Chapter 17: Game
WTF??
These were the three letters plus two punctuation marks that the Orc brother in front of Mo Tan conveyed with his rich facial expressions. If people with mental abnormalities were not almost barred from playing games, this fellow would probably be wondering which hospital this kid in front of him had escaped from.
That pixelated face, sneaky expression, and underground party-like tone of voice, no matter how one looked at it, did not seem like a sane person.
Besides, he shouldn't know him at all, right?!
Unfortunately, the person in front of him truly was a fish that slipped through the net, both for the hospital and the police…
“Alright, stop pretending~” Mo Tan chuckled, nudging the Orc player’s arm with his elbow, and whispered, “I saw through you long ago. As expected, you look pretty much like how I imagined. Speaking of mixing Erguotou into plain water…”
This handsome Orc (no mistake) with long, fiery red hair didn't wait for him to finish, immediately turned and walked away, muttering something as he went, the content of which seemed to contain some discriminatory remarks against homosexuals.
“Uh, is it not?” Mo Tan scratched his hair, then briefly looked around, and suddenly burst out laughing: “Ha! So it was you!? I knew that kid's aura was much weaker than expected just now. I really found the wrong person!!”
He excitedly muttered as he rushed towards an Ogre player not far away. That guy was built like an iron tower, and for some unknown reason, he had sculpted his face to be particularly bizarre, like a Stitched Monster who had just poked a hornet's nest, the kind that could scare his own kind into falling over.
Meanwhile, Shuang Ye, who had been narrowing her eyes and glaring at Mo Tan from a distance, finally couldn't bear it anymore. She quickly took two steps, grabbed his collar, and pulled him back, rolling her eyes and coldly snorting, “It's me!”
“What do you mean, 'you'?” Mo Tan glanced at her with disdain, waving his hand impatiently, “I made an appointment with my buddy to meet here. Didn't you see he's waiting for me to go say hello?”
He pointed his chin at the Stitched… uh, Ogre not far away, and waved his hands excitedly, shouting, “Buddy! I'm over here! Speaking of mixing Erguo into that plain water…”
“It's me! Me! Me!” Shuang Ye grabbed Mo Tan’s collar and pulled him in front of her, her eyes practically spitting fire, as she stomped her foot and roared in a low voice, “That company making fake alcohol was found out by me! It’s called Gongting Yuye Co., Ltd. Those geniuses sold water mixed with Erguotou for one thousand eight hundred eighty-eight yuan a cup, when the cost was less than one and a half yuan! I implanted the crash program! You stole the internal data! We disclosed the information together! And you even blew up their skinny boss’s monitor in passing! So, understand?!”
This girl was almost on the verge of a breakdown just now. Shuang Ye, standing not far away, had heard the entire process of Mo Tan mistaking a certain Orc for herself. She was already furious because this guy had imagined her to be that kind of existence, and then Mo Tan, after realizing he had found the wrong person, immediately set his sights on an even uglier one!
Who could tolerate this!!
If it weren't for the fact that force couldn't be used in the Public Space, she would have already thrown a large fireball directly at this guy's face!
“Ah…” Mo Tan looked at Shuang Ye with considerable helplessness after hearing her, then glanced at the Ogre brother who was only wearing a pair of shorts, and pouted, “So that’s how it is. Tsk, how disappointing…”
Shuang Ye gritted her teeth and looked at him: “What kind of disrespectful expectation did you have of me before?!”
“At least~” Mo Tan suddenly changed his somewhat neurotic demeanor from before, and said with a light chuckle, “She should be calmer than this childlike little girl in front of me.”
“Who are you calling…” Shuang Ye retorted almost instinctively, but then suddenly froze when she noticed the playful look in his eyes.
Although Mo Tan's face had become severely distorted in the eyes of others after being blurred, Shuang Ye could still feel his slightly sarcastic smile and the other layer of meaning behind that sentence.
Not calm enough…
She wasn't calm enough…
Where exactly was she not calm enough…
Wait!
Shuang Ye looked up in astonishment at the man she had collaborated with for many years but had never met, her expression suddenly turning grim: “You knew it was me all along?!”
