Infinite Peculiar Games

In Room 2, the curtains, once blown open by the wind, remained unclosed.

Through the translucent windows, one could see the entire garden outside the castle.

Under a starless night sky, the purple haze spread among the tangled plants, blurring the boundaries between branches, stems, and leaves, creating clusters of ghostly shadows.

Miss Anna, dressed in black, stood in the sea of roses, looking like a tombstone under the pale, lonely moonlight.

The light was too dim for Qi Si to determine which way she was facing—if she was looking at him.

But he was certain of one thing: if she discovered someone was still awake, the player’s fate would be dire.

It was perfectly reasonable for the host to feel angry upon realising that the guest was pretending to sleep to deceive her. Given the characteristics of the key, it could be inferred that the door would not be able to stop Miss Anna at that point.

As for what she would do once she entered the room…

With a sense of humour only he could understand, Qi Si silently thought to himself. Surely it can’t be to discuss emotional issues.

Suddenly, he felt curious. The rules stated 【7. Only ghosts and monsters can kill humans.】As a living person, what could Miss Anna do to him, and how would she treat him?

However, the Peculiar Games offered many instances to choose from. Dying in the first instance would be too much of a loss; he had to survive until the second instance to at least break even.

It’s better to let other players test out how one might die.

On the bedsheet before him lay several rose petals, which fell there without him noticing.

Qi Si softly blew on them, watching as the petals trembled and fluttered in the gentle breeze before gracefully descending to the ground.

On the other side of the bed, Lin Chen was sleeping soundly, murmuring incoherent words in his sleep, unaware of everything that had just happened.

At this moment, he rolled over, taking most of the blanket with him and pressing it under his body. A few seconds later, he resumed his steady snoring.

Qi Si’s eye twitched slightly but relaxed afterwards.

He remained motionless in his position of lying on the bed, his heartbeat and pulse gradually slowed with time. Accompanied by Lin Chen’s rhythmic snoring, Qi Si quickly succumbed to the drowsiness invading his mind.

Qi Si yawned and fell into a deep sleep. When he opened his eyes again, it was daylight.

In the garden directly facing the French windows, Miss Anna’s ghostly figure had vanished, leaving behind only a vibrant patch of roses, blazing like fire.

The mechanical clock outside the door solemnly struck five heavy chimes.

It was 5 a.m.

The brief nap was of little help. With a series of tired yawns, Qi Si propped himself up with his arm and looked in the direction of the door.

Withered petals lay scattered on the ground, forming a small pile in front of the door, a testament to the events of the previous night.

“Bro… Brother Qi, why is the chair overturned?” Lin Chen finally woke up, immediately noticing the wide-open curtains, the fallen chair, and the scattered red dress on the floor.

He turned pale. “Did something happen last night?”

“Yes.” Qi Si calmly got out of bed, pulled the curtains closed, righted the chair, and pressed it against the curtains again. Then he picked up the red dress and tossed it into the corner. “Miss Anna was here.”

Lin Chen jumped out of bed. “What did she come for?”

“You should be asking her. I’m not God; how would I know?”

Sitting on the stool, Qi Si recounted everything that had happened the night before, including some speculations about the points of death.

Lin Chen processed the information blankly, then sighed in relief. “Luckily, I went to bed early last night.”

…To be precise, you were knocked out early.

With Qi Si’s words echoing in his mind, Linchen asked, “Brother Qi, how do you know that as long as Miss Anna doesn’t catch us awake, we’ll be safe?”

“I guessed.” Qi Si chuckled. “Since being awake or asleep depends on the game’s mechanics, I’m definitely not the only one awake last night.”

“An ongoing game like this wouldn’t be a complete slaughter. Miss Anna’s knocking from room to room meant she couldn’t kill every awake player. So I speculate there are conditions for her to kill.”

“Considering how she repeatedly asked if I was asleep, I guess her killing condition is ‘discovering a player awake at night.'”

Lin Chen admired him, although not fully grasping the situation: “You’re amazing, Brother Qi. If it were me, I would’ve opened the door in fear when she tricked me, claiming she knew I was awake.”

