Chapter 1 The CG Ends Here

The opening CG ended there, and in that instant, the figures of six players appeared in the classroom.

This classroom had nine pairs of desks and chairs, neatly arranged in three rows and three columns.

At this moment, all the players were seated. From the perspective facing the blackboard, the first row, from left to right, had the three girls: Ruoyu, An Yueqin, and Xiaoling. The left-hand seat in the second row was empty, while Feng Bujue and the team's sixth member sat in the middle and on the right, respectively. And Xiaotan… sat alone in the middle of the third row.

"Eh~ As expected, they're acquaintances." Xiaoling turned around immediately, looking at the team's sixth member, and those words just blurted out.

The reason for saying "as expected" was naturally because she had already foreseen this situation.

After the new version was released, everyone was busy leveling up, and the important thing about leveling up was "efficiency"... Undoubtedly, it would be more efficient to repeatedly grind through several ordinary instances with a higher chance of success than to queue for a "Team Nightmare," a high-risk instance.

Therefore, there were only two types of people who would solo queue for a Nightmare Team instance: players without a studio background, and… top-tier experts.

Adding the condition that "their level is similar to the Hell Front team," the likelihood of "meeting acquaintances" was quite predictable.

"Feng! Bu! Jue!" About two seconds later, Tun Tian Guixiao started yelling. He ignored everyone else and shouted at Jue-ge as if he had met an enemy.

"What's with all the shouting…" Feng Bujue stared with dead fish eyes, gazing at the excited Guixiao, and said weakly, "Planning to use the Zijing Hong Hulu (Purple-Gold Red Gourd) to capture me? Calling my name to see if I dare answer?"

"Tch…" Being retorted like that, Guixiao also felt that he might have been a bit too excited. He curled his lip and continued, "So calm… Doesn't he take me seriously at all…"

"With your magnificent one-meter-six frame, my eyes can't contain it." Feng Bujue's mocking ability was truly innate and seamless. "I always respect you in my heart."

"I'm one meter sixty-nine! And I'm still growing!" Hearing the topic of height, Guixiao couldn't stand it, and he raised his voice again to shout.

"It's okay, my heart is broad, I can still fit you even if you grow another zero point five centimeters." Jue-ge waved his hand, replying with a smile that wasn't quite a smile.

"How long are you guys going to discuss the height issue?" At this moment, Ruoyu, who was beside them, couldn't stand it anymore and stopped the two from rambling.

Before her voice faded, a system prompt rang out.

[Your character abilities have been restricted. You are now playing an ordinary person.]

The same prompt rang in the ears of the six players, and after exchanging glances, everyone understood.

"Sigh… I hate these kinds of restriction instances the most." Guixiao immediately expressed his dissatisfaction. "I always fail when I encounter these types of scripts."

"Then you're lucky today." Jue-ge replied with a smile, "Today, your older brothers and sisters will carry you through the instance and let you experience the fun of restriction instances."

"Hmph…" Guixiao crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Keep dreaming…"

"In any case, let's confirm our identities first." At this time, An Yueqin turned her head and said to everyone, "If there are no accidents, the roles we're playing have already been assigned…" As she spoke, she pointed to the upper left corner of her desk.

In the place she pointed to, three characters were carved: San Qian Yuan.

The characters… were carved using something like a craft knife, and the writing didn't look like it was done by an adult. Of course, carving characters was different from writing them, so it couldn't be ruled out that the font was distorted because of the difficulty of carving, resulting in this effect.

"This is the surname of the character we're playing, right?" Xiaoling had also noticed the characters carved on her desk long ago. In the same upper left corner, with the same kind of writing, was carved—"Tu Shou" two characters. "Speaking of which… it seems like I've randomly gotten a particularly rare surname."

"Oh, oh! I have one here too." Xiaotan had obviously discovered the carved characters on the desk after being reminded by his teammates. "It's called Sawada."

"Mine here is carved with 'Yuan'," Ruoyu replied.

"Ha~" Guixiao also saw the carved characters on his desk at this moment. "'Yamada', huh… it feels like a very common surname." He was somewhat inexplicably disappointed.

