Dice In The Darkness: Cthulhu Calls
Chapter 568: Mirror World (Middle)

Chapter 568: Mirror World (Middle)

Zhang Wenbing nodded and said, "Well, let me start by talking about the two modules I experienced. The first module was the first formal module I entered after entering the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall. At the time, my identity was a new outer disciple of the China Dao Sect, who was arranged to receive unified training at a certain university in the Magic Capital. Then my player and a few others were assigned to the same dormitory, which was a notorious haunted dormitory where several students had mysteriously disappeared without a trace, so the school had closed it for a long time, until our arrival as training students caused the dormitory to be reopened and provided to us for accommodation.

Of course, the main quest for our group of players at the time was to uncover the truth behind the haunted dormitory, so we began to investigate the situation in the haunted dormitory. We soon gathered a lot of information, including a message sent by a missing student to his girlfriend, saying that he had got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and when he came out of the bathroom, he was surprised to find that all the other people who had been sleeping well in the dormitory had disappeared, and the guitar that had been hanging on his bedside had moved to the opposite bedside. However, still half-asleep at the time, he thought it was just because he had opened the door incorrectly, so he went back into the bathroom and opened the door again, and everything in the dormitory had returned to normal. So that male student later thought it was just a hallucination caused by not being fully awake... And then that male student mysteriously disappeared a month after sending that message, and because he had already broken up with his girlfriend at the time, his ex-girlfriend did not reveal the incident of that message, until I made a lucky big success roll to uncover this information.

So my player and the others guessed that the key to unraveling the mystery of the haunted dormitory was that bathroom, so we made some preparations and entered that bathroom in the middle of the night. And when we left that bathroom, we found ourselves in the Mirror World, and the dormitory in this Mirror World was exactly the same as the one in our real world, except that everything in the dormitory was reversed, and outside the window was only a thick, indistinguishable mist. Seeing this situation, my player and the others knew that we had apparently come to a terrible place, so we planned to directly leave the Mirror World and return to the real world, since we had already learned the truth about the haunted dormitory and could now complete the main quest.

Unfortunately, things did not go as planned. This Mirror World was easy to enter but difficult to leave for us players. We initially tried to imitate the approach of that male student to re-enter the bathroom and exit, but found that this trick didn’t work at all. So we could only discover a problem after going through various judgments: that was, the dormitory in the Mirror World was missing an important item - the Bagua mirror originally hanging on the dormitory doorframe. So we understood that to leave the Mirror World, we must find that Bagua mirror, and we began by searching for it in the dormitory. We found a fragment of the Bagua mirror, and judging from the size of that fragment, we still needed to find two more fragments of the Bagua mirror. So we had to leave our own dormitory, and soon we found another fragment of the Bagua mirror at the stairwell on the same floor, while also hearing footsteps coming from upstairs.

Although we all knew that going upstairs would definitely be dangerous, we also knew that the last fragment of the Bagua mirror must be upstairs, so we had no choice but to go upstairs. There we found a person who was almost completely mummified, but his mind was still very clear, and he was the same male student who had sent the message. He provided us with a lot of information, such as the last fragment of the Bagua mirror being on the roof of the dormitory building, and there was a group of human-faced rats on the roof that would attack anyone who came up there, and those killed by these rats would also become their companions.

In addition, he also told us that in the Mirror World, people would get hungry very quickly, and if they didn’t leave the Mirror World in a short time, they would become like him - neither human nor ghost, and forever in a state of hunger... But the only benefit was that they would become immortal. And as for the mist outside the dormitory building, he had only seen people go in, but never come back out, and as long as you touched the mist, you would be drawn into it involuntarily, even if five or six people were holding on to you.

After learning about the situation in the Mirror World from that person, we knew we could only go up and deal with those human-faced rats. So we collected some things from the various dormitories and went up to directly confront those human-faced rats. In the end, we managed to obtain the last fragment of the Bagua mirror, because the speed of the human-faced rats in the Mirror World was the same as the slowest player among us, and those human-faced rats could not leave the rooftop. After returning to the dormitory and reassembling the Bagua mirror fragments, we were then teleported back to the real world, but that male student who had become mummified was not teleported back with us."

Hearing this, Liu Xing felt that the dormitory module experienced by Zhang Wenbing was largely similar to the Harvest Shrine module he had experienced, with almost identical settings, such as having to collect certain items before being able to leave the Mirror World, the mythical creatures’ speeds being the same as the slowest player, and the module using hunger as a way to urge the players to complete the module quickly.

Like that layer of mist.

It seems the settings for the Mirror World series of modules are all inherently connected.

At this point, Zhang Wenbing continued, "You should also remember that after completing the module in the Ghoul Area, a MVP player would be selected, and the MVP player could then ask the KP some questions. So when I became the MVP player, I asked the KP about the relationship between the Mirror World and the real world, and the KP told me that the Mirror World is actually just a backup of the real world."

A backup?

Everyone furrowed their brows, not immediately understanding what that meant.

