The road chase is still ongoing while Xü Beijin was talking to the young man.

Yet, along the way, when Scapegoat checks the rear-view mirror, he suddenly yells in shock, “the car is gone!”

Nobody responds.

Not that it’s unexpected——Look at everyone present on this car. One Lin Qin who’s popular like this. One Selfish, One Trash.

Scapegoat is feeling pretty hopeless by this point.

It’s going to fall to him to carry them or what?

“Keep going,” Mu Jiashi is the one that couldn’t take this dead atmosphere anymore, and he adds, “try and see if there are any other scenes to explore. There are no clues so far in the corridor and on the road.”

Scapegoat goes ‘phew’ as he maintains a steady speed.

Where did the man in black go?

Xü Beijin has a guess, and when he turns the stream back to the bedroom, it is filled with screams just as expected.

“Fuck! What’s going on?! Why is there someone else here?!”

“Shouting out ‘three’ was incorrect… Why…”

Just now, when the third “Number off!” was ringing in their ears, Laosan quickly said “Three” in response.

Yet, the moment he said that, the wrathful male voice chastises them even louder than before, “you trash can’t even number off properly!”

The Missiontakers are looking at each other nonplussed in the pitch dark room. Why is ‘three’ wrong? Aren’t you supposed to number off going 1, 2, 3, 4?

Before they can discuss what this means, the shy woman suddenly yelps.

“What?”

She says with a trembling voice, “some… someone… someone is touching me.”

“What?”

“We’re all away from you!”

In a Nightmare, never casually approach other Missiontakers is an unspoken rule. This is to eliminate suspicions of Carddealers stealing cards.

The shy woman says with a really anxious tone, “no, no, I mean… someone, suddenly appeared!”

The next second, the familiar tone coldly chuckles——the tone of the man that told them to number off——who then goes on to say, “a useless piece of trash that can’t even count properly can just go to hell!”

Then the man starts randomly swinging his big machete everywhere.

The four Missiontakers wanted to dodge, but they can’t see a thing in this pitch darkness. They do not know where the weapon is coming from or whether they are about to be slashed next. They don’t even know whether the person next to them is friend or foe anymore.

The woman is yelling out in pain while crying in desperation.

The three men are trying to fight against this man that suddenly appeared, yet it is as if he has some kind of cheat. He can dodge all their attacks, but his machete keeps swinging accurately at their heads, their torsos, their arms and legs.

Soon enough, the room is filled to the brim with the sickening smell of blood, but they are still alive.

They will die eventually, but not yet. This is a slow torture until death. Blood continues to flow out of the wounds on their exposed skin. Their clothes are completely drenched.

They haven’t any strength to resist anymore, and yet, it seems the man knows as well. He continues to chuckle along merrily and cruelly as he slows his pace down. The big machete is still slashing down their skin, slash, by agonising slash.

Laosan is gritting his teeth. He can faintly hear the shy girl crying, and his dulled mind is wondering if they are all about to die. Can’t it be quicker? This torture… this torture…

His nose is chock-full of the stench of blood. He wants to puke.

His body is already overtaken by a sense of weakness. Somebody has already fainted next to him, it seems. He is glad he can’t see the terrifying scene in the room clearly. In this dark, completely unknown space, plus the wounds on his body and the smell of rusted iron, he could go mad.

When suddenly, a voice shouts out besides them yet again, “count off!”

Laosan is blanking out wondering if this is his hallucination before death.

His fingers are already growing stiff and cold. The man that was swinging the big machete… Is he even in the room anymore? Did he disappear as quickly as he appeared?

Laosan can barely hold himself up. His vision is red. Just red. It is probably the blood from his head covering his eyes.

Crimson——Darkness——Crimson——Darkness. It’s so damned dark.

He lightly whispers, “four.”

Then he holds his breath, waiting for the voice that might ring out in the air… Then, he sighs in relief. It seems he was correct.

… One, two, three four. One, two and four are correct. Why is only ‘three’ incorrect?

Is this counting error going to keep happening after that? What number is it besides ‘three,’ anyway?

He is trying really can’t focus due to the pain and weakness. Why is the man gone? Are the other Missiontakers still alive? Are all of them just hurt and not yet dead?

He coughs. His throat is full of blood too. He tries to speak up, even if his voice is but a whisper, “is anyone awake?”

No answer comes.

His eyes are wide open, but he is practically blind. He is alive, but in this pitch black space, he is practically dead.

Laosan’s mind is digressing again.