"Mm…" After everyone had finished reporting the surnames carved on their desks, Jue-ge slowly replied, "Mine here… is carved with 'Togashi'…"

Silence.

A long silence.

For some reason, after Jue-ge reported those two characters, the other five people looked at him with strange expressions, and they all stopped talking.

"Well then…" After nearly a minute, Feng Bujue broke the silence himself and changed the subject. "Speaking of which, didn't the last part of the opening CG say that someone shouted? Why didn't we hear it…"

"Uh… maybe… we finished shouting when we were loading the characters." Xiaotan was also very obliging, and casually added a sentence.

"Mm…" Feng Bujue stroked his chin and said, "The main quest hasn't been refreshed yet, either, which means… we need to trigger a flag, right?" As he spoke, he stood up and walked towards the podium. "Let's look around first and see if there are any clues."

Hearing this, everyone didn't say much and began searching on their own.

According to habit, people would generally first confirm the things closest to them at this time, such as… the inside of their desks.

But they quickly confirmed that the inside of all nine desks were empty, not even scraps of paper.

Then, everyone unfolded their investigation of the surrounding objects one by one, according to their "degree of suspicion".

At the same time, Feng Bujue picked up an old newspaper on the podium, and not knowing if it was a reading addiction acting up, he stood there and started reading…

Five minutes passed in the blink of an eye.

The results of everyone's investigation were as follows…

The sliding door of the classroom was locked and couldn't be opened. When it was forcibly pulled, there was no prompt like "requires a key".

The windows facing the playground and the corridor were all tightly closed. When approached, a prompt appeared: "Sealed by some dark force." When looking out through the glass, it was pitch black, and only their own shadows could be seen.

The arrangement of the storage cabinets at the back of the classroom was the same as the overhead view of the desks and chairs. When trying to open them, the prompt "requires a key" appeared.

There was a wooden bookshelf on the right-hand side of the podium, which also couldn't be opened.

On the wall on the left-hand side of the podium hung a painting with a huge human face. Judging by the painting style, it didn't seem like something an elementary school student could have. To be more specific—abstract art.

There was also storage space inside the podium, but it also "requires a key" to open.

In summary, after a preliminary investigation, the clues were still concentrated on the old newspaper on the podium. If there were any hints… they should be on it.

"So… how is it on your end, team leader?" Xiaoling briefly told Jue-ge about the intelligence collected by everyone and asked.

"Mm… first of all…" Feng Bujue put down the newspaper in his hand, "This is a May newspaper, the date is May 19th."

"What does that explain?" Guixiao asked.

"Do you remember the first sentence of the narration was—'This is a summer evening'." Feng Bujue replied.

"Oh…" Guixiao nodded. "So?"

"Judging from the layout of this classroom, the names on the desks, and the atmosphere of the script…" An Yueqin explained at this time, "This is undoubtedly a horror story that takes place in Japan, and Japan and we are both in the northern hemisphere, so their 'summer' should be June, July, and August of each year."

"Which means…" Ruoyu also replied, "This newspaper is from one or two months ago?"

"Not necessarily…" Feng Bujue replied, "The year on the newspaper is Showa 47, which is 1972. It could be a newspaper from one or two months ago, or it could be a newspaper from one or two years ago, or even a newspaper from one or two decades ago…" He paused, "We also have no way of deducing the era when this script takes place, or the specific ages and graduation years of these characters… because the narration didn't mention the specific time of the 'present', only saying 'long time no see', and this 'long time'… could be ten years, twenty years, or even thirty or forty years."

"But…" Xiaotan heard this and looked suspicious. "Didn't he also say 'everyone hasn't changed much'? That means it hasn't been too long, right?"

"Not necessarily." Feng Bujue immediately replied with these two words, and continued, "Most people will say that when they reunite with their childhood companions after many years; because people's memories from childhood are the most profound. As long as they recognize the person in front of them, the memories of that time will be awakened, and then the face in the memory will overlap with the face in front of them… Coupled with some 'emotional' factors, they will naturally say something like 'you haven't changed'."

