Chapter 48 Old Campus [Congratulations! Your room has unlocked "1v1..."]
[File No. 27561]:
Dungeon Name: Old School
Dungeon Difficulty: Four Stars - Hell
Dungeon opening count: 0
Dungeon Type: Role-playing
Main Quest: [To be unlocked]
Side Quests: [To be unlocked]
Hidden Boss: [To be unlocked]
Recommended Host's Dungeon Role (Only Available to Hosts): [To be Unlocked] (This dungeon does not support free selection)
Recommended number of players (open only to the host): 5
[Room Avatar: (A chubby, gray-blue pixelated bird)]
Room Name: Old Campus
Room ID: 4902
[Host: Xue Chao]
[Currently running: Old School Days]
...
[Takeout storage compartment is now open]
You may bring any one of the following items into the instance.
Xue Chao scanned through all the options; they were all items that existed in the studio, no larger than the palm of his hand, and none of them could be electrified or ignited. This must be the source of the players' "little props." In the end, he chose the blade, which was the safest choice.
[Randomly matching players to a room...]
Xue Chao didn't rush to change the room name. He planned to wait for five players to enter the room to see if there was anyone suitable to play with. However, the 4 minutes and 44 seconds of waiting time was suddenly halved, and only one player was matched into the server area.
[Player: 1/5]
Due to the unique nature of this instance, the host's "betting" segment has been cancelled.
[Predicted camera positions have been automatically matched to the current player]
[Start Game]
Live streaming is now available.
[...]
Main Quest 1 "Role-Playing" is now available.
[Mission Details: Play the assigned role without being discovered that you are not the real person.]
Xue Chao woke up in a studio.
Strictly speaking, it shouldn't be considered a studio. Unlike the solemn atmosphere of an official television station, or an interview room plastered with virus logos, it resembled more of a student's radio station.
The floor was covered with a yellow-green educational puzzle rug, each piece printed with mismatched English letters. The wallpaper was a soft pale yellow, covered with long rainbow stickers. The ceiling was low, with cloud-shaped warm lights hanging down, rising and falling, the longest of which could reach his shoulder, giving him the illusion of having wandered into a dwarf's house.
The radio station was also shorter than normal, with each word and color block in front of it, the round characters pieced together crookedly, spelling out "Sunflower Kindergarten Radio Station".
Xue Chao felt a choking sensation, as if things had deviated from his expectations. School settings are a timeless horror theme, and he had prepared himself when he decided on the dungeon, but reality was quite different from his preparations. He thought the game's background would be at least middle school... Kindergarten was too far-fetched.
The window was also a cute, blunt, round four-leaf clover shape. He looked out through a single clover leaf at the empty space outside, just past the playground equipment, and saw a young man pushing open the door. Behind him, in the hazy morning light, the kindergarten's rainbow archway looked like a lukewarm jelly.
A strange feeling arose in his heart. The left port of the Giant's Harbor instance was also empty, but the sense of abandonment, rust, darkness, strange mechanical fish, blood, severed limbs, and dead animals made it dangerous inside and out. The emptiness here was different. It was bright and clean, unlike anything in horror movies. The cute and childlike layout and objects were like putting a tired soul into a cradle, making people feel drowsy and cozy.
Peaceful, serene, and deserted.
It's incongruous.
He was the only one in the broadcasting room, and there was no other sound in the building. The playground was quiet, and not even a car stopped on the street outside the gate. The silent residential buildings were like insignificant backgrounds, leaving only that one person in the playground.
It's as if they're the only two people in the whole world who have accidentally stumbled into an old game that's been permanently shut down.
"[Jiang Ming] is starting his live stream! Hooray!"
"[Jiang Ming] Hooray! Bro misses buddy!!"
"[Jiang Ming] Huh? Why is there only one player?"
"【Jiang Ming】has a small number of players, right? Last time, I only had one prediction camera."
"【Jiang Ming】But other unlocked camera positions also take up space, so why is there only one camera position on the entire screen this time?"