Though his instincts are still counting in his mind, counting the time – a skill that all Missiontakers in the Tower possess by heart.

Tools for measuring time, watches or whatever, are extremely rare in the Tower, but grasping the flow of time in the Nightmare is extremely important, so all Missiontakers have to force themselves to keep time.

Some Missiontakers can even count extremely accurately, completely in step with time passed in reality, though most Missiontakers are only capable of roughly keeping an accurate time. If it goes on for too long, the inaccuracies become wild.

Laosan can do nothing in his weakness from losing too much blood. He is still counting inside, all dazed. About one minute has passed when another “Count off!” rings out.

He almost sighs in relief.

One minute.

That is the amount of time between two counts. It means they must produce one number in a minute and also think about the number to report next.

He knows one, two, three and four are actually 1, 2, ? and 4, then five…

He is hesitant.

If he is wrong, the man with the machete will probably appear again.

The man that has tortured them in this dark room for a whole minute.

This is the first run of the Nightmare, so he probably isn’t too powerful yet. It is likely to change, however. At least right now, though, the man is only here for a minute, and after slashing his way about for a minute, a new round of ‘count off’ begins, and he is gone.

It seems that he appears whenever the number is wrong as a punishment. He attacks for one full minute.

If they are able to stay alive for minute after minute, they might just finish counting off all the numbers and then achieve an ending.

But…

But how could they possibly survive another session like this?

Laosan coughs again. He is sitting on the ground while leaning on the bed behind him. His consciousness is drifting. He might be gone soon.

All the other three are unresponsive. They haven’t died yet because the Nightmare is still ongoing. They might have all fainted, though.

Laosan is smiling in bitterness. He is fearful of the number he is about to say. What if the fifth one isn’t 5? Then a fresh round of punishment begins, the man with the machete will be here…

He is trying to curl up as much as possible, but his slight movement tears his wounds open again. The pain makes his fright even greater. Still, gritting his teeth, he shakily says, “five…”

Then.

“You trash can’t even number off properly!”

“No!!!”

Laosan screams out, as the man emerges in the room again. He is coldly chuckling, and mercilessly slashing with his big machete again.

They do not last the minute.

The Nightmare restarts.

Laosan’s eyes shoot open again. They are back in the pitch darkness. He is still breathing heavily from shock.

In the stream, the viewers are all screaming ‘aaaaa’s watching the mad murderer in black under the night vision camera. They are terrified.

“BEIBEI AAAAAAAA”
“Bei, plz, my san is dropping!!!”
“this man is just a psychotic murderer… he looks so excited when he is killing…”
“urgh, is he pure npc or actor like Beibei? if hes actor… is he insane?”
“Hard to say. In fact, if Beibei wasn’t the host, I’d have assumed he was an NPC”
“someone said earlier ‘that boy is suspicious,’ does that mean… the boy is the owner? then who is the man in black? whats their relationship? maybe the boy fears him cuz this is nightmare?”
“who knows… or the boy is diff in the nightmare and grown up to become this crazy murderer? maybe he is scared of himself”
“so y r they counting in the first place?”
“? why’s everyone analysing?”
“uwuwu… that scene was too scary, u know”
“AAAAARGH im finally thinking again after swinging that scene out of my head! y did u mention it!”
“but jeez, even a scene like that wasn’t censored to oblivion? I’m guessing there’s someone behind the host hehe”
“stop with the scary ‘look behind u’ ok?! quit scaring ppl!”
“… are you even viewers of a horror game stream or not… you’re all chickens lol”
“i wanna hear the detective dalao’s analysis”

“… Watashi ga kita! Let me put this out first, since we don’t have much information, most of this is my imagination for the sake of consistency.
First, the only concrete piece of information – The Missiontakers are divided into two groups, and because Actors act as NPCs, we will not consider the Actors themselves for now.
The most direct problem with the Missiontakers divided like this is Prisoner’s dilemma – Cooperation is much more difficult at this point.
While the Missiontakers in the bedroom are still unaware of the other Missiontakers, but I guarantee that the Missiontakers over at the corridor are already cussing after this restart.
In this situation, with unequal and limited access to information from the other side, especially given this mutual pulling-your-leg in the very beginning, a True End is likely difficult; it seems even a Normal End, potentially by counting off to completion, is at least equally as difficult?
All in all, I am really pessimistic about how this Nightmare will play out.”

When the detective dalao mentioned the corridor, Xü Beijin has also switched the camera source over, and as expected, the four Missiontakers all look like they’re doubting the value of living.