“How so?” Mo Tan did not answer the girl’s question, but instead retorted.
“I’ve been observing the people in this area,” Shuang Ye quickly regained her composure, gently pushed her glasses up with her index finger, and said in a deep voice, “At least for two minutes, you shouldn’t have been among the people around me. And when I noticed you, you were already standing in a position where, even if you spoke softly, I would still hear you, striking up a conversation with that Orc strongman.”
Mo Tan chuckled dryly: “Please don’t use such an ambiguous word as ‘striking up a conversation’…”
“Both the timing of your appearance and your distance from me were too coincidental,” Shuang Ye ignored him and continued to speak to herself, “Even if both points could be explained by chance, your slightly exaggerated actions were too targeted.”
“Alright, I’ll commend you for now,” Mo Tan clapped his hands, “Although this kind of belated keenness is truly not worth praising, as a Gentleman, one should always be more lenient towards beautiful girls, shouldn’t they?”
Shuang Ye pursed her lips and remained silent for a long while before looking up at the blurred face in front of her and asking, “How did you know?”
“Do you find it unbelievable?” Mo Tan’s gaze at this moment was as if he was looking at an idiot.
Shuang Ye couldn't help but feel another surge of anger, but this time she quickly calmed down again, and said indifferently, “I do have a guess, but I still need to hear your answer to make a judgment.”
Mo Tan’s gaze towards her grew even stranger, and he asked suspiciously, “Are you really SUN?”
Shuang Ye chuckled: “It’s fine if you don’t believe me. How about you reveal some information, and give me a chance to prove myself?”
“No thanks.” Mo Tan spread his hands: “I just noticed that a large number of false data with very similar conditions suddenly appeared online earlier, so I casually investigated a bit. After realizing they were all meaningless, I didn’t bother with them anymore, but it turns out…”
He snapped his fingers, and half of the life in the universe instantly Disappeared… Apologies, wrong channel…
He snapped his fingers and raised an eyebrow at Shuang Ye: “It turns out I didn’t expect someone to directly follow those lingering traces, and both the tracking methods and some habits were very similar to someone I know. This undoubtedly proves that those false data must have something to do with you, more or less…”
“I understand.” Shuang Ye didn’t wait for him to finish, drooping her small head and saying helplessly, “Then just now you found that I was the only person in the entire area who matched the descriptions of countless false data, so you came to test me with a ‘blind cat’ mentality, and it turns out…”
“You jumped out yourself,” Mo Tan laughed, “Like a pure-hearted little girl accused of puppy love by her teacher, flustered with rage.”
Shuang Ye rolled her eyes: “I never realized you had such a terrible personality, Black.”
“Because we often unconsciously beautify formidable opponents we have never met,” Mo Tan extended his right hand to Shuang Ye, “And if the distance is gone, the originally non-existent idealized mental image is also gone. So, nice to meet you~ Sun~”
Shuang Ye casually slapped Mo Tan’s hand and snorted, “From what you just said, it seems there’s quite a big difference between me and the Sun you had in mind.”
“Life is hard, don’t expose it~” Mo Tan shrugged, “I have no intention of continuing to hurt your self-esteem, buddy… No, should I call you ‘Madam’ now? Or something else?”
Shuang Ye pouted, “Call me whatever you want. Now, let’s move on to the next topic. Have you also tried attacking the Wu Zui Company’s system?”
“Alright, Little Pudding.”
“What did you say?!” Shuang Ye’s already somewhat cloudy expression immediately turned even gloomier.
Mo Tan looked at him innocently: “Didn’t you tell me to call you whatever I wanted?”
“Just keep calling me ‘buddy’,” Shuang Ye said coldly, “So, you also suffered a loss with Wu Zui Company, just like me?”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” Mo Tan suddenly said in a very grim tone, the anger and frenzy on the verge of bursting forth in his voice, intertwined with his indescribably complex demeanor, made Shuang Ye shiver involuntarily.
