-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 66
Chapter Title: Devil's Game Plan
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Right now, I had two choices.
The first was to follow the original game as closely as possible, making my high school friends disappear one by one, nice and slow. That way, I could savor the fear gripping them... especially the girls.
The second was to ignore the original game entirely, lock every last one of them in the holding cells right away, fuck the girls, and turn the guys into zombie test subjects.
Ah, of course, the first plan still meant fucking all the girls and using the guys as zombie guinea pigs—it was the same there.
The only real difference between the two plans was whether I'd enjoy a bit of the original atmosphere before slowly locking them up one at a time, or just throw them all in cells immediately.
'Follow the original game as much as possible? ...Nah. That'd take way too long to fuck each girl one by one. ...But flipping over this perfectly laid-out table and doing whatever I want feels like a waste too.... I can fuck them anytime, but setups this fun don't come around often....'
After agonizing over it, I decided to go with enjoying it as close to the original game as possible for now.
If I couldn't hold back midway and desperately wanted to fuck the girls, I'd just flip the table then.
'In the original, the culprit Jun-chang kills off all the guys first, including me.... But unlike him, I won't kill the guys off. I'll use them as zombie test subjects.'
Since Jun-chang, the protagonist of the original game, had vanished because of me, I had to step into his role.
I hung out with my high school friends in the villa's living room, playing board games and card games, then timed it right and spoke up.
"Huh? That's weird. The Wi-Fi hasn't been working for a while now."
A few of them pulled out their phones at my words.
"Whoa, you're right. Jun-chang said the Wi-Fi was on earlier, and it worked fine when we first got inside."
"Come to think of it, where'd Jun-chang go?"
The friends were starting to feel uneasy about the villa.
'Heh. Their reactions are just like in the game.'
Normally, the first incident happens after they've spent the night and the next day rolls around.
Thanks to me, it had been moved up by a day.
Because Jun-chang had disappeared today.
Right on cue, the weather shifted. The once clear skies around the villa grew dark and overcast.
I remembered the creator—Jun-chang—saying that the weather around the villa was influenced by how much fear the characters, excluding the protagonist, were feeling.
"Guys, something's off. This isn't right. Let's go find Jun-chang. He might've had an accident or something."
"Yeah, let's do that. Where's his room?"
The friends stopped their board and card games in the living room and started searching for Jun-chang.
The first place they checked was Jun-chang's personal room—the door I'd secretly smashed.
"Gasp! Jun-chang's door is busted."
"...W-what? What the hell happened here?"
The friends started panicking at the unnatural sight.
The weather around the villa darkened further.
Rain looked like it would pour any second.
"You think something really happened?"
"We need to hurry and find Jun-chang. I have a bad feeling about this."
The friends felt the urgency to find him fast.
Seeing the smashed door made them think something bad had gone down.
That's when I delivered the line that Jun-chang, the protagonist, was supposed to say.
"It's inefficient to all go together. Let's split up and search places where Jun-chang might be."
In the original, this line came after one of the guys went missing—not Jun-chang—and before they found his body.
By the time they discovered the first victim's corpse, a second one had already been killed by Jun-chang.
The high school friends get thoroughly toyed with by the culprit, Jun-chang, and vanish one by one.
'...Ah, of course, from the game player's perspective, it just seems like some third-party intruder. Jun-chang's the protagonist, after all. Even I thought it might be Jun-chang's uncle or a third party on my first playthrough.'
Yeah. More precisely, they get played by Jun-chang's split personality, 'Devil,' while stumbling around trying to find the culprit.
Along the way, they suspect the wrong people or frame innocents.
But the twist ending is that the real killer was the player character's other split personality....
Even that sounds kinda fun when I describe it, but actually playing it? Total snoozefest.
"Yeah, good idea. Let's split up and search for Jun-chang. Call if you find him."
"Got it."
In their panic, they forgot this place had no signal and scattered to look for him.
Setting the stage for the killer to strike freely.
'In my case, I'm not a killer—just a kidnapper....'
For now, I decided to target the guys first, just like the original game.
Having those dicks hanging around the girls was getting on my nerves.
Maybe the creator, Jun-chang, had ditched the guys first for similar reasons?
In the original, the three male characters, including me, get brutally killed and found as corpses first, ramping up the isolated villa's tension.
'Hmm, since I've already dealt with Jun-chang, I just need to handle those two other dicks.'
Four guys, seven girls.
Excluding me and Jun-chang, two guys left.
I picked one of the two guys at random and got to work.
The male characters, busting their asses searching alone for Jun-chang, had mostly headed to deeper, more remote spots than the girls.
Perfect for taking them out.
"Hey, Ji-hoon. Come here. I think I saw Jun-chang's silhouette over there."
"Really? Where?"
I double- and triple-checked that no one was nearby, then pulled a silenced pistol from my Subspace Storage.
While he stared at the bushes I'd pointed to, yelling "Where? Where do you mean?", I shot him in the thigh from behind.
-Pfft!
"Gahhh!!!"
I gave the writhing guy on the ground the exact same treatment I'd given Jun-chang.
Knocked him out, slung him over my shoulder, hopped on the ATV in the underground level 1 passageway.
Strapped the unconscious bastard on the back like luggage.
Rode the ATV to the elevator for the underground facilities, took him down, and locked him in the room next to Jun-chang's cell.
'Hmm... Normally, you'd make another victim every 2-5 days... but if I do that, the girls might lean on the other guys for sleep and comfort? Can't have that.'
I decided to tweak the original game's flow a bit.
First off, lock up all the guys except me.
I lured the last dick to a secluded spot by saying Jun-chang was visible but hard for one person to handle...
Shot him in the thigh with the silenced pistol, knocked him out, stopped the bleeding, and tossed him in a cell.
"Kuhuhu, now it's just me and the girls."
In the control room on underground level 5, I sipped premium wine while watching the CCTVs covering the villa, grinning.
The fridge in this room was stocked full of high-end wine.
The girls were scattered, frantically searching for Jun-chang with worried faces, but getting nowhere.
"Hm, sun's starting to set, so they're giving up and heading back to the villa. Guess I should too. ...Ah, but first, alibis. Need some girls to see me so they can vouch I was searching hard for Jun-chang."
Riding the ATV through the spacious underground level 1 passageway let me zip around the villa grounds effortlessly.
The others were clueless, huffing and puffing on foot or running between spots.
With my alibis solidly in place, I leisurely returned to the villa.
Parked the ATV in the underground level 1 passageway right below, took the hidden elevator up.
Using the secret passages, I'd discovered more besides the one in Jun-chang's room bookshelf—several hidden routes in the villa.
When I reached the first-floor living room, a few girls were already back.
They were sniffling or on the verge of tears.
They'd scattered without remembering the no-signal issue,
then freaked out when calls wouldn't go through and started crying, now seeking comfort and emotional support like the pussied sluts they were.
And I played the perfect reliable man they could lean on mentally, enveloping them in emotional support.
If the other guys were around, the attention and dependence would've spread out.
But right now, I was the only one with a dick here.
"...What do we do? Can't find Jun-chang..., and for some reason, Min-jun and Ji-hoon are gone too...."
"We shouldn't just stick together like this. Shouldn't we ask for help outside...?"
"Yeah. But who has the car keys?"
"The car keys? Obviously Jun-chang, since he drove...."
"Haa.... What now...?"
The girls wore grave expressions, agonizing over what to do next.
'Heh heh....'
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Read 234 more chapters ahead on NovelDex!
https://noveldex.io/series/climbing-the-tower-alone
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━