"[Jiang Ming] That's weird... Could it be that there's only the host and the player in the instance right now?"
"[Jiang Ming] That's impossible. I've only ever seen 6-player dungeons, and this one is even rarer. Is it possible that in this game, a single player can now run an entire dungeon?"
Congratulations! Your room has unlocked the "1v1" tag.
In a 1v1 match, the host only supports one player?
As the only player loaded into this instance, Jiang Ming was unable to open the teaching building door. He waved exaggeratedly towards the broadcasting room window, greeting the player while indicating his predicament.
Xue Chao brought up the host panel and saw his face clearly through the camera angle.
The face of the man with long black hair is very thin, as if the most perfect bones are covered with the most perfect skin. There is no room for "almost" flaws from any angle. He can be described as "beautiful" or "handsome", which is somewhat androgynous. He is a mixture of two extremes of beauty, which is contradictory yet self-consistent.
But those beautiful, smiling eyes were so captivating that before you could appreciate anything else, a single glance from them would steal all your attention, making you willingly fall in love with them.
Xue Chao coldly appraised the overly handsome young man. Not bad, he wouldn't have to worry about generating buzz in the early stages.
When their faces are put together, their popularity rating jumps to 4 right after the show starts.
Main Quest 2 "Campus Memories" is now available.
[Main Quest 2-1 "Sunflower Kindergarten": But the adult replied, "What's there to be afraid of with a hat?"]
[Task Details: Please experience your kindergarten years and complete your storyline!]
Jiang Ming took out a fluffy sunflower name tag from his pocket and carefully pinned it to his chest. His name was written in delicate round characters in the center of the flower. It was obviously a name tag for a child, but it unexpectedly matched his temperament. He gestured for his host to look at it.
He smiled and said, "This is all I have. I can't go inside the building. I'm giving you the clue. I'm going to check out the rides. See you later!"
The voice was pleasant, but the tone was too lively. The short sentence was a bit annoying. After watching the man skip and jump into the huge elephant slide, Xue Chao found his name on the schedule. His job was to be a student who came to the kindergarten to do odd jobs on weekends.
To play a role, you first need to find out who you're playing. The only clue we have so far is the sunflower name tag (the game seems to have made it so that the player shares the same name). We can roughly determine that the character you need to play is a child with the same name as the player.
Jiang Ming, who was taller than him, was clearly not a "little kid," and his physical attributes alone were enough to give him away.
Therefore, we need to find a way to shrink Jiang Ming.
It's 6:30 now. According to the timetable, school starts at 7:30. Students will probably start arriving gradually from 7:00.
The period before that was likely spent preparing for them.
Since Jiang Ming couldn't get in, they had to split up. Jiang Ming was in charge of the outside of the building, while Xue Chao was in charge of the inside.
The broadcasting room was at most 2.2 meters high, which Xue Chao could easily reach with a light jump. However, when he pushed open the door, the ceiling of the corridor was four or five meters high. The disorienting feeling of suddenly becoming far away from what was once so close made him feel dazed for a moment.
The high ceiling is filled with sunflowers, their golden petals and leaves unfurling in the shadows where the sun doesn't reach. On both sides are windows with plant and animal figures, but the figures are upside down and the glass is different colors. It's as if old morning light, like a framed image, shines through the glass onto the corridor floor, forming colorful shadows of different shapes: green rabbits, pink four-leaf clovers, blue stars, gray hearts, etc., like a hopscotch grid for children.
It's like the sky above your head and the ground beneath your feet have been turned upside down.
The rooms were all locked and empty. The corridor walls were decorated with small red flower award walls, with various cute stickers around the edges. Rows of student photos were neatly arranged, but all of them were half-body photos from the neck down, without any headshots. So apart from the sunflower name tags with different names on their chests, the children wearing the same school uniforms were almost indistinguishable.
Xue Chao didn't see "Jiang Ming," so he probably wasn't in one of the two classes on this floor.
