…And somehow, he kept on surviving. Medurio was able to complete shift after shift at the expense of his sleep and sanity.

  The lack of sleep and the constant fear of death had made him lose count of how many nights he had spent at Glown’s Wonderland already… But his shadow employer was starting to grow impatient–Frankly, Medurio had nearly forgotten why he had been here in the first place, with how stressful his shifts were, and the sheer amount of focus required to not be slaughtered…

  Nonetheless, he was going to have to find something to do… He needed to find some space in his head to think about how he was going to explain this to city guard eventually. Right now, his mind was only filled with the ways each clown gal attacked and how to counter them.

  Gelbimi wandered the building in a speedy manner, slowing down and accelerating unexpectedly. She needed to be watched on the cameras for when she would spot the office door… Although not strictly necessary with her, powering down the computer before rushing to hide behind the door was a must.

  As long as he didn’t make too much noise in the process, she would be gone within five seconds at most… It was crucial not to give her any reasons to linger any longer. It was crucial not to tickle her curiosity in the least. The more shifts he went through, the less forgiving the clowns were with the way they moved and the frequency at which they attacked.

  Although the yellow jester-cheerleader was simple to deal with, coupled with the others, she was perhaps the worst of the bunch. If he didn’t catch her at least right as she spotted the office door, he was likely to be a goner.

  Blaunellie stayed in a rather small area of the building, but it was a place filled with hiding spots and which required Medurio to move the cameras to take a look at the entirety of the rooms…

  The blue clown-bard required an extensive amount of attention, just like Gelbimi, she needed to be caught before she did her thing, so that he had time to actually power down his computer before remaining silent and still–She would only listen for a handful of seconds, but during that time, Medurio couldn’t look at any cameras.

  Rosalind and Mimi were in the same boat in terms of requiring attention, but at least the duo was not quite as quick to execute their attack. Medurio had more time to deal with them than the other two.

  Now that the night watcher was more familiar with how to activate other functions through the computer as well, the pink ventriloquist and her animated puppet were actually one of the simplest clown gals to deal with, but the problem remained the same. The amount of attention that needed to be placed upon several clowns who operated in different areas was straining, and forgetting any of them could be fatal.

  Braunlili had the decency of not requiring him to watch her on the cameras, but as time had gone on, she had proven to be one of the most aggressive clowns of the bunch, attacking nearly twice as much as the rest on average, and although easy to avoid, every time she attacked, it would result in time that was spent not watching any cameras.

  These four alone, as they had gotten more and more active, had proven to be difficult to handle, and yet… Medurio had had to deal with more of them as the shifts went on as well.

  The triplets–Klein, Kleinn, and Kleiny–Were especially annoying. All three did the same thing. They would either approach from the door or through the vents, and they required Medurio to use two new functions when they decided to use the latter approach…

  They were so small that they couldn’t actually trigger the opening of the door, even if they banged on it. So locking the door in their face was actually the way to go. However, the problem arose when they decided to crawl into a vent.

  He needed to use a new function, which allowed him to view motion on a map of the VS and subsequently lock down parts of the vents to prevent them from getting close to him. There was a whole manner of strategy about this that he had discovered. After all, Braunlili was also up there, and she would register as much more ‘movement’ than any of the triplets.

  The idea was to use the lockdown function, which couldn’t stop her at all, to bait the giant contortionist into believing that the way being shut down led to the night watcher. She wouldn’t always take the bait, but using this technique, Medurio had been able to significantly reduce the number of attacks he had to endure from her. Which was a lifesaver.

  …As for the triplets, when blocked, they would eventually exit the vents altogether. It was important to note that Zlown had said that if they got into the office, they wouldn’t actually attack him. Instead, they would just start playing a sound that would be louder based on how many of the triplets were inside.

  The louder the sound, the faster the other clown gals would become. Kleiny once managed to sneak into the office, and even with just one, the speed increase had been absolutely awful to deal with. Thankfully, she had only gotten in toward the end of his shift…

  Violettid was–In Medurio’s opinion–The worst one of them. He needed to use another function on the cameras, which was the flash… And he needed to use it on the maximum possible setting to flash her in the eyes as often as possible to make sure she wouldn’t move.

