Ch 11: I Run a Food Shop in an Escape Game

Endless Stairway (6)

“Yi Han, we succeeded…………” So the flushed-faced Jian Lin, still breathing hard from the rapid fall, turned his head and saw his beautiful teammate’s real appearance.

Under the bright moonlight stood a man with refined, handsome features and calm eyes…

One could still vaguely recognize the breathtakingly beautiful outline from before, except now the long hair had become short hair, the chest was flat, the waist was slim, and the legs were long…

…Why was it a man?! And one half a head taller than himself at that???

All the color instantly drained from Jian Lin’s face… every word that had reached his lips got forcibly swallowed back down.

“You… y-you you…”

“What?” This man, still half a head taller than him, had not even let go of the arm he grabbed while jumping off the building. He casually asked, “What were you trying to say just now? Why’d you stop?”

Jian Lin really had wanted to say something.

But now the only subtitles floating through his brain were “QAQ” and “TAT.”

He genuinely had never met a girl who combined so many contradictory traits into one person. Beautiful, intelligent, cold yet polite, gentle yet vicious, decisive, fearless in danger, astonishingly bold…

He originally could have praised pretty little sister with another hundred compliments.

But could someone please tell him why pretty little sister suddenly turned into a man right after leaving the instance…

Jian Lin only felt his world collapse as dizziness overwhelmed him and his vision went black.

“……” Yi Han suddenly felt his hand empty.

Jian Lin: disconnected on the spot.

…And as the person who theoretically should have been the embarrassed one, Yi Han remained utterly expressionless even after leaving the instance, without the slightest trace of guilt.

Yi Han: Ever since entering this game, it somehow feels like my skin’s gotten thicker and my moral standards lower too. ：-）

【Now beginning reward settlement…】

【Instance cleared. Base points: +200】

【Clear contribution: 80%, ranked first among all players. Bonus points: +100】

【Scene exploration: 100%. Bonus points: +50】

【NPCs eliminated: 3. Bonus points: +30】

【Total points earned this instance: 380】

【Clear Rating: S】

When settling a One-Star instance, there was one additional category compared to the beginner level, called “Clear Contribution.”

The app explained it as:

“Calculated comprehensively according to the player’s exploration of the instance rules, the amount of effective clues obtained during gameplay, and the order in which players successfully escape. After calculating the percentage, bonus points are awarded according to ranking among all players. However, players with 0% contribution will instead lose points.”

And because of this new category, the original “Exploration Progress” category was further specified into “Scene Exploration Progress,” distinguishing it from the newly added “Rule Exploration Progress.”

This made Yi Han feel that future instances probably would no longer feature situations where he was the only player.

Because the “Contribution” category clearly existed for situations involving multiple players clearing together.

In this instance, “Endless Stairway,” Yi Han’s contribution had been 80%.

At first glance that already seemed extremely high, but after thinking about it carefully, something felt off.

Because if one truly examined it closely, this instance had basically been pushed forward entirely by Yi Han himself from start to finish.

Before jumping off the rooftop together with him, Jian Lin had only done two things:

1. At the start of the instance, he provided two hidden rules.

Those two rules had been accurate and indeed extremely helpful for clearing the instance. But they most likely would not be counted toward contribution percentage.

Because such explicitly defined death conditions would inevitably have been discovered during the exploration process by normal players following ordinary clearing methods anyway.

Jian Lin merely revealed them early, saving time, but not actually advancing the instance progression itself.

2. After opening the doors containing ghost NPCs, he participated in all three forced missions.

This likewise was clearly not a required process for normal instance completion, and therefore would not count toward contribution.

Thus, the reason Jian Lin received 20% instead of getting penalized with 0% was entirely because he jumped off the rooftop simultaneously with Yi Han, leading the system to judge that the two escaped successfully at the same time without differentiating ranking.

Recalling how firmly Jian Lin insisted on jumping together…

Now that Yi Han thought about it, if Jian Lin was not entering a One-Star instance for the first time, then he should already know the contribution rules.

In that case, his actions were not about “sharing risk with a teammate” at all, but rather a hypocritical excuse to avoid losing points.

