Ch 23: I Run a Food Shop in an Escape Game

Hot Spring Bathhouse (11)

When he left the instance, Yi Han only felt a faint headache.

But the moment he returned to the Main God Space and relaxed slightly, he collapsed onto the bed unconscious.

He seemed to sleep for a very long time.

And for the first time in ages, he dreamed.

He dreamed of when he was ten years old.

His parents had suddenly died in an accident. All sorts of relatives he had never seen before appeared out of nowhere, saying they wanted to take care of him.

But every single one of them circled endlessly around the properties and savings his parents had left behind, greed impossible to hide in their eyes.

So he rejected their “care” and insisted on living alone.

Because he was too young to work, and afraid of sitting around spending away his inheritance, he squeezed himself into corners of morning and night markets during freezing dawns and late nights, selling little trinkets.

Sometimes unreasonable customers bullied him. Sometimes seemingly kind sellers bullied him too.

He remembered every single one of them.

Then he waited for chances to retaliate.

Later, as he grew older, taller, and stronger, fewer people dared bully him openly anymore.

Everyone put on friendly masks instead.

But Yi Han saw clearly.

The malice hidden beneath people’s skin had never escaped him.

He never spared bad people’s feelings, nor tolerated anyone’s nonsense.

Gradually, he became the somewhat cold and difficult person he was now.

Because of that, neither teachers nor classmates liked him very much.

The people who interacted with him most frequently during his student years were school bullies and local thugs.

On average, he beat two or three into submission every semester.

After he became old enough to work part-time jobs, the list of people he regularly beat up expanded to include bizarre bosses and awful coworkers.

From age ten to twenty, Yi Han had seen all varieties of human warmth and coldness. He had endured all kinds of hardship.

When people pinned him down in alleys and beat him, he clenched his teeth, endured it, and waited for a chance to explode upward and break their ribs.

When fever left him delirious and illness left him unable to rise from bed, he still dragged himself to the hospital and survived until recovery.

Therefore, no matter what obstacle appeared before him, he believed he could overcome it.

Even trapped within this real escape game.

Even when the goal was the seemingly impossible one hundred million points.

Even when ghosts with all sorts of powers stood in his way.

He had never once doubted that he could do it.

…

【System Prompt: Debuff “Ghostly Mind Corruption” has been removed!】

【Player successfully escaped the illusion through personal willpower. Permanent buff obtained: Steadfast Heart (Immune to mind-control type attacks from ghosts)】

Yi Han abruptly tore himself free from the hazy dream and sat upright, breathing heavily.

He discovered himself lying on a bed.

Not the bed from reality.

The single bed in the tiny windowless, doorless room of the Main God Space.

Right…

He had already not been in the real world for many days.

Yi Han rubbed his forehead and took a moment to steady himself before fully merging reality with the dream he had just experienced.

He took out his phone and checked the time.

“…Three days have already passed?”

Because he had fallen deeply into that bizarre dream for those three days, the system had automatically deducted points to purchase enough rest time for him.

Yi Han recalled what had happened before he fainted, then traced farther back and finally understood the situation.

Earlier, after retrieving the key underwater, his enhanced underwater vision had allowed him to see the eerie ghostly shadows above the surface.

Instinctively sensing they were bad news, he had simply sought another escape route and drained the pool.

On the surface, the water had drained away, and the shadows seemed to disappear too.

But in reality, they had likely entered Yi Han’s body at that moment.

Then they lay dormant, only erupting after he left the instance and dragging him into that dream.

Unexpectedly, the Hard Mode dungeon had been this devious.

Even after players successfully cleared the stage, it still planted a bomb inside their bodies at the very end.

If a player lacked sufficient mental fortitude, they might be manipulated in dreams until all their points were exhausted and they died.

Fortunately, Yi Han had relied on instinct to break free from the dream.

And through disaster, he gained a permanent buff.

Only after confirming with the system that the effects of those ghostly shadows had been completely removed did Yi Han finally relax.

He turned off the system setting that automatically renewed rest days for him, then opened the app to check the previous stage’s rewards.

