Being an Extra Actor in an Escape Game

A Meeting Of Five

Translated by boilpoil

Edited by boilpoil

X Beijin immediately pays close attention to this man in the Cell Nightmare.

His appearance suggests him to be an average middle-aged, man? Well, he is extremely dirty and ragged right now.

Normally, though, hes the kind of person you would overlook in a crowd. He is also seemingly quite paranoid.

Though what he just said and what he was doing earlier, seems to suggest he isnt completely insane.

It seems he is only half mad. He knows he is somewhere special, and he can never leave.

He probably tried many times over the years, but he failed, and ultimately, gave up.

So he just observed everything in the building. If theres no one else on the 16thfloor, perhaps there really arent anyone else to be found in this scene anymore.

He may have only ended up in this grey fog alongside the empty shell of the building.

Just like other Missiontakers who have lost themselves entirely, he didnt enter through X Beijins Nightmare, which means he wouldnt be able to utilise the door in the fog, so all he can do, is wait for a slim sliver of hope unto eternity.

He might have lost all hope already after all these years.

His legs are already broken after all the endless walking. Now all he could do, is drag his wooden legs along and crawl in the building.

His entire life is now just the building, and the city that burns outside.

Nothing more.

X Beijin observes the man quietly as he works out the behaviour patterns and mindset of the man over the years.

He probably succumbed entirely in the beginning, until chance had it and he regained some sanity along the way.

But, given that its inside the grey fog, would it be better for one to regain sanity or remain insane?

X Beijin has no answer.

He is merely wondering, if the man can maintain such a strange state of existence in the grey fog, then why would he have succumbed in the first place?

Shen Ynj seems to think the same, and asks directly.

Not that hes that curious about the mans past, but maybe hes a bit sympathetic. Each one of them in the Tower is equally pitiable. And what theyre doing, is trying to end it once and for all.

The man immediately becomes wary, though, saying, why are you curious about that? Could it be that you can leave this place?

Shen Ynj is astonished at how sharp the man is.

What kind of circumstances must it have been for such a person to have succumbed?

Ye Lan calmly says, yes, we do, then she adds after thinking a little, but its unlikely to be applicable to you too.

Ye Lan still hasnt remembered X Beijins Nightmare, but when they left these strange scenes behind earlier, the other people present in the scenes never seemed to notice the door or the grey fog.

So she thinks its likely this person wouldnt be able to leave either.

Shen Ynj nods. He knows a little more than Ye Lan does, too, and says, we entered here through a special channel. So we Then, considering that he wants the man to speak up, he tells the truth, we are trying, to save people like you for good.

Save us for good?! The man immediately asks, do you mean death?

Oh, no. We mean escape. Escaping the grey fog. Escaping the Tower.

Tower? Ye Lan glances over at Shen Ynjs direction. The terms seems to carry a strange familiarity with it, but she doesnt know where it stems from.

Though, it sure doesnt have positive connotations, by the sounds of it

Hearing Shen Ynjs explanation seems to stun the man. Then, in front of Shen Ynj and Ye Lan, who have crouched down to talk, tears start streaking down the eyes of the man.

He desperately asks, is it really possible?

We think so Shen Ynj replies earnestly, were working hard for that goal.

The man blanks out for a while, before suddenly smiling ominously and says, then theres no way I can let you leave.

Both Ye Lan and Shen Ynj are shocked.

The man yells, youre lying! You want to leave me staying here forever Liars! Never! I wont go down like this!

He is fuming at this point, go away! Leave! Ill tell you nothing!

The two Missiontakers are going to try persuade the obstinate man, but he is too agitated, so much so that he is coughing up blood from his throat, from his rough degradation of his vocal cords having yelled insanely for too long.

And he refuses to communicate further, too. He just tells them to leave him alone.

So finally, Shen Ynj and Ye Lan leave him be so that he can calm down.

Theyre both quiet and calm by nature, which means this is quite the difficult situation for them.

Ye Lan says, he clearly doesnt buy anything we say, then she analyses from a more practical angle, do you think we can find the door without involving him?

Shen Ynj thinks and says, we can try to check out the 9thfloor. I suspect that, after being in this building all this time, he would have caused a fair amount of changes.

Ye Lan furrows her brows, then shakes her head and says, I suppose so. He needs time to calm down, too.

Shen Ynj nods.

Then they take the stairs down to the 9thfloor. As expected, it looks completely different from how it was back in the Nightmare.

All the rubble that piled up at the bottom of the stairwell has been moved andrearranged into a pathway leading down, and is itself largely covered in bloody hand prints and foot prints.

Shen Ynj observes this pathway under the dim lighting for a bit, and then says, he probably did this.

Ye Lan asks, what do you mean?

Under where this staircase stopped is originally empty, collapsed, and down there was a pile of rubble reaching up to the 6th, 7thfloors, Shen Ynj says, taking a deep breath, and then adds, but now, a new path has been built.

Ye Lan is clearly shocked, and murmurs, it looks like that man did spend a really long amount of time here.

Shen Ynj looks at the much less chaotic stairs ahead, and speechlessly compares it to the rubble-filled stairwell from the last Nightmare. Going back up the stairs would have been impossible after jumping down to the rubble there.

After a moment of silence, he says, lets move ahead carefully then. With the path here, I suppose the 9thfloor and below wouldnt be the same as I knew it either We might find out something.

When he previously visited this Nightmare, none of the group of Missiontakers had ever visited a floor under the 9thone properly.

Not that they knew about the true nature of the Apocalypse back then, either.

Here, though, it seems they might be able to reevaluate what happened in this building with the new knowledge.

The madness that occurred in this building, doesnt seem to be that far away from where the Raining Hellfire took place in the city.

Shen Ynj isnt sure which occurred first here, but they must have coexisted for a long time.

That leads to the current scene with the building of mad people and a burning city outside.

This means that, even after the Raining Hellfire, the people did not successfully escape the clutches of madness.

After a whole year of the madness spreading, people have started to re-establish a semblance to normal society, even if the new order is itself rather chaotic and messy.

They might have gone on to become some sort of twisted civilisation if that continued, but after the Raining Hellfire, all simply became naught.

An Apocalypse of both the physical and mental variety, brought human civilisation to its very knees.

Meanwhile, Shen Ynj and Ye Lan found a strange document on the 7thfloor of the building.

It is titled A Proposal for the Reconstruction of Civil Order, and entirely handwritten with multiple distinct handwritings.

Its probably the game companys employees who wrote this.

The ones who, with their misguided, insane passion and focus, turned this whole building into a real-life game.

And in this Proposal, they expanded this idea to the scale of the whole world, and believes that this is the way to restore order to society.

If everything were a game, then it would be so much simpler.

The game would assign everyone some initial default setting.

They would be able to understand their mental state, health, past experiences, relationships, etc. in detail, as if theyre playing some highly realistic life simulation game.

Madness will simply become a label, or special debuff of their game character.

Perhaps, for some rather nave children, they would even call having an Insanity status effect as damned cool.

They see it as a way to diminish the paranoid discrimination people have to the madness. Just like some scholars were suggesting, theyd have to become used to living and coexisting with the madness.

Humans still had, and still have, no idea where this madness came from and why it happened to Earth.

They were powerless to stop its pandemic-level spread. All they can do, is live and let live.

So this game company made this proposal as a way of implementing that principle.

Theyve largely skimmed on the actual entertainment value of the game, and instead, emphasises it as being a practical implementation of a way to rein in the madness. They love games, so they want to use games to achieve this.