Zhang Wenbing shrugged and said seriously, "As for this ’backup’ term, I didn’t quite understand it either, and was then kicked out of the module by the KP at the time. The next time I entered the module, I found that I had been transferred by the China Dao Sect to become an internal member, and was then dispatched to an internship at a company in the Yunnan-Guizhou region. Of course, this company was actually the China Dao Sect’s most important branch in the Yunnan-Guizhou region, and while I was officially responsible for financial work, I was actually in charge of arranging the day-to-day affairs for the China Dao Sect’s activities in the Yunnan-Guizhou region, and would occasionally take the field to deal with mythical creatures or secret cults, because after all, I was a player, and the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall would certainly not let me just sit back peacefully in the rear. And it was precisely because of this that I got to know many young talents and big shots within the China Dao Sect, so I also asked them about the situation of the Mirror World."

"First was my direct superior, Qin Yi, the main person in charge of the China Dao Sect’s Yunnan-Guizhou region, the nominal boss of that company. His strength, in my opinion, should be on par with the famous Wizards in the Cthulhumyth. And Qin Yi and the hometown of my character card are both in western Hunan, so we have a very good relationship. So I found an opportunity to ask Qin Yi in the module about the situation I encountered during my training in the Magic Capital. Qin Yi directly told me that the reason I was assigned to the Yunnan-Guizhou region was because he had heard about my experience during the training in the Magic Capital, and he was the one who formally introduced the concept of the Mirror World to me. However, even for the China Dao Sect, their understanding of the Mirror World is not extensive, only knowing that there are 450 known mirror points in China, and these mirror points refer to the locations where one can enter the Mirror World."

"But the most important thing is that even though the China Dao Sect knows the specific locations of these mirror points, they are unable to actively open and enter the Mirror World. According to the China Dao Sect’s observations, these mirror points randomly open up, sometimes opening more than 10 times in a single day, and sometimes not opening for over 10 years. But the most important thing is that these mirror points are all located in areas with high human traffic, so the China Dao Sect can only monitor these mirror points for now... Of course, the China Dao Sect has also tried to seal these mirror points, but to no avail."

"But in any case, when the China Dao Sect first confirmed the existence of the Mirror World, they specifically sent people to investigate the situation in the Mirror World, wanting to establish a branch there like in the Dream Realm. However, the China Dao Sect’s people found that the situation in the Mirror World was completely different from the Dream Realm. First, the scope of each mirror point in the Mirror World varies in size, with the largest known mirror point being a small county town, and the smallest being a bathroom. And in each mirror point, there will be and only be one type of mythical creature, and the speed of these mythical creatures is the same as the slowest person who enters the mirror point. Those who enter the Mirror World must not only evade the attacks of these mythical creatures, but also find the important items scattered throughout the Mirror World in order to leave, and even if you enter the Mirror World through the same mirror point, the things you need to find and their scattered locations will be different each time."

"Then there’s the so-called hunger. Depending on the size of the Mirror World, the humans who enter it will faint from hunger within one minute to one day. These people who faint will become a kind of mummy-like existence, forever in a state of hunger and unable to leave the Mirror World, and they also cannot enter the mist that exists in every Mirror World. This is also one of the most important mechanisms of the Mirror World, because I once encountered a player on the forum who fell out of the Mirror World due to being knocked out by hunger, and even after being revived through a module, his character card was still in an unusable state. And he had also asked the customer service of the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall, and the answer he got was that his character card was completely normal and he would eventually be able to use it."

"Later, I also got to know another player who had gone through a Mirror World module together with the previous player. That other player had entered the mist out of disbelief, and he didn’t know how long he had walked in the mist before being suddenly notified by the KP that his module had already failed. But what surprised that player the most was that his character card had not been torn or discarded, but instead been marked as "lost". You know, the character card markings in the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall have basically only ever been "torn" or "discarded", and occasionally a character card may be in an unusable state for certain reasons, but a character card marked as "lost" is, as far as I know, the only one of its kind."

"So in the subsequent modules, I took the time to ask Qin Yi if any of the China Dao Sect NPCs had entered the mist in the Mirror World. Qin Yi told me that indeed, many China Dao Sect NPCs had entered the mist in the Mirror World through various means, such as being tied with ropes, carrying various photographic equipment, or dividing themselves in half and throwing one part in. In the end, these people either involuntarily or voluntarily entered the Mirror World and never returned. But the China Dao Sect was able to discover through various means that the life signs of those NPCs who entered the mist were still normal."

"So now I have a guess about the Mirror World - that everything in the Mirror World should be exactly the same as the real world, but for some unknown reason, the mist has appeared in the Mirror World, dividing it into various interconnected areas, and the areas within the mist are the undeveloped regions. But someday in the future, this mist will completely disappear, and the entire Mirror World will become a whole, evolving into an existence similar to the Dream Realm. However, the origin of the Mirror World is still a mystery. But I think at this point in the Cthulhu RPG, the blame should be shifted to Nyarlathotep, as only Nyarlathotep would likely create a Mirror World out of boredom, and so far, aside from you, Liu Xing, no one else has discovered the presence of any Great Old Ones or Outer Gods in the Mirror World."

Liu Xing nodded, feeling that Zhang Wenbing’s words made some sense.

"Oh right, Zhang-ge, what did you experience in the second module related to the Mirror World?" Zhang Jingxu asked.

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