Chapter 120
Chapter 120
Xiao Qian stood dazed for a moment. Only then did he realize Xiao Huai had thrown his earlier joke back at him.
Xiao Huai strolled onward beneath the streetlights with no intention of answering his question.
Perhaps he did not know. Perhaps he did not want to say.
Xiao Qian lifted his eyes to Xiao Huai, matched his stride, and said softly, “Suit yourself.”
Everyone was hiding something, after all.
Over the past several days, Xiao Huai had agreed to practically every request Xiao Qian made.
Later, though, even Xiao Qian stopped seeking humiliation.
He could not beat Xiao Huai at games, could not out-eat him, and could not compete with the quality of his sleep. Xiao Qian was beginning to find the whole thing pointless.
When Xiao Huai had three days of standby time remaining, Xiao Qian disappeared.
Xiao Huai woke in the hotel but did not look for him. He seemed unsurprised by the disappearance and assumed Xiao Qian would leave his sight forever like any other passerby.
But that night, he received a team invitation.
[System Notification: A player wants to form a team with you. Go read their message!]
Xiao Huai opened the system interface. A dancing little figure popped onto the screen, wearing a magician’s hat and bowing like a performer observing the etiquette before a show.
The figure seemed to leap out of the screen. At Xiao Huai’s feet, it began speaking in Xiao Qian’s tone.
“Xiao Huai, I spent the whole day collecting clues. I’ve even picked the game for you. A fourth-floor instance. Are you in?”
After reading the message, Xiao Huai slowly went to the bathroom and splashed water over his face.
Before the mirror, he wore a simple black shirt. His lashes trembled faintly as he lowered his eyes and touched the glass with one fingertip.
It was as though he were speaking to himself, yet also as though he wanted to speak to someone else.
“We probably won’t meet again, will we?”
* * *
Outside the fourth-floor game lobby, numerous game companions waited for their customers.
As the games grew more difficult and players gained experience, more and more of them chose to travel with teammates.
In an unfamiliar, dangerous environment, one more companion meant one more chance of survival.
Although disreputable groups such as JOKER existed inside the game, even the darkest places held traces of light. Some organizations had built solid reputations through responsible, honest game-companion work.
Foxslayer was one of them.
Although Foxslayer was famous, it was not large. For one thing, its guild leader had no interest in expanding and was usually impossible to find. For another, the organization lacked neither money nor items and was already perfectly self-sufficient.
Anyone hoping to play with a member of the organization either needed to be obscenely rich or leave it to fate.
Besides Foxslayer, the horror game had several large game-companion organizations. Many consisted of the game’s top players, and they accepted only items as payment.
Items were the only truly hard currency in the horror game.
The more powerful an item, the more valuable it was.
The same held true for clues. Some were ordinary and offered little use after they were obtained, while a single high-level clue might directly double the chances of clearing a game.
Any organization dedicated to game-companion work therefore needed an enormous intelligence network behind it. Better information meant a better chance of survival.
After all, whether someone was a game companion or a newcomer, they could never enter the same game a second time after clearing it.
Game companions were stronger than newcomers only in their intelligence gathering and their ability to react quickly to danger.
Naturally, possessing a supernatural ability was always an advantage.
Xiao Huai returned to a game lobby after many days away. The fourth floor’s decor was even more sinister than the third’s, and the players here either looked deathly gray or utterly indifferent.
Few made a fuss. Everyone had begun growing accustomed to the game.
The instant Xiao Huai entered the lobby, a tiny figure bounded across the floor and scrambled to his feet.
Xiao Huai looked down. Wasn’t this the magician who had appeared on his system interface?
So it actually existed.
The Little Magician removed its top hat, rose onto its toes, and held the hat up as if urging Xiao Huai to take it.
The moment Xiao Huai touched the hat, a thin blue thread wound around his finger. Its other end stretched into the distance.
The Little Magician promptly jumped onto his palm, put its hat back on, and pointed into the distance. It had truly made Xiao Huai its means of transportation.
Xiao Huai smiled. The little fellow was rather cute.
As expected, the other end of the blue thread led to a familiar face.
Xiao Qian had set up a reclining chair directly before a nebula and lay upon it with his eyes closed, resting.
The instant it saw Xiao Qian, the Little Magician jumped from Xiao Huai’s palm and planted both feet squarely on Xiao Qian’s face, making him yelp in pain.
When Xiao Qian saw the magician, he glared at it wordlessly and snapped his fingers. The little fellow shattered into fragments and disappeared.
He raised his head to Xiao Huai as though nothing had happened. “You’re here.”
“What was that?” Xiao Huai asked.
He had seen something similar before, though that one had been a yellow chick.
When he first met Tian Xia on Evernight Street, she had a little yellow chick beside her that loved shouting, “next level.”
The two creatures gave Xiao Huai the same feeling. Perhaps they belonged to the same kind.
Xiao Qian tugged the blue thread and tucked it into his pocket. “That? My little assistant. It’s made for game companions. Professional, isn’t it?”
Xiao Huai raised a brow. “I don’t know about professional. Can it do anything besides summon people?”
“Of course.” A proud smile appeared on Xiao Qian’s face. “This is a high-level item. It can communicate with teammates inside an instance and deliver messages regardless of distance. It even possesses its own awareness. That’s why it just sat on my… Ahem. Anyway, impressive, isn’t it?”
It could communicate with teammates inside an instance without regard for distance.
That was certainly worthy of a high-level item.
If a player was in danger but unable to contact their companions, the little fellow could help them.
It was not an unthinking object but possessed an awareness of its own. At times, it might even reverse a hopeless situation and create a miracle.
The Little Magician was not the only communication item. Xiao Huai had previously seen a [Falcon Communication Stone].
That stone was merely a walkie-talkie limited to members of the Falcon organization. Under certain special circumstances, it could lose its connection just as a phone lost its signal.
The Little Magician was more like a messenger that ignored distance, delivering messages just as it had when it danced across Xiao Huai’s system screen.
If a message truly could not reach him, it could even find him directly inside the game lobby and climb onto his leg as it had just done.
Xiao Qian took out a massive stack of clue leaves. “Here, catch. Take a look at the clues I found.”
Xiao Huai paused slightly when he saw the stack.