DSMC Chapter 154.1

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“Haha, isn’t ‘no survivors’ self-explanatory? It means once players come in, they never make it back out. What’s so hard to understand about that?”

“I think the person above meant how these adorable little kids could make an instance with no survivors. So far it seems pretty harmless. Kitty Baby gets along really well with the Little Class Monitor. I haven’t seen any elementary school kids causing trouble.”

“That just means you’re too naive. You’ve been watching Kitty Baby’s stream so much you’ve gotten soft. Can Kitty Baby really be compared to other players? If you watched a few more streamers, you’d see completely different outcomes. Go check out XXX’s stream next door. That guy got chased by a bunch of terrifying little kids until he was miserable. One of them even had his heart ripped out by a child. Blood everywhere.”

“Wow, it was that horrible? I thought this instance was just about adorable elementary school kids interacting with players! Which stream has all the gore? I’ll scout it out for Kitty Baby first and come back to tell him which kids to watch out for!”

“Can one of the veterans spoil it already? Hurry, hurry! I can’t wait to know what happens!”

“Wait, are you guys watching a different [Innocence] instance than I am?”

“Probably. (lights cigarette.jpg) Our streamer chose a Level 2 difficulty instance. After entering, it became Level 4. One day later, it upgraded to Level 5. Holy crap… I didn’t realize it until I counted. Our Kitty Baby jumped three difficulty levels in a row? Even the greatest prodigies aren’t that insane.”

“So Kitty Baby went straight from a Level 4 instance to a Level 5 one? I seriously thought this was an instance that Qu-laoshi specially designed for him!”

“Well, it is an instance that Qu-laoshi designed for Kitty Baby and then some. The three instances related to Qu-laoshi have all merged together now. The more you think about it, the scarier it gets. Will there be even more Qu-laoshi instances later? Judging by what’s happening now, are all the characters in these instances Qu-laoshi’s alters? Seriously… just how many personalities there are?” 

Perhaps no one but Teacher Qu himself knew how many personalities he still had that the audience had yet to see.

Yan Jiyun was currently staring at Yan Weilan as he made his wish. Both he and Qi Feng believed they were inside Teacher Qu’s world of consciousness. If they could successfully gain the trust of one of Teacher Qu’s personalities, perhaps that personality could be made to work for them. Yan Weilan was their first small experiment.

One second, two seconds, three seconds—

Just as Yan Jiyun was beginning to think his experiment had failed, the surroundings around the three of them changed!

They had actually come out.

And that also proved something: this painting was really Teacher Qu’s work.

Yan Jiyun looked at Yan Weilan, who was still standing beside him with his eyes tightly shut and his hands clasped together in sincere prayer. He almost couldn’t bear to interrupt him.

“We’re out. We’re back in the function building. Class Monitor, you can open your eyes now.”

Yan Weilan opened them. “Huh? What happened? Why did praying like you told me make us come out?”

Yan Jiyun casually made up an explanation. “Probably something to do with magnetic fields. Maybe you accidentally activated some mechanism, and it just took a while before we came out.”

Yan Weilan’s eyes widened. “You told me to make a wish on purpose? You were teasing me?”

Yan Jiyun shook his head. “Absolutely not. Didn’t I say we’d just give it a try? Turns out it worked.”

Yan Weilan accepted the explanation. “Okay… I guess I was useful after all.”

Yan Jiyun smiled. “You’ve always been useful. To us, you’re a very important teammate!”

Yan Weilan nodded eagerly and looked at Yan Jiyun expectantly. “Mhm. So… am I your best friend too, just like Qi Feng?”

Yan Jiyun was about to casually say yes, treating it as humoring a child, when Qi Feng quietly tugged at the corner of his shirt from behind and whispered, “In games, never casually make promises to NPCs.”

Yan Jiyun considered his response. They really did need to stay on guard around NPCs. “You’re both my friends. Aren’t we all members of the Detective Squad?”

Afterward, he carefully reflected on Qi Feng’s warning. He was right. Yan Weilan had an aura that naturally lowered people’s guard. Just looking at him made people subconsciously want to chat with him a little longer.

Although Yan Weilan hadn’t heard the answer he truly wanted, he seemed satisfied with Yan Jiyun’s reply nonetheless. A pure, beautiful smile spread across his face.

“Mhm. I’m officially a member of the Detective Squad now.”

Yan Jiyun felt that Yan Weilan seemed strangely attached to the idea of making friends. Did he usually not have any?

He needed to think about it from another angle. Did Teacher Qu have friends when he was little?

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“The streamer was this close to falling into the NPC’s trap.”

“Yan Weilan is so cute though. What kind of tricks could he possibly have?”

“The children who appear the most innocent and flawless are often the scariest. Don’t you think something’s off?”

“So Yan Weilan is actually a boss too? Doesn’t that mean Kitty Baby’s fallen straight into a boss nest?”

“Not necessarily. The NPCs in this instance use a point system for players. If a player’s actions make an NPC unhappy, enough negative points will eventually trigger certain events. On the other hand, if the NPC is satisfied with what the player does, clearing the instance becomes much smoother. This instance is both difficult and easy; it all depends on the player’s way of thinking and how they treat the child NPCs.”

“So you basically have to completely understand a child’s personality and preferences? If you indulge what the child wants, they’ll go down the good route, but if you don’t, they’ll become an antagonist? Isn’t that incredibly hard to balance?”

