A bizarre and terrifying experience; I messed up the dungeon world.

In the afternoon, she deliberately lingered in the studio until everyone else had left before slowly tidying up her paints.

Sure enough, the sound of approaching footsteps came from behind.

"Han, your drawing has improved a lot today."

Chen Mo stood behind her, even closer than yesterday.

"Thank you, Teacher Chen." Han Yingying turned around and activated the fraudster's active skill. She needed to insert a false message into the conversation to guide the other party to reveal more information.

"I was thinking about this while I was painting today," she said, her tone casual as if she were chatting, "You mentioned a painting in the basement earlier—was that also a student's work? I heard that a student once painted a really amazing painting, but no one has seen him since."

There are three instances of false information in this passage. However, the fraudster's suggestive techniques will cause the target to automatically rationalize the false content.

Chen Mo's expression went blank for a moment, as if a program was processing an exception.

Then he laughed.

"That wasn't drawn by a student," he said. "It was left by the person who drew me."

Han Yingying's skill captured a crucial piece of information—"the person who painted me." In other words, Chen Mo himself was also created through the painting. He wasn't the creator of the painting; he was a product of it. So who was the creator?

"The person who painted you? Then he—"

Chen Mo's smile suddenly froze.

Then his face started to change.

His features seemed to melt like wax, dripping down to reveal another face beneath. A pale, expressionless face with pupils that were entirely black.

"You're lying to me," he said. His voice had changed. It was no longer the warm voice of a young teaching assistant, but a hissing sound, smelling of paint, seeping from beneath the canvas.

Han Yingying took a step back.

The con artist's efforts were exposed. His S-rank, uncanny intelligence far exceeded her assessment—the false information only fooled him for less than ten seconds.

Chen Mo raised his hand. His five fingers transformed into the shape of a paintbrush, the tip of which was covered in thick black ink, and he reached out towards Han Yingying's face.

"Since you're so eager to know," the hoarse voice said, "I'll draw you in so you can see for yourself."

Han Yingying's body reacted instinctively—she stumbled backward, her heels hitting the easel, and she fell backward. Chen Mo's fingers brushed across her forehead, a cool touch brushing against her skin, like someone had splashed cold water on her face.

The easel tipped over. The paint bottles shattered on the floor, splattering red and blue paint everywhere.

Chen Mo did not pursue.

A utility knife flew from the side and pierced his wrist.

Zhou Lang entered through the side door of the studio. He was carrying the chainsaw in one hand—somehow the inventory in the dungeon could fit such a large thing—and had already pressed the switch with the other hand.

The chainsaw emitted a piercing buzz.

Chen Mo looked down at the utility knife on his wrist. The oozing from the blade wasn't blood, but paint. Indigo paint trickled down his arm.

He tilted his head, looked at Zhou Lang, and smiled.

"The students in the sketching class are all very interesting."

His body began to peel away from the incision, like a painting being soaked in water, the paint layers flaked off. A few seconds later, Chen Mo's entire body turned into a pool of complex colors of paint, seeping into the cracks in the floor and disappearing.

The studio fell silent.

Zhou Lang turned off the chainsaw and walked over to look at Han Yingying's forehead. She reached out and touched it, her fingertips touching a small patch of black.

"He ran into you." Zhou Lang's tone was flat, but his actions were quick—he took something out of his inventory and wiped it on her forehead.

It's turpentine. A solvent used in art studios to dilute oil paints.

"Luckily, it was just a little bit." Zhou Lang put the turpentine away. "If he had finished painting it, you would have ended up like the bald guy."

Han Ying's legs went weak for a moment, but she quickly regained her composure and organized her thoughts.

"I got some information out of him," she said. "Chen Mo said he didn't paint that picture; he said, 'It was left by the person who painted me.' He himself is a character created."

"The creator." Zhou Lang pulled the craft knife from the puddle of paint on the ground and wiped it on the canvas of the easel. "The core of this instance is not Chen Mo, but the creator."

"But who is the creator? Is he dead? Or is he one of the twelve of us?"

"Eleven now," Zhou Lang corrected her.

Right.

It was almost dark when the two left the studio. Han Yingying had wiped the black marks off her forehead, but her skin still felt strangely tight, as if something was trying to take shape beneath it.

"You can't be alone tonight." Zhou Lang said this as he reached the top of the stairs without turning his head.

Han Yingying caught up with him: "What do you mean?"

"He touched you and left a mark. Tonight, the sound of that painting won't leave your door; it will go inside."

"What should we do then?"

"Come to my room."

Han Ying paused for a moment.

Zhou Lang noticed and glanced back at her. His expression was indifferent, as if he were asking "Want to go to the cafeteria?" rather than "Come to my room."

"I've already treated the walls of room 205," he said. "I used turpentine to dissolve all the paint from the underlying canvas. That room is now the only space in the entire building that isn't inside a painting."

"...When did you do this?"

"last night."

How could this guy go out and do construction work last night, despite the rustling noise filling the corridor? Han Yingying looked at Zhou Lang's calm face and didn't know whether to call him audacious or crazy.

Both are possible.

That night, Han Yingying moved her pillow and blanket to room 205. The room was indeed different from the other rooms—the walls were bare gray cement, with traces of turpentine everywhere, and the air was filled with a pungent chemical smell.

Zhou Lang gave her the bed and moved a chair to sit by the door.

Aren't you going to sleep?

"I'll guard the door."

Han Yingying lay on the bed wrapped in a blanket, facing the wall. She couldn't sleep. Too many things had happened today; her mind was a jumbled mess.

"Zhou Lang".

"Um."

"How long have you been investigating that bug?"

There was a moment of silence.

"Three months."

"What did you find out?"

Silence followed again. So long that Han Yingying thought he wasn't going to answer.

"The appearance of high-level anomalies in low-level dungeons isn't a system error." His voice came softly from the doorway. "Someone is putting things into the dungeons."

"Who?"

"I don't know. But every time I find out a little bit, the difficulty of the next dungeon I enter jumps up ridiculously. It's like something is stopping me."

Han Ying turned over, looking at his silhouette as he sat in the chair with his back to her. A rustling sound came from the hallway, stopping precisely at door 205. It stopped for a long time. But it didn't come in.

Zhou Lang's room became the only safe zone.

"Why do you need to investigate?" she asked.