Volume 5 - CH 85.1

Mushroom

Translated by boilpoil

Edited by boilpoil

Why couldn’t the little girl be the Nightmare’s owner?

Neither the Missiontakers nor the viewers of the stream have considered the question previously, the reason being, the Missiontakers all know that the Tower resident in question is a female adult, definitely not the age of a little girl.

The viewers of the stream have clearly had their thoughts led astray by them as well.

Yet, the fact is that Actors in the Nightmares do not necessarily play roles completely identical to their roles in the Tower. Just like how Xü Beijin isn’t necessarily always a bookstore owner in Nightmares while being so in the Tower.

It is no exception for any Nightmare owner, whose identity in the Tower may hint at clues in the Nightmare, but may also mislead, as is this case.

Possibly, the little girl has all grown up outside of the Nightmare, but the experience here has been an unhealed childhood trauma. So, even becoming an adult isn’t helping her move on from it for good.

Also possibly, in this Nightmare, the Nightmare owner only felt deeply helpless and terrorized because of the apocalypse and the insanity of the building, so her own image changed to that of a meek little girl befitting that image.

This is her Nightmare, and obviously, anything could happen in dreams.

The existence of the photograph means Xü Beijin is more inclined towards the first possibility.

In the stream, the viewers are in excited discussion again,

“yeah! why couldn’t the little girl be the owner of the nightmare!”

“wasnt there a nightmare owner whose image in the nightmare was a little boy?”

“if she really is the nightmare owner, then it seems to make even more sense that mystic ended up in the role of her mother…”

“so, cuz mystic gave her the bracelet, she subconsciously mistook her for her mother, which retroactively affected the photo?”

“oh damn, im sold”

“wanna bet? whether the nightmare owner, is the little girl, or her mother”

“since we’ve already seen the little girl but not her mother ever, I choose the little girl”

“umm, but Beibei just told us so much background of the nightmare, it sounds too much to be what a little girl her age would know, so I vote the mother…?”

“did you forget the little girl outside the nightmare could have grown up? so the nightmare is her childhood trauma… makes sense right?”

“… sorry but I’m too confused, staying neutral until there are more proof”

“so why cant the nightmare owner be someone else, with the mother and daughter both being traps? [evil emoji]”

After the debate, the viewers fail to come to an agreement.

The same happens to the Missiontakers.

They are also considering if the little girl can be the Nightmare’s owner, but this is not helpful to their current exploration at all. They still need to make the rounds through the floors and look for a way out in the madness and gore.

Teen’s proposal that Jiang Shuangmei may have played the role of the little girl ended up casting doubt on who the Nightmare owner truly is, but it didn’t end up going anywhere.

Jiang Shuangmei and Wu Jian still leaves elevator Three as planned, while the three that remained inside continues on their ‘adventure.’

Suits doesn’t dwell on which of the four lit buttons in the elevator to press for too long, and pushes the button for six directly.

Before they reached the 20th floor earlier, they tried for a really long time in elevator One to reach the floor. It’s naturally even less efficient than taking the stairs, but they managed to work out some details.

First, the floors an elevator can reach, is probably fixed, but this set of floors can overlap with that of other elevators.

Second, the buttons that light up in one elevator could each represent one or more floors in that set; it is possible that, for some floors in the set, only one button can ever take them there.

Based on these two facts, if the Missiontakers want to explore all the floors the elevator can theoretically reach, they will have to try all the buttons instead of just one.

And there is also a third, which is that, of the set of floors an elevator can reach, some would be safe, some would be unsafe. This would not change, and they do not have to worry about changes to a floor, making it dangerous during exploration.

… These could change by the time the Nightmare crumbles, however.

Although Suits is recalling what Jiang Shuangmei told them, which is that the little girl has Mystic’s bracelet on her wrist in the very beginning.

Could the Nightmare already be crumbling right now, then? A restart should not have allowed such a thing to happen. However, if the little girl really is the Nightmare’s owner, who subconsciously mistook Mystic to be her mother, then that changes the whole story…

The Nightmare owner has quite the control over the Nightmare itself, given that it is their own dream.

With both the little girl and Mystic missing entirely, Suits can feel his head throbbing. They could have pulled out Infocards to cheat, but the target for using it on is now nowhere to be found.

Nor does Suits like using utility cards for that matter.

As Missiontakers on higher floors, they are more accustomed to looking for the truth with their own efforts.

There is also an unspoken sort of knowledge between the Missiontakers, which is that in any Nightmare where a utility card is used to cheat ahead, the post-Ending lottery will have massively reduced odds of producing rare utility cards.

Therefore, much like a hoarding hamster, these Missiontakers of higher floors would try to refrain from using utility cards as much as possible in Nightmares and only solve the Nightmare by their own hands, while doing whatever they can to ensure they acquire high quality utility cards.

… That said, Suits wasn’t expecting for this Nightmare of the bottom floor to be this difficult.

He can’t help but glance over at Teen, at the young adolescent who was sure he was just going to breeze through this easy-mode adventure on the bottom floor, who is now instead thinking hard with his head lowered. He seems to be stuck in his thoughts about this Nightmare.

Being a self-proclaimed logician, this Nightmare must truly be nightmarish for him.

Suits shakes his head. Compared to his companion, he is much more of a realist. He only wishes that, when he sees the little girl after this, he would be able to obtain an answer to whether she really is the Nightmare owner.

And also, he wishes that Lin Qin and Fei would be successful in their explorations as well. Otherwise, their second run of the Nightmare will have produced no new answers and only a whole host of new questions.

Then, with a ‘ding,’ the elevator has finally reached its destination.

Suits immediately gets to work converting the time and distance. Starting from the 20th floor down, it was at most 4 seconds.

So… that makes this the 17th or 18th floor?

Suits remembers that Fei, Liang Shuang and Shen Yünjü said that they have reached the 18th floor on elevator Two during the first run, and they already know that there is some kind of insane painter there. So this time, he wishes that the elevator would reach the 17th floor instead.

And if the 17th floor is right above the 16th floor, which they know is a safe zone, then what might there be on the 17th floor?

Feeling somewhat anxious, Suits watches the elevator door open.

The next second, Suits’ pupils rapidly shrink in shock.