"What do we do now?"
Ran Yan's face was full of worry. Were these patients really going to wait until the Wake-Up Bell rang at eight before they would return to the sanatorium?
But if they really waited that long, she and Bo Yi could forget about leaving. After all, the patients' attacks were only ordinary attacks; whether the players escaped depended entirely on their own abilities. But once Miss Nina and the orderlies got involved... it might become a "rule violation" that directly triggered the Instance's death conditions.
Simply waiting was out of the question, but there were only two of them. What could they do to get all those patients (NPCs) outside back into the sanatorium and lock them in...? Surely she and Bo Yi couldn't go out and drag them back themselves? Even setting aside whether they could manage it, there were so many NPCs that by the time the two of them had caught every last one, dawn would probably have broken.
If they failed to handle everything before 8:30, once Miss Nina appeared...
Ran Yan shuddered.
The consequences were unthinkable!
"How about..." Ran Yan thought hard. "We split up?" She pointed at the keys in Bo Yi's hand. "I'll go out and lure those NPCs away. While I'm distracting them, you hurry to the iron gate and try the keys... what do you think?"
Bo Yi looked Ran Yan up and down, then shook his head. "You wouldn't last long enough."
Bo Yi wasn't deliberately underestimating Ran Yan, but the fate of the Veteran Players outside said it all. They were far more experienced than Ran Yan and knew the Instance much better, yet even with five of them outside together, they hadn't lasted ten minutes against those NPCs. If all those NPCs chased a