Doomsday Carnival Chapter 1

1th Subway Station and Clown

The summer of 2093 is surprisingly short.

At the end of April, the temperature is gradually rising, yet, it was still not too hot for a few months when an early autumn rain arrived, beating down the temperature until it can no linger lifts its head.

In front of the wailing wind and the weeping rain, there are even less people who goes out.

Li Yi Ning stood the the subway, one hand grasping the handrails and using the other hand to hold the wet umbrella.

In the peak hours, there definitely won’t be any seats available, Li Yi Ning tries to keep his balance and stared towards the other compartments. The train slowly rocks with the ryhtm of the subway, with warm yellow light giving off a magical feeling.

Boom–

The subway is moving.

His eyes landed on a woman dressed in a sophisticated fashion. She seems to feel the stare as she unconciously lifts her head but her eyes did not stay on Li Yi Ning’s face. With a blank expression, she looked around in a circle before bowing her head, staring at her phone. The mobile phone is on a forum page. She quickly typed in the reply column and knocked down four words. Your mother is dead.

There are many people here but there is not too many noise. Everyone seemed to be more accustomed to shouting themselved hoarse in the internet.

Especially in the frequent cases of disappearance today. None of the victims have ever returned.

‘Drink today while drink you may,’ just live in the moment, worry about yourself and others tomorrow.

“The train is moving. Please stand firm and secure. Arriving infront of the station…”

With the false and cheerful female voice ringing in the car, the subway arrived in the station, stopped, and moved forward again.

There are now more people in the car.

Li Yi Ning struggled to keep his balance. He pulled out his phone from his pocket, hearing it ring just now, if he did not heard it wrong.

There’s an extra app on his homescreen.

He doesn’t know when he accidentally pressed a spam ad, and tried to press the icon to uninstall the app. But unexpectedly, the screen went dark.

The, immediately as the screen lights up, a bright and dazzling clown suddenly appeared, as if trying to rush out of the screen.

Li Yi Ning frowned and pressed the phone. He is currently standing and its not convenient to manage his phone. He decided to deal with it in the next station but he did not expect that at that exact moment, a brisk sound echoed in his ears.

“Doomsday Assistant intallation is complete.”

What was that? Li Yi Ning felt that he just heard a hallucination.

He pressed the phone again, opened the app and saw a clean and refreshing interface. The top avatar bar has his picture–a much better one than any photo he’d ever taken due to his crappy selfie technique, with a few lines next to the avatar.

Li Yi Ning : 26 years old

Rank : 0 (Experience Value 0/150)

The following column has an empty resume and there seemed to be something further down but Lin Yi Ning didn’t checked it. On the right side of the app, a second screen shows a backpack interface with 10 empty grids. There is a forum which is divided into several areas like small talk, tradings and so on. The bottom of the latest post list have been refreshed, titled: What’s is this thing? How can this app not be removed.

Lin Yi Ning certainly have no idea.

Not knowing what to make of the strange situation, Lin Yi Ning looked around, the lively and noisy crowd gave him a sense of security. The day’s work have exhausted him, and he was more inclined to go home and sleep after eating dinner rather than dwell on what had suddenly arisen.

However, the train have long arrived in the station but the door has not opened yet.

“What the hell?” Someone whispered a word of complain.

Uneasiness gradually spread in the crowd then the lights in the subway went out. A few rays of light shone through the glass doors, illuminating the faces of everyone giving a hint of illusion.

With a bang, the lights all brightened up and before people reacted, they were surprised to find that the metal car became a transparent glass.

On the opposite side, they can clearly see another subway car full of passengers looking at them with the same nervous eyes.

There were no passengers waiting to embark between the two subway car, no staff to maintain order, even the elevators was gone.

Immediately, they were surprised to find that they were getting farther and farther apart, the middle space between the two growing rapidly. Gradually, the original hall became three times larger than before.

A man with a clown mask fell from the sky.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” He announced.

