Chapter 187: Hide-and-Seek Challenge 9

While the two in the room grew increasingly paranoid, on the other side of things, Perry Yates slept soundly until dark.

When Perry Yates opened her eyes, she was momentarily dazed by the unfamiliar, dim surroundings, but the confusion quickly vanished.

She checked the time. The game was already half over.

Meanwhile, the two people in the room still had nothing to show for their efforts. This time, they hadn’t found so much as a shadow, not even a single hair.

This realization sparked an ominous thought. ’Could we have entered a fake game?’

This inevitably reminded them of the period when the survival game first arrived. People on their planet were dying at nearly every moment, a situation that persisted until the first Dealer Player emerged.

However, the survival game didn’t become merciful just because a Dealer Player appeared.

The survival game was as ruthless as ever; it was the first Dealer Player to emerge on their planet who gave them a moment’s respite.

Just then, the woman suddenly looked outside and said to her male companion, "Do you think... she could be hiding outside?"

At this point, they weren’t considering any other possibilities. All they wanted was to find her quickly and end this round. They didn’t even care about the hidden mission rewards anymore.

’After all, no reward, no matter how great, is more important than your own life.’

Hearing this, the man thought she had a point. After all, they had searched the entire house, inside and out, countless times and had come up with nothing.

’But what if we’ve been looking in the wrong place from the start?’

Perry Yates had only said they were playing hide-and-seek; she never specified she would be hiding *in* the house.

The garden that came with the house was quite large; hiding a person there would be no problem at all.

With that thought, the two of them left the house and began to search outside.

However, they had already missed the optimal window for their search. The sky outside had turned completely dark, and they had no items to enhance their abilities.

The pair could only rely on light-emitting items to painstakingly search the yard.

The cards both players had fused with were of the Wood Attribute. So, upon seeing the plants in the yard, they thought to use their cards’ power to find her.

Weren’t they just playing right into her hands? Perry Yates used the level hierarchy between the cards to nullify theirs.

The plants in the yard still responded to them, but these responses were all being directed by Perry Yates.

Perry Yates used these plants to occasionally feed them false information.

Watching the two of them run around the yard like headless chickens, Perry Yates found her mood improving considerably.

’As expected, happiness is built upon the suffering of others.’

By the time the game ended, both of them had numb, vacant expressions.

Upon hearing the announcement that the game was over, tears of relief streamed from their eyes. Finally, they could leave this godforsaken game.

The moment the game system announced their failure, they quit without a second thought.

Let someone else play this torturous game in the future. They, for one, were never coming back. It was just too agonizing.

On her end, Perry Yates also received the game-end notification.

Since she was the only one to clear the game this time, there was only one set of rewards.

After Perry Yates collected her reward, two options appeared before her: Continue Game or Quit Game?

In this game, quitting midway didn’t cause you to lose any rewards you’d already earned.

So, Perry Yates hesitated between the two options for a moment before ultimately choosing to quit.

Previously, she had been forced to continue playing only because she didn’t want to lose her hard-won rewards.

Now that quitting midway wouldn’t cost her the rewards, Perry Yates naturally chose to end the game. After all, who would want to have their life constantly under threat?

Besides, she could earn back the value of the few cards she’d obtained in the game in a matter of minutes out in the real world.

After returning to reality, Perry Yates couldn’t help but let out a long sigh of relief.

’Finally, I’m back.’

’There’s no place like home.’ The saying might be crude, but it was true.

And at this moment, Perry Yates still didn’t know that she was about to become a legend.

The story of how this came to be begins with the two players who had just left the game.

Although these two were from the same planet, they belonged to different factions.

Although their experience in the game hadn’t been physically dangerous, it had left them with significant psychological trauma.

You can at least defend against a terror you can see. The unseen terror is the truly horrifying kind, because your own mind will relentlessly fill in the blanks.

After returning, both of them required a long period of psychological counseling before they began to recover.

But both of them declared they never wanted to play a game of hide-and-seek for as long as they lived.

Afterwards, they recounted what they had encountered in the game.

At first, no one believed them. After all, the game they entered was considered a very simple one among the many games.

Compared to other games where one’s life was constantly at risk, the instance they had entered was generally safe as long as you didn’t do anything suicidally stupid.

But neither of them looked like they were lying, especially when word came that the rival faction was hearing a similar story.

At this point, their superiors believed half of what they said.

After all, the two factions didn’t get along, and the relationship between their members was extremely hostile.

Whenever members from the two sides met, they would either ignore each other completely or start a fight on the spot. Peaceful encounters were exceedingly rare, making it highly unlikely they had colluded on their stories.

To get to the bottom of it, the leaders of both factions sent their own people to investigate the game instance again. The result? Nothing happened. It was just an ordinary game.

However, the original two players insisted they weren’t lying. To prove their innocence, they even submitted to lie detector tests. The results were clear: both of them passed.

For a variety of reasons, a certain legend gradually began to circulate among the planet’s player base.

The legend told of a special instance in the survival game, one with an NPC who loved to play hide-and-seek with any players who entered, taking sadistic pleasure in scaring and tormenting them.

This rumor somehow spread far and wide, eventually reaching other planets. It was later listed as one of the Top Ten Unsolved Mysteries of the Survival Game.

Because after those two people, no one had ever encountered and entered this game again.

On the other side, Perry Yates was completely unaware of all this. At this moment, she was busy with another matter.