“This is just a matter of logic,” Qi explained. “You need to understand: behind closed doors, Miss Anna cannot be a hundred per cent certain whether the players in the room are awake or not. Otherwise, she wouldn’t need to ask so many times; she could just break in. Similarly, I speculate that she is also bound by the rules not to disturb players who are asleep.”

“If she breaks in, she faces two outcomes. Either she guesses right and kills an awake player, or she guesses wrong, finds no one awake, and faces an unknown punishment for breaking the rules. Balancing risk and reward, she would make a more cautious decision.”

Lin Chen, with his eyes half-closed, replied, “But regardless, she can’t be sure if someone in the room is awake, right? As long as we don’t open the door, even if there’s some noise, it could just be poor sleep or sleep-talking.”

Qi Si nodded. “So, either she gives up on killing, or she tries to test the probability of each room’s occupants being awake and takes a gamble on the highest probability.”

He paused, then asked, “Lin Chen, have you ever opened a blind box?”

“…Huh?”

“There are a total of three blind boxes, each containing a cat that may be dead or alive. Some may already be dead, while others are barely clinging to life. However, one of the boxes is rigged; upon opening, it will release a poisonous gas that causes the cat inside to die regardless of its initial state.”

“If you find an alive cat, you get its equivalent weight of gold; if you find a dead cat, you get killed. You can guess if the box is rigged and the cat inside is dead or alive by tapping, weighing, or other means.”

“If you’ve examined the first two boxes and suspect the cat in the second one might be alive, do you first weigh the third box or just open the one in your hand?”

Lin Chen understood and replied, “I would check all boxes first; otherwise, I can’t be certain if the second box is rigged and whether it might poison the cat inside.”

Qi Si shook his head and sighed. “Then you found that the third box is made of a different material compared to the other two, clearly indicating it’s special. You feel relieved, thinking that by opening the second box, you’ll get an equivalent amount of gold. But then you realise, you don’t know if, after all this time, the cat inside the second box is still alive.”

Lin Chen, feeling distressed, scratched his head and asked, “Can I not open any of the boxes?”

“Of course.” Qi Si said, tapping his index finger on his knee intermittently. “Similarly, after checking Shen’s room, Miss Anna couldn’t be certain if I fell asleep in the meantime. So her safest decision is not to choose any room.”

“—Meaning, if everyone was smart enough, last night was a safe night.”

Lin Chen listened to Qi Si’s logical analysis with a blank expression, feeling like he had grasped something and yet understood nothing at all.

Qi Si did not plan to explain further.

If not for the usefulness of Lin Chen as a tool, he would not have minded if Miss Anna had immediately dragged him out to bury him in a pit. Perhaps he would have even cheered her on while watching from the sidelines.

It was still early. Qi Si walked to the desk, tore a page of papyrus sheet, and began writing with a pen.

Lin Chen cautiously approached, leaning in to read what he had written on the paper:

【2. The exact time can be known by counting seconds.】

【3. It is unclear which Miss Anna “likes guests”.】

【4. You can pretend not to know, or by other means, to ignore Miss Anna’s requests, but you must not be discovered.】

【5. There might be two ‘Miss Anna’s.】

This was undoubtedly an interpretation of the rules on the system interface, fulfilling the main task of “deciphering the rules.”

After reading it, Lin Chen blinked. “Brother Qi, what do you mean by two ‘Miss Anna’s?”

Qi Si put down his pen and looked at him. “I’ve told you, while the black-dressed Miss Anna was watching me from outside the window, there were knocks at Shen Ming’s door.”

“Given the current situation, Miss Anna’s attacks are still physical. Otherwise, doors wouldn’t stop her, and she couldn’t judge the players’ states from behind them. Since she can’t be in two places at once, there are only two possibilities: either there are two of her existing, or in this instance, there’s another main NPC* of equal status to her.”

“This way, many contradictions can be explained. Why can Miss Anna serve as both the main NPC of the instance and yet ‘has no malicious intents towards them’; sometimes trustworthy, sometimes dangerous; sometimes in black, sometimes in red.”

