"You should head upstairs. I'll handle what comes next here."
"This isn't a place you should have come to, but since you were trying to protect the Apartment, I won't pursue it."
The Old Landlord pinched some tobacco into his pipe and spoke blandly, waving them away.
Ji Yan glanced at Long Yuan on the ground, acknowledged him, then turned and left.
"Looks like that kid stole all your thunder this time?"
The Landlord smoked his pipe and spoke casually.
Long Yuan's expression darkened. "Old Landlord, I didn't expect that little brat to be so cunning!"
"Was he cunning, or were you simply no match for his cunning?"
"In this Apartment, cunning isn't an insult. Every tenant who wants to stay alive here has to be cunning, or they would have been thrown out long ago."
The Old Landlord shook his head, his tone mercilessly mocking.
Long Yuan's face looked as ugly as if he had swallowed a fly. No matter how hard he thought, he could not figure out how the other party had predicted every trap in advance.
It was as though Ji Yan had gotten hold of the script beforehand. There was simply no answer to it!
Meanwhile.
Ji Yan had already hurried out of the Basement.
The stifling air instantly became fresh and pleasant.
As the flesh and blood on the floor stitched itself back together, Ji Yan turned and thanked the Blood Wall.
A line of bloody words slowly surfaced on the Blood Wall: "How did it go?"
"Fairly smoothly."
"The culprit behind the damage to the Apartment has been dealt with." Ji Yan had not expected the Landlord to be the one to bring this Main Quest to an end.
However, Ji Yan could guess that there had to be other ways to complete it.
He had merely triggered a hidden completion method by accident.
After all, the Game Panel had said that the Landlord only appeared in the Main Quest as a hidden Easter egg.
In the end, it had all depended on the absurdly overpowered bug that was Omniscient Understanding. Otherwise, in a trap within a trap like that, Ji Yan had no idea how many mines he would have stepped on or how many Sudden Deaths he would have suffered.
Previously, Ji Yan had only used this talent on a small scale.
Only now did he see just how ridiculous this talent truly was!
"Ding! This Main Quest has officially ended. The culprit behind the damage to the Apartment has been eliminated, and the Dungeon crisis has been successfully resolved."
"The following are the performance ratings of all players involved in the Main Quest, along with announcements of penalties and rewards:"
"Third-class performance score: discovered the true source of the damage, located beneath the Apartment's foundation."
"Second-class performance score: discovered the method of reaching the Apartment Basement."
"First-class performance score: exposed the scheme of the Eerie tenant imprisoned underground."
"Special-class performance score: discovered the hidden Easter egg and completed the Main Quest."
"For this evaluation, the highest-performing player, 'Ji Yan,' scored a total of 95 points!"
"The corresponding performance-score rewards have been distributed to each player's personal mailbox."
"Warning! The following players committed incorrect actions and maliciously harmed the Apartment's 'kind NPCs.' They will face penalties of varying severity..."
As the announcement of the Main Quest's end rang in every player's ears, Ji Yan immediately received his reward.
He opened the reward package.
There were only two rewards: an Apartment Door Key and a Repair Gem.
Apartment Door Key: First-class Dungeon Privilege. While holding the key, the player may open the main door and proceed to the next Dungeon, while marking the currently cleared Dungeon as a save point.
Repair Gem: Can repair any Eerie item below Legendary Quality.
There were not many rewards, but they were immensely valuable.
More notably, Ji Yan's personal Information Panel had been upgraded, his Tool Bar inventory had expanded, and the game analysis had become more comprehensive.
In addition, he had gained 300 points of Eerie Power, along with increases to every status attribute.
"Talent notification: Congratulations, player. You have acquired the final Talent Fragment, which has been automatically assembled for you."
"Your F-tier talent, Omniscient Understanding, has been upgraded. This upgrade optimizes its activation method, changing it from touch activation to gaze activation. Each gaze activation consumes 100 points of mental state."
"The way to activate the talent changed from touch to sight?"
Ji Yan's eyes lit up.
This optimization was clearly right on target.
During several previous missions, Ji Yan had suffered because he could not activate Omniscient Understanding immediately. Now that flaw had been fixed, this talent could be said to be infinitely close to perfect.
Ji Yan then checked the other players' rewards.
Huang Ran and Long Yuan had both received rewards, but theirs had been greatly reduced.
The worst off were the players who had attacked the Multi-faced Eerie. The extent of the damage they had caused determined the severity of the punishment they faced.
The most unfortunate was the player who had dealt the final blow and killed the Multi-faced Eerie. He was directly punished with permanent imprisonment in the Basement!
Every player who received punishment was on the verge of collapse.
Who could have imagined that the faceless Eerie was the biggest mine in the entire Main Quest?
Ji Yan gave it a brief look.
Then, he opened his strategy panel.
Because of this Main Quest, his strategy progress had directly surpassed Long Yuan's, placing him in first place!
Saving the Apartment from one crisis had directly increased every Eerie tenant's favorability toward Ji Yan by more than 40%.
"A Main Quest really is a Main Quest."
"Completing one Main Quest saves others the effort of working like slaves for months."
He could see it now. The reason Long Yuan had been so overwhelmingly ahead of the other players was because he had completed the previous Main Quest.
Thinking about it carefully, that guy's S-class talent really was formidable.
It could find someone to die in his place and analyze information as well...
But unfortunately, Ji Yan's talent was an unreasonable, bug-level existence!
Inside Room 404.
Liu Yitong also received the announcement that the Main Quest had been completed.
After hearing the penalties, her back could not help but turn cold.
Fortunately, she had chosen to trust Ji Yan and had not followed the crowd in hunting the Multi-faced Eerie. Otherwise, her name would have been on the punishment list as well.
"How did he do it?" Her beautiful eyes widened.
Ji Yan did not return to Room 404 immediately. Instead, he went to Room 801.
Inside the room, Miss Xu was still at ease.
She held a watermelon in her hands and enjoyed the breeze from the balcony. It was clearly an Eerie Game, yet everything around her had an entirely different atmosphere.
"You're more capable than I expected. You actually managed to find the Landlord to solve the problem in the end."
Miss Xu seemed to see through everything. The moment she spoke, she mentioned the Landlord, that hidden Easter egg.
Looking at Miss Xu, who seemed to know everything, Ji Yan felt dazed.
Sometimes, he truly wondered whether the boss of this Dungeon was not the Landlord at all, but Miss Xu before him—the real hidden final boss...
"Miss Xu, is there anything you don't know?" Ji Yan could not help asking.
Xu Xin smiled beautifully and answered a different question. "How were my three paper dolls?"
"If it weren't for Miss Xu's three paper dolls, I would definitely have been finished."
"So I came to thank you right away!"
Ji Yan answered sincerely. His gratitude came from the bottom of his heart.
She was not one of his Eerie family members.
And according to that favorability strategy, she had not even reached 20% favorability with him, yet she had given him a piece of Legendary Quality equipment.
From the game's perspective, this was no different from a bug.
From a realistic perspective, it did not make sense either.
Miss Xu seemed to see Ji Yan's confusion. She smiled faintly and said, "Don't thank me so quickly. I'm not a good person, nor did I do it for fun."
"Those three paper dolls are the greatest treasures in my Room 801. Countless people have coveted them before, trying every possible way to obtain them, including Long Yuan."
"As for why I gave them to you... it was a bet of mine."
Before you continue