Suddenly, a green balloon floated out from the end of the staircase, slowly drifting in the morning light, like a little swan spreading its wings. Sunlight shone through its thin wings, illuminating its hazy internal organs. Inside the balloon was a paper airplane.
It floated slowly, dancing lightly in the air, and stopped in front of Xue Chao. Just then, it turned around and showed an upturned smile. Even a simple drawing could show its liveliness, and then it suddenly exploded.
Amidst a shower of petals, Xue Chao caught the paper airplane, which unfolded to reveal a timetable doodled on by a child.
[First lesson: Craft class Location: Origami Paradise (childish crayon handwriting follows) Today we learned to fold paper (the character "斤" was written as "斥"), and we made a huge golden house, like this ████████ (blurred out).]
(Another handwriting) Qian Liang is so annoying! He stole my drawing. Teacher Wang from the senior class scolded him, but what's the use? He'll be eaten by ██ too!
There was also a sticky note attached; the handwriting was much more mature, so it must have been written by the teacher:
Liangliang's mother took leave because her child was sick and went to the hospital.
(Written in different colored pens, possibly added later) Xiaohua didn't come either; we only found out during roll call. Her parents took her back to their hometown and forgot to ask for leave. Honestly, how unreliable!
There should be a roll call during the first class. Is Origami Paradise the name of the classroom?
Xue Chao was on the top floor. There was no origami playground on this floor, so he was about to go downstairs to look for it when he stopped as soon as he turned the corner.
The stairwell had no windows, so it was dark and gloomy. The ceiling must have been very high, as it was pitch black when I looked up, but I could see the colorful ocean balls piled up to my calves when I looked down, with the steps barely visible.
Another red balloon was tied to the handrail, this time depicting an overly realistic human mouth, contorted in a grotesque expression, with the words "Are you sure you want to go this way?" written below.
Xue Chao walked down the stairs without looking to the side, wading through the ball pit with a "rustling" sound. There were no floor number signs in the stairwell. He went down one floor, looked back in the corridor, and found that he was still on the same floor.
Each stairwell was exactly the same, filled with ocean balls, with a red balloon with a lip pattern attached to the handrail. On the next floor, the words under the red balloon's lips became "hahahahaha," as if mocking his wrong decision.
He went down three more floors, but it was still the same; he was lost in a maze.
Xue Chao peeked up through the gap in the stairwell and saw the red balloon, like a curious human head, squeezing downwards into the gap, almost deformed, with its lips in the middle turning into a realistic eye, staring straight down at him.
Xue Chao's heart stopped for a second. After catching his breath, he went back the way he came, went up one floor, grabbed the scary red balloon, and the sound of the balloon rubbing against the stone wall hurt his ears. Even though he had controlled his strength, the balloon still burst under the pressure.
Go up another floor, and the red balloons disappeared; the stairwell seemed even darker.
On the next few floors, whether going up or down, the red balloons did not reappear. The stairwell darkened as rapidly as a person's mood deteriorated until finally, all he could see was a sea of balls at his feet.
He went down another floor, and it was the same, but then he heard the sound of ocean balls hitting the ground from upstairs.
But the area outside the stairwell remained unchanged, so he cautiously went down another floor. This time, the light returned, and the red balloon reappeared, still with the shape of lips, just like when he first entered the stairwell. But the words on the balloon had changed to: "You hurt me."
On the next level, the light suddenly dimmed again. The red balloons were filled with ocean balls, bulging and swollen, like clusters of bumps and pustules. All the ocean balls had the same lips painted on them.
The red balloon swelled bigger and bigger, its grinning mouth becoming increasingly rampant, until it was as big as the original balloon. The sound of the ocean balls rubbing against each other grew more intense and chaotic, until finally it burst open and scattered all over the ground.
The balloon fragments lay limply under the handrail, and the stairwell fell silent.
After a while, a new red balloon slowly floated up from downstairs, turned the corner, and revealed a red lip with the words:
You don't need to leave.
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