Lin Yi Ning found that the man looked a little familiar. Then he quickly reacted. Its the clown he saw in the app he just downloaded.

“This is the game developed by the Ma22 Galaxy Smile Company with the chinese name Doomsday Carnival. The beta has just ended and you are the first batch of players.”

“I’m the game’s GM and your novice guide. You can call me Clown.” said Clown, eyes darkening with a little mockery.

The crowd was in an uproar.

“I am also a core technology within the game, an AI. If you can survive, we will meet often.” The Clown tilted his head and laughed. “Lets introduced the rules of the game now. Doomsday Carnival is an unrestricted escape game. You can upgrade by clearing a copy. At full level, you can take on the final challenge. Complete the final challenge and you can leave the game. As for the other rules, there are none.”

“Here is the copy of King City Chengxi Subway Station and what you’re going to do is very simple. After killing another player, you will get a ticket to get out, or you can also kill them—”

Slowly rising around him are five tables, each with an animal on top: a vulture, a monkey, a wolf, a crocodile and a bear.

Each animals are similar to the creatures in earth but not exactly the same, each one looking at the crowd with malice. The monkey looked on, interested, baring its teeth at the crowd and also doing a very humanized cut throat action.

The clown bowed again gracefully, “Get to know each other. After all, you will all have a very intimate relationship that you never had in your life in the next few hours.”

When his voice fell, all the five animals roared.

In addition to that, no other sound was heard and there was only dead silence.

Suddenly, the vulture moved. It grabbed somebody from the inside of the train, her cellphone still in camera mode. The monkey also sprang out and lifted a man out of the crowd.

“Very well. You seemed very keen to participate in this game.” The Clown said. “Let me all show you the rules of the game.”

The woman, who looked flustered and pale, said: “I don’t know who you are, what is the purpose of your prank but I have already called the police and they will come soon. You better not have any idea.”

The monkey was lying on the clown’s shoulder giggling, laughing with full mockery. Indeed, I am afraid that even the woman herself doesn’t believe her own word. After all, the metal compartment became a transparent glass in a blink of an eye which is enough to make people uneasy.

“I didn’t do anything!” The man shouted.

“I just hate thieves.” The clown smiled and with a wave of his hand, a pillar rose from the ground. The man flew out of thin air, tied to the pillar.

A knife appeared on the woman’s hand.

Lin Yi Ning keenly observed that after the woman held the knife, her movements seemed to be no longer under her control.

She held the knife, going forward step by step. The man tied to the pillar now have glazed eye and shook his head desperately but the woman seemed more miserable than him. “Help… somebody help me… I don’t want to kill anyone…”

No one wants to come forward after her.

Her arm tremble but he feet still moved forth firmly, and the knife reached the thief.

Clean, beautiful and deadly. This knife shouldn’t belong in a city of white collar workers.

Fortunately, the thief died quickly and didn’t suffer too much.

After his death, the blood on the ground, together with the corpse, slowly turned into light spot and gathered together to form a group of light/light group(guan tuan).

The clown stepped forward and reached hand towards the group of light and took a temporary subway ticket that they knew nothing about.

But the things printed on the magnetic card turned into a few distorted words.

“Kill a person and you get a ticket out. Kill one of my little friends and you can get five tickets. When they all dies, all the people can leave.” The clown said.

“Relax, don’t be so tense. This is the novice field, it will not be difficult…”

He placed the magnetic card into the woman’s hand and whispered in her ears, “Learning to kill is the first thing needed to survive here. You did very well.”

“All right, take your loot and go. You deserve it…”

Regaining control of her body, the woman snapped out of her trance and tremble before letting out a shrill scream.

The wolf then rushed out the bit off the woman’s neck.

“Very noisy.” The clown shook his head and said with a smile.

“They won’t attack you for five minutes after the barrier is broken, you can make your choice.”

“Well, if there’s no other problem. Let’s start the game.”