"Stowaways" and "Zen Players"

Giant ship.

Compared to the yacht Bai Zhi had been on before, this giant ship could truly be called a colossal behemoth.

Perhaps because of that, the number of players appearing on this ship was unusually high. Seven-Colored Black Bird had been the thirteenth player to arrive, and less than half an hour after she appeared, the number of players here had already reached forty-four.

The reason she knew this so clearly was largely because of the strange counting voice that rang in everyone's ears aboard the ship at regular intervals.

That voice seemed to be counting the number of players who had appeared on the ship. Every two to five minutes on average, it would count from beginning to end once more.

Due to the unique nature of the Final Instance in this Large-scale Campaign Quest, all players were randomly assigned after entering the Dungeon. Since each player entered at a different time, new players would occasionally join them aboard this giant ship.

—and whenever a new player arrived, the voice counted the newly added player as well.

No one knew where that voice came from, nor did anyone know what would happen once it counted to a certain number... People always harbored an inexplicable fear of the unknown.

About half an hour had passed. The counting voice had gone through seven rounds, but during that time, nothing unusual had happened, nor had there been any casualties.

Other than the counting voice that inevitably sounded at intervals, there was nothing abnormal about this giant ship at sea.

There was only the endless succession of waves, along with the downpour that grew heavier as time passed.

Yet the more things remained like this, the stronger the players' sense of foreboding became.

It was not as if no players had considered