Marry the NPC with Money, Wife Comes Knocking - Chapter 118

Chapter 118

After they left on the bus, more people arrived at the bus stop.

Two male players approached together, looking around warily. They waited for a long while, but nothing happened.

One of them spoke up. “Didn’t the prompt say there would be NPCs guarding this place? Every house has its doors shut. Are they still inside?”

“It’s not like we’re supposed to take the initiative and knock, right?”

All players had received a notification from the scenario system. They were required to come here to interact with the NPCs and convince them to drive the buses out to take them to the Inner Domain.

NPCs were Anomalies; if the interaction went poorly, their lives would be in danger.

But now, even the NPCs were gone, leaving them without a vehicle to depart in.

They hesitated on the spot, and after a while, more people arrived.

Wen Mo had also followed the prompt here, but the two people in front of him didn’t look like NPCs. “Are you players?”

The man nodded and said, “We didn’t see any NPCs when we got here.”

Fang Ge and Yi Shuang arrived late. “Hi, everyone’s here.”

There were five players present in total, likely the only survivors of this dungeon.

Yi Shuang scanned the surroundings. Hua Suihe and Ye Susheng were not here, and she immediately understood why.

The two men discussed climbing the walls to see if the NPCs were there. “Hey, there are five of us. Should we go check the NPCs’ houses? Just waiting here isn’t going to solve anything. We’re finished if we wait until dark.”

Yi Shuang interjected calmly, “You won’t find them for a while.”

Yi Shuang was a perennial rank one on the leaderboard. Although she wasn’t social, it didn’t mean other players didn’t recognize her. Her words carried an inherent weight of authority.

But this wasn’t good news. The man instantly became anxious. “Then what do we do? We can’t leave without a car. We won’t reach the Inner Domain on foot before dark, will we?”

“It’s over sixty kilometers from here to the Inner Domain.” Yi Shuang checked the time and estimated the running duration. At a normal jogging pace, they could reach the city before nightfall.

Ignoring the others, Yi Shuang looked at the girl beside her. “Can you run?”

Fang Ge’s eyes widened, and she asked uncertainly, “Are we going to run there?”

Yi Shuang wasn’t joking at all, her tone remaining serious as she asked, “Without the help of a talisman card, purely on physical strength-can you do it?”

“I… think so?” At this point, Fang Ge could only choose to believe in herself.

Wen Mo noticed their conversation and asked, “Are you really planning to run there?”

“What else? Stay here and wait to die?” Fang Ge felt a surge of fighting spirit and began stretching on the spot, preparing for the run.

Yi Shuang didn’t stay idle either and began to warm up.

The men still held a sliver of hope and climbed over someone’s wall. Finding no people and no vehicles, they had no choice but to start moving their legs.

Fang Ge and Yi Shuang ran in front. As people who had been through several dungeons, their physical stamina was decent, and they didn’t feel too tired after the initial start.

After running five kilometers, Fang Ge’s steps grew heavy. She felt as if she couldn’t lift her legs anymore. She was drenched in sweat, and her vision was becoming a bit blurry.

Back in the day, she was the type of student who nearly died just from the 800-meter physical fitness test. Being able to run this long was already a massive improvement, but it was truly exhausting. She wanted to stop.

Yi Shuang noticed her tendency to slow down and adjusted her pace to stay level with her. “Control your breathing. You’ve run five kilometers, but the finish line is still far away. You can’t stop now.”

Fang Ge gritted her teeth and didn’t speak. She lengthened her stride slightly and continued running forward at a steady pace.

The men ran a bit faster, overtaking them to stay in front, though they would run for a while and then stop for breaks when they got tired.

After another half hour of running, Fang Ge’s face turned pale, and her lips lost their color. She didn’t know how much further they had gone, but no matter how tenacious her willpower was, it could no longer support her forward momentum. She slowed down and began to walk.
Seeing her stop, Yi Shuang also slowed down to walk alongside her, asking with concern, “Are you doing okay?”

Fang Ge’s throat felt like it was on fire. She shook her head wearily and said weakly, “You go on ahead… don’t worry about me…”

Yi Shuang didn’t catch what she said and, worried she might just collapse on the spot, kept urging her, “Keep moving. Don’t stop.”

“Take a breath, walk slowly.” Yi Shuang pulled a water bottle from her bag, took a small sip herself, and screwed the cap back on.

“Drink once you’ve caught your breath. We can rest for half an hour before heading out again.”

After a few minutes, Fang Ge finally managed to recover. She didn’t dare drink too much, taking only a single sip before handing the bottle back to Yi Shuang. “Can we make it to the Inner Domain?” she asked, her voice raspy.

“If the time flow remains normal, we have more than enough time. Don’t worry.”

“Are we more than a fifth of the way there?”

Yi Shuang made a mental estimate and shook her head. “We’ve covered about a sixth. If we maintain the pace we just had, we can finish the run in six hours.”

Upon hearing this, Fang Ge’s aching legs turned to lead. She looked around for a pillar to lean against, but finding nothing, she could only cling to Yi Shuang’s arm. “People only get more tired the longer they run…” she said feebly.

“Sister Shuang, don’t you feel tired?”

“I’m alright.”

Yi Shuang was a regular in these dungeons; she spent as much time in them as Ye Susheng spent at work. To better survive the dungeons, she spent her rare days off exercising and building her stamina. To her, this was essentially a one-day marathon-nothing too stressful.

“Well… you’re really amazing then…”

Yi Shuang supported her swaying body. “Just don’t faint on me. If I have to carry you, it’ll be quite a struggle.”

Fang Ge forced herself to take a step. “I won’t hold you back.”

Yi Shuang caught her in time, her tone light. “Alright, rest for a bit. There’s no rush; it’s not even noon yet.”

Fang Ge counted the hours. “That means there’s at least seven hours until six in the evening.”

Yi Shuang shattered her illusions. “We can’t waste time. It gets dark early around here.”

Fang Ge withered.

Her talk of giving up was just talk; this was a life-or-death situation. The shifting shadows were the footsteps of the Reaper in pursuit; she couldn’t just quit.

Finally, just as they reached the edge of the desert, the notification that they had cleared the dungeon rang in her mind. The sun was just beginning to sink behind the desolate mountains in the west.

Fang Ge’s knees buckled, and she fell forward with her eyes closed.

Yi Shuang instinctively reached out to catch her, but as luck would have it, players who cleared a dungeon were immediately teleported back to their own homes. Her hands grasped at empty air, and she suddenly found herself standing in her own living room.

Fang Ge’s collapse ended with her kneeling on the soft carpet of her own home.

They had cleared it. She hadn’t even had the chance to say anything heartfelt to Yi Shuang; it was all because the boundary at the edge of the desert was too vague, and she hadn’t dared to stop and say goodbye.

Still somewhat conscious, Fang Ge pushed herself up and walked several laps around her living room to let her racing heart settle down.

The phone on the coffee table rang. Fang Ge fumbled for it and, seeing it was Yi Shuang calling, quickly swiped to answer.

Yi Shuang’s voice came through the line: “I saw you fall just now and thought you might have fainted. I’m calling to check on you.”

Fang Ge tried to speak, but no sound came out of her strained throat. She managed a raspy whisper: “I’m okay.”

Yi Shuang heard her and gave a hum of affirmation. “Don’t gulp down too much water yet. Just take small sips to moisten your throat.”

“Okay.”

Yi Shuang shared a few more post-exercise precautions and told her to get some good rest before hanging up.