Chapter 2 (1/2)
Translator: Lonelytree Editor: Millman97
The app with the Haunted House icon looked similar to many popular management mobile games; however, instead of managing a hotel, aquarium, or pet store, it was to manage a haunted house.
Chen Ge stared at the screen, and a single question was on his mind. Why would the phone left behind by my parents have this curious app on it?
He looked through the interface of the app, and all the information on it matched the conditions of his actual Haunted House like the daily visitor numbers and available scenarios. This gave Chen Ge a weird sensation, as if the Haunted House managed in-game was no different from the one he was managing in real life.
They were both down on their luck and facing closure; there were simply too many similarities between them.
“Could it be that this game is built using my Haunted House as its basis? Then does this mean that if there’re changes in the game, it’ll also happen in real life?” Chen Ge muttered.
Chen Ge continued to read; the current scenario of the Haunted House, Night of the Living Dead, was brutally criticized. Even the Minghun scenario that got onto the papers before only managed to get a 0.5-star rating.
“If Minghun only gets 0.5 star, I shudder to imagine how scary those unlockable scenarios are.” He tried to click on the options, and when he did, a window appeared on screen, telling him that he needed to finish a certain number of daily missions before he would be able to unlock the scenarios.
“Looks like the daily missions are the key to this; it is only by completing daily missions that I’ll be able to unlock the haunted scenarios. By unlocking more scenarios, I’ll be able to attract more customers and, consequently, expand the Haunted House.” Chen Ge was an avid player of mobile games, so he soon grasped the rules of the game—the rate of completion for daily missions was going to influence the development of the Haunted House.
After clicking on Daily Missions, three options surfaced:
Easy Mission: There are three main elements to the design of a good Haunted House—Story, Scenario, and Mood. A Haunted House without a story is a Haunted House without a soul, please complete the background story to the two scenarios, Night of the Living Dead and Minghun.
Normal Mission: Fix all the mannequins inside the Haunted House before midnight.
Nightmare Mission: I know you’re still not wholly convinced about the existence of ghost in the world; in that case, how about a little game? The truth will be revealed when you open your eyes.
Daily Missions will refresh every day at midnight. User can only apply for one mission each day, and the reward corresponds to the difficulty of the mission.
(Beware! The more difficult the mission, the more dangerous it’ll be, so please choose carefully!)
After looking through the mission details, Chen Ge gasped with surprise. “The missions in the game have to be completed in real life? Isn’t this the perfect proof that this game can influence real life‽”
To test this speculation, he decided to pick a mission. Since the reward was given according to difficulty and he could only pick one each day, for the sake of the biggest reward, he had to pick the most difficult mission. However, the warning attached to the end of the missions did make Chen Ge worry.
“This is hard to choose. The description for the Nightmare Mission is so vague; it just speaks of a trap. Why don’t I start with a Normal Mission? Fixing all the props will be difficult but not impossible.”
Chen Ge was a man of action, after he had made the decision, he started to move. He grabbed his toolbox and a bucket of unopened fake blood and started to inspect all the mannequins around the Haunted House.
Night had fallen. To save electricity, Chen Ge didn’t even leave the lights in the corridors open. Squeezing a flashlight in his armpit, Chen Ge twisted through the large Haunted House, fixing all the mannequins that needed his attention.
If there were any outsiders who saw this, they would probably be so spooked that they would call the cops directly.