When A Destructive Wolf Joins An Escape Game

"The kids these days are so courageous." The middle-aged woman sighed, “When I was young, I wasn’t afraid of heaven or hell. I even watched ‘Ring’1 by myself at night. But I can’t do that anymore, I’m too scared to even click on a horror movie.”

The young girl quietly listened to her and obediently smiled without giving a reply.

Gu Mozhi felt that the girl’s tone of speech was strange, as if it was tinged with mockery. His gaze flitted over to the speaker before finally landing on the young girl.

The adults here couldn’t even compare to a child.

Pinkhead was indifferent to the bickering, he had already expected this to happen. He simply greeted the female college student and walked towards Gu Mozhi and the little girl. As he neared them, he spoke, “It doesn’t matter if it's just the four of us. To be honest, I thought that only me and this beauty would be willing to hold vigil. Let’s discuss how we should arrange our shifts. We have four people so one person will only hold vigil for one night while the other three will hold vigil for two nights.

“So, it’s possible for us to hold vigil more than once?” the young girl suddenly realized. 

If that was the case, then the situation had just become even more precarious. There were some people willing to hold vigil this time. But what would have happened if none of the 18 people had wanted to hold vigil? Would they have picked someone at the bottom of the food chain and forced them to hold vigil for 7 nights in a row?

The young girl frowned, realizing that this game might be even more sinister than she had originally thought.

"This is human nature." The little girl solemnly added on to her previous statement.

Gu Mozhi raised his eyebrows, finding it interesting. The kids these days really weren’t as innocent as they seemed2, they understood everything. 

Pinkhead couldn’t help but laugh. He praised her, “Little Sister3, you know a lot.” 

“Us three should take on the two nights.” The female college student rubbed the young girl’s head. “She’s too young, I’m worried about her. I’m guessing that the first night will be the safest, should we let her go first?”

“But no one knows what the rules are on the first night...” Pinkhead hesitated, “Why don’t we let her take the second night instead? That way, whoever holds vigil the first night can gain some experience and knowledge of the rules.

The female college student thought for a while, “That works. Then who’ll go first?”

Gu Mozhi hadn’t spoken the whole time. He had just listened to the flow of their conversation. It didn’t really matter to him which nights were assigned to him.

The other people had shrunk away from them, not wanting to get themselves involved. Only the young man had hesitated, and in the end, he had decided against stepping forward and had joined the rest of the crowd in shrinking away.

“Why don’t we play rock paper scissors for who goes first…”

The sentence was interrupted halfway as a system prompt sounded again.

[It is now 12 o’clock. Unfortunately, you didn’t choose anyone. Therefore, you will all receive a penalty.]

The people who had been trying not to get involved began to panic.

Someone panicked and pointed at Pinkhead, “We choose him! Choose one of them! Don’t penalize us!”

“Weren't you guys discussing who to choose? How come you took so long? You did it on purpose didn’t you?" Someone angrily blamed the group of four.

However, the system remained unmoved. Pinkhead’s group of four watched on coldly, even the young girl watched the deranged adults with her large black eyes.

If these had been normal times, they probably wouldn’t have had such a large reaction. But after experiencing the collapse of their world, these people had long since lost their ability to think clearly. Their calmness earlier had either been a survival mechanism or, the current situation hadn’t fully sunk in. Be it the former or latter, the previous supernatural events had been a huge blow to them, and now they had reached a breaking point.

The female college student instinctively pulled the young girl into her arms and whispered, “Don’t pay any attention to them. Big Sister will protect you.”

The girl hugged her back and nodded her head, "Big Sister, I’ll also protect you."

[No. 018 has activated the newcomer instance penalty: All players must hold vigil until morning, and no one will receive the safety shield the next day. All players are asked to attentively hold vigil through the night, please do not slack off.]

"Fuck!" Someone frantically ran to the door which led to the back of the hall, but found that it didn’t budge no matter how much they pushed it. The person panicked.

Now, the only way to leave the mourning hall was to go through the entrance. But it was raining outside, and everything was pitch black. It looked very ominous outside, and no one dared to run out.