【Stage Cleared. Base Points: +200】

【Contribution rate: 96%, ranked first among all players. Reward Points: +100】

【Scene Exploration: 100%. Reward Points: +50】

【NPCs Eliminated: 6. Reward Points: +90】

【Total points earned in this stage: 440】

【Hard Mode multiplier: 1.5】

【Final score for this stage: 660】

【Clear Rating: S】

Yi Han’s accumulated points had now exceeded one thousand.

Two-star stages could now be unlocked.

And that also meant his gourmet web shop could now operate in all one-star instances.

Actually, after bulldozing his way from the newbie stage through the one-star Hard Mode stage he had just left, Yi Han had already started feeling that his S-rank iron pot was no longer enough.

The ghosts in the stages kept growing stronger.

After all, his iron pot was still merely kitchenware (resentful boss ghost: so you do remember?!), not a proper weapon.

If he did not upgrade soon, he probably would not even be able to smack ghosts anymore once he entered two-star stages.

So now he had to do two things:

1. Find a way to upgrade the iron pot.
2. Buy another S-rank off-hand weapon from the shop for situations unsuitable for blunt weapons (?).

Whether upgrading an S-rank item or purchasing another S-rank weapon, both obviously required enormous amounts of points.

Fortunately, now that his business territory had expanded to all one-star stages, his shop could bring in much greater profits.

However…

Although he now possessed four recipes, there was still only one person operating the cookware:

Himself.

The efficiency was far too low.

“What way is there to make someone else do this work for me…?”

Yi Han pondered.

The system shop did sell various kinds of servants.

But the iron pot belonged exclusively to him. No one else could operate it.

As Yi Han scrolled absentmindedly through the escape game app, he accidentally tapped into the forum page.

“Oh right… the social functions unlocked already.”

He had not had time to check them yet, and did not know whether the forums might contain information useful to him.

Yi Han opened the personal information section of the forum page and casually registered his player name as “y.”

Before he even started browsing posts, he first received two friend requests sent three days ago.

One from “Yan Yan.”

One from “Durian Yogurt.”

They were the two girls from the Hot Spring Bathhouse stage.

Before leaving the instance, they had already told him that once social functions unlocked, players could locate former teammates through their historical clear records.

Apparently, after receiving his permission, the two girls had immediately sent friend requests after leaving the stage.

Yi Han accepted both requests.

Then he noticed that beside both their names was the status:

“Sleeping.”

It was morning in the Main God Space right now, exactly the time when players were catching up on sleep.

Yi Han flipped backward through his clear records.

The newbie stage showed that he had cleared it solo, without teammates.

As for the teammate from “Endless Staircase,” the nickname shown was simply “Jian Lin.”

Based on Yi Han’s understanding of him, that was probably his real name.

This kid’s guard was so low, Yi Han genuinely did not know how he had survived this many days.

Not only was Jian Lin alive, his progression had actually surpassed Yi Han’s.

Beside his name was written:

“In Game. Stage Name: Asylum (Two-Star).”

Still inside a dungeon at this hour meant this probably was not a short ordinary stage.

After pondering for a while, Yi Han sent him a friend request.

However, the system indicated the other party was currently inside a game and would only receive it after leaving the instance.

So Yi Han exited the friends page first and returned to the forums to start browsing posts.

Just like normal game forums, the escape game forums were divided into sections like “Guides,” “Trading,” “General Chat,” and so on…

Along the side of the entire forum page, the most eye-catching thing was the total cumulative points ranking for all players.

Yi Han’s ranking number showed him somewhere in the millions…

Meanwhile, the anonymous player ranked first had somehow already accumulated over eighty million points.

However, there was only one person with a score that high.

Below that were only a few players with over ten million.

Then a few more with several million.

Not many overall.

Scrolling further down revealed the second leaderboard.

Average Points Ranking.

This one ranked players according to score efficiency per stage cleared.

And atop that leaderboard, Yi Han’s username “Y” sat prominently in first place.

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