They boarded the subway, found empty seats, and sat down in unusually heavy silence.

They had broken a record. By all rights they should have been overjoyed — but this record had so wildly exceeded any reasonable expectation that their feelings at this moment, alongside elation, were mostly stunned disbelief and a vague sense of unreality.

Yuri in particular was full of questions. He very much wanted to corner Bai Youwei and get a straight answer — but with other passengers aboard the train, he could only hold his tongue for now.

He finally waited until they were back at the villa. Yuri was on the verge of speaking when Bai Youwei moved faster, darting back to her room without wasting a single second!

A moment later, the sound of running water came from the bathroom, followed by the bathroom door clicking firmly shut.

Natasha rubbed her arms, turned, and headed toward her own room. “I need a shower… I feel like I reek of toilet cleaner…”

Ada burst out laughing at that. “You spent half the day spraying toilet cleaner — of course you smell! I’m going to wash up too!”

Within a few sentences, they had all dispersed to clean themselves up.

Shen Mo passed behind Yuri, noticed him standing there in a daze, and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“…Nothing.” Yuri shook himself back to the present. “I was going to ask about the score. With our score jumping this high, it’s only a matter of time before other people start paying attention. But right now I haven’t got any clear idea of the reason — the only clues I can think of are the change in the mutant count and the change in our combat strength……”

He paused mid-sentence and looked up at Shen Mo. “Forget it, let me think it over. Go clean up too. We’ll talk over dinner.”

Shen Mo gave a slight nod. “Alright.”

……

Dinner was a precisely calibrated nutritional meal prepared by the doll servants.

It probably should have been a proper celebration — rich dishes, good wine, the works.

But they had been so thoroughly battered by the stench of the mutants and the acrid bite of the toilet cleaner that they were in no mood to be picky. They reached for the lightest foods they could find to fill their stomachs.

Toast, mixed green salad, edamame, corn, multigrain porridge……

Bai Youwei dropped two mint candies into her own bowl of rice porridge.

From Shen Mo’s perspective, this was a thoroughly bizarre way to eat.

“Next time you all go into a dungeon, I won’t be going,” she said, stirring her porridge listlessly with her spoon. “Every time I close my eyes right now, all I see are those eggs and that slime… it was absolutely revolting. I’ll stay home and wait for you all instead.”

Yuri glanced at her thoughtfully, wondering to himself whether this was her way of saying she had accomplished what she came to accomplish and could gracefully withdraw.

Ada, sitting across from her, teased, “Staying home sounds so boring. Besides, the next dungeon might not even have monsters — just come with us. Who knows, maybe you’ll find other uses for things, like hand sanitizer, or laundry detergent, hahaha……”

Bai Youwei let out a dismissive snort and curled her lip. “Even without monsters, there’ll still be scenes of blood and carnage.”

“Whatever the case, we really owe this high score to Youwei,” Natasha said with a smile. “Even if using toilet cleaner was a little ridiculous — maybe… well, I think maybe that’s exactly why we scored so high.”

“Mm……” Yuri was pensive, his voice measured. “In the underground parking garage — designing that chain explosion and using the elevator as a delivery method was also an excellent idea. It had the element of total surprise.”

Bai Youwei immediately sat upright and fixed Yuri with wide eyes. “Captain — you don’t actually think I did all that on purpose, do you?”

“Now that you put it that way……” Ada chuckled. “It does look rather deliberate — you kept drawing more and more monsters in.”

Bai Youwei’s face filled with an expression of deep wronged innocence. “How could that possibly be?! If I had done it on purpose, I would have told you all in advance. How could I just throw everyone into a fire pit without a word?! We hit so many unexpected situations — nobody can guarantee they’ll make it out every single time. What if someone got hurt along the way? Would I be so selfish — to risk my teammates’ safety, let everyone get caught up in danger and be scrambling and fighting for their lives — do I look like that kind of person?”

Yuri: “……”

Ada: “……”

Natasha: “……”

Shen Mo was quiet for a moment, then cleared his throat softly and said, “Let’s eat.”

—