a few days?

That is to say, if they can’t find an anchor point in time, tomorrow they will become young adults, the day after tomorrow they will enter middle age, then grow old, and die.

Life here is short, a quick birth and a quick death.