DSMC Chapter 50.2

[Time until game start: 30 seconds]

Yan Jiyun checked his gift inventory. He didn’t dare randomly buy anything else for his two NPCs.

Not that either of them seemed to care. They looked like they were sulking for some reason, even though things had been fine before.

Browsing the shop again, Yan found a gift that seemed perfect for Liang Yu.

[Would you like to spend 10 points to purchase the gift “Book of Magical Mind Reading”?]

Yan selected “Yes” and gave it to Liang Yu.

[Player No. 29 has given NPC Liang Yu a “Book of Magical Mind Reading.”]

[Wow! Player 29 has resolved Liang Yu’s current issue. Bond value with Liang Yu +10!]

Yan Jiyun: “…”

Alright, now he understood how gifting worked.

Qiu Xi looked completely confused. How did he even figure that out?

Gu Wenzhu sort of gets it… but also doesn’t.

How had their teammate guessed the NPC’s problem? He looked at the cheerful bun shop lady serving customers, and wondered if it was supposed to be that obvious? She didn’t look like she had any problems at all!

[Time until game start: 3 seconds]

2 seconds—

1 second—

[Final round begins. Players, please remain alert at all times~]

Yan Jiyun was now on the street outside the Yunxiao Hotel, where he could already see players with number tags on their arms. He guessed that only players and bonded NPCs could see the tags — regular background NPCs couldn’t.

Qingyun Town was divided into three areas: Xiaoyun Street, Siyun Castle, and Yunxiao Hotel.

Yan Jiyun was on the street outside the hotel, the busiest area of the three. There were clothing shops, knockoff phone stores, legally-distinct McDonalds and KFCs, souvenir shops, and plenty of restaurants. It’s a typical small fourth-tier city scene.

He figured everyone was still sizing up the situation; no one wanted to make the first move to steal someone’s number tag. They were probably all testing how their NPCs functioned in battle first.

Outside the hotel, Yan Jiyun spotted players who had been previously eliminated but revived using props. So it was true that a player could exchange points to bring back teammates. Compared to NPCs, teammates might actually be more reliable, they could coordinate attacks, after all.

Every team seemed to prioritize reviving their own eliminated members. As for those who’d switched sides and then been eliminated again, who knew if anyone would bother to buy them back.

Yan Jiyun, Gu Wenzhu, and Qiu Xi had cleared three rounds and won all three. They’d become a stable team. Rather than risking it with other players, they preferred to trust NPCs and had no plans to recruit anyone else into their little “three-person disabled squad.”

Winning or losing in this game came down to seconds. Choose the wrong partner, and it could spell doom to the whole team. 

As for those who’d been eliminated but not revived: well, tough luck. In a deadly game, everyone had to look out for themselves. None of them were saints.

In the previous rounds, simply being touched meant elimination. Now the difficulty had ramped up — the only way to end the game was to snatch the opponent’s number tag.

As soon as the game began, Yan Jiyun saw a new notification pop up in the upper-right corner of his screen, a live system broadcast.

[Remaining Players: 25/30]

[Player exchange channel closed. The next exchange window will open in 3 hours.]

[Time remaining until the instance ends: 20 hours 24 minutes 10 seconds]

This round lasted more than twenty hours, meaning it was going to be extremely complex, the hardest difficulty yet. And now that NPCs were included, the players were going to have an even harder time.

It was very possible that strong teams would start forming alliances, taking out weaker teams first before turning on each other.

Yan Jiyun categorized their Team F as one of the weaker ones. Even though they now had NPCs to back them up, if the system forced a PK mode, they might not be able to win. If the opponent had more people, they definitely wouldn’t stand a chance.

He hated that his Human Form Time Card was so short.

He had to prepare for the worst. There was still one possible solution — he needed to gather as many resurrection props as he could!

No one knew what resurrection props looked like, not even him, so the field was fair. Whoever found them first would gain the upper hand¹an explanation: resurrection prop is for when a player is eliminated in this round. If a player is eliminated in the previous rounds, you can immediately redeem them using points.. 

Yan Jiyun didn’t know where Tang Shi was taking him. He remembered Tang Shi saying he was a local, but he hadn’t gone home after returning to town, which was strange. Yan Jiyun wanted to see if he really wouldn’t go back.

But Tang Shi didn’t go home. He went from inn to inn, asking if there were any rooms available. Every large inn refused him once they saw he was carrying a cat.

Liang Yu followed close behind, while Tang Shi seemed to be sulking at him.

After being turned away twice, Tang Shi fixed his gaze on Liang Yu’s suitcase. “Lend me your luggage for a bit.”

Liang Yu asked, “What for?”

Tang Shi’s plan was simple: “I’ll put my stuff in your suitcase, and I’ll carry Oreo in my backpack. Otherwise, they won’t let us check in.”

Liang Yu chuckled. “You just realized that?”

Tang Shi narrowed his eyes. “So you knew earlier and didn’t bother to tell me?”

Liang Yu said, “Didn’t mean it that way. But you obviously didn’t want to talk to me, so I kept quiet.”

Tang Shi: “…”

Yan Jiyun didn’t want to be shoved into a backpack, but for now, keeping a low profile was best.

They finally found an inn that would take them in, though it only had one room with a king bed. Tang Shi wanted to stay alone, but Liang Yu insisted he had nowhere else to sleep.

Tang Shi: “Share a bed with you? Aren’t you afraid I’ll kick you off the bed?”

Liang Yu: “What’s the problem? It’s just one night. I’m leaving tomorrow anyway, no point booking another room.”

