Gamers Are Fierce-Chapter 691 - 659 Suspicion

After Bob finished speaking, everyone's gaze shifted to Danfei.

This thin black player's complexion was gloomy, his expression somber as he gripped a keen-edged Sharp Axe, his whole body emanating a fierce Evil Qi that warned strangers to keep their distance.

Before Li Ang had arrived, Danfei had already shared the news of his brother Kafei's death with the other players present.

Early this morning, after he saw the note on the window of room 1008, he immediately rushed out of his room and went to the corridor, searching for the old woman in red and his brother.

After running a lap around the corridor without finding them, he went downstairs to knock on Bob's door on the ninth floor. However, there was no response. Danfei didn't know if Bob was deliberately not opening the door or if he had already fallen into an abnormal condition and couldn't extricate himself. So, he had no choice but to stop knocking and returned to the tenth floor to search on his own.

With the lock-picking gear he carried, he opened the doors of every room on the tenth floor and searched meticulously: guest rooms, the power distribution room, hotel staff rooms, the elevator lobby, the area above the elevator lobby ceiling...

The dreadful old woman in red and his brother had vanished as if they had evaporated into thin air. He couldn't find any trace of them. Even the pool of blood at the end of the corridor had disappeared when Danfei went to check again.

Growing increasingly desperate, Danfei wandered aimlessly on the tenth and eleventh floors, clutching the Battle Axe, ready to fight to the death with any aberration that appeared in his sight. Unfortunately, he encountered none. It wasn't until the curfew ended at 07:07 that he went downstairs, as previously arranged, to meet with the others.

Kafei... was probably gone.

Li Ang glanced at Danfei. His brother must have been the muscular black man living on the tenth floor, possessing deep and solid Energy fluctuations—a strong fighter. I hadn't expected him to be the first to be struck down by an aberration, vanishing without a trace, whether dead or alive.

After Danfei finished, it was the others' turn.

Yuyi Xinzhong on the seventh floor was instructed to enter the restroom and play rock-paper-scissors with his reflection in the mirror for three hours, all the while resisting the insidious, ethereal voices that continuously eroded his sanity.

The Plague Doctor on the sixth floor was instructed to sit in a chair and perform an appendectomy on himself with a blade made of ice from the refrigerator, before the ice melted.

In the room of Mule on the fourth floor, the air conditioner malfunctioned, and the temperature rose to nearly seventy degrees Celsius for two hours.

Wanli Fengdao on the second floor was required to catch a total of five hundred green-headed flies that swarmed into the room through the gap under the door, all within half an hour.

Meanwhile, 13MARK on the eighth floor, Li Rising on the fifth, Liu Wu Dai on the third, and Ω on the first floor all claimed they did not encounter any abnormal events last night. Nor did they find any notes, and they reported that nothing happened while they stayed in their rooms from 00:11 until 07:07.

"Hmm... so, that means floors 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 7, 6, 4, and 2 had notes and abnormal events. Floors 8, 5, 3, and 1 had no notes and no abnormal events," Bai Haozheng pondered for a moment, then said slowly, "It seems there's no pattern here..."

"Doesn't the Accommodation Guide mention that notes in the rooms are generated randomly?" The Plague Doctor spread his hands and said. "It advises residents to ignore the content of the notes. Only if the hotel is compromised and the staff are unreachable should they stay in their rooms and follow the directions on the note. Maybe these are the notes that were randomly produced."

"It's hard to say." Ω shook his head. "The hotel itself is an 'aberration' with its own habits and preferences. The hotel staff compiled a summary of bloody safety incidents and put it into a guide. According to that guide, most areas of the hotel will no longer be safe from 00:11 to 07:07, and abnormal events might occur—like a baby crying or a deceased lover knocking. The notes in the guest rooms are randomly generated; usually, guests should ignore them, but they must be followed if the hotel is compromised and the staff are unreachable.

