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Bonus chapter! Thank you to Swissroll for the donation! ^^
***
When the prompt for the completion of the main task sounded, the people around the dining table were momentarily stunned.
"Not bad, Xiao Shi," He Yi said, his gaze lingering on Wen Shichun.
Across from him, Chang Zhao glanced at the landline phone he had just retrieved. "Do we still need this then?"
No sooner had he asked than He Yi leaned back, one hand dangling casually by his side. He picked up the phone cord from the floor and tossed it to Chang Zhao. "You can keep it."
Chang Zhao was irritated by the other's attitude. "You really don't lift a finger, do you?" he retorted.
But since they were still in a dungeon, Chang Zhao stored the phone and cord away and changed the subject, though his frown remained. "That ghost mentioned staying on the second floor earlier. Where are there even any rooms left up there?"
As soon as he finished, He Yi knocked on the empty seat to his right and said with a laugh, "Have you forgotten about our former teammate already?"
"You think he'll move into Bo Ya's room?" Chang Zhao sounded skeptical.
Wen Shichun listened to their conversation, his eyes sweeping over the diary placed on the table. Then he spoke:
"That ghost... could it be Lin You's father?"
Hearing this, He Yi and Chang Zhao stopped their bickering, both turning to look at the white-haired young man.
"Very likely," Shen Jing, beside Wen Shichun, nodded in agreement. She even suspected the ghostly servant was the one mentioned in Lin You's diary—the helper who was said to be a great cook. Though the meal they had just endured still made her stomach churn.
"The newly appeared ghosts are people who existed in this mansion's past," Wen Shichun said slowly, his voice soft and devoid of particular emotion. "Will more 'old faces' appear now?"
"This..."
Shen Jing hesitated for a moment.
"Let's not."
The thought of that scenario made Chang Zhao shiver.
He instinctively glanced at Xiao E beside him.
The white-haired young man remained as composed as ever, as if fear was a foreign concept to him.
Chang Zhao, somewhat reassured by his companion's calm demeanor, took a deep breath to steady himself. "Xiao E, you must have played a lot of supernatural-themed instances before, right?"
Wen Shichun knew what he was thinking, but what he wanted to say was: "If that's the case, then the butler shouldn't have moved into his former room, should he?"
The layout of this mansion was somewhat unusual. There were no typical servant quarters on the first floor, nor was there a separate wing outside the main building.
As soon as he finished speaking, he noticed Chang Zhao's face turn pale.
"L-let's call for backup," Chang Zhao stammered.
"What's wrong?" Xun Yi asked, quickly noticing that his reaction was off.
"Because the room he's staying in was probably the ghost butler's old quarters," Shen Jing answered for Chang Zhao.
She then sighed.
"And my room used to belong to a maid. If 'she' plans to stay the night too..."
She didn't finish the sentence, but everyone at the table understood.
When Shen Jing first entered her room yesterday, she had recognized it as a maid's quarters. At the time, she found it strange that servant rooms would be on the second floor, just like the master's rooms. Now, seeing how strongly Chang Zhao reacted, it was likely for the same reason.
"Right," Chang Zhao swallowed hard. "Let's call for backup. We need to catch the killer before nightfall and finish this instance."
He didn't have any items to deal with ghosts.
He couldn't afford to face an A-class supernatural entity.
"I have over three hundred points left. I only need to keep a few; I can contribute all the rest."
"Don't panic just yet," Xun Yi said, looking at Chang Zhao, whose forehead was now beaded with cold sweat.
"I think we should start to worry."
He Yi stated.
"Have you all noticed the time?"
"What do you mean?"
Prompted by He Yi, almost everyone in the dining room immediately checked the in-game time displayed on their panels.
"How is it already noon?!" Chang Zhao exclaimed, his face full of disbelief upon seeing the clock display 12:00.
"Obviously," He Yi shrugged, "the time flow in this instance has accelerated."
Yue Cheng chimed in casually, "I'm hungry again."
Even though they had just finished a satisfying meal.
Wen Shichun closed his panel.
It seemed the accelerated time flow also included their bodies' energy consumption.
At this, even Xun Yi's expression shifted—though, to be fair, his expression hadn't been particularly pleasant to begin with.
"If it's hiding, we won't be able to find it."
Xun Yi stated the obvious.
If there were a way, he would have used it already.
Wasn't the whole point that there was no other option?
No sooner had he finished speaking than he heard the E-rank player's voice.
"It won't."
Wen Shichun raised his gaze, meeting the other's eyes levelly.
"It will come to me."
As he spoke, he caught a glimpse of He Yi's expression from the corner of his eye.
