Chapter 40: Madhouse (7)
This last-minute addition shocked even many veteran players who had survived multiple instances, let alone newcomers with little experience.
Ji Ning's gaze lingered on the line "Due to insufficient player numbers, the instance difficulty has increased," and she sank into thought.
Normally, fewer people should mean lower difficulty—like in a game, the smaller the party, the easier the instance.
Yet in this survival game, it was the complete opposite.
Ji Ning guessed that this meant in this Madhouse instance, the more people there were, the easier the tasks would be to complete.
Was it because of cooperation?
Ji Ning shook her head. It couldn't be that simple. Other instances didn't forbid cooperation, as long as not everyone reached a unanimous agreement, there was no problem.
Maybe the answer lay in something still unrevealed. Worrying herself sick now was useless. Ji Ning climbed onto the bed, hugged her pillow, closed her eyes, and fell asleep.
Her first night in the Madhouse passed without major danger, though not without tension.
The next morning, everyone was woken by a piercing wake-up bell. Shortly after, someone shoved breakfast through the gap in the iron-barred doors one by one.
The tray held watery congee and steamed buns. Ji Ning, imitating the NPC across from her, wolfed it all down.
After breakfast, all the iron-barred doors in the entire building opened, releasing every patient.
Guided by the Orderlies, the patients exited the dormitory building, turned left, and walked through layers of iron gates to reach a large, fenced-off open area.
The area had tiered benches and exercise equipment; it seemed to be the patients' recreation yard.
By this point, Ji Ning had pretty much figured out the layout of the Madhouse.
Imagining a bird's-eye view, the main entrance was directly to the south. The whole Madhouse compound was square-shaped, with the research institute in the lower right, the reception area in the lower left, and the dormitory and staff buildings in the upper left.
And the upper right—where they were now—she could see a single-story building in the distance with a sign that read "Staff Cafeteria."
In the exercise yard where they now found themselves, several dozen patients were confined here to sunbathe and amuse themselves. As long as they stayed inside the yard, the patients were, for the moment, mostly free.
The Orderlies waited outside the fence, clustered in small groups chatting idly.
Ji Ning sat on the very top of the tiered benches, the spot closest to the Orderlies, pretending to play with her hair while sunbathing, but actually trying to eavesdrop on the Orderlies' conversation.
The only remaining female players—No. 3 He Huihui, No. 10, and No. 12—all made the same choice as Ji Ning, sitting very close to the NPCs outside the fence.
The Orderly NPCs' voices weren't very loud, just barely audible. But what they were saying felt immediately promising.
"The rat infestation in the cafeteria still not dealt with?"
"Nope. Tomorrow I'm assigned to exterminate rats again. So annoying."
"Tell me about it. Set out more cages, scatter rat poison—wouldn't that fix it? Why drag us into it?"
"No idea why, but suddenly there are so many rats."
"Seems like it happened right after that last heavy rainstorm. They just exploded in number."
"Did they come in from outside?"
"Dunno. Maybe a pipe broke somewhere…"
These few lines were packed with explosive information.
After the heavy rain, the nearby staff cafeteria had a rat infestation, very likely because a partition in the sewer system had failed.
If rats from outside could crawl in through the pipes, did that mean the people inside could also use those pipes to get out?
Ji Ning lowered her head, and her eyes, fixed on the wooden planks, lit up. Compared with the game hints, this newly obtained second escape plan was clearly far more reliable than the one that involved climbing over the wall by using a big tree.
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