/
Mu Jiashi asks the man after a short while, “are you a Missiontaker or an Actor?”
“Missiontaker, I’m a Missiontaker,” that man quickly replies, “what do you mean by Actor? You mean the Tower residents?”
Mu Jiashi doesn’t answer him, but says, “now that you’re safe, we’ll be going our way.”
The man seems like he wants to object, but he doesn’t say it.
Mu Jiashi advises, “don’t stay somewhere for a long time. Avoid other people. Try to stay awake and sane as long as possible. Don’t let the madness… get to you.”
The man nods profusely.
Shen Yünjü follows Mu Jiashi’s steps, and when the person can no longer be seen, he asks, “why not work with that person?” He pauses, and asks, “are you worried…”
“He is inflicted with the madness already,” Mu Jiashi says coldly, “he is still keeping it at bay for now, but he might go crazy any second. We can’t keep such a person by our side.”
Shen Yünjü doesn’t seem entirely satisfied, but he nods silently.
Yes. This is how Mu Jiashi is——How he always is.
Rational, calm, ruthless. Always making the most effective choice, even if it is a cruel one.
When Mu Jiashi told him the avoid people, the man is probably assuming he means he has to avoid the madmen, but he probably didn’t know, he is already going mad himself.
There is nothing Shen Yünjü can do but bitterly chuckle and comment, “hopefully, everyone else can realise that… the madness, can spread.”
“Hopefully.”
They continue forward.
Behind them, some kind of haze seems to have settled in, slowly burying the road which they walked.
XĂź Beijin and Lin Qin have finally isolated the second data port.
And it is through the exercise that they come to terms with exactly how many empty residences there are on the bottom floor of the Tower.
Well, the ‘bottom floor,’ but as once explained, it’s not actually a singular floor, but an area made up of multiple connected levels of structure, that are collectively, the bottom floor.
Even with how quickly Lin Qin can move, they still spent quite a lot of time running around, with the data port jumping around every minute, sometimes even going from a corner to the furthest point away. Even if Lin Qin can fly, he won’t make it in time in those cases.
It’s like hide-and-seek, except the one hiding can teleport every minute.
It’s a godsend Xü Beijin has a gods-eye-view on things.
Lin Qin is examining the object——The data port, as it were——in his hands.
Not that the appearance would ever make Lin Qin suspect it to be the data port, even though it is, according to XĂź Beijin.
It’s just a mundane door handle, violently torn off the hinges by Lin Qin, so the now bugged ‘data port’ can only stay within the handle, unable to move again.
“The door handle is just an ordinary door handle, but the data port is hidden inside,” is the explanation Xü Beijin gave.
Lin Qin asks curiously, “so what is this data port for?”
He already understands now that the ‘Update Log’ he found was what NE used to note its updates to this game, so that the game designers outside can check if needed.
So what is this door handle for?
“This is the port handling new players logging in,” Xü Beijin says, “it continuously teleports to new empty residences, which becomes the spawn point for new players coming into the Tower. That’s why it is always on the bottom floor.”
Lin Qin understands completely now.
Then he can’t help but ask, “so what about when regular players log in?”
Xü Beijin goes quiet for a moment, before saying, resigned, “did you forget, that ‘regular players’ are us, the humans? There only needs to be one single-use login for us, and we will never need to do so again.”
Since they can never log out anyway.
Lin Qin points out, though, “but didn’t you tell me before that there was this… streamer who entered the game as well?”
Xü Beijin, surprised, falls into thought, having discovered the discrepancy in his conclusion, and says, “yes… you’re right. That means regular players must also have somewhere assigned to log them in…”
But how ever he searches, he still can’t find out what the data port handling this log in looks like.
He knits his brows and looks back at the door handle in Lin Qin’s hands. Maybe, their login is also handled by this data port, which is also responsible for assigning regular players to their set residences?
XĂź Beijin is doubtful, though.
Recalling that the first time Olai entered ‘Escape,’ he didn’t enter the Tower at all, and logged out in the Nightmare immediately;
The second time, he entered as a new player;
But there must have been a third time, for him to have left the comment for XĂź Beijin that he completed his task.
This means, there has to be a data port handling regular players entering the Tower.
But Xü Beijin doesn’t even know how regular players logging in would look like, or where they would land in the game. He certainly hasn’t been through that experience himself.
Though speaking of which, new players’ first entry into the game defaults to going into any active Nightmare instead of the Tower. If so, then is this door handle’s data port… really the point of entry for the new players?
Confusing himself with all those thoughts, Xü Beijin knocks his forehead once, and says, “no… that can’t be right. New players can still choose to skip the default experience of landing them directly in a Nightmare and instead enter the Tower first…”
He has been confounded. His thoughts are all tangled up.
Lin Qin just looks at the door handle and says, “so maybe this is just the thing handling login, right? For both new and regular players…”
Then Xü Beijin suddenly realises, that Lin Qin’s explanation would work.
This door handle, while it always teleports between empty residences, there is nothing to say that it does not teleport to occupied residences.
They begun tracking the movement of the handle when everyone is already inside Nightmares – either the Ultimate Nightmare, or other Nightmares.
Obviously, no regular players would be logging in right now either.
So there is simply no reason for it to teleport to occupied residences. It’s stopped at empty residences to wait for new players to come in——Even if it may never actually be utilised that way.
Lin Qin is right. There aren’t different data ports for handling new players and regular players logging in. There is no need to have two data ports for handling login. It’s unnecessary complexity.
So then, why did he implicitly assume this data port is only used for new players logging in?
Xü Beijin furrows his brows, thinking about when he first received this information, and then tilts his head to look in the direction of his room’s door——At NE.
All information he has on the data ports come from NE – more specifically, as fragmented pieces of memory that were shoved into his mind. They are things that he learned after he was shattered and glued back together.
Are his memories lying to him?
XĂź Beijin stares at nothing for a while, before tiredly casting his eyes downwards, and sighing quietly.