What malicious intent could NPCs possibly have? C17.2

Hey, first of all, thanks for reading my lousy Machine Translation. To be honest, I’d really like it if you guys corrected the mistakes I made. But please speak nicely and politely. My heart is not strong enough to read your too-harsh comments. Have a nice day. 🙂

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Chp17. part2

“The first letter of our group’s numbers is KW, which means the first letter of each child in the same group is the same. His mother and my mother both start with JJ, so maybe they know each other.”

Ning Ge’s mother was still pedaling a wheel. Seeing Ning Ge approach, she smiled and pointed to the door, inviting them in.

“My break time isn’t over yet,” she said, without dismounting, “Did you bring your friend to see me?”

Ning Ge wasn’t sure how to address her, so she asked directly, “We wanted to ask if you know JJ1013?”

“Of course I know her, she’s my friend. We grew up together.” Ning Ge’s mother pointed to a cubicle opposite, “Upstairs, see that girl with shorter hair than me? Do you need to see her?”

In the cubicle Ning Ge’s mother pointed out, there was a woman who looked about the same age as Ning Ge’s mother, with slightly shorter hair, pedalling a wheel, her expression somewhat blank.

Ning Ge and the others went upstairs, found the cubicle, knocked on the door, and went inside.

As soon as they entered, Ning Ge noticed the number on the back of the woman’s hand—”

JJ1013.

At the same time, everyone’s bracelets immediately reacted.

[Congratulations, found it!]

Just as Pei Han said, you only need to walk within a few meters.

This task wasn’t a trap, the little chubby boy’s mother was right there, pedalling her wheel.

If, as Ning Ge initially thought, she didn’t need to bother deciphering the QR code, she could blindly try it in the women’s stalls and find it.

Pei Han knew what she was thinking. He leaned down behind her and whispered, “The problem can be solved using a clumsy method, but don’t you think my solution is more elegant?”

Ning Ge: “…”

Okay. You’re elegant.

JJ1013 looked at them strangely. “Something wrong?”

The task was complete. Ning Ge replied, “Nothing, we went the wrong way.” She turned and left.

“Wait a minute,” JJ1013 called out to them. “You’re from the new batch of kids who woke up, right? You suddenly grew up?”

Ning Ge nodded.

JJ1013 looked bewildered. “I feel like you guys are somehow connected to me…” she thought hard. “I think I’ve forgotten something, something very important…”

Her memory had been erased, she had forgotten her child.

Ning Ge thought, It’s better not to remember.

Leaving her cubicle, Pei Han asked Ning Ge, “What are you thinking about?”

“I was thinking,” Ning Ge said, “that this task of finding the mother might also be telling us clues to finding the anchor point. They’re all mentioning ‘Mother Sphere,’ like a mother goddess. Could the anchor point be related to ‘Mother Sphere’?”

“Possibly,” Pei Han said.

They ran into Jing Yao and Jiang Jin, both with short haircuts.

“Found it? Not bad,” Jing Yao said.

This was a collaborative task. As soon as Ning Ge and the others finished, everyone’s bracelets reported the mission as complete.

They were also searching for people, using the “clumsy method” Pei Han had mentioned—knocking on doors one by one.

Jing Yao noticed something was wrong.

His robe was splattered with dark brown spots, like bloodstains.

Owen, quick to speak, immediately asked, “Did you kill someone?”

Jing Yao replied, “I just interrogated that aunty nanny to see if she genuinely forgot or just didn’t want to tell us. Turns out she definitely forgot.”

Interrogated the nanny?

Jing Yao didn’t care. “What’s there to be afraid of? That aunty was clearly a guide-type, non-critical NPC. If you accidentally kill her, the system will just send someone else. There won’t be any punishment, and it won’t affect the mission.”

Ning Ge was speechless.

Owen asked, “You killed her?”

“Uh…” Jing Yao answered Owen, but his gaze lingered on Ning Ge’s face.

He was watching her reaction.

However, Ning Ge, with her naturally indifferent expression, noticed nothing and showed a hint of disappointment. “Not dead, just a little blood.”

Ning Ge looked at him indifferently. “What happened to your nose? Did the aunt nanny hit you?”

There was still a tiny bit of dried blood on one of Jing Yao’s nostrils.

“How could she possibly touch me?” Jing Yao subconsciously touched his nose, glancing at Jiang Jin beside him. “Of course someone else hit me. Can’t tell friend from foe, doesn’t know what’s good for her.”

So it was Jiang Jin who hit him.

Good for her.

Jiang Jin remained silent as usual, as if she hadn’t heard.

She held something in her hand.

Ning Ge immediately recognized it as the knife Pei Han had used to cut off Curly Hair’s arm in the infirmary, only it had been broken off, leaving only the dagger-length section. The lower part had been modified, wrapped with strips of cloth to form a handle.

She was sharpening the modified dagger with a dark, unidentified piece of material, her hands moving tirelessly. Jing Yao glanced at the dagger in her hand. “Why are you sharpening the knife so much?”

Jiang Jin ignored him.

The new mission hadn’t arrived yet, so the group returned to the classroom together.

Ning Ge kept looking down at her bracelet as they walked.

“Why are you looking at it?” Pei Han asked her.

“Waiting for it to issue a mission, give clues, and quickly find the anchor point to leave,” Ning Ge said.

Ning Ge didn’t want to stay in this place for another minute, especially with Jing Yao.

He had been observing and testing her, seemingly hesitant to report her easily, he must have a reason for not doing so. In any case, a quick resolution was best.

However, the bracelet remained silent.