Tang Shi: “Why should I share a room with you? The last two inns had rooms, and even if they didn’t, there’s a four-star hotel in the county. You could’ve gone there for the night.”

Liang Yu: “I don’t know anyone here. Besides, I only checked out of my last room because of you. You owe me a place to stay.”

Tang Shi: “What’s that got to do with me?”

Liang Yu: “Everything. If that guy hadn’t said what he did, I wouldn’t have punched him. And I’ll say it again: I’m not Chen Xiaoyu’s boyfriend.”

Tang Shi: “Whether you two are dating or not has nothing to do with me.”

Liang Yu: “It kind of does. If I hadn’t said hi to you in the library that day, I wouldn’t have missed her confession. When I nodded, she thought I was agreeing.”

Tang Shi’s tone grew bitter. “Chen Xiaoyu being your girlfriend isn’t enough for you? So many people like her and can’t get her.”

Liang Yu: “You can’t just look at appearances. You’re too naïve. To really know someone, you have to understand their personality too. If it weren’t for my better family background, she wouldn’t even look at me. Otherwise, why didn’t she accept you?”

Way to twist the knife.

Tang Shi glared at him. “Shut up!”

From their exchange, Yan Jiyun pieced together the story behind Tang Shi’s anger.

Apparently, everything started when Tang Shi went looking for his runaway cat, Oreo. He accidentally overheard Chen Xiaoyu talking on the phone with a friend, and what she said broke his heart. Getting rejected was bad enough, but realizing she thought of him as a penniless loser crushed him. He was furious and humiliated, nearly fainting on the spot. Then a male classmate who liked to tease him showed up and joked about him being rejected. The guy laughed so loudly it felt like salt in the wound. Liang Yu overheard, didn’t take it lightly, and punched the guy.

After that, Tang Shi packed up his few belongings, checked out, and Liang Yu followed. That was when Yan Jiyun encountered them.

Yan sighed. What a tangled mess of relationships!

But thinking about it another way, since NPCs clearly had complicated relationships with each other, maybe those relationships could also determine how NPCs behaved in battle?

If NPCs were like playing cards, with A counters B, B counters C, C counters D, then if his opponent had A and he had B, he would have a guaranteed win.

Yan Jiyun reopened his temporary prop inventory. All unused high-level props were now grayed out.

The system stated exchanges could only be done every three hours. To deal with other teams, he needed to know which NPCs they’d exchanged for. Based on what he knew, he could estimate each team’s score.

After analyzing the system’s rules, he concluded there were three things he needed to do:

Identify which NPCs other teams had exchanged for.

Understand the relationships between those NPCs.

Find the resurrection props.

Most people on the street were NPCs from the Yunxiao Hotel. Each team had entered the same scenario, so by observing which NPCs were accompanied by players, he could tell who had exchanged for whom. After all, people naturally gravitated toward what mattered to them.

After switching lodging, Tang Shi and Liang Yu unexpectedly got a one-bedroom suite with a balcony. It was nighttime, so there wasn’t much to see, and the air still carried a mix of rain, earth, and vanilla.

Once the full-area scene was open, the town felt no different from an ordinary one.

Yan Jiyun couldn’t help thinking how city dwellers often came to small towns like this on weekends. It felt just like that.

Twenty-four hours in a dungeon meant twenty-four hours of gameplay, with maybe only two hours to rest.

Normally, this would be Yan Jiyun’s resting time.

He spotted the large bed in the middle of the room, piled with a pair of plush teddy bears making a heart, and immediately leapt onto it, knocking them to the floor.

Liang Yu instinctively lunged forward, scooping up the black cat. “Oreo, that bed isn’t for you.”

Yan Jiyun: “…”

Beds are for sleeping, aren’t they? And you NPCs don’t even need sleep!

He wasn’t even tired. He just couldn’t resist jumping on beds.

When Liang Yu set him down, Yan Jiyun bounded onto the balcony. They were on the third floor, facing the street. The town was still bustling, likely because the castle’s Rose Festival was coming up.

While the other players were still strategizing, he could move first!

An idea struck him. He dashed back inside, tugged at Tang Shi’s pant leg to get his attention, then ran to the door and sat there.

Tang Shi looked puzzled. “What do you want to do, Oreo?”

Yan Jiyun: ‘Obviously, I wanna go out, handsome!’

Liang Yu translated for him: “Maybe he wants to go for a walk.”

Two minutes later, the two men and the cat were back on the street. Yan Jiyun went straight to a seafood restaurant, pressed his paws against the tank, and stared at the fish swimming inside.

That fish was begging to be braised!

[Want to be Human] livestream channel:

“I’ve seen other players in this scene. None of them had this much follow-up. Why does it feel like I’m watching a story quest? Isn’t this supposed to be an action dungeon?”

“You’re not alone.”

“I checked other players’ streams too. They’re all screaming and running around, it’s just not that fun. But here? It’s weirdly peaceful, and I can’t stop watching.”

“Same. I could watch Meowmeow for hours. The way his paws at the fish tank is so cute. I wanna buy the whole tank for him!”

“Never thought I’d end up watching a combat dungeon turn into a slice-of-life cat stream. It’s weird, but kind of mesmerizing. (lights cigarette)”

T/L: tbh, the moment the author hit me with “and there was only one bed” trope, I immediately shipped Liang Yu/Tang Shi. It do be as easy as that sometimes.

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  an explanation: resurrection prop is for when a player is eliminated in this round. If a player is eliminated in the previous rounds, you can immediately redeem them using points.