Chapter 1374: No Service at Night
"Not necessarily," Zhou Donghe hesitated for a moment before saying, "I actually think those waiters might be more dangerous at night. There are so many people in the back kitchen, they might come out at night. Besides, this is a restaurant, not a hotel. It's normal to have no room service at night."
Xu Huo nodded. "You have a point. The first hurdle we'll face is definitely the other players."
After all, they had to compete for rooms, and that was the only information the waiter had given besides the voting.
The clock on the restaurant wall jumped to exactly eight o'clock. As the lights went out, everyone was plunged into thick darkness—this wasn't an ordinary night. Even players with night vision could barely see anything around them, relying only on their ears.
In an instant, the entire restaurant became so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Amid the deliberately suppressed breathing, a crisp "click" suddenly rang out, like the sound of a switch being flipped. The next second, lights came on in two corners of the restaurant.
Two dim wall lamps weren't enough to illuminate the entire restaurant, but they provided sufficient light for the players. The restaurant, which had looked magnificent during the day, now exuded a chilling gloom. The arranged seats, the hanging chandeliers, the instruments in the corners, the bar in the middle—everywhere shadows overlapped, it seemed covered in a layer of gray mist, making it impossible to see clearly.
The floor near the lights was slightly clearer, enough to reveal that the beautiful, clean carpet from daytime was now stained with various marks. The dark stains were impossible to identify, let alone the thick dust covering them.
But none of that mattered. Where the wall lamps shone, two corridors appeared. Although it was impossible to see if there were rooms in the darkness a few meters away, these were the only paths forward!
Instantly, all the players surged toward the narrow corridors. In this situation, even using items made it hard to open a path. But then the restaurant changed again—the corridors gradually widened, new wall lamps appeared ahead of the existing ones, and where the lights shone, new paths and new spaces emerged.
The two corridors that first appeared didn't connect to each other, but standing in the restaurant, players could use spiritual power and space power to judge the situation on both sides. These were two forked paths. Each path would split again after entering, and the second fork would lead not to a simple corridor but to entirely new spaces.
"Hurry!" the players shouted as they split into the two corridors. Passing through the first corridor, doors appeared in the side paths.
With occasional "bang bang" sounds, players successively found and entered rooms.
Xu Huo lagged two steps behind, starting from the corridor on the right. Upon entering, he quickly scanned both sides. His spiritual power couldn't penetrate the room doors, so he could only look along the corridor. Two rooms, one on each side, had already been occupied, with the numbers "28" and "57" appearing on their doors.
"Open up! Open up!" Some players kicked and pounded at the doors. Getting no response, they quickly rushed toward the next corridor.
Dai Song and Li Kun had taken the right side, so Xu Huo followed the skinny player Zhou Donghe to the left. There was some distance between them. Before Xu Huo could reach him, he saw Zhou Donghe successfully slip into a room. As the door closed, "42" appeared on it.
The corridor space didn't exist from the start but gradually expanded as the players moved forward. When Zhou Donghe closed his door, a large warehouse area unlocked ahead. Tall and short cargo boxes were stacked everywhere, with the center piled into an irregular quadrangular pyramid, taking up a lot of space and making the area even darker. The only small lamp was over fifty or sixty meters away on the opposite side.
Given the current spacing of the rooms, it was unlikely there would be one for every player. So Xu Huo glanced at the corridor that bent back to the right and chose a room in the middle of the passage to the right of Room 42.
Room 172 was secured.
Standing behind the door, Xu Huo could occasionally hear players outside twisting door handles or cursing in frustration. He could hear sounds or sense someone touching the door, but nothing beyond that could be specifically perceived.
This room could seal off spiritual power—he couldn't see what was happening outside.
But that wasn't surprising. Based on the previous rooms, once the door was closed, no player could open it from the outside, whether by items or violence. In other words, players who entered a room were completely safe from threats outside.
The sounds of attacks and curses outside gradually turned into "friendly negotiations." Xu Huo ignored the players bargaining outside his door and turned to examine the room.
The room was simple: a bed, a desk, a wardrobe, and a bathroom. The decor was old, the wallpaper already discolored. The main ceiling light was broken, leaving only one small wall lamp above the bed still working. The other bulb flickered occasionally, teetering on the edge of breaking.
In this instance, places without light meant you couldn't see clearly. With no windows to borrow light from, Xu Huo walked over and pulled the lamp wire out from under the wallpaper, making a simple fix.
With two lamps working, the room wasn't as dark as before.
He walked to the desk. Aside from the paper and pen for voting, there was nothing on it. The drawers contained some used dirty towels and tissues—completely worthless.
Under the bed, however, there was an old promotional brochure. Comparing the time on it with his prop watch, it was already two years old.
The brochure featured seascapes and specialty dishes. Xu Huo found a few matching species on the Under Dimension, confirming they were special species from other wormhole points.
One of the orders found in the Skinner's ledger was from the Bauhinia Restaurant. Like the Skinner's pig farm, the Bauhinia Restaurant likely operated across different wormhole points. It had some minor fame in the game, though there wasn't much information about it on the Under Dimension. Random instances differed slightly from fixed ones—they might change locations after a single run, and even the rules weren't certain. It wasn't strange that few people knew the specifics, especially since this was a high-mortality instance.
The number tags the waiter distributed to players weren't in strict order. Some later-arriving players occasionally got earlier numbers, but not many.
"Beep." At that moment, the communicator rang. Xu Huo picked it up and saw it was a message from Zhou Donghe, asking if he had found a room. If not, he could come to Room 42, along with a rough description of its location.
Xu Huo didn't reply to the message. Before the commotion outside completely died down, he contacted Dai Song.
(Chapter End)