...
With the accelerated time flow, afternoon arrived swiftly.
In the end, everyone decided to return to their rooms first to avoid violating any ghost-related rules.
The entire mansion returned to its previous silence.
The butler and the maid had vanished without a trace.
In the end, Shen Jing steeled herself and moved into Boya's room, while Chang Zhao moved into the one where Xun Yi had been staying.
When Wen Shichun returned to the second floor, the gap under the door remained exactly as he had left it.
That thing was definitely hiding.
Once back in his room, it wasn't long before the sky outside began to show signs of darkening.
After sprinkling Yue Cheng's flour across the entire bedroom floor, Wen Shichun walked to the window. His view extended to the distant tree line; under the ashen sky, the trees looked more like ghostly figures with their legs sunk deep into the snow.
Although the restoration rate for Lin Zhe's case had reached 100%, the feeling that something was wrong hadn't faded.
Wen Shichun had always trusted his intuition.
It had helped him escape danger many times before.
And just then—
Suddenly—
Something flickered past his field of vision.
His gaze sharpened, instantly focusing on the area between the shadows of the trees.
Wen Shichun tried to locate what had darted through the forest moments before, but after several minutes, he found nothing.
The sky outside grew increasingly darker. In those brief few minutes, the sky beyond the mansion had already taken on the dim hue of yesterday's five o'clock twilight.
...
Only when it became impossible to distinguish anything outside did he finally draw the curtains and turn back into the room.
The mutated ghost that had escaped from the dining hall earlier was gone.
That creature was fairly large, but the mansion's grounds were limited.
They hadn't encountered it since, and combined with the shadow he'd just seen flitting between the trees—Wen Shichun wondered, had the mutated ghost already left the mansion's confines and gone outside?
Could these ghosts and monsters actually leave the boundaries of this house?
As he walked back, his footsteps halted when his eyes fell upon the pitch-black darkness beneath the bed.
The young man in the room pressed his lips together thinly.
Finally, he pulled over the wooden chair from the desk and sat down by the wall, not far from the window.
This position faced the pitch-black space under the bed, allowing him to see everything in the room—except for the bathroom.
When he opened his system panel, there was already a long string of unread messages in the team channel.
Wen Shichun scanned through the updates.
His teammates were discussing the roulette wheel.
It seemed that the 1,000 points required to activate it was no small amount.
Chang Zhao: "I still have over 300 points left. Just leave me a small amount—I can contribute the rest."
Shen Jing: "I only have 100 points. Sorry."
...
Shen Jing was a B+ player, yet she had even fewer points than Chang Zhao, who was B-.
Sensing Wen Shichun's confusion, the system proactively explained: [Points can be used to purchase tools and emergency supplies in the system store.]
Wen Shichun still didn’t have a concrete understanding of the value of points—until he saw his own balance of 10 points, and the bag of flour in the system store priced at 100 points per bag.
Wen Shichun: "..."
[Food items tend to be more expensive.]
The system gave a faint, almost embarrassed cough.
...
Wen Shichun slowly lowered his gaze, his eyes sweeping over the flour scattered all over the floor.
Since the bedroom was originally carpeted, he had been a bit generous with the flour, spreading a thick layer to ensure that the killer would leave footprints if they entered the room.
But now, realizing that he had literally scattered away a potential external aid...
Wen Shichun fell silent.
Only one simple equation remained in his mind:
10 bags of flour = 1,000 points = 1 roulette wheel activation
He had really thrown away an external aid...
"..."
[Therefore, a player's point balance is not determined by their rank. They always end up spending their points due to various emergencies, though higher-ranked players generally have more points to spare than lower-ranked ones.]
[The main sources of points are rewards from clearing instances, rewards from completing optional objectives, and…]
Here, the system paused.
Wen Shichun looked up. Though he didn't know where it was, he asked the air, "And what?"
[Points can only be obtained inside instances. The final method: livestreaming. Not recommended for players.]
"Why?"
Wen Shichun seized on the key point.
Then, he heard his system reply in a low tone: [Because if a player enables livestreaming, they expose too much. Furthermore, viewers outside the instance are not guaranteed to reward the streamer with points. Often, the audience makes numerous demands, toys with the streamer, and the streamer, forced by the need to survive…]
"System." Wen Shichun cut off the explanation. He already understood.
But it was strange.
"What are you, really?" he asked.
He had considered many possibilities before.
A game program, an artificial intelligence, a higher-dimensional intellect.
But sometimes—no, often—the system's reactions felt too genuine.
Too rich, almost human.
Like now, it fell silent again.
As if thinking something over.
