Wait, Why Is the Ghost More Scared Than Me?

The other nine players had also gotten to their feet, one after another.

Six of them were clearly entering a dungeon for the first time.

The remaining three were relatively calm.

Especially the buzz-cut man standing at the front.

He wore black tactical gear.

A dark red dagger hung at his waist.

A silver player badge was pinned to his chest.

"All newcomers, stay put. My name is Zhou Hai. I'm a C-rank player, and I've cleared five supernatural dungeons. People have successfully left the Blood Moon Hotel before. As long as we follow the dungeon rules strictly, this won't be a guaranteed death sentence."

Shen Niannian's eyes immediately lit up.

(☆▽☆)

A professional!

I've got to cling to this thigh.

She edged two steps closer to Zhou Hai without drawing attention.

After a moment's thought,

she shuffled another small step closer.

Given how she looked right now,

what was wrong with being a little scared?

Wasn't it perfectly reasonable for a delicate nineteen-year-old beauty to be afraid on her first trip into an A-rank dungeon?

As for the fact that there was a twenty-four-year-old grown man inside...

There was no need to worry about such a minor detail.

The next second,

an icy mechanical voice rang out in every player's mind.

[Welcome, guests, to the Blood Moon Hotel.]

[Your mission: survive in the hotel for three days and obtain proof of checkout.]

[The hotel rules are as follows.]

[Rule 1: The hotel will do its best to accommodate guests' reasonable requests. Please do not deliberately make things difficult for the staff.]

[Rule 2: Guests are forbidden from leaving their rooms after 11 p.m.]

[Rule 3: If you hear knocking on the wall from the room next door in the middle of the night, do not respond.]

[Rule 4: Regular staff members all wear black uniforms. If you see an employee in a red uniform, leave the area immediately.]

[Rule 5: Please take good care of your room key. Guests without a room are not protected by the hotel's rules.]

Shen Niannian quickly committed the rules to memory.

Then her attention returned to the dungeon mission.

[Survive for three days and obtain proof of checkout.]

Two conditions.

Neither could be skipped.

In other words,

surviving three days was only a time requirement.

The part they actually had to take action to complete was obtaining the [proof of checkout].

Yet the five rules didn't say a single word about it.

Shen Niannian narrowed her eyes slightly.

(｡ŏ_ŏ)

"Classic game routine. First you tell me the final objective, then make me search the whole map for the quest item myself, huh?"

But this was clearly no time to dwell on that.

She quickly sorted out her priorities in her head.

First,

check in and get a room key.

Rule 5 had made it clear that guests without a room were not protected by the hotel's rules.

The room key was the most important item for staying alive right now.

Second,

find a safe place to stay.

Third,

once she had gotten settled, find a way to investigate where to obtain proof of checkout.

As for the hidden identity and all that...

That could wait.

Dead people didn't have hidden identities to investigate.

(๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

At least the rules in front of her were all very clear.

She liked that.

What she feared most were dungeons that wrote out a whole bunch of riddles and made players stake their lives on guessing the answers.

Zhou Hai quickly analyzed the situation as well. "Rule 5 specifically emphasizes the room key, which means checking in should be our most important task right now. Before we get our keys, nobody should act on their own, much less provoke the staff."

Shen Niannian nodded silently.

The professional's judgment was much the same as hers.

Good.

Survive first.

Then figure out how to clear the dungeon.

Everyone hurried after Zhou Hai.

Creak-

The hotel's two tightly shut black wooden doors slowly opened.

A lanky figure, more than two meters tall, walked out of the pitch-black lobby.

It wore a black doorman's uniform.

Its neck was bent nearly ninety degrees to the left.

Its entire face, from forehead to chin, was sewn shut with thick black thread, leaving only two grayish-white eyeballs exposed.

Several newcomers instantly turned pale.

One girl instinctively took a step back.

A translucent panel automatically popped up before Shen Niannian's eyes.

[Target: Blood Moon Hotel doorman]

[Race: Stitched Corpse Ghost]

[Danger level: B-rank]

[Identity: Regular employee of the Blood Moon Hotel]

[Current status: Normal]

The corner of Shen Niannian's mouth twitched.

Even the one in charge of opening doors was B-rank.

Wouldn't the hotel owner be on a whole other level?

The doorman walked up to them with stiff, dragging steps.

"Guests, please check in one at a time. As long as you abide by the Blood Moon Hotel's rules, we will do our best to ensure that every guest has a pleasant evening."

Shen Niannian looked at its completely sewn-up face.

(￢д￢.)

Pleasant?

Your understanding of the word "pleasant" might be a little different from a normal person's.

Zhou Hai stepped forward first.

The doorman checked his identification and quickly handed him a wooden room key stained dark red.

"Zhou Hai, room 205. Please take good care of your room key."

The second.

The third.

The process was oppressive, but nothing went wrong.

That was until a middle-aged man in his forties received his room key.

[302]

The man's expression soured.

"Could you move me to the second floor? The third floor is too far from everyone else. It isn't safe for me to stay there alone."

The doorman's grayish-white eyes swept over him.

"No."

The man's expression stiffened.

There were people all around him.

More than a million viewers were still watching the livestream.

Perhaps checking in had gone so smoothly for the others that he had grown a little bolder.

"Don't the rules say the hotel will do its best to accommodate guests' reasonable requests? I just want to change rooms. That should be a reasonable request, right? A hotel this big can't possibly have no vacant rooms."

As soon as he finished speaking,

Zhou Hai's expression changed abruptly.

"Stop talking!"

Too late.

The doorman slowly turned its head.

A hint of chill suddenly appeared in its previously calm grayish-white eyes.

"Are you questioning the hotel's arrangements, sir?"

The middle-aged man's face went pale in an instant.

"I... I didn't mean it like that."

