Miss Dolly

Four more people arrived at the mansion in succession. Once the last player stepped over the threshold, the front door seemed to sense it and slammed shut with a bang.

A voice immediately sounded in their ears:

[Welcome to the game instance!]

[Instance name: Miss Dolly's Portrait Gallery]

[Instance type: Puzzle-solving]

[Instance difficulty: C]

[Number of players: 11]

Once the announcement ended, someone in the crowd seemed to gasp. "C-rank?!"

The slightly overweight man who had entered the mansion last jolted at the sound. He turned around and tried to open the front door, but the door that had swung open so easily before now seemed welded to the wall. It would not budge.

"W-what's going on?!"

His shout clearly struck a chord with another player. A woman in a short skirt shakily raised her hand and asked in a tearful voice, "I'd like to know too... Where are we?"

The commotion went on for a while before someone took charge and calmed everyone down.

It was the man in the T-shirt who had smiled at Li Xian earlier.

The man introduced himself as Yi Jing. He approached the two newcomers and explained their situation in a gentle, patient voice. Under his reassurance, they gradually quieted down, though they still could not stop the panic welling up inside them.

"Yi Jing, I've never been in a C-rank instance before. It won't be especially dangerous, will it?" asked a worried-looking man in sportswear with neatly cropped hair.

"Don't worry. If I brought you here, that means I'm confident we can handle it."

At his assurance, the three people gathered around him seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

Song Qingzhang nudged Li Xian. "Did he bring those three people over there?"

"Probably. And from the looks of it... none of them have cleared many instances."

Song Qingzhang was puzzled. "So he's helping newcomers out of the goodness of his heart?"

Li Xian did not answer. He continued watching Yi Jing instead.

After reassuring the three, Yi Jing went on, "Besides, C-rank instances offer much better point rewards than lower-ranked ones. You'll be able to reach the Advanced Zone sooner. Don't worry. As long as you listen to me, you won't be in any danger."

Every word seemed to be spoken entirely for their benefit. Once the others learned that Yi Jing had cleared C-rank instances before, they began gathering around him as well.

Yi Jing was quietly becoming the group's leader. In the entire hall, only Li Xian, Song Qingzhang, and the tall man who had been leaning against the wall from the start remained unmoved by his "kindness."

Watching Yi Jing's seemingly harmless smile, Li Xian could not help recalling what the person who had sold him information in the player lobby had said:

"If you run into a veteran player who's especially friendly to newcomers in an instance, stay as far away from them as you can."

As he pondered those words, crisp footsteps sounded from upstairs.

Click, click, click.

It was the sharp sound of high heels striking marble. A woman's figure appeared on the staircase.

Everyone looked up at once.

The woman's face emerged from the shadows, identical to the face in the portrait hanging in the hall.

Unlike in the portrait, however, she wore a lavish gown that could almost be called extravagant. It was a vivid scarlet, with a ruffled collar concealing her neck. Its elaborate skirts covered the tops of her feet, leaving only glimpses of her black soles. Silk gloves fitted her hands smoothly, adding no bulk to the fingers resting on the banister.

Click, click, click.

She descended gracefully, her steps as regular as a metronome. After looking over the group, she parted her red lips.

"Good evening, my guests."

"My name is Dolly, and I am the lady of this house. Thank you all for accepting my invitation to attend my art exhibition."

"Unfortunately, due to certain issues, the exhibition cannot open as scheduled. It has been postponed until five days from now. To express my apologies, I have prepared rooms for all my guests on the third floor."

With that, she produced a ring of keys and handed it to Yi Jing, who stood at the front.

Yi Jing cautiously reached out to take it. His hand paused in midair once he had the keys.

"Until the exhibition opens, I will make sure you are all well looked after. I hope you enjoy yourselves."

As Miss Dolly finished speaking, the system's voice sounded:

[Clear objective: Attend the art exhibition in five days]

Dolly seemed uninterested in any response. She simply turned and headed back up the stairs.

The instance's livestream went live at that moment, and those following Li Xian flooded into the stream.

[Li Xian's live!]

[The streamer's second instance... Let's see. C-rank? Isn't that a pretty big jump in difficulty?]

[That's weird. He doesn't have a veteran guiding him, so how did he end up in a C-rank instance on his second run? A normal newcomer would get D-rank at most, right?]

[Any experts here who can explain?]

[Could the system be deliberately targeting him? The difficulty of his first instance was pretty off too...]

[That makes even less sense. Why would the system target some newcomer for no reason? If you said it was targeting Guild Leader Lin of the White Night Guild, that might be possible.]

[Does it really matter? He cleared a TOD instance. Surely a C-rank instance won't be what takes him down?]

[But Miss Dolly's Portrait Gallery... Has anyone seen this instance before?]

[Weird. I've never even heard of it.]

Yi Jing did not distribute the keys as soon as he received them. Instead, he put them in his pocket.

He cleared his throat. "Let's check the third floor first."

Everyone followed the stairs up to the third floor, where a long corridor stretched before them.

Unlike the brightly lit hall downstairs, the third floor had only a row of small bulbs set into the corridor ceiling, casting a dim glow.

Both walls of the corridor were lined with portraits.

Every portrait depicted a handsome man or a beautiful woman, all painted with startling realism. Their eyes stared straight ahead, as though observing the people who had intruded here.

Song Qingzhang rubbed his arms. Finding the scene rather unnerving, he averted his gaze and stopped looking at the portraits.

The two newcomers stood at the top of the stairs, reluctant to move forward because of the eerie paintings. Only after Yi Jing urged them on did they follow behind the others.

The woman in the short skirt kept her head firmly bowed, staring at the tips of her shoes as she walked, not daring to glance at the portraits beside her. The slightly overweight man, also a newcomer, stared fixedly at the back of the player ahead of him.

Yet his peripheral vision kept straying toward the portraits on either side. Whether it was his imagination or something else, he seemed to catch the eyes in one painting moving-

The group walked down the corridor in silence. Yi Jing checked the room numbers against the keys in his hand. Having made his assessment, he turned around and said, "Let's hand out the keys."

He slipped the key he had chosen into his pocket ahead of time. Everyone was extremely tense, and only Li Xian was sharp enough to notice his little maneuver.

He did not expose him. He simply took his own key without a word.

"There's one left. Who hasn't taken a key?"

Yi Jing held up the last key and asked, but no one answered.

He frowned, then heard someone draw a sharp breath.

At some point, the slightly overweight man had fallen to the rear of the group, several steps behind everyone else.

He had turned toward the wall and raised his head, his expression blank and bewildered.

His eyes were fixed directly on the pupils in the portrait.