"Yeah, that's the most common line you hear at class reunions." An Yueqin immediately agreed.

"Hey, hey… I'm saying…" Guixiao already seemed a little impatient at this moment. "Why are you guys researching those things? Is it necessary to nitpick the character backgrounds so meticulously? Isn't the main point right now to trigger the flag and get the main quest first?"

His words immediately attracted the attention of the entire Hell Front team.

"Why… why are you guys looking at me with that kind of expression…" Guixiao muttered, "It's kind of creepy."

"I think I know why you can't complete 'restriction ability scripts'." Feng Bujue shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. "Your patience is too bad."

"Tch…" Guixiao heard this and glanced sideways. "That line and tone sound familiar… I feel like Chan-ge has also said something similar to me."

The "Chan-ge" in his mouth was naturally Chou He… oh no… Meng Jingchan.

"Eh? By the way, why aren't you queuing for instances with your studio teammates?" Speaking of Chan-ge, Xiaotan also remembered something.

"Uh… this…" Guixiao hesitated for a moment.

"This might involve the secrets of their studio, you shouldn't ask." Xiaoling's ability to read people's expressions was also very strong, and she nudged Xiaotan with her elbow to remind him after seeing this.

"Oh, oh! Sorry about that." Xiaotan smiled sheepishly. "Pretend I didn't ask."

"Mm… actually, there's nothing that can't be said." Guixiao curled his lip. "Anyway, you guys aren't professional players, as long as you don't spread it around, it doesn't hurt to tell you this… " He paused for half a second, and continued, "When leveling up, our studio will arrange complementary teams based on each person's characteristics. And me… I'm the type of person who's more suitable for solo queuing." Guixiao spread out his hands and said in a rather proud tone, "The bottom line is… I'm guaranteed to be 'excessive combat power' in 'non-restricted ability scripts'."

"In other words, you're a burden in instances like this." Feng Bujue poured a basin of cold water on him just two seconds after he started getting cocky.

"Stop spouting nonsense!" Guixiao said, "Didn't you say you were going to carry me through the instance with certainty! It's been ten minutes since the script started, and we haven't even found the main quest! What are you being arrogant about?"

"Don't worry, Yamada-kun." Feng Bujue smiled, "I'm just about to tell you something closely related to the main quest."

Then, Jue-ge wore a smile and used a very relaxed tone to say something that made people's scalps tingle: "According to what I read in the past few minutes… all the news in this newspaper is about a school. Of course, if there are no accidents… it refers to the school we're in." As he spoke, he used his eyes to signal the row of seats in the last corner of the classroom, "The headline on the front page is—'Fire in the warehouse opposite the principal's office, although the fire didn't spread, a student still died in the fire'; and the name of the deceased student… is Suzuki Takayuki."

When he said these words, his teammates… especially Xiaotan and Guixiao, shivered at that moment.

Because they all remembered—the name carved in the upper left corner of that seat was "Suzuki".

"You mean…" Two seconds later, Ruoyu was the first to reply, "That Suzuki is the class monitor who hasn't appeared yet?" She paused for a second, and then continued, "That doesn't make sense, right?"

"Yeah…" Xiaoling also said, "Let's just say he is the class monitor, that Suzuki was burned to death during his student days, and the matter was even reported in the newspaper, there's no reason his classmates wouldn't know about it; under this premise, the situation of 'receiving a letter from him' would scare people half to death, who would even show up?"

"That makes sense." An Yueqin thought for a while and added, "Inferring from the tone of the narration… no matter who the real class monitor is, at least the classmates who came to the appointment all think he or she is still alive, so it can't be Suzuki."

"Mm, good judgment." Feng Bujue listened to everyone's opinions and replied, "Therefore, the actual situation may be… Suzuki Takayuki was indeed a member of this class, but he wasn't the class monitor, and he was burned to death during his student days, so he didn't appear at today's gathering. It's also possible… that the Suzuki who was burned to death wasn't a member of this class, but was also a person from this school, after all, Suzuki is also a relatively common surname in Japan."

Speaking up to this point, Jue-ge changed the topic: "But…"