Gamers Are Fierce-Chapter 718 - 716 Accumulated Snow

The following morning, ten players gathered in room 0908.

The room's door stood open. The floor was covered with bloodstains, and furniture was strewn about. Within the room, there was no sign of Bob, the occupant of 0908.

Bai Haozheng fell silent as he used Telekinetic Power to pick up a stack of unknown black-red material from the ground. That material looked somewhat like paper covered with messy writing, but it was layered with a thick crust of dried blood, filth, and hair, emitting a strange, foul odor.

The players present had already shared their experiences from the previous night. Those who hadn't received a note and had a bye were the Black Holy Son, 13MARK, the Plague Doctor, Li Ang, and Wanli Fengdao. Those who had received notes were Bai Haozheng, Yuyi Xinzhong, Mule, Liu Wu Dai, Ω, and Bob.

Bai Haozheng received a note shortly after curfew began. The note read, "Pass through the stone door." After reading it, a stone door suddenly appeared in the living room of his suite. Upon passing through the stone door, he found himself in a maze resembling the hotel corridors—winding, complex, and reconfiguring itself at regular intervals.

Using mathematical reasoning, it took Bai Haozheng several hours to decipher the maze's pattern. Harnessing his extraordinary player abilities, he escaped back to his normal room, 1408, before the curfew ended.

During this time, he also discovered a desiccated corpse within the maze. Judging by the clothing, its owner had been dead for many years and seemed to be a hotel guest who had inadvertently wandered into the maze. Tucked into the pocket of the individual's upper garment was a palm-sized diary.

The diary's owner claimed to be Martin Anderson, an American insurance salesman. During a camping trip with friends at a nature reserve, he had strayed deep into the forest, where they stumbled upon a very out-of-place wooden staircase.

Driven by some unknown impulse, one of Martin Anderson's friends ignored all advice, climbed the wooden staircase, and then vanished without a trace. In a panic, the others fled the forest to seek help from the outside world. However, Martin Anderson tripped, hit his head on a rock, and passed out.

When he woke up, he found himself inside the Dolphin Hotel. The following parts of the diary were extensively torn, smeared, and altered. Through the increasingly disordered and erratic sentences, one could clearly sense the insurance salesman Martin Anderson's panic and tension. He had entered the same maze-like corridors Bai Haozheng had experienced shortly after arriving at the Dolphin Hotel. He had been trapped inside for nearly a month, surviving solely on food found in the maze's periodically refreshed trash bins.

As for Martin Anderson's cause of death, Bai Haozheng speculated it was likely prolonged mental exhaustion followed by extreme psychological shock, resulting in a heart attack.

Setting aside Martin Anderson's cause of death for a moment, Yuyi Xinzhong's note read, "Eliminate Vermin." Suddenly, a vast number of insects—flies, cockroaches, mosquitoes, fleas, lice—swarmed from every corner of her room. Dense and omnipresent, they rushed toward Yuyi Xinzhong like a black wave.

She managed to hold off the tide of vermin with area attacks and splash damage, leaving behind stacks of insect carcasses as high as the ceiling in her room.

As for Liu Wu Dai and Omega, the note they received stated, "Maintain the cleanliness of the door." With a previous case in mind, neither dared to neglect their duty. They spent the whole night cleaning everything in the room that could be considered 'a door' until 3:28 AM.

That's right, at the same time as yesterday, the hotel once again filled with an ethereal, deep voice speaking, "One less."

Omega, on the first floor, saw six figures in Bamboo Hats walk from the right side of the corridor and enter the stairwell. Wanli Fengdao on the second floor and Liu Wu Dai on the third floor also saw the figures in Bamboo Hats. However, tonight the elevator hadn't been used, and the old lady in red didn't appear.

At 3:30 AM, Li Ang, the Black Holy Son, and Mule were still in room 0408, interrogating the Pen Spirit for information. Using gentle threats and coercion, Li Ang successfully got the Pen Spirit to agree to cooperate.

He employed Alchemy, using soil to transform the pen into a typewriter, allowing the Pen Spirit to type on it for faster communication. After all, both pens and typewriters are tools for writing. It's quite normal for a new era's Pen Spirit to reside within a typewriter or a keyboard.

In any case, with the Pen Spirit using the typewriter, communication efficiency increased dramatically. Accompanied by a CLICK-CLACK, it typed out its life story.

Like Martin Anderson, who died in the fourteenth-floor labyrinth, the Pen Spirit was also an American. His name was Carter Murphy, a successful professional manager. Once, while skiing through a forest, he felt tired and decided to rest against a tree. Unbeknownst to him, the tree was a fir whose umbrella-like canopy could hold falling snowflakes. This characteristic meant the snow underneath was filled with a lot of air, broken branches, and powdery snow. It appeared firm but was extremely soft.

The moment Carter Murphy sat down, he sank right through, falling backward with his feet in the air, his hands plunging into the deep snow at the base of the tree. Frantically, Carter Murphy tried to move his body to crawl out of the snow. However, his hands couldn't grasp anything firm, nor could he touch the ground. The more he struggled, the deeper he sank.

Soon, Carter Murphy was overwhelmed by the snow. His vision slowly darkened. When he opened his eyes again, he had arrived at the Dolphin Hotel and become one of its occupants. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

According to Carter Murphy, back then the Dolphin Hotel was situated in a forest. The hotel appeared quite normal. The lobby was adorned with a lodging guide (identical to the one Li Ang and the others had seen), and both staff and lodgers were ordinary humans.

Most of the hotel's lodgers were people who had gone missing in the real world. They were informed by the hotel staff that they had died and that their ability to stand, run, and breathe was due to the hotel's special effects.

The lodgers usually enjoyed the treatment of a star-rated hotel. They had the freedom to socialize, move about, work out, and bond—even form relationships and live together, provided that no pregnancies occurred. However, they also had to abide by the rules: not to move about outside their rooms during curfew, not to open their doors at will during curfew, and not to leave food outside their doors.

The lodgers didn't know what would happen if they broke the rules. The staff kept their lips sealed, merely smiling in response to inquiries. However, from the constant changes in the lodger community, it was evident that some would disappear or even die.

Carter Murphy only stayed at the Dolphin Hotel for three days. One night, he fell asleep in room 0408 and never woke up again in human form.