Completing the Main Quest, A Bet

"You guys go up, I'll handle the aftermath here."

"This place isn't for you, but seeing as you're protecting the apartment, I won't pursue it."

The Landlord, picking at some tobacco, stuffed it into his pipe and spoke indifferently, waving them away.

Ji Yan glanced at Long Yuan on the ground, gave a nod, and turned to leave.

"It seems that kid stole all your thunder this time?"

The Landlord said nonchalantly, puffing on his pipe.

Long Yuan's expression was grim, "Old Man, I didn't expect that little slyboots to be so cunning!"

"Is it others who are cunning, or are you unable to outwit their cunning?"

"In this apartment, cunning isn't a derogatory term. Every resident who wants to stay here has to be cunning, or they'd have been thrown out long ago."

The Landlord shook his head, his tone laced with merciless mockery.

Long Yuan's face was as ugly as if he'd eaten a fly. He couldn't figure out for the life of him how the other party had predicted every trap laid out for him.

It was as if he had the script beforehand, making him utterly unbeatable!

At that time.

Ji Yan had already quickly exited the basement.

The stifling air instantly turned fresh and pleasant.

As the flesh and blood on the floor seemed to stitch together, Ji Yan turned and thanked the blood wall.

The blood wall slowly displayed a line of bloody text: "How did it go?"

"Relatively smoothly."

"The culprits who destroyed the apartment have been eliminated." Ji Yan hadn't expected this main quest to conclude with the Landlord's help.

However, Ji Yan could guess that there were definitely other ways to complete it.

He had merely accidentally triggered a hidden completion method.

After all, the game panel had mentioned that the Landlord was just a hidden Easter egg appearing in the main quest.

Ultimately, it all came down to the overpowered bug of [Omniscient Understanding]. Otherwise, in this labyrinth of traps, Ji Yan didn't know how many times he would have stepped on a landmine and died.

Ji Yan had only made small, tentative uses of this talent before.

Now, he truly saw how overpowered this talent was!

"Ding! This main quest has officially concluded. The culprits who destroyed the apartment have been eliminated, and the dungeon crisis has been successfully resolved."

"The following are the performance scores, punishments, and rewards for all players involved in the main quest:"

"Third-class performance score: Discovered the true source of the damage, located at the apartment's underground foundation."

"Second-class performance score: Discovered the method to access the apartment's basement."

"First-class performance score: Exposed the setup of the underground imprisoned eerie resident."

"Special-class performance score: Discovered the hidden Easter egg and completed the main quest."

"This evaluation: The highest-performing player, 'Ji Yan,' received a total of 95 points!"

"The corresponding performance score rewards have been distributed and sent to each player's personal mailbox."

"Warning! The following are players who made erroneous actions, maliciously harming the apartment's 'benevolent NPC,' and will face varying degrees of punishment..."

The announcement of the main quest's end sounded in every player's ear, and Ji Yan immediately received his rewards.

He clicked open the reward package.

There were only two items: the Apartment Door Key and a Repair Gem.

[Apartment Key: First-class dungeon privilege. With the key, players can open the door, proceed to the next dungeon, and mark the currently conquered dungeon as a save point.]

[Repair Gem: Can complete the repair of any Eerie Item below the [Legendary] quality.]

The rewards weren't numerous, but their value was immense.

More significantly, Ji Yan's personal information panel had been upgraded, his tool bar and backpack expanded, and his game analysis became more comprehensive.

Furthermore, he gained 300 points of Eerie Power, and his status attributes increased.

"Talent prompt: Congratulations to the player for obtaining the last talent fragment. It has been automatically pieced together for you."

"Your F-class talent [Omniscient Understanding] has been upgraded: The upgrade content includes optimizing the trigger method from touch activation to gaze activation. Each gaze requires consuming 100 points of mental state."

"The trigger method for the talent has changed from touch to sight?"

Ji Yan's eyes lit up.

This optimization was clearly excellent.

In previous missions, Ji Yan had suffered disadvantages because he couldn't trigger [Omniscient Understanding] immediately. Now that this flaw was fixed, this talent could be considered infinitely close to perfect.

Ji Yan then checked the rewards of the other players.

Both Huang Ran and Long Yuan received rewards, but they were significantly discounted.

The most miserable were the players who attacked the Multi-faced Eerie. The degree of damage determined the severity of their punishment.

The most miserable among them was the player who landed the final blow on the Multi-faced Eerie, directly receiving the punishment of being permanently confined to the basement!

The players who were punished were all on the verge of collapse.

Who could have imagined that the Faceless Eerie would be the biggest trap in the entire main quest?

Ji Yan took a brief look.

Then, he opened his strategy panel.

Because of this main quest, his strategy progress directly surpassed Long Yuan's, ranking him first!

Saving the apartment from a crisis directly increased the favorability of all eerie residents towards Ji Yan by over 40%.

"The main quest is truly the main quest."

"Completing one main quest saves others the effort of toiling like cattle for months."

He finally understood that the reason Long Yuan was so far ahead of the other players was that he had completed the previous main quest.

Thinking about it, that guy's S-rank talent was indeed formidable.

It allowed him to find substitutes to die and to analyze information...

But unfortunately, his own talent was an unreasonable Bug-level one!

Inside Room 404.

Liu Yitong also received the broadcast of the main quest completion.

Upon hearing about the punishment, her back grew cold.

Fortunately, she had chosen to believe Ji Yan's words in the end and did not follow the crowd to hunt the Multi-faced Eerie; otherwise, her name would also be on the list of those punished.

"How did he do it?" Her beautiful eyes widened involuntarily.

Ji Yan didn't return to Room 404 immediately. Instead, he went to Room 801.

In the room, Miss Xu was still enjoying herself.

Holding a watermelon and enjoying the balcony breeze, the eerie game seemed to have a different atmosphere when it came to her.

"You're more capable than I expected, actually finding the Landlord to solve the problem in the end."

Miss Xu seemed to see through everything, and as soon as she spoke, she revealed the Landlord, the hidden Easter egg.

Looking at Miss Xu, who seemed to know everything, Ji Yan felt a sense of daze.

Sometimes he truly wondered if the boss of this dungeon wasn't the Landlord, but Miss Xu before him was the true hidden big boss...

"Miss Xu, is there anything you don't know?" Ji Yan couldn't help but ask.

Xu Xin smiled like a blooming flower and answered his question with another: "How are my three paper figures?"

"If it weren't for Miss Xu's three paper figures, I would definitely have been doomed."

"That's why I came to thank you immediately!"

Ji Yan's reply was sincere; his gratitude was genuine.

The other party was not his eerie family member, and despite only a 20% favorability strategy, she had given him a [Legendary] grade equipment.

From a game perspective, this was undoubtedly a bug.

From a real-world perspective, this was also illogical.

Miss Xu seemed to notice Ji Yan's surprise. She said with a half-smile, "Don't thank me just yet. I'm not a pushover, nor am I doing this for fun."

"Those three paper figures are my most prized possessions in Room 801. Countless people have coveted them before, trying every way to obtain them, including that Long Yuan."

"The reason I specifically gave them to you is... it's my gamble."