The doorman extended a bony hand.

It grabbed his right hand.

Crack!

The sharp sound of breaking bone rang out in the lobby.

The middle-aged man's index finger bent straight back.

A stark white finger bone pierced through his skin.

Blood dripped from his palm.

"Ah!"

The moment his scream escaped,

the doorman's head began to turn toward him.

The middle-aged man immediately clenched his teeth.

Cold sweat covered his forehead from the pain, but he didn't dare make another sound.

The doorman pushed the room 302 key back into his hand.

"Sir, your room cannot be changed. If you continue to deliberately make things difficult for the staff, the hotel reserves the right to terminate your stay."

The middle-aged man held his hand.

He nodded frantically.

He didn't dare say another word.

At that moment,

the barrage of comments in the livestream, which had just been discussing Shen Niannian's looks, noticeably quieted down.

"That's the Blood Moon Hotel for you."

"What he just said violated rule 1."

"The doorman didn't even kill him outright. It was only a warning."

"Without a room key, you're not protected by the hotel. Having your stay terminated is basically a death sentence."

The smile vanished from Shen Niannian's face too.

(｡ŏ_ŏ)

Holy shit.

It really broke his finger?

Now she finally understood.

These dungeon rules weren't just there to be read.

They could actually get you killed.

She stared at Wang Jianguo's index finger, now completely bent backward, and quickly replayed what had just happened in her head.

The point where Wang Jianguo had actually gone wrong didn't seem to be "asking to change rooms."

It was that he had continued to question the hotel after being refused.

[Please do not deliberately make things difficult for the staff.]

That was the most troublesome thing about this kind of rule.

Whether it counted as making things difficult

was not necessarily up to the players to decide.

So they could make requests,

but it was best to leave the other party room to refuse.

They could ask,

but not force them.

They could discuss things,

but not give orders.

At least until they understood the boundaries of these weird beings' rules, there was no shame in being a little deferential.

Losing their lives would be the real loss.

Shen Niannian silently made a note.

When talking to a weird being, always leave yourself a way out.

Soon,

it was finally her turn.

Shen Niannian walked up with her voucher and looked up at the B-rank weird being in front of her, the one that had just broken someone's finger.

Her delicate little face looked noticeably more demure than before.

"Hello, sorry for the trouble, but could you help me check in? If it's convenient, could you give me a slightly quieter room? Of course, if it's not convenient, that's fine too. I'm not picky."

Her attitude was excellent.

Her tone was gentle.

The whole point was to avoid making things difficult for the staff.

(๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

The doorman lowered his head.

His gaze fell on the girl's face.

Silver hair.

Red eyes.

A petite figure.

The next second,

his entire body went rigid.

"..."

Shen Niannian blinked.

(・_・ヾ

Why isn't he taking it?

She gradually began to feel uneasy.

That man had only said a couple of extra things earlier,

and he'd lost a finger.

Now this ghost had been staring at her for so long...

He's not planning to start with my arm, is he?

Just then,

the identity profile suddenly refreshed.

[Target's status has changed drastically.]

[Current status: extreme fear.]

Shen Niannian: "?"

(⊙o⊙)

She looked at the B-rank evil ghost in front of her, over two meters tall, who had just broken someone's finger with his bare hands.

Then she looked down at her own slender arms and legs.

Wait.

Big guy.

Who exactly are you afraid of?

The doorman's mind was in complete turmoil.

That face.

There was no way he could mistake it.

Many years ago,

this little ancestor standing before him had visited the Blood Moon Hotel.

On the day she left,

the blood mirror that guarded the hotel, which the owner had kept for over three hundred years, was shattered.

From then on,

there had been one rule at the hotel that all the veteran employees understood without saying.

They could offend guests.

They could offend the manager.

But when they saw this one-

they had better keep their heads down.

Especially with the being behind her.

The Blood Moon Hotel could afford to offend that one even less.

The problem was...

Hadn't she left the Weird World long ago?

Why had she suddenly come back?

And the instance had sent her back as a player?!

The doorman's two long, thin legs had already begun trembling slightly beyond his control.

(((;꒪ꈊ꒪;)))

But the viewers in the livestream knew nothing about any of this.

All they saw was the doorman staring fixedly at Shen Niannian.

"This is bad!"

"She must have triggered some hidden rule!"

"That man just talked back a couple of times and got his finger broken. This girl isn't going to die on the spot, is she?"

Zhou Hai's expression was equally grave.

"Shen Niannian, stay where you are and don't move. Don't keep talking to him, either. You haven't clearly broken any rules, so he might not attack you outright."

Shen Niannian obediently nodded.

(.•́︿•̀.)

It wasn't as though she wanted to move.

The problem was...

the identity profile was still displaying:

[Extreme fear.]

And the doorman's legs were practically shaking like a sieve.

You're a B-rank weird being, and you're this scared in front of an ordinary person like me.

Am I supposed to be afraid of you,

or walk over, pat you on the shoulder, and say-

Don't be scared.

Big sis doesn't eat ghosts?

Just when everyone thought the doorman was about to strike,

thud.

The register fell from the doorman's hand to the floor.

The next second,

under the stunned gazes of the nine players and over a million livestream viewers,

the B-rank weird being who had just broken a player's finger over a disagreement abruptly took half a step back.

Then he bent over.

And bowed ninety degrees!

"Honored guest, welcome to the Blood Moon Hotel! If you have any requests regarding your room or our service, please don't hesitate to tell us. We'll do our utmost to meet all your reasonable needs!"

The entire place fell deathly silent.

The nine players:

Σ(⊙▽⊙"a

The livestream:

"???????"

Shen Niannian:

(｡ŏ_ŏ)

Wait.

When you were dealing with the others just now...

That wasn't your attitude at all!