Back in the classroom, the atmosphere was very different from when Ning Ge and the others had left.

The group of boys and girls were resting, chatting and laughing in small groups, the air thick with the scent of romance under the influence of hormones.

The aunt-nanny had returned and was distributing clothes to everyone.

She looked disheveled, her clothes were covered in bloodstains on the front and sleeves, even more than Jing Yao’s.

She looked up and saw Jing Yao, seemingly instinctively flinching. However, her expression was blank, as if she didn’t remember what had happened.

The system had cleaned up Jing Yao’s mess, erasing her memory.

“Where did you guys go? Come and get your clothes.”

Jing Yao smiled, casually taking a set from her.

A guide-type non-critical NPC.

Ning Ge wondered what type of NPC she was.

The clothes were a plain cloth top and trousers, with simple cloth shoes, the same as what every adult here wore. The place had air conditioning, so the temperature was consistently comfortable, and the simple top and trousers were sufficient.

Everyone took turns changing in the restroom, looking much neater.

Ning Ge changed her clothes and took a moment to ask the aunt-nanny, “What is the ‘Mother Sphere’?”

“The Mother Sphere,” the aunt-nanny enthusiastically waved her arms, “is everywhere. It’s everything you can see and touch, even yourself belong to the Mother Sphere .”

It sounded like a description of a god, perhaps it truly was their mother goddess.

The aunt was busy arranging everyone’s lives.

“Is anyone sleepy? There are dormitories in the back, everyone has a bed. You can sleep if you want.”

Curly hair muttered, “Goodness, we only live for a few days, and we still want to sleep? Sleeping will cut our time in half.”

Owen laughed, “You never sleep outside the dungeon, do you? You still live a lifetime, sleeping half a lifetime, what’s the difference?”

The aunt-nanny continued, “If you’re hungry, there’s a touchscreen in the lobby where you can buy nutrient solutions. Just scan the code, your parents should have topped it up for you.”

Although Ning Ge wasn’t hungry, out of curiosity, she and Pei Han tried it out.

In one corner of the lobby, there was indeed a row of touchscreens resembling ATMs. One of them sold food, with a small door next to it. By selecting something on the screen, you could get a vial of toothpaste-like edible nutrient solution and bottled water.

Like a vending machine, it was very convenient.

Ning Ge also saw people buying clothes and supplies, scanning a code first and then retrieving the items from the door next to it.

The Mother Sphere provided everything.

All you had to do was diligently pedal the wheels.

The nutrient solution didn’t taste bad. The two of them, holding the tubes, ate as they walked back.

Ning Ge had a question she’d always wanted to ask Pei Han, and now she decided to ask him.

“Pei Han, does the dungeon restart? Or does it continue day by day like in the normal world?”

Pei Han was an expert. “Dungeons vary greatly. The last dungeon we went to, the one at the inn, was probably a refresh type. Every time a new player enters the world, it restarts.”

Restart.

Ning Ge shuddered silently.

As an awakened NPC, she wondered what would happen when the world restarted. Would her memories be wiped clean?

“This dungeon is probably a transitional one,” Pei Han continued. “These kinds of dungeons are usually very stable, waves of players come and go like a revolving door, and they only restart once in a long while.”

Ning Ge asked curiously, “How did you figure that out?”

Pei Han showed her his bracelet. “When Alpha accepts test missions, they can see the dungeon number. If you have experience, you can glean a lot from the number. I can teach you if you want.”

Ning Ge understood; it was an Alpha privilege.

“How often does this transitional dungeon restart?” Ning Ge asked.

Pei Han glanced at the number. “Probably several decades.”

That’s a long time, enough for a lifetime. Unfortunately, life here is short and swift, she couldn’t stay.

The two returned to the classroom, ate and drank their fill, and finally, the bracelet vibrated.

It slowly released messages, one by one: [New Mission]. Curly was scared. “The mission isn’t going to test our knowledge of what the helmet taught, is it? We’ve been busy looking for Mom, we haven’t learned anything.”

Owen laughed. “You’re afraid of elementary and middle school courses too?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Curly retorted. “Some elementary school questions I might not even be able to answer.”

The bracelet seemed to respond to him:

[Tell me, what were you most afraid of when you were a student? Exams, of course. Congratulations, it’s here.

Mission: Exam.]

Curly groaned painfully from deep in his throat.

But immediately after, the bracelet sent a message.

[Urgent Notice: Previous mission message withdrawn.]

Everyone:?

Withdrawn? We don’t have to take the exam anymore??

A new message arrived.

[Remember the fear of being pressured to get married?]

[Mission: Successfully register your marriage at the marriage registry.

Note: Ten-minute time limit.]

Failure Penalty: Randomly select one player to be executed. This line has been repeated a million times, if it’s the same again, I’ll write a #.

Ning Ge paused, thinking, Even the randomly executed players aren’t complaining, but you, the executioner, are already experiencing professional burnout?

Pei Han said, “It’s probably because of a timeline error. The originally scheduled exam task didn’t have time, so it skipped to the next task.”

Jing Yao glanced at the curly-haired guy’s smug face and snorted.

“You thought it was something good? The anchor point clues are gone too.”

The new task is marriage.

“Even my mom wasn’t this anxious about getting married,” Owen laughed in exasperation, “Only ten minutes?”

Pei Han asked the aunt-nanny standing in front, “Excuse me, where is the marriage registration office?”

Owen couldn’t take it anymore, “Is the key question where the marriage registration office is? The key question is, do you even have anyone to marry?”

Author’s Note:

Pei Han: Yes.

Ning Ge: No, you don’t.