And just seconds ago, Wen Shichun had even sensed something like concern in the system's explanation.
Concern for him.
It was strange.
Several seconds later, the mechanical voice spoke again:
[I am the system assigned to you by the game configuration. Every player who enters the game has their own exclusive system. In other words, I am your exclusive system.]
The system added: [You are my one and only host.]
[Within the bounds of the rules, I will answer all your questions.]
[I am here to serve you.]
...
Listening to the system's rigid reply and introduction, a faint, almost undetectable trace of amusement flickered in Wen Shichun's eyes.
His fingers, resting on his knees, tapped in a habitual gesture of contemplation.
"What's your name? What should I call you?" Wen Shichun asked, his gaze falling on the live stream section of the panel. "This game has many players, right? Don't you systems have unique identification numbers?"
The sudden shift in topic left the system momentarily speechless: [...]
It thought to itself: Weren't you already calling me 'system' before?
Despite this, it answered: [No identification number.]
Its voice sounded even colder.
It was like a form of mask, put up after sensing the other's probing.
"Is that so..."
As he spoke, the white-haired young man leaning back in the wooden chair allowed a very faint smile to touch his lips.
He seemed to perceive the cold, rigid demeanor emanating from the system bound to him.
If it had a physical form...
it would probably be someone in a stern suit, serious and meticulous.
Unexpectedly vivid.
It really didn't seem like a machine.
...The system, which didn't seem like a machine, observed that slight smile on someone's lips.
It nearly malfunctioned.
...
After a moment of probing, Wen Shichun reined in all his emotions and opened the live stream page.
Earlier, while browsing through his panel's inventory space, he had noticed that some of the items seemed incredibly useful—but their prices were astonishingly high.
The system watched as a certain someone's slender finger hovered over the option to "Start Streaming" and couldn't help speaking up:
[You...]
"I know what you're worried about."
"But as a newcomer, I have nothing to hide."
His balance was zero, his items nonexistent.
"Besides, isn't there a first-person streaming option here?"
That way, even his appearance could remain hidden.
With that, Wen Shichun tapped the "Start Streaming" option, and a mechanical prompt tone followed:
[Player Alias: Shi, confirm first-person perspective for main-view streaming?]
"Yes."
...
After confirming, a series of streaming-related explanations immediately sounded in Wen Shichun's mind:
[Main-view stream activated]
[Streaming Dungeon: The Invisible Lover (B to A rank)]
[Streamer: Shi (District 10, E-rank)]
Right after, the streaming interface before Wen Shichun instantly changed.
On the streaming panel, he could see exactly what his own eyes were seeing.
And shortly after his stream went live, viewers quickly found their way in.
Wen Shichun still had District 10's public chat channel open in the lower right corner of his panel. Just a few minutes earlier, he had seen a player with the alias [Huai Xieli] post in the channel:
"If anyone in a promotion dungeon starts streaming, I'll immediately sponsor 100 points to hire external help."
Now, players browsing the promotion dungeon section gradually trickled into this newly launched stream.
Wen Shichun closed the live preview window, leaving only the viewer comments and the public chat visible on the right side of his panel, then waited patiently.
It seemed the first-person stream could even filter out his system panel from the view.
Unless the streamer voluntarily shared it, a player's panel remained private under all circumstances.
Right now, what the audience saw was simply the bedroom in front of him.
In the live stream at that moment:
"Finally, someone's streaming a run of this dungeon."
"An ascension dungeon! An ascension dungeon!"
"And it's a first-person perspective stream."
"Fine by me, first-person is more thrilling. Having the streamer on screen would just be a distraction. Let me see what's happening in this run... Hey brother, what's all that white stuff all over the floor?"
"But with first-person, we can't see the streamers clutching each other and crying from fright. What a shame. (Throws an egg +1 point)"
"Streamer! Streamer! When are you spinning the wheel? That's all I want to see! (Sends a flower +1 point)"
"Wait a second... this streamer's rank... it's only E-tier?!"
"E-tier? E-tier! An E-tier entered a B-tier dungeon! (Cat leaning back in shock.jpg)"
"Yikes... which high-level player brought them in?"
...
Wen Shichun's gaze scanned the rapidly increasing number of comments. As he quickly absorbed the information, his eyes finally settled on a specific username. Only then did he speak:
"Player from District 10, codename [Huai Xieli], the stream is now live. Please transfer the promised sponsorship to this channel. Thank you."
When the streamer's voice rang out, the previously frantic flood of comments seemed to freeze for an instant, then surged forth even more intensely:
"Hey—that voice... weirdly pleasant, isn't it?"