"You guys wanted this to happen, didn’t you?!" The middle-aged man glared daggers at the group of four. “Look, we’re all stuck here with you now. If you were too scared to hold vigil, then you should have said so4. Did you go over the time limit on purpose to kill us?” 

Pinkhead had a bad temper, he immediately exploded when he heard their accusations. Chuckling coldly, he said, “‘Too scared to hold vigil’? You of all people dare to say that? Who was the one that wasted time blabbing about some other topic? Someone even reminded you about the time limit, but you were the one who told them to shut up. But now that we’re getting penalized, you realize that the time limit is important?”

"You!" The middle-aged man was so angry that he could barely hold himself back from running over to beat him up. But he deflated the moment he saw the practiced way that Pinkhead rolled up his sleeves.

Ignoring how skinny Pinkhead was, he looked like a gangster. Maybe he really was a gangster, he looked like a really good fighter. The middle-aged man was sporting a beer belly and was no match against him.

After witnessing the huge gap between their strength, the others swallowed back their previous complaints. Pinkhead waved his fists at them as a warning before sitting back down in satisfaction.

They fell into silence. They had already been penalized and talking would be of no use. Anyways, no matter how they looked at it, it felt much safer to hold vigil together. On the contrary, going back and resting in their rooms alone seemed to be less safe.

After thinking over it, most people were satisfied with their current situation and no one made any more trouble.

Seeing that the show was over, Gu Mozhi lazily leaned back against the wall. The game had hindered his rest time. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he was waiting for ghosts to show up, he would have already gone back to his room to sleep. 

He couldn’t leave for now, so all he could do was rest on the spot. He didn’t mind the dirty floor and sat down on it directly. He leaned against the wall behind him and yawned.

The female college student looked left and right before pulling the young girl over with her. The two sat down next to him.

The young girl watched Gu Mozhi with shining eyes. She reached out a finger and lightly poked his arm, “Big Brother, why aren’t you afraid at all? You can even sleep right now.”

Gu Mozhi had been planning on closing his eyes and going to sleep. He opened his eyes and looked down at the small human child. She looked innocent, kind, and very well-behaved, very different from the other children Gu Mozhi had seen before.

Offspring of the demon clan were all annoying little brats. Those brats could be crowned as the king of all the other bratty offspring, there was nothing in the world that could surpass the hatred that dogs and cats felt for them. Although Go Mozhi had once been a young demon, he held no sympathy towards them as they always made him suffer.

This was his first time seeing a well-behaved and innocent child. He found it very novel and interesting, and his sleepiness vanished immediately. 

"They can’t scare me at their level.5" It was rare for him to talk to a child with such a nice tone of voice, “I’ve eaten...I’ve seen more ghosts than the amount of food you’ve eaten in your lifetime.” 

"Are ghosts real?" The young girl asked curiously, she was completely captivated by the topic.

Gu Mozhi raised his eyebrows, "The world just collapsed, and you’ve been dragged into this game. You tell me, are ghosts real? Magic exists in this world mk6?” 

The young girl propped her chin on her hand and thought for a while, “I know that this game probably has ghosts. But I want to know if my previous world had ghosts. I thought that ghosts only existed in this game.”

The female college student next to them pricked up her ears, she was also very curious about this question.

"Of course they did." Gu Mozhi lied without batting an eye.

To tell the truth, he had never met a ghost in the previous world. But that world had already collapsed. If he said that ghosts existed, then they existed, no one would be able to call him out for lying. 

"There was this one time that I rented a house, and it was haunted by a ghost who had been hanged to death...…” Gu Mozhi spoke with a hushed and deep voice.

Making up ghost stories was as simple as cake for him.

The surrounding listeners felt their hair stand up, they were both scared and curious. They were frozen in their spots, not knowing if they should run and hide. They were the perfect example of just how contradictory humans could be. They were obviously as timid as mice, but the curiosity in their hearts could not be suppressed.

Everyone gradually calmed down, and once again, the mourning hall fell into silence. The desolate sound of the rain was now accompanied by the echoes of Go Mozhi’s made-up ghost story. 

"...on that day, I suddenly woke up in the morning. I could hear something gently scratching on the wall. It seemed like the sound was coming from under my bed, so I stretched my head down to take a look and saw...”