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Owing to the vast area within the Ultimate Nightmare, people might end up never running into someone they know. Of course, it’s possible they meet up very quickly.
Case in point, Mu Jiashi and Shen YĂźnjĂź.
Both were surprised at the other when they saw each other, then they both sigh in relief.
Never mind whether it is helpful to encounter a companion in this situation; it is at least reassuring mentally.
“Did you run into anyone else?” Mu Jiashi asks, “someone you know, or someone that is clearly still awake.”
Shen Yünjü shakes his head, replying, “I’ve met people I knew, but they have all succumbed.”
Mu Jiashi sighs, and says, “same here.”
He met A-One, actually, but the guy, with his phone in his hand, playing his mobile game attentively, happily passes by Mu Jiashi without even so much as a glance. Mu Jiashi didn’t even know how he should call out to him.
Shaking his head at the memory, he says, “it seems it would be adequate for now to follow Xü Beijin’s advice to the letter. Stay awake, stay sane in this Nightmare. Hopefully, that is enough to let us win the Ultimate Nightmare.”
Mu Jiashi isn’t feeling quite ambitious… Or rather, he has fallen back to the most efficient choice with the maximum probability of success.
Right now, staying safe and awake in the Ultimate Nightmare, keeping his sense of self with him, is a far more realistic and practical goal than looking for the truth and ways of achieving a True End.
Shen YĂźnjĂź nods in agreement.
They’re outside a university, from which Mu Jiashi just emerged, and Shen Yünjü just passed by. Shen Yünjü can’t help but glance at the name of this university.
QĂźcheng University.
Noticing that gaze, Mu Jiashi explains, “I am studying postgraduate here, apparently… I don’t remember the major, but something related to biology or chemistry. I just left a lab.”
Shen Yünjü sounds surprised, and he hesitantly asks, “you still remember?”
“Not exactly…” Mu Jiashi says, “I think I entered the programme when the Apocalypse was already ongoing… But after I woke, I looked around myself and got information.”
Shen Yünjü nods, quiet as is his habit, but then, after thinking a little, also tells him his situation, “I believe I’m an… office worker, and have been for several years. What happened during the Apocalypse… I don’t know, and I’m not planning to find out.”
Mu Jiashi says “same,” then he adds after a pause, “seeing others’ tragic experiences is different from seeing your own tragic experience.”
They continue walking past the university campus, and they start talking about something else soon enough.
Mu Jiashi suggests, “we should find a safe location first, take stock, and try to find the other companions; I’ve tried using the Internet in the campus, and it still worked, but we don’t know when it will go down.”
“This scene is too big, we might not be able to meet up in time,” Shen Yünjü says monotonously, “we might have to be dispersed.”
“That’s alright, as long as we stay sane.”
They continue discussing their following steps with a dry and mechanical tone.
Up to this point, the two of them have taken this Ultimate Nightmare as a simple recreation of the Apocalypse.
They haven’t fully grasped the reason that this Nightmare is branded… ‘Ultimate.’
They reach an intersection, when screams erupt nearby, and they turn to see someone in shock, limping, escaping from a bakery – the bakery’s window is full of splashed blood.
The escaping person sees Mu Jiashi and Shen YĂźnjĂź, and they lock eyes with one another.
Then the person quickly yells, “you’re awake, aren’t you?! You know the Tower, Nightmares… and damned scene is fake!”
The man is so agitated and fearful his words are getting incoherent, but the implication to Mu Jiashi and Shen YĂźnjĂź is clear enough, and they both appear surprised in response.
The man pleads with them, “please, my coworkers, they don’t believe me. They want me to stay inside the bakery with them, I did all I could to run away…”
He shows them his bloodied, bleeding thigh, “they’ve slashed my leg…”
Behind the man, there are already people pouring out from the bakery.
Mu Jiashi immediately takes the man by the arm while Shen YĂźnjĂź takes his other arm, and they successfully half-drag-half-run away with the man in their tow.
They run for a while under the overcast, gloomy skies, until they arrive outside of the walls to a residential community a while later.
The man is thanking them profusely, although he looks quite in pain from his wound.
Mu Jiashi examines the man – the very first stranger – Missiontaker? Actor? – he’s met that is still awake since entering the Nightmare.
A youthful man in his twenties, it seems. Rather ordinary in appearance, but the fright on his face when he escaped from the bakery is still quite vivid in his memories.
He asks, “so you were in that bakery when you opened your eyes in the Ultimate Nightmare? Why didn’t you leave immediately?”
The man has a pained smile as he explains, “I just… couldn’t react in time. I know it’s the Ultimate Nightmare, but I didn’t know it’d be this. It’d be… the past.”
His tone trailing off, his expression contorts visibly.
Then he continues, “And my colleague told me to get to baking, and I just followed the orders without thinking much, getting scolded for doing a poor job too…”
Mu Jiashi furrows his brows at the rather useless descriptions and asks, “when did you realise something was off?”
“It was, like, the mood,” the man says, “they were acting weirdly fixated, dedicated… to a really strange degree. I could be convinced they’ve fallen in love with the bread they’re baking…
It was enough to give me goosebumps, so I said I didn’t feel well and wanted the day off. They were unwilling to let me go, telling me I can’t leave work early. I can’t… I can’t betray the bread… and things like that.
I still wanted to leave, then someone grabs a knife and slashes at my leg, saying how I won’t be able to walk outside like that… It was extremely unsettling, you understand, right?
The bakery had the pleasant scent that was comfortable and amicable, but… but then the smell of blood came and I snapped out of it immediately.
I… I ran outside. They wanted to stop me, but there was no way I could stay.”
Some kind of strange mood seems to be overtaking him. He mumbles, “I think, if I stayed any longer, I’ll become them. I like it at the bakery… the bread is so soft…
I like it… I love it… I adore it…”
He keeps mumbling like that.
Mu Jiashi shuts him down calmly, “I see.”
The man freezes for a while, before looking terrified and asking, “what was I saying?! Shit, am I still under that place’s influence? The madness… is it infecting me?!”
Shen Yünjü furrows his brows and suggests to Mu Jiashi, “would this mean that we mustn’t stay somewhere same for long? Or the madness there would start to infiltrate…”
Mu Jiashi asks, “do you still remember the scene He Shujün and Mystic ended up in, in Xü Beijin’s Nightmare?
Exploring Ruins… I think they call it something like that, but they say that people who explore the ruins left behind after the madness might bring that madness out.”
Shen Yünjü quietly comments, “almost like a virus.”
The poor guy, meanwhile, is looking at them, confused and still in shock.