Pei Guang pulled Firefly into the trash can he had prepared.
Inside, Firefly asked nervously: "Will this really not get us caught?"
Pei Guang: "No, no~ As long as you don't climb into a container right in front of your pursuer, you'll never get caught. At most, it's just a false alarm! This is player experience talking!"
Of course, sometimes player experience could go astray, but when that happened, Pei Guang naturally had countermeasures. For now, if he could catch the enemy easily, there was no need to make a move too early.
Meanwhile, Sparkle, disguised as Sampo, used her own methods to enter the Studios Theme Park.
Following the "scent" she had marked on Pei Guang, she arrived and spotted the white plastic-lawn chair Pei Guang had left behind.
Even Sparkle couldn't help but whistle when she saw it: "A chair filled with power!"
Her gaze was locked onto the chair, and she wanted nothing more than to let her backside have intimate contact with it.
At that moment, Sparkle couldn't help but think: Could my warm butt heat up the cold chair?
Improper thoughts popped into her mind, and as a Masked Fool, she immediately noticed something was wrong with herself—and with the chair.
Unfortunately, though she was a Masked Fool, she was still within the chair's "capture" range. In fact, being a Fool might even make the effect stronger?
In that instant, there was no Masked Fool anymore: only a cute girl who desperately wanted to sit in that chair.
With Sampo's face, she walked forward in an odd gait.
The chair looked so plain and ordinary, but she just wanted to sit on it, to experience this strange power from another world.
Closer. Even closer. When she was less than five meters away, she suddenly felt her foot slip.
Dog poop? Is there dog poop in the dream world?
Questions popped into Sparkle's head.
She instinctively glanced down and saw a yellow banana peel under her foot. She actually felt relieved.
"Praise the God of Mischief! No dog poop in the dream world, only banana peels."
Wait… banana peel???
Sparkle shuddered. She quickly looked around, only to see the ground covered in banana peels.
She had seen Pei Guang use banana peels to make hovercrafts spin out of control. A premonition hit her: if she lifted her other foot, she would definitely start spinning like those vehicles.
"Hmph! Trying to deal with me? Too naive."
She admitted this player had some tricks, but who was she? She was the one and only Sparkle!
Even if it was a player, she—
But just as she tried to pull her foot back, she realized there was no safe place left to step. Somehow, banana peels were everywhere around her feet.
That was when she noticed the trash can nearby: banana peels were constantly being tossed out from it. They weren't thrown directly at her, but around her, cutting off every escape route.
In the blink of an eye, five or six more peels had landed. Already with no footing, now it was completely impossible to move.
Balancing on one leg, she suddenly imagined a bespectacled old man asking her: "Survive or be destroyed, there is no other choice."
She didn't know why she saw that scene, but she knew one thing: she had been outplayed.
And how could a trash bin spit out banana peels? Well, because Firefly was inside.
With her deadly accuracy, every peel she tossed landed perfectly, and while Sparkle was pondering her life, the ground around her was already paved over.
"Damn it! So this is what Sampo meant by being close friends?"
About that… Sampo hadn't lied. Ever since he and Pei Guang had a serious talk, the two had built a strong friendship.
No exaggeration, if old Sampo really got into trouble someday, Pei Guang would feel obliged to lend a hand.
After all, the guy was a walking loot drop! And the quality was always high.
Seele's stuff, Dan Heng's stuff, and all sorts of goodies had come from Sampo. For that reason alone, Pei Guang couldn't let anything happen to him.
Sparkle prepared to retreat, but the moment she tried, she suddenly realized someone was behind her.
She instinctively turned her head, only to see Pei Guang, who had somehow appeared without her noticing, standing there with a stick aimed at her backside.
Sparkle froze.
How had Pei Guang snuck up on her without her noticing?
Looking at the stick in his hand, she swallowed nervously. With Sampo's face, she forced a smile: "My dear~ Long time no see, I—"
Before she could finish, Pei Guang jabbed the stick hard into her butt cheek.
He had originally wanted to use "Thousand Years of Death" on this fake Sampo, but with Firefly watching, he decided that was too much and just poked the butt instead.
Of course, in Pei Guang's eyes, this wasn't a pretty girl: it was Sampo.
