The moment a player is touched by the mermaid statue, it feels as if something is sucking out their brain. Their eyes roll back, looking as if they're convulsing wildly with whites showing, foam dribbling from the corners of their mouth, limbs slowly curling up, both legs pressed together on the ground twitching and swaying, just like a fish tail thrashing madly after being splashed with boiling water. Their skin turns stiff and pale, gray-black marble patterns like those seen in the mirror by Liam White appear around their eyes, their eyeballs vanish, leaving only the whites covered in those patterns, and the corners of their mouth are rigidly pulled upward.

　　【Player John Easton’s sanity reduced to zero, completely mutated by the monster mermaid statue, game failed】

　　【Player Holly Lewis’s sanity reduced to zero, mutated by the mermaid statue... game failed】

　　【Player Miles Turner... game failed】

　　The small TV screens of the failed players fizzed out with a “zzzt” and went dark, and the people gathered around these little TVs sighed.

　　“Sigh, I knew it, it’s probably still going to be nearly impossible to clear this time, way too hard…”

　　It’s only the first night, the monster has only appeared once, and already about a fifth of the small TVs on the 【Newbie Zone】 TV wall have gone dark. All the screens above, below, left, and right of Liam White have gone out, leaving him alone in a sea of black screens, his face calm as he stared at the door.

Chapter 5: Siren Town

　　Liam White could hear the crisp sound of marble knocking against the door, and at this moment, the doorknob also jiggled twice. Although the door was locked, the doorknob, under the forceful twisting of the mermaid statue outside, made a fragile metallic cracking sound, as if it would break at any moment, and then the mermaid statue outside would force its way in. Even the door itself began to shake.

　　This thing seemed to want to come in. Its deathly pale eyes scanned around Liam White’s room, as if discovering there was no one inside. It seemed to leave Liam White’s door, the doorknob stopped moving, and the outside of the room became silent and still, as if the thing had left.

　　But Liam White still held his breath. He remembered that this thing made a dull sound when it moved—without that sound, something was wrong. The mermaid statue hadn’t left at all; it was most likely still quietly waiting outside his door.

　　It was trying to trick him, luring him out, Liam White thought. He glanced sideways and saw that the peephole, which had returned to the color of the carpet, had suddenly turned back into a protruding white eyeball.

　　That thing was still there!

　　After waiting a while, the thing still seemed unwilling to give up and wanted to come in. The doorknob was suddenly twisted into a protruding, broken shape, teetering as if it would fall off the door at any moment.

　　The mermaid statue outside was about to come in!

　　Some of the viewers in front of Liam White’s TV screen couldn’t bear to watch and closed their eyes.

　　“It’s rare to see such a promising contestant… sigh, what a pity.”

　　“The main thing is, this Siren Town instance is just disgusting. This is nowhere near newbie-level difficulty—throwing newbies in here is just killing them.”

　　“…How could this happen? I had high hopes for him, a player with 100 sanity!”

　　“So what if it’s 100? His other stats are pretty average. In an instance like Siren Town, going in for the first time without knowing anything, not to mention newbies—even veterans who don’t know the mermaid statue’s specific weakness are basically doomed. A newbie would have to be a total monster to clear this…”

　　Liam White’s mind was racing, his breathing slowing down.

　　The game had made it clear: these ghosts and monsters have weaknesses, and players can use those weaknesses to escape from them. So the way to break the deadlock was to find the weakness that limited this thing’s movement.

　　Liam White closed his eyes and recalled the entire process of checking in tonight.

　　As long as it’s a game, there’s always a solution. A game with no solution is trash. Liam White had played horror games for so many years, he was absolutely certain there must have been some hint about the mermaid statue’s weakness.

　　What was it…

　　Liam White calmly began to review every scene where he’d encountered the mermaid statue.

　　The first time was at the fountain outside the hotel. Jeffrey Howard exclaimed that he saw the mermaid statue move. That movement was silent, just following behind the car as it turned. That mermaid statue didn’t look directly at them; it was looking at the water.

　　The second time was in the hotel lobby, with a huge number of mermaid statues, all staring directly at them, but not moving.

　　The third time was in the hotel room. Aside from the huge mermaid statue looking into the mirror, the other mermaid statues all stared at Liam White. After Liam White fell asleep, they started to move. The mirror mermaid moved the fastest, but after Liam White woke up, the statues stopped moving.

　　But clearly, staying awake wasn’t what limited the mermaid statues’ movement, because the one outside the door was already about to break in.

　　The game would never put you in an unsolvable situation. There had to be something on him that could limit the mermaid statue’s movement.

　　It wasn’t something in the room, nor in the hotel. It had to be something Liam White brought with him, because the things in the hotel and the room couldn’t limit the mermaid statue’s movement—the fact that the statue could freely enter and exit Jeffrey Howard’s room proved that.

　　What was it?

　　Mirror… water… sleeping… direct gaze!

　　Liam White knew what it was!