Ch 9: I Run a Food Shop in an Escape Game

Endless Staircase (4)

Seeing Yi Han’s expression turn unfriendly, the girl quickly said, “I won.”

Her movements had been especially fast. That tiny trick had actually only been caught by Yi Han’s sharp eyes. Even Jian Lin thought he had only lost because of bad luck.

“I’ll choose truth…” he said after hesitating for a long while.

When ordinary classmates played this kind of game, the person who chose dare was usually in more danger. Truth, at most, would involve questions like “How many girlfriends have you had?” or “Was your first kiss taken yet?” Aside from being a little embarrassing, it was usually nothing serious.

So Jian Lin instinctively felt that, even in this escape game, choosing truth would be safer.

Unexpectedly, the girl NPC once again revealed that scheming smile.

“Very well. Please answer.”

Her eyes turned between Jian Lin and Yi Han before she spoke maliciously.

“During this instance, have you deceived your teammate about something very important, something that concerns her interests and may even endanger her life?”

Jian Lin froze.

After hearing the NPC’s question, his face instantly became very ugly.

The wording of this question was far too cunning.

He had indeed not told the full truth about something, but it was absolutely not like what she described…

This question was entirely meant to sow discord. It was the lowest-level divide-and-conquer trick.

But although it was low-level, it worked.

Jian Lin had indeed hidden something. For a moment, he did not know how to explain, and he instinctively looked toward Yi Han in panic.

Yi Han was also looking at him with a deep gaze. Seeing him refuse to answer, his eyes seemed to carry a trace of probing.

“You only need to answer yes or no,” the NPC girl added even more sinisterly. “In Truth or Dare, you can only tell the truth. If you lie, the task will immediately be judged as failed.”

“I…” Jian Lin’s face was pale.

In the end, he could only compromise.

“Yes.”

【Forced Task 3: Complete.】

“Congratulations, your task is complete. You may now return to the stairwell and continue the game.”

The girl smiled in satisfaction and gestured toward the door, indicating it could now be opened and they could leave.

Jian Lin lowered his head, embarrassed and afraid to look at Yi Han.

Yi Han only looked at him wordlessly for a moment.

Then he turned toward the relaxed-looking girl NPC and took out his pot.

“…What are you doing?” The NPC’s smile froze.

Although an iron pot probably did not count as a weapon, Yi Han’s stance was truly frightening, as though what he held was not a pot, but a bone-chopping cleaver.

“Both of your coworkers have already been kicked out of the instance by me. If you don’t want the same thing to happen, cooperate and take us to the clearance clue. Otherwise…”

Yi Han’s tone was flat. He glanced at the hole he had smashed in the wall nearby, the threat in his words extremely clear.

He had not acted yet, but his presence was oppressive, and his tone was even more sinister than hers had been.

“…”

The girl NPC was probably one with little combat ability, but as a fierce ghost, she had never been provoked by players like this before. She immediately pointed angrily.

“Get out.”

Of course, Yi Han could not possibly just leave like that.

He stepped forward, twisted her arm, and pinned the NPC girl down.

The entire process only used one hand.

“Y-You, you, you…”

The NPC girl could not understand no matter how she thought about it.

How could this delicate, sweet-looking beautiful girl be so violent and so strong?

“Where’s that iron wedge from earlier?”

Yi Han twisted her arm behind her and pressed her against the wall, then reached toward Jian Lin.

The NPC girl turned her head in terror.

“What are you going to do?!”

Yi Han replied, “Earlier, I used that thing to pry a crack in the wall first. Then I hammered it inward with force…”

NPC: …???

Unable to break free, the girl stared at him in horror as Jian Lin truly returned to -1801 and brought over that terrifying iron wedge.

She immediately cried and surrendered.

“Wouldn’t it have been better if you’d done that earlier?”

Yi Han lost interest and pulled her off the wall.

And so, with an NPC captive in hand, Yi Han and Jian Lin no longer needed to search by themselves.

Yi Han held her like a chick, and the three of them left the room, following the stairs upward.

Although even Yi Han had not expected things to go this smoothly, clearing the stage faster was indeed a good thing.

The girl NPC cried the entire way, but she behaved honestly.

Under her guidance, the group climbed all the way up to the 6th floor, the highest floor in the building.

They finally stopped in front of door 601.

The girl was still held in Yi Han’s hand. With tears in her eyes, she glared at him again, signaling that this was the room.

“What do you think? Is this the right room?”

Even after the Truth or Dare incident, Yi Han still looked toward Jian Lin, the luck emperor, as usual.

Jian Lin looked like he wanted to say something, but Yi Han was clearly not the kind of person who liked melodrama. Original translation at HololoNovels dot com. So he temporarily swallowed his explanation and turned to look at the door marked 601.

His gaze seemed capable of sinking directly into that gray-blue metal, piercing through it to glimpse the secret within.

After a long while, Jian Lin suddenly shook his head.

Instead, his eyes shifted aside.

“…It’s hard to explain, but I feel like choosing the room next door, 602, would be better.”

After a pause, he added,

“But I’m not sure either… My luck today seems pretty bad. Maybe we should still…”

“No. We’ll listen to you,” Yi Han said decisively.