No matter who was pretending, poking Sampo's butt was a tradition worth carrying on.
Sparkle's eyes widened.
She hadn't expected Pei Guang's speed to be so fast, striking without even a word of interrogation—and straight to her butt???
The jab knocked her off balance, and her weight shifted onto the banana peel.
The moment her weight hit the peel, she went down.
She tried to control her body, but it was useless.
With the ground already paved with banana peels, her fall only sent her sliding into more of them. She began spinning across the ground.
"!!!"
The world spun around her.
For so many years, she had always been the one playing others, but now Pei Guang was the one playing her.
She refused to accept it, but no matter what, she could do nothing.
She spun. She couldn't jump. She couldn't even close her eyes.
She was experiencing the irresistible crowd-control effect of banana peels—no accuracy check required. With no shield and no special items, all she could do was fall, spin, and scramble up again among the countless peels.
At least this was the dream world. In reality, by now Sparkle's face would already be bruised and swollen.
"Damn it! Damn it!"
Sparkle was unwilling to accept this.
Twice now, without doing anything, she had been taken down by Pei Guang first.
She wanted to say something, because she knew as long as she spoke, Pei Guang would definitely be interested.
"My dear~ don't toy with me~ let me go, I'll take you to play some adult—"
Before she could finish, Pei Guang grabbed her chin and poured coffee down her throat.
It was clear Pei Guang wasn't going to let go of someone disguised as Sampo.
First, he had already marked her as an enemy. Second, she dared to impersonate Sampo? Since she was pretending, he might as well test whether she could "drop loot."
But the moment Pei Guang emptied that bottle of coffee into her, his expression froze.
"Damn it! Wrong coffee!"
Looking at the bottle with Himeko's portrait on it, he clutched his chest in pain.
"No! My coffee—my Himeko special brew!!!"
Since they were both coffee, he had stored Himeko's coffee together with his own: to distinguish it, Himeko's had her portrait on the bottle.
This was coffee Himeko had promised him before.
Because he hadn't completed missions and hadn't returned to the Express, she hadn't given him much, just a portion she carried with her.
He had just placed it with the others, and out of habit, when he grabbed a bottle to feed Sparkle, he hadn't checked carefully.
Only when he saw Himeko's big portrait on the label did Pei Guang feel like his heart was being torn apart.
This was Himeko's coffee.
Unlike the endless sleep-inducing coffee, Himeko's could be slightly "enhanced" to torment people., inflicting pain without any side effects. With the right additives, it was the king of coffees.
Even without using it for torture, a sip was an experience.
Players didn't care if something tasted good, as long as it could be consumed.
But now, before he could savor Himeko's coffee himself, he had just wasted a bottle on someone pretending to be Sampo.
It hurts! That's too painful!
Unlike his own coffee, which was unlimited, Himeko's brew was rare. Her hand-ground beans were precise, her free time limited: every bottle was precious.
Staring at the nearly empty bottle, Pei Guang sorrowfully licked the last drops. Even a little bit made his esophagus burn.
That was enough to prove it was Himeko's special:no one else could make ordinary coffee hurt like this!
And now one of his few bottles had been wasted on this faker.
Meanwhile, Sparkle's mind was spinning like a lantern reel.
A memory of her conversation with Sampo.
Sampo: "Don't worry~ the player's a good guy. His coffee might make you drowsy, but it's rich and fragrant. Drink it and you'll dream of purple century eggs! Just imagine: purple century eggs! If I didn't have other business, I'd drink his coffee every day."
Sparkle: "Huh? It's that good?"
Sampo: "Trust me! You know me—I, old Sampo, might fool others, but I'd never fool you~"
Then Sparkle had received more "intel" on Pei Guang. But whether coffee or anything else, it was all wrong.
Completely wrong.
Delicious coffee? All she felt was her throat burning, her stomach ready to explode.
Sampo had said it would put her to sleep—but instead, it left her wide awake, wracked with pain.
In her suffering, she looked over and saw Pei Guang suffering too. She couldn't understand: why was he in pain?
And this was supposed to be good coffee? Next time she saw Sampo, she'd make sure he drank it himself.
At that moment, Himeko's coffee scored a double kill: Sparkle's body broken, Pei Guang's heart broken.