On the other hand, if he truly had not known…

Then this person might genuinely be the sort of pure-hearted boy supposedly protected too well by his family.

People like that generally did not survive long in escape games. The fact he avoided point deductions this time could only be considered blind luck.

As for which possibility was the truth, Yi Han could not be bothered to investigate.

Regardless of whether his contribution was 100% or 80%, he still ranked first, and not a single point less ended up in his pocket.

And Jian Lin had indeed been useful.

Without those absurdly lucky hands of his knocking on doors… Yi Han might not have farmed thirty points from three NPCs, and the recipe might also have been lost.

So Yi Han felt the result was perfectly reasonable.

After the settlement ended, Yi Han rested briefly. Feeling not particularly tired yet, he began researching how to unlock Two-Star instances.

Previously, the requirement for unlocking One-Star instances had been clearing a beginner instance with at least a C-rank rating.

That condition had practically no difficulty. As long as a player did not die in the beginner instance, they could easily meet it.

But upgrading from One-Star to Two-Star was far more difficult.

【Requirements to unlock Two-Star instances: Clear at least one One-Star instance with a rating of B or above, and accumulate a total of at least 1000 points.】

Yi Han had earned 179 points in “Closed Classroom” and 380 in “Endless Stairway,” bringing his current total to 559 points.

The secretly earned delivery-food points clearly did not count.

To reach 1000, he would still need to clear at least two more One-Star instances.

“This is too slow.”

Yi Han frowned.

But 380 points in a One-Star instance was probably already close to the limit. A violent player like himself could achieve numbers like that, but ordinary players likely only earned around 200 or so each run.

“How can one obtain more points in a single instance?” he directly asked the system.

The system quickly responded.

【Players who have cleared same-rank instances with an A-rank or above may attempt to activate “Hard Mode.” In Hard Mode, settlement points will receive a 1.5x difficulty multiplier, and there is a chance to obtain special abilities or rare items.】

【Compared to “Normal Mode,” Hard Mode contains larger game environments, more concealed clues, and exponentially increased escape difficulty.】

Activating “Hard Mode” required 500 points.

Although not expensive, Yi Han genuinely did not have the spare points.

Before entering the previous instance, he had spent over 2000 points buying the “Malice Detector” specifically to guard against fake teammates like in the beginner instance.

And then his previous teammate turned out to be a harmless little white flower, meaning the detector never got used once…

“Hard Mode” was definitely something he intended to activate.

Yi Han first closed the app’s instance-history page, directly summoned the “Former Owner’s Resentful Spirit,” and once again began his grand money-making enterprise.

Now his recipe book contained two dishes: “Braised Pork” and “Honey-Glazed Chicken Legs.”

Compared to the healing properties of “Braised Pork,” a buff increasing jumping ability was not especially competitive.

Still, something was better than nothing. Perhaps certain future instances would happen to require precisely that kind of buff.

Yi Han added both dishes to the online store menu, pricing each at 50 points, then had the former owner open the ordering channel.

Immediately, endless streams of orders flooded the backend.

Yi Han once again repeated the monotonous yet blissful cycle of:

Cooking → collecting money.

……

This time too, he only operated the shop for one hour before temporarily closing it.

He earned another 2000+ points.

Yi Han immediately activated “Hard Mode” through the system. However, activation still required over twenty hours of waiting, meaning he would be able to freely choose the mode the next time he entered an instance.

By now it was already deep into the night.

Ordinarily he should have rested and conserved energy for the next instance, but Yi Han had only recently jumped off a building and then immediately earned several thousand points afterward. His nerves still remained in an oddly excited state.

The small room he occupied had neither doors nor windows, so he could not see the outside world.

Now, with nothing to do for the moment, Yi Han suddenly felt an impulse to see the world outside the room within the Main God Space.

“I think I saw an item in the shop before that only beginners could buy.”

After a quick search, Yi Han found it.

【Door】

【Quality: C-Rank】

【Condition: Brand New】

【Description: Opens a door leading to the outside world. Can only be used inside rooms within the Main God Space. Duration: 10 minutes.】

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