"Have you noticed? The guide says that abnormal events are always happening, while the notes are random. These two things are discussed independently, without elaborating on the connection between the abnormal events on the floors and the notes. But from our experiences last night, the players who did not receive a note didn't hear any disturbances outside their doors on their floor. Strange, isn't it?"

Ω paused, then chuckled coldly. "There are a few possibilities.

"[1] The floor's abnormal events and the notes' abnormal events exist independently. Notes can only take effect within a room, while the floor's abnormal events can affect the entire floor. Both can cause fatal damage to players, usually without interfering with each other, the only difference being the location of residence. Last night, no aberrations specific to the floors were roaming about—possibly a protective mechanism of the System, allowing us to acclimate to the rhythm of this scenario.

"[2] The floor's abnormal events and the notes' abnormal events exist independently. However, besides being aberrations themselves, notes also serve as bait or triggers. When a note appears, it will attract the aberration in the corridor. The two will cooperate, inside and outside the door, inducing the occupant to open the door or directly causing the death of the occupant who opens it. This possibility is corroborated by the two guidelines: do not open the door, and, under normal circumstances, ignore notes. Without notes, no outside aberrations would be attracted—therefore, the occupants of rooms 8, 5, 3, and 1 naturally heard no disturbances outside their doors.

"[3] The floor's abnormal events and the notes' abnormal events are essentially the same thing. They inhabit the hotel or are possibly part of the hotel itself. Notes are created by the floor aberrations, or the two mutually benefit and coexist, forming a whole. Receiving a note means being targeted by an aberration on the floor. In the current situation, where the hotel is breached and the staff are out of touch, the aberrations on the floor can ignore the safety properties of certain rooms and invade them. If you complete the note's task, the defense remains effective and can resist the outside aberrations. But if you fail to complete it, the outside aberrations can invade in force, killing the occupant inside at will. This possibility is corroborated by the sixth rule in the Accommodation Guide: do not leave meals outside the door—it's possible that meals are a kind of ritual, inviting outside aberrations to invade. The absence of notes in rooms on floors 8, 5, 3, and 1 might be because the hotel hasn't noticed them, or the hotel aberration's power is limited and it can't consume so many people at once, so it proceeds in batches.

"The same fact could have three possible reasons. Each possibility corresponds to a different strategy."

"What's the point of thinking about this?" The Plague Doctor shook his head. "I, on the other hand, feel that all the information we currently have is given by the hotel. If the hotel itself is an aberration, it has countless ways to feed us false information. And the Accommodation Guide is not entirely trustworthy either. Remember the objective of the second phase task? The task objective is to find the Dolphin Hotel Accommodation Guide. It doesn't say to *abide by* the Accommodation Guide. The hotel staff disappeared without a trace. Perhaps their summary of experiences is flawed, containing fatal omissions, or they might harbor ill intent, deliberately luring outside occupants to commit taboos. In a situation of incomplete information, wild speculation, and formulating action plans based on those speculations, is likely to get oneself and one's teammates killed."

"Alright, alright." Bai Haozheng waved his hand to interrupt the dispute between the two players, speaking sternly, "Let's not argue for now. Players should indeed be skeptical, speculate boldly, verify cautiously, and question everything unreasonable to find loopholes or clues set by the scenario. But right now, we have too little information, too vague to be verified by multiple sources. If we doubt everything, then there is no room for thought. Um... for now, let's make a trip to the tenth floor and check the situation in Kafei's room. We can discuss the aberrations we encountered last night along the way and see if we can find some commonalities."

The other players had no objections. Just as everyone was about to head to the staircase, Li Ang, who had been deep in thought with his head down, snapped back to reality. He raised his head and his hand, saying, "Wait a moment."

Bai Haozheng turned around. "What's wrong? Is there something?"

"I'd like to first see the two notes that you, Danfei, found in your own room and Kafei's room," Li Ang spoke slowly. "The aberrations you experienced were a bit different from everyone else's."