In the girl’s eyes, the answer was already obvious…
He must have hit a wall just like her, and it seemed he had suffered a considerable blow. Moreover, perhaps due to a man's irrational 'self-esteem,' this guy's sense of frustration seemed much more severe than her own…
【Hmph, serves him right! Who told him to tease me just now? I wonder if the arrogant Mr. Black will feel even worse when he discovers that SUN, who has always been his formidable rival, is a girl like me~】
Shuang Ye thought with a hint of malice.
But in reality, the more she believed that this messy guy in front of her and the intelligent priest named Black Vatican were not the same person, the further Shuang Ye, misled by Mo Tan, drifted from the truth…
From this point on, the tempo shifted.
Mo Tan was, of course, not as angry as he appeared. His slightly agitated demeanor at this moment was more to conceal his desire to burst out laughing. The emotions and expressions he showed Shuang Ye were all fake, all acted out.
Mo Tan’s performance had already begun since his message to Sun earlier in the day.
This included his interaction with the other party while in the Absolute Neutral role, his constant provocations just now, and even the anger he displayed now, like an arrogant eccentric who had suffered a blow in his own domain—all of it was false.
All of this was to clear Shuang Ye’s suspicion of the two entities, ‘Black Vatican’ and ‘Mo Tan’, and to lead her further and further into incorrect judgments…
Now, only one step remained.
“Speaking of which,” Mo Tan rather abruptly changed the subject, “I really didn’t expect you to be playing this game. It seems my previous difficulties regarding the game pods were a bit too presumptuous.”
Shuang Ye also didn’t want to provoke him too much, not because of the ‘soft-heartedness’ that applies to most girls, but because she didn’t want to waste precious probing time on meaningless mutual taunting. After all, who knew when this unpredictable guy would suddenly go offline and Disappearance, so she went along with his words: “Me too~ I didn’t expect you to have time to play games, instead of spending all day with tissues and restricted videos like most of your kind.”
Oh no! It seems I accidentally taunted him again!!!
However, Mo Tan didn't seem to mind this time. Instead, he forced a smile and said, “I think you must have some very subjective misunderstanding about male hackers…”
“No, I just thought you were a shut-in,” Shuang Ye laughed.
The atmosphere suddenly became much more harmonious~~
“Haha, I occasionally go out to feed stray cats and do some charity work~”
“That’s nice~ I heard guys who like to take care of animals are very good at making people feel safe~”
Of course, this was merely a superficial phenomenon. After all, neither of these two was an easy opponent. Although they seemed to be getting along quite well, they were the kind of people who, given the slightest opportunity, could unhesitatingly throw the other into a well with a stone and even cause a few landslides in the process…
However, Shuang Ye was consistently planning to severely trick Mo Tan.
And the latter, only when his personality was in the chaotic neutral state would he have such thoughts, so he was bound to suffer losses. The fact that his weakness was found first was a lesson learned.
If it weren't for the system bug caused by his dissociative identity disorder, Mo Tan, who might have made a misstep and revealed his flaws at some unknown point, might have lost this game first.
When his personality was in the Absolute Neutral state, Mo Tan always felt a little bit of lingering fear whenever he thought about this…
But now him…
He would only feel pure pleasure and excitement~
As long as it brought him pleasure, he wouldn't care if he was shoveling dirt by a ghost's grave or dancing on a knife's edge…
Just have fun!
As a pop-up window appeared in front of Shuang Ye, her last trace of doubt was completely dispelled.
【Player Tan Mo (chaotic neutral) requests to add you as a friend】
“I feel like an idiot,” Shuang Ye muttered softly, then readily accepted Mo Tan’s friend request, and then looked at another name in her friends list.
Friend: Black Vatican (Absolute Neutral)
Even if this guy might also have some issues, or even be a decent hacker, it no longer mattered…
Shuang Ye looked up at the guy in front of her, a smile appearing on her cute, doll-like face.
【Because the biggest, most troublesome, most difficult prey has already appeared~】
She suddenly felt a surge of motivation!
“Even if you’re flattered that I actively added you as a friend, don’t get lost in thought just yet.” Mo Tan’s somewhat annoying voice quickly brought Shuang Ye back from her reverie.
Looking at the somewhat petite orange-haired mage in front of him, he leaned down and whispered into the girl’s ear…
“I want to play a game with you.”
Chapter Sixteen: End