DSMC Chapter 16

The saying “There’s no cat that doesn’t steal fish” is often used to describe people who are unfaithful to their partners. But in Yan Jiyun’s case, it could only be taken literally — a cat simply couldn’t resist the smell of fish, and no wonder they often snuck off to eat some.

He really wanted to restrain his appetite. After all, his bout of gastroenteritis had only just cleared up. But the aroma of grilled fish was far too strong. The chef clearly had real skill. No wonder this was a viral restaurant in the instance, handpicked from countless candidates. The fragrance was genuinely mouthwatering.

In the end, the human soul triumphed over the cat’s body that was desperate for fish.

The restaurant’s name was actually the same as the instance’s name: Midnight Diner.

Maybe the name was just riding a trend.

Earlier, on the truck, Yan Jiyun had heard the radio in the truck announce the time. It was now around 10 PM. 

Inside the restaurant, the liveliness was in stark contrast to the quiet outside. There were quite a few customers, chatting in twos and threes, eating and talking, enjoying a leisurely night.

The interior was cozy, and the layout was much like any other restaurant. In addition to regular seating, there was a bar counter, where some couples liked to squeeze in together to eat. It made them look more intimate and special.

Yan Jiyun really didn’t notice anything unusual in the main dining area.

The main quest was to find out why this restaurant’s business was booming. From his knowledge of social news, a viral restaurant that became a must-visit spot must have something exceptional about it. Perhaps in its ingredients, plating, décor, service, or some other detail.

Ding-ling.

The door opened. In came the two restaurant staff who had gone out earlier to move goods, and at the very back was a player who had entered the game alongside him.

Yan Jiyun slipped under a table that had been reserved by other customers. The lighting here was relatively dim, so no one would notice him without looking closely.

The reason he avoided this person was simple: the man was too flashy. He hadn’t realized immediately when Yan Jiyun appeared — his timing and awareness were off — and he cared more about his livestream audience than anything else. Not the kind of person Yan Jiyun wanted to work with.

The restaurant was still open for business.

As they passed by, Yan Jiyun twitched his nose. The boxes they were carrying reeked of seafood.

He didn’t follow them inside. The door between the kitchen and dining area looked heavy, and he couldn’t be sure he’d be able to get back out later. If he got caught by a chef, he’d be finished. The chef had knives, after all, and going by the logic of the last instance, if an elementary school doctor could be a psychopathic killer, why couldn’t a chef?

While he crouched under the table, thinking, the bell over the restaurant door rang again. At the reception desk, two receptionists asked the new arrivals for a code.

This time it was a man and a woman. The man’s voice was cold, the woman’s was charming. They entered one after the other, not looking like a couple, nor like they were here to eat. The server led them straight to the table where Yan Jiyun was hiding.

Yan Jiyun: “…” Was it too late to move to another table?

Server: “Mr. Jiang, Mrs. Jiang, what would you like to eat?”

Mr. Jiang: “What’s tonight’s special?”

Server: “Tonight we’re offering a seafood barbecue set. If it’s not to your liking, you may also order separately, and a chef will prepare it just for you.”

Mr. Jiang: “Then we’ll have the seafood barbecue set.”

Once the order was taken, the server left.

Yan Jiyun thought about using this chance to switch tables, but after hearing their conversation, he gave up on the idea.

Mrs. Jiang said, “The instance info we gathered was correct. It really is a role-play search instance.”

Mr. Jiang: “It’s a pity we couldn’t get more clues.”

Mrs. Jiang: “As long as we’re careful, it should be fine. We also have to stay safe.”

Mr. Jiang: “Observe both the restaurant’s customers and staff closely. Don’t forget the players, either. If necessary, we should share clues with them.”

Mrs. Jiang: “Alright.”

Yan Jiyun understood them well. Two fists can’t beat four hands[mfn]basically, there’s more power in a group compared to individual[/mfn], and the more clues they had, the sooner they could clear the instance.

The game would never provide players with any instance information. One had to explore and figure it out themselves once inside.

From what he’d gathered so far, this was a role-play search instance. In other words, each player took on the role of a certain character within the instance, with NPCs and players acting out the scenario together.

Thinking back, when he first entered the game, he had been on the truck with that flashy male player. So he might be playing the role of a seafood deliveryman.

The other players hadn’t made a move yet, and Yan Jiyun wasn’t in a hurry. As a black cat, he was inconspicuous for now and could quietly gather information. First, he could confirm who the other players were. In a ten-player instance, as long as he carefully distinguished each person’s footsteps and movement range, it would be easy to figure out their identities.

He had played search games before, but mobile games were just for relaxation. Now, it was the complete opposite of “stress relief”. Here, the exploration cost lives. One wrong move and he could be eliminated, with no chance to start over. He had to treasure his life.

Other players had all gathered at least some instance info beforehand, but Yan Jiyun could only extract useful bits from their stray words.

Compared to the last instance, this one really was harder. He started from zero, from nothing, and had to find that one loose thread before moving forward.

Before long, the server brought the seafood barbecue set to the two players. Under the table, Yan Jiyun was practically drooling.

They ate every bite without mercy, completely ignoring the black cat under the table whose mouth was watering.

While they were eating, a few more customers entered, some players, some real instance NPCs. For other players, this was confusing, but for Yan Jiyun it was an open-book test.

Players would pretend to be calm, but their steps were uneven and their voices slightly tense. All the NPCs, on the other hand, had steady voices, light and cheerful steps, and a noticeable excitement when they came in.

Mr. and Mrs. Jiang still hadn’t made a move.