“I didn’t understand before why Miss Anna, a living person, would be frightening in an instance where only ghosts can kill humans. If main NPCs can’t kill players, is she relying on players fighting among themselves to kill one another?”

Lin Chen listened to Qi Si’s analysis and felt his head itch. “So, should we try to team up with Miss Anna, who is a living person, to deal with that ghost NPC next?”

After saying that, he saw Qi Si looking at him with a gaze that seemed to care for a child.

“Who told you that the living must always be good and the supernatural creatures must always be evil? Weren’t you terrified of that living Miss Anna yesterday?”

Qi Si picked up his pen again and drew three circles labelled “Miss Anna,” “Ghost NPC,” and “Player,” and then connected them with double-headed arrows.

“There are three possibilities. One, as you thought, Anna Miss is good and close to the players, while the Ghost NPC is evil. The second possibility is the exact opposite. And of course, the worst-case scenario is when both NPCs collude, wanting to jeopardise the players.”

“This is why we need to figure out what kind of entity this unseen ghost NPC is. This relies on our exploration of the third floor.”

Lin Chen nodded solemnly, once again deeply impressed by the expertise of a “veteran player.”

Qi Si walked over to the wall and picked up the red dress once more. “However, I’ve developed some new theories about the background story of this instance.”

He switched to a dramatic first-person narrative, his voice full of emotion: “The girl and I were in love, but faced numerous obstacles. She couldn’t meet me openly, so she could only knock on my door at night…”

Lin Chen stared blankly. “…” Brother Qi, you’re incredible, but do you have to be so twisted?

He swallowed nervously and cautiously objected, “Bro… Brother Qi, why are you sure this instance is about love? Could it be that Miss Anna is killing to maintain her beauty? I’ve heard about a historical figure, Queen Mary*, who bathed in the blood of young girls…”

Qi Si countered, “Do you remember what fruit was on the table yesterday?”

Fruit?

Lin Chen was stunned, then Qi Si continued, “Ever since Albrecht Dürer depicted the forbidden fruit as an apple in his 1507 painting ‘Adam and Eve,’ the misunderstanding caused by this translation error has spread widely and gradually become accepted as fact.”

“And judging by Miss Anna’s attire, this instance is set sometime after the seventeenth century. By that time, the ‘apple’ had become a symbol of the forbidden fruit from Adam and Eve’s story, connoting love.”

“Apples rarely appeared on the menus of European aristocratic dinners. Even when they did appear, they were typically served as desserts like stewed apples in syrup, not as whole fruits that guests would need to bite into.”

“Given all these factors, we can reasonably conclude that the appearance of apples at dinner carries a significant metaphor. As for why Miss Anna would place such an obvious symbol on the table, it’s probably similar to the mentality of a psychopathic killer who enjoys returning to the scene of the crime.”

Lin Chen listened with a distracted gaze, feeling only absurdity.

Having logical reasoning alone is not enough; now you even need to know such obscure knowledge. Are those who excel in specific subjects not allowed to survive?

This is only my first game instance…

Qi Si always enjoyed spinning tales to scare people. After spinning a far-fetched reasoning, he saw Lin Chen dumbfounded and then chuckled to reassure him: “If you just want to survive, it’s not that complicated. You can just hide in your room; in case of a special situation, refer to Rule Four—pretend you don’t know anything.”

“In theory, as long as you’re bold enough to sleep for three days straight, you might actually make it through this instance unscathed.”

Lin Chen’s eyes lit up, almost ready to ask Qi Si to knock him out again.

Qi Si lowered his eyes and sighed. “Of course, everything I’ve said is based on assumptions from the first night and could be entirely wrong. After all, the rules might be misleading us…”

As soon as the words fell silent, a sharp scream echoed from outside the door, as if it were a blade piercing through the room.

—Something had happened.

(End of chapter)

——

*TL’s note:

An NPC, also known as a non-playable character, is any character in a game that is not controlled by a player.

The Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory is said to have murdered hundreds of girls and bathed in their blood to keep herself beautiful.

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