Gamers Are Fierce-Chapter 710 - 708 Sacrifice

13MARK immediately understood Bai Haozheng's meaning.

No matter what those six Bamboo Hat figures were, since they had walked up from the lower floors, they should logically also walk down from the upper floors.

The Ghost of Hidden Eye resided on the twelfth floor. The floors below, the eleventh and tenth, originally belonged to Danfei and Kafei; after the two brothers died, those floors naturally became vacant. Bob, living on the ninth floor, had slept through the entire night. Therefore, theoretically, 13MARK, who lived on the eighth floor, should have been the most likely to see those six Bamboo Hat figures taking the Ghost of Hidden Eye (alive or as a corpse) downstairs.

"I didn't see anything," 13MARK said, spreading his hands carelessly.

Yuyi Xinzhong, Plague Doctor, Li Ang, and others living below him also claimed they hadn't seen anything.

"Is that so..." Bai Haozheng said, pushing up his glasses. "There are two possibilities. First, the Bamboo Hat figures disappeared directly on a floor with the Ghost of Hidden Eye, teleporting to another location in the hotel. Second, the Bamboo Hat figures took the Ghost of Hidden Eye and walked down using the staircase on the right side of the corridor, which is why those living on the left side of the corridor didn't see them."

"What difference does that make?" Bob asked with a gloomy face.

"Of course, there is a difference," Bai Haozheng said casually. "Those Bamboo Hat figures kept saying 'one less' until something happened to the Ghost of Hidden Eye. Understanding their pattern of movement helps us determine the process, the result, and the reason behind the Ghost of Hidden Eye's disappearance."

"There's too little information." Black Holy Son shook his head and, looking at the crowd, said, "If we don't figure out the identity and origin of the Bamboo Hat Giants, they will continue to take others away. If I don't receive a sticky note tonight, I'll enter the elevator after 01:11 and patrol between the first and the fourteenth floors. If anyone needs help, they can send a signal, like opening their door or slipping something through the door gap, and I will do my best to help."

"Hmm?" Ω said, glancing at Black Holy Son with some surprise. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

For players without a friendly fire mitigation system, unity and cooperation were just empty slogans. It was considered good enough not to kick someone when they were down, let alone expect help from other players who were neither kith nor kin.

"I'm sure," Black Holy Son said, nodding. "I personally think it might be safer in the elevator than staying in a room all night. I had also planned to call other players on the different floors from the elevator to check on their situation and decide whether to go up or down. However, considering that the content of the sticky note might be 'do not make any sound,' randomly making calls might disrupt your missions, so I'll refrain for now.

"If those six Bamboo Hat Ghosts appear again tonight, I could also use the elevator to ascend or descend, allowing me to track and observe them in real time, and even rescue any players they target.

"As for my reasons, first, it's for my own better survival. And second..." Black Holy Son's face twisted into a somewhat fierce smile. "No matter what, the Ghost of Hidden Eye was my companion. For him to die so inexplicably... we absolutely need to get an explanation."

"..." Bai Haozheng fell silent for a moment, then nodded and said, "That's a good suggestion. However, for safety's sake, it's best to choose another person to accompany you, so you can watch each other's backs."

The hotel elevator had a capacity for two people. After including Black Holy Son, it could still carry one more player. On the surface, Bai Haozheng's suggestion seemed to be out of consideration for Black Holy Son—if there were two players in the elevator, their odds against a potential encounter with the old woman in red would be significantly improved. Essentially, however, it was also a test and a limitation for Black Holy Son. If he were to roam between floors alone, the danger would be too great. He could easily attract the attention of unnatural beings in the corridor by jumping in and out of the hallway, prying open others' doors, or shouting loudly—using a borrowed knife to kill, harming those honest players who stayed in their rooms. If another person could be placed by his side, then they could function as a supervisor.

Bai Haozheng himself was an Intelligence Analyst from the Special Affairs Bureau. With his official background, he was considered trustworthy. Liu Wu Dai, Wanli Fengdao, and others had close ties with the Special Affairs Bureau and could, to a certain extent, be considered allies. Li Ang and the mule, who had entered the script scenario with Liu Wu Dai, were naturally also within this circle of allies.

"If I don't receive a note tonight, or if I've already completed it," Bai Haozheng said, looking at Black Holy Son, "I will also enter the elevator for some time after 01:11. We can team up."

"Same here," Li Ang said, standing aside and raising his hand in agreement.

"Hmm, but the elevator has a maximum load of two people; any more and it will no longer be safe. As it passes each floor, I will open the elevator door to show the number of people inside," Black Holy Son stated calmly, seemingly unaware of the deeper meaning in Bai Haozheng's words. "If we're lucky, tonight we might figure out what those Bamboo Hat figures really are."

So, the question circled back to the starting point: What exactly had the Ghost of Hidden Eye done to be killed? Was it because he killed the woman in the kimono in his dream, or because he violated some currently unknown taboo, or had the hotel's rules completely collapsed, leaving life and death to random chance?

After some contemplation and discussion, the players still couldn't reach a conclusion. Eventually, they searched the twelfth floor and the elevator shaft again, but unfortunately found nothing.

This was also within expectations. Players had tested this before; the corridors of the Dolphin Hotel had a self-refreshing function. For instance, the transparent tape they had stuck on the corridor phone quickly disappeared.

To test the required refresh time for the hotel corridors, Li Ang had even specially used mud to create some dye and had drawn a lot of graffiti on various floors, in the first-floor lobby, and in the elevator shaft. The test results showed that the graffiti would gradually begin to disappear within an average of 30 minutes to 3 hours. The shape, content, and area of the graffiti were unrelated to the time it took to disappear.

Changes to the hotel's structure behaved similarly—items taken from the front desk cabinet and placed on other floors would also be fully restored within 30 minutes to 3 hours. This meant that if the Ghost of Hidden Eye were chopped into pieces like dumpling filling and scattered in the corridors, the players gathering the next day would find absolutely no trace of it.

A day quickly passed, and the players once again scattered, returning to their respective floors. As they were leaving, Liu Wu Dai, who had deliberately lingered at the back, covertly tossed a crumpled note to Li Ang.

The content on the note was simple: "The woman in the bathtub told me something before she disappeared, 'Don't trust anyone else.'"

Li Ang clenched the note in his palm, activated Alchemy, and nonchalantly transformed the paper into an origami crane.

As time went on, the strangeness within this hotel also began to change, becoming more... intelligent? At first, it had simply issued the content of the notes, but now, it could interact with players and even converse. On the second night, Li Ang had been attacked by four oil paintings. He had gone to great lengths to subdue them and had attempted to extract information, but the characters within the paintings had been completely uncommunicative, indifferent to his interrogation attempts, no matter how much seawater he poured on them. From the previous night's feedback, the strange head Black Holy Son encountered had demanded he tell a ghost story; the bizarre entity Liu Wu Dai met in the bathtub had warned her not to trust others; and the Ghost of Hidden Eye had even chatted with the woman in the kimono he encountered. Was it the players' presence that caused the hotel to mutate, or was the hotel gradually recovering by consuming lives?