"Ahem. Well. Past experience and forum guides state that opening the door in the resort sub-stories never goes well."
Well, at least one person was sympathetic enough to respond. With quite valuable information too! A resort, hmm?
And a resort rife with danger!
Not much, though. These people were genuinely overreacting a lot. Nearly twenty minutes in, yet out of the dozen and a half people, only one had died. Barely anything! Even nymph playtimes had a higher casualty rate.
Ming really was hungry now.
He bid the very nice group—the dreamers(?)—goodbye and sat back down at his original table. The blondie was gone, probably off to find his edgelord clan teammates. Dark-blade? Shadow blade? Shadow-scythe?
No matter. Ming could probably do it himself.
He looked around. All the other people were busy. But earlier, they'd mentioned a forum. And a system.
Hmm.
Trying very hard (and failing) not to feel stupid, Ming whisper-shouted at the air.
"System. System? Forum? Inventory? Quest?"
Nothing prompted a response.
No magic screens.
No magic apps.
Not even the blue one with white calligraphy like last time.
Stupid system.
Stomach growling, Ming gazed mournfully at his egg tarts. Well, not his. That was the main problem. And he had even forgotten to pickpocket that other group earlier! A shame, really.
At this point, Ming had basically given up. Though the shop was amazing, he had no money and no way to eat those egg tarts. According to the other group, he wasn't even able to leave through the door!
So, the only way to leave was to clear the sub-story. How? Ming didn't even have the stupid system to give him quests!
If only it had been the system from last time—that one had honestly been really useful.
Hmm. What could be the goal? It was a small space, so probably not a chase scene. It could have just been to survive for a limited amount of time, but that would have been very boring. What if it was a cooking challenge? Oh dear, please no! Cooking was the hardest thing to do, ever. Hopefully the challenge was something easier.
Maybe to find clues? To catch a ghost? That made sense.
Ooh! Maybe it was like a werewolf game, one of Ming's favorites. Everyone was a villager, but there were werewolves—or in this case, ghosts—and they tried to kill all the villagers. The villagers had to try and figure out who the werewolves were in order not to die.
Ming really liked that game actually, because depending on the amount of people, there might have been extra characters and roles like detective, little witch, cupid, or martyr.
Yep. He should try that first.
But what if there were consequences to guessing wrong? It would probably have been okay, right? Death was a social construct anyway!
Ming got back up and walked to the kitchen doors. The cashier was empty, and the paintings on the walls only had bamboo. No clues in the main sitting area—hand on wood, heart beating excitedly.
He walked in, half expecting the waitress from earlier to pop up once more. But no, the kitchen was also startlingly empty. Clean, though.
Ming ran a hand over the metal counters and sniffed at it. A strong sense of iron… because the tables were made of iron. Eh, at least he'd tried.
A hand on his shoulder startled him, and he nearly jumped a foot high into the air. How had he not noticed? Even if sounds were muffled and his eyes were less compound, he should still have been able to hear their heartbeats, no?
It was obviously just because Ming hadn't been paying attention. Right.
He turned back and was face to face with the blond kid once more. Aw, how cute! He was out of his scaredy-cat phase.
Behind Huipao stood two others, people wearing matching wristguards on their right hands. A marker of their shadow lance(?) guild? Though they did look a lot more menacing than Huipao. Bodyguards, perhaps.
That meant Huipao was important! Hopefully money-wise, so he could buy Ming food later. Best to get on his good side. A rich friend was a useful friend after all.
Oops. Huipao had been chattering on this entire time, and Ming hadn't been paying attention. Hopefully nothing important. Tuning back in, he realized that Huipao had just been introducing his teammates, with a brief intro to their abilities.
No way—abilities? Ming positively had to know more.
The serious-looking man was called Fu Bianheng and had a soul-bound item instead of an ability. Very cool. It was a set of double daggers, each with names. Maybe they even had set effects too? Truly fitting for the dark blade guild.
"It's the Darklance Guild!"
The woman was called ZhaoYing, and she was a healer. Very cut-and-dry introduction, and honestly? She looked nothing like a healer. She looked more like she would try to dissect innocent little bugs—somehow even more monstrous than a ghost. Extremely scary, but cool in equal measure.
He scooted away from her a bit. He could also see her amusement from where he was standing, but that was okay. A strategist knew when to reduce risk.
Ming cleared his throat, pretending he hadn't missed the entire set of introductions.
"Well! Good to meet everyone. Very cool knives, very cool healing, very cool… wristbands."
He gave them a thumbs-up, hoping it read as friendly instead of starving and desperate.
Huipao beamed for some strange reason. That kid always smiled. Very scary, almost like the waitress. Did that mean he was a ghost?! Ah, but the others would probably have looked at Ming weird if they knew his criteria for judging ghosts was whether they smiled.
Maybe blondie wasn't the ghost?
Blondie continued.
"So! We were thinking, we should search the kitchen together. Ghost dungeons like this usually hide clues near food prep areas."
Ming brightened.
"Clues? Maybe even edible clues?"
No one laughed. Tragic.
Ooh, more to a tragic backstory! Everyone knew the coolest people had the absolutely worst, most heart-wrenching, absolutely tragic backstories. Maybe having one would increase the coolness of Ming's ability?
That reminded him—he really did need to ask how exactly one went about unlocking abilities. Probably some wishy-washy magic? But Ming didn't have a system. Oh no, did that mean no magic?
Still, the four of them shuffled deeper into the kitchen, past the metal counters and spotless stovetops. The place looked so pristine it felt wrong, like someone had polished away all signs of life.
Ming tapped a ladle. It rang too loudly in the silence.
Fu Bianheng surveyed the room, daggers materializing in faint outlines at his hips.
"No spiritual residue. No traps."
Zhaoying snorted.
"Not here, anyway."
He really wished she would stop sounding delighted at the idea of surprise death.
They spread out, with Huipao poking cabinets, Zhaoying scanning for energy flows, and Bianheng examining the tiled floor like it had committed a crime. Ming, meanwhile, gravitated toward the far corner where a bulky, old-fashioned ice box sat squat and frosty against the wall.
He paused. The iron latch glinted.
"…Was that always there?" he asked.