Yan Jiyun listened carefully to the newcomers. One player with a limp went to the restroom with a cane, and after a while, came back out.

Nothing special happened for now. The smell of food from every table was seeping into Yan Jiyun’s nose, and he tried hard to imagine it as unappetizing, additive-free cat food. Every time he’d sneaked human food and gotten sick afterward, so had to eat that kind of food as his staple. Now he loathed them. 

After staying under the table for a while, the flashy player who’d entered with him — Wen Nanxing — came out from the kitchen. Naturally, he hadn’t left with the driver earlier, but had chosen a seat at the bar instead. Once the server confirmed he was a paying customer, they left him alone.

Wen Nanxing kept up his high-profile act, deliberately pulling out a phone and starting a fake livestream, describing the place to his audience. Yan Jiyun guessed he might be making steady tips from it.

By recognizing voices, Yan Jiyun not only noted some players’ traits, but also overheard a lot of instance information from within earshot.

Behind him, two female players entered together, posing as close friends. One had a deeper voice, the other a sweeter one. They didn’t say much at first, until the sweet-voiced girl tried to start a conversation, and they began chatting about some of the game’s rules.

It turned out the sweet one had just finished her college entrance exams. Her scores weren’t even out yet when she was pulled into the game. She was simple and straightforward in personality, while the older “big sister” type likely already had a job. The latter was willing to share instance info with the recent graduate.

Yan Jiyun learned quite a bit, and even indirectly picked up more rules related to the game.

Apparently, anyone who had entered fewer than five instances was still considered a newcomer player.

Game instances are divided into Newcomer Instances, Easy Instances, Intermediate Instances, Hard Instances, and Top-level Instances. There’s also various PvP instances that open irregularly.

For newcomer players who have entered instances no more than three times, after completing one instance they must enter the next one within three days. Players with three to five instance experiences must enter the next instance within seven days.

The game rules state that a newcomer player’s first five instances must include two instances with Challenging difficulties. If the first three are Introductory, then when selecting the fourth instance the system will lock all Introductory instances. The player must either choose a Challenging instance themselves, or have the system choose one for them — there’s no third option.

As everyone knows, the further one progress, the higher the level of the instance, the greater the difficulty, and the longer the duration. Naturally, the rest period between instances also increases as the difficulty rises.

Aside from the above rules, the two young ladies also mentioned guilds, which reminded Yan Jiyun of the scene when he had exited the temporary rest area in human form — it should be an organization established by players themselves. Joining a guild had both advantages and disadvantages. Due to time and location restrictions, they hadn’t gone into detail.

Yan Jiyun had quite a lot of patience. Nearly an hour after entering the instance, he hadn’t moved from his crouched position. Some players who couldn’t sit still had already started taking advantage of going to the restroom to wander around the restaurant, mainly trying to check the kitchen to see if any special “seasonings” had been added to the dishes.

Just as he felt he was about to fall asleep, a sudden commotion broke out in the restaurant.

The waiters who had been serving dishes in an orderly fashion suddenly started moving quickly. The restaurant’s front door closed after a middle-aged male player hurried inside, and a “Closed” sign was hung up.

The two players sitting at the same table as Yan Jiyun also noticed this abnormality.

Mrs. Jiang whispered, “Why is the restaurant no longer accepting customers?”

They too had been patiently waiting for the instance’s event trigger, and now it seemed it had finally arrived.

The words had barely left her mouth when a shrill scream shattered the noisy restaurant. All the chatting customers seemed to have been put on pause, turning their heads toward the source of the sound.

“Ah! There’s a dead person!”

“Manager Wang is dead!”

“How did he die so suddenly?”

The scene of the incident was at the cashier’s counter.

Due to the large customer flow, there were three staff members working at the front — two cashiers and a restaurant manager. At this moment, the restaurant manager lay collapsed across the counter.

All the players’ attention was now focused on the cashier’s counter. They crowded over, each of them putting on an acting performance, pretending to be nothing more than curious onlookers.

Wen Nanxing even deliberately used a fake phone case to pretend to take pictures. Yan Jiyun slipped past his feet and, taking advantage of everyone looking toward the counter, quietly moved from under the table he had been hiding beneath to a spot behind the air purifier next to the counter.

From his angle, he could clearly see the state of the manager’s body — there was a deep, gaping wound in his back right over his heart, as if he had been shot from behind.

At the same time, all the players received a system notification:

[Side Mission: Please find the murderer who killed Manager Wang.]

A pot-bellied middle-aged man nervously twisted the thumb ring on his finger and said to a waiter, “Call the police, quickly.”

There were ten players in total for this run, so it seemed the search for clues to the mission line wouldn’t take too long.

From his lower vantage point, this was the first time Yan Jiyun had been so close to a dead body. Even though he himself had died once, seeing this scene was still quite shocking.

Suddenly, a wealthy-looking woman pointed to where Yan Jiyun was hiding. “Heavens, why is there a black cat in the restaurant? That’s terribly unlucky!”

Yan Jiyun had never expected that despite hiding so well, he would still be discovered by an NPC.

Surrounded by a crowd of players and NPCs, he felt like he was sitting on pins and needles!

[Want to be Human] livestream channel: 

“Ahhh, so tense!”

“What should we do? The little one’s been spotted! That wealthy woman clearly has no goodwill toward black cats, what’s the little one going to do?”

“From a first-person POV it’s so scary, but so exciting at the same time. I’m so conflicted! So many eyes are staring at the kitty!”

“It’s so suffocating…” 

“I love this atmosphere. There’s no way the little cat can escape this time. I’m looking forward to it!”