Seeing that they had not been turned against each other at all, and that her question had been asked for nothing, the girl NPC instantly became even angrier.

She could not help trying to provoke them again.

“Men are all liars! He lied to you, and you still dare trust him? Aren’t you afraid you’ll waste this knock for nothing?!”

Yi Han: …

Whether all men were liars, he did not know.

What he did know was that the NPC’s desperate statement had conveniently proved that the hidden rule Jian Lin provided was probably true.

Yi Han sighed.

“I didn’t expect that even after falling to this point, you’d still try tricks. Since that’s the case, don’t blame me for being heartless.”

Girl NPC: …???

In any case, this NPC no longer had any use.

Yi Han brought the pot down.

And she… became 10 points.

The triple kill for this game was achieved.

“Knock,” Yi Han said.

He had no guilt whatsoever over discarding someone after using them. When he spoke to Jian Lin again, his expression had not changed at all, merely giving a calm instruction.

Jian Lin turned and knocked on the door.

Yi Han kept his eyes forward the entire time, only thinking that if the two hidden rules Jian Lin had given were both correct, then all three ghosts in this building should be gone by now.

In that case, what would come open the door for them?

This time, they waited longer than the previous two times.

After quite a while, the door finally creaked open.

Inside the doorway was complete darkness.

Yi Han waited a while longer, but no one ever poked their head out. The inside remained completely silent. It seemed this room truly had no one in it.

Without hesitating further, Yi Han switched on his phone flashlight and stepped inside first.

Jian Lin followed closely behind. By the time he entered, Yi Han had already turned on the lights.

The room was brightly lit. Its layout was no different from the underground apartments. The two stood there for several seconds and even called out a few times, yet no NPC emerged from anywhere inside.

Only then did Yi Han finally relax and put away the pot.

The two of them then performed a quick search through the rooms together and soon determined that this was the home of a maintenance worker.

Of the two bedrooms, only one contained a bed. The other had been converted into a storage room, filled with all sorts of tools. A folding ladder leaned against the corner wall.

A dated maintenance logbook lay on one of the shelves. Judging from the layer of dust on the cover, it had clearly not been touched for quite some time.

Yi Han casually flipped it open and immediately raised an eyebrow.

After this maintenance worker’s final work assignment, there were no further records, as though he had vanished. And the last place he had gone that day was this building’s rooftop.

“So these clues are guiding us to the rooftop?” Yi Han rubbed his chin.

But the problem was…

This building had no door leading to the rooftop.

Yi Han had personally come through the stairwell earlier. There was no way he could remember wrong.

Actually, if they had not encountered three ghosts in a row during the first three attempts, they probably would have already found multiple clues in ordinary rooms that hinted at the correct escape route.

Gathering multiple pieces of information and then deducing the correct answer from them… that was what normal players’ puzzle-solving experience should look like.

But this time, with a sudden luck emperor by his side, Yi Han had become addicted to beating ghosts for points during the early game. The points and recipes had indeed felt great to collect, but now that it was time to determine the true escape route, they lacked enough information and could not make a firm judgment.

A game would never create a level impossible for players to clear. Since this room had been personally identified by the NPC girl… there should definitely still be more clues here regarding the path to survival.

Yi Han put down the maintenance logbook and searched through the house carefully once again together with his teammate.

And in the end, they truly found something.

A spare key to the rooftop door that the room’s owner had specially gone out to copy.

【System Prompt: Player has obtained the key to survival. The escape door has now appeared normally within the scene.】

Holding the key, Yi Han opened the door and saw that beside the staircase on what had previously been the top floor, the 6th floor, there was now an additional staircase leading upward.

“…So that’s how it is. If the rooftop staircase and door had been visible from the start, then as long as players reached the 6th floor, it wouldn’t have been hard to discover that the escape route was here. So the game hid this part of the scene until the most critical key had been obtained.”

There was nothing else useful left in the room, so Yi Han prepared to lead Jian Lin out and head straight for the rooftop.

But just before they left the room, Jian Lin suddenly stopped him.

“Yi Han… I-I want to explain something.”

“Hm?” Yi Han paused and turned to look at him.

“Earlier, during Truth or Dare… what that girl asked about…”

Yi Han could already guess what he wanted to say from the hesitant expression on his face.

But Yi Han did not really think it was necessary to hear it.

Because he had already guessed that what Jian Lin was hiding was definitely related to his luck-based ability.

That NPC had phrased her question so maliciously on purpose. It was a kindergarten-level attempt at sowing discord. Naturally, Yi Han would not believe it.

It was not because he had that much trust in this teammate he had only just met. He simply had confidence in his own judgment.

As someone who had grown up alone without family, surviving amidst the malice of adults since childhood, Yi Han actually trusted very few people now. Original translation at HololoNovels dot com. Whether this teammate was truly as kind and innocent as he appeared, Yi Han did not really care to know. After all, once they left this instance, they would probably never meet again.

As long as his ability was useful to Yi Han, and as long as he was obedient and did not drag the team down, that was enough.

Yi Han actually had a feeling that entering the rooftop escape gate might not be the final challenge of this instance. There could still be some unknown danger waiting above.