“Let me tell you, it’s extremely subtle. You can’t overdo it either. If an elementary school NPC notices you’re being too nice, they’ll think you’re either a kidnapper or someone with ulterior motives. The moment they become wary of you, you’re basically dead.”

“That sounds ridiculously difficult. But then why do Kitty Baby and the Little Class Monitor get along so well? Is Kitty Baby literally every single thing the Little Class Monitor likes?”

From the very beginning, both Yan Jiyun and Qi Feng had remained wary of Yan Weilan.

After leaving the secret room space, they discovered a painting hanging on the wall of the inner room of the multifunction classroom. The painting depicted the very room they had just escaped from.

Yan Jiyun turned to Qi Feng. “Let’s take the painting with us.”

Qi Feng immediately understood what he meant. Without the painting, even if the masked man caught another child, he would have nowhere to hide them.

There was just one problem: the painting hung too high. Neither of them could reach it.

Yan Jiyun was about to go fetch a chair. “There are chairs outside. I’ll bring one in.”

Qi Feng crouched down. “No need. I’ll lift you up. It’ll be faster than dragging a chair over. Climb on.”

When Yan Jiyun was in cat form, sitting on Qi Feng’s shoulder had never seemed like a problem. But now he was human, squatting on someone’s shoulders somehow felt inappropriate. 

He patted Qi Feng’s shoulder. “If I step on your tiny shoulders, won’t you end up not growing any taller?”

Having never before been looked down upon, Qi Feng felt rather depressed by his current child’s body. “I won’t. I’m nearly 1.9m in real life.”

Yan Weilan asked, “Can you predict how tall we’ll be in the future?”

Instead of climbing onto Qi Feng, Yan Jiyun ran outside and dragged in a chair from another classroom. As he did, he answered Yan Weilan’s question. “You’ll grow to about 1.85 m.”

Yan Weilan frowned. A tiny competitive spirit welled up inside him. “Then why am I not as tall as Qi Feng?”

Yan Jiyun sighed dramatically, suddenly feeling annoyed himself. “I’m even a little shorter than you. So unfair!”

The comparison instantly erased Yan Weilan’s competitive mood. “Don’t be sad. Drink more milk and you’ll grow as tall as me.”

While the two chatted, Qi Feng stepped onto the wheeled chair and removed the painting from the wall. Yan Jiyun steadied the chair for him while continuing to talk with Yan Weilan so he wouldn’t feel left out.

He suddenly felt like some kind of social butterfly trying to keep everyone happy.

Qi Feng successfully removed the painting. Carrying it together, the three of them quietly left the multifunction classroom under the cover of darkness.

Just as they were about to step out the classroom door, Yan Jiyun suddenly stopped them both.

“Wait. I hear footsteps. If we open the door now, we’ll definitely run into whoever’s outside. How about we hide under the desks first?” He was really asking for Qi Feng’s opinion.

Qi Feng nodded. “Okay.”

Since he was carrying the painting, it wasn’t convenient to run anyway. He had secretly tried slashing the painting with the razor blade earlier, but it hadn’t worked. The painting couldn’t be cut, nor could it be destroyed by smashing it.

Yan Weilan was now completely immersed in his role as a Detective Squad member. Being hunted by a bad guy was thrilling, terrifying, and exciting all at once. He didn’t object to any of Yan Jiyun’s suggestions.

He crawled beneath the last desk nearest to him, carefully pulled the chair back into place, and whispered, “I’m hidden.”

Yan Jiyun and Qi Feng each crawled beneath adjacent desks. Yan Jiyun reminded him, “Don’t make a sound. It’s dangerous.”

Yan Weilan poked his head out from beneath the chair. “I know. I’ll stay quiet.” Then he covered his own mouth.

Yan Jiyun also tucked himself underneath the desk. 

The footsteps of the adult grew closer and closer. They had become loud enough that even Qi Feng could clearly hear them now.

The person pushed open the back door of the classroom.

Unfortunately for them, all three were hiding in the back row. If the man’s eyesight was as sharp as Yan Jiyun’s, he’d immediately spot where they were hiding. 

NPCs never turned on lights, that was simply one of the game’s rules. Likewise, they could walk effortlessly through complete darkness. Neither of those things made any scientific sense.

As Yan Jiyun was silently grumbling about it, he heard the masked man’s thigh slam into the corner of a desk.

Yan Jiyun: “…” Well… it looked like the trash game’s NPCs had vision no better than ordinary people after all. Though perhaps this was just a special case.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t good news. As long as the masked man stopped and looked down, he’d easily discover the three of them.

At the moment, they still couldn’t determine whether the masked man was Teacher Qu, mainly because he and Qi Feng hadn’t tested whether they themselves could leave a painting the way the little class monitor had.

Whether the masked man was Teacher Qu or not actually wasn’t that important, because Teacher Qu’s various personalities all fought one another anyway.

If Yan Weilan really was one of Teacher Qu’s personalities, then it made perfect sense for the masked man to want to kill him.

The real issue was that the system clearly didn’t want the masked man to succeed. Right now, Yan Weilan was the main mission objective, the person they were supposed to protect. 

But the real main mission was to find the real Teacher Qu. So why were they protecting the Little Class Monitor? Could he somehow lead them to the real Teacher Qu?

Yan Jiyun mentally sorted through the logic, and a new idea formed.

Perhaps that was true. For now, they absolutely had to keep him safe.