  He wasn’t given much of an explanation by Zlown, but apparently, the violet gal’s light sensors were more sensitive, so repeated strong flashes of light had a tendency to cause her MI to just shut down temporarily–But just that would have been too simplistic.

  Violettid was only so strongly affected because she was sitting in the dark, meaning that flashing her too much would just result in her getting used to it and ignoring the flashes altogether. Medurio had made the mistake once, and he wasn’t going to make it again.

  She was even faster than Gelbimi and could traverse the distance separating the office from her starting point in an absurdly low amount of time. She would act like the cheerleader and not check inside the office, but once she had adapted to the light, she would make this trip constantly. So even if Medurio hid from her every time without fail, the time he would lose doing so would definitely result in him getting killed by another clown gal.

  …Once again, he had only survived because his shift had already been nearly over when it happened.

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  It was unreal how often he had needed nothing but pure luck to survive because of his own mistakes–Or rather, because of the fact that Zlown was intentionally withholding information and being as vague as possible.

  Although he truly believed the short, violet clown to be the worst of the bunch due to the amount of attention she required on top of the rest, she wasn’t the most dangerous to deal with…

  This honour would fall upon Schwarzolie. He hadn’t experienced it since he would be dead otherwise, but Zlown had been very clear on this one.

  Every so often, Medurio would hear the distant echo of music throughout the building. It was his telltale sign to check the camera pointed at the clown-magician’s stage. Schwarzolie would bring out a sheet, stretch it out in front of her, and just–Disappear.

  He had no idea how this magic trick worked, but she would vanish without a trace behind this sheet without fail. From there, he would have to scour through the cameras to find where she had gone, and specifically move the camera to stare directly at her to really show that he knew she was there.

  If he failed to do so within an unknown amount of time. He would just die. Zlown had been quite direct about it. Not finding Schwarzolie meant death… Which made sense, as one time, when Medurio couldn’t find her on the cameras, he had ended up realising that she had actually ended directly behind his back.

  He was told that she did magic tricks–Not actual magic, but in his mind, she was absolutely teleporting. He couldn’t wrap his mind around how she could move around such a big building so quickly otherwise… But he definitely appreciated that she didn’t use this magic ‘trick’ to immediately kill him.

  The biggest problem–Once again–Wasn’t actually finding her and stopping her from killing him, it was having to drop everything else to focus on only her. Distraction was the real killer in this nightmarish wonderland…

  Weissecilia, the sleepy gal, was a constant threat from the very moment she had been introduced into his torment. She was deathly quiet and was far too proficient at hiding from the cameras… The good and bad thing about her was that she wasn’t just trying to get to his office. She actually cared about how much noise came from the office itself–Including both noises he himself made, the computer made, and whatever noises the other clown gals could make.

  She would get closer and closer as she heard noise, but she wouldn’t actually tear his face off upon getting to the office–He was allowed a few ‘warnings’ before anything bloody happened.

  At first, he would lock the door when she arrived, only hearing a faint voice through the door… Telling him that it was time to go to sleep and that he shouldn’t be awake at this hour, but remembering that Zlown liked to be mysterious, he remembered the MI’s words carefully, and realised that it was actually better not to lock the door and let Weissecilia into the room.

  Why? So that he could apologise and ask for some leniency–It was surprisingly effective. Of course, it took time to do so. Thus, he couldn’t always do it, but it seemed to actually work and sort of ‘refresh’ the white clown’s patience.

  It was a bit awkward because she would talk to him as if he were a child… Her voice was oddly calming as well. He would always feel better after hearing her speak. There was no doubt that she did an excellent job during daytime hours.

  Lastly… There were the twins from the box. The pastel-coloured, thin and tall clown girls–Medurio found them to be quite freaky-looking, especially in the darkness of the night, but even when he left and saw them illuminated by sunlight, he couldn’t help but find them a bit disturbing… For some reason, unlike the others, they seemed malicious even past the end of the shift.

  All of the other gals would return to normal once it was time for the day watcher to arrive, but not them. They would stare at Medurio as he left, as if plotting against him.

  No need to say, the night watcher did not like them at all, and the way they attacked was quite the hassle.

  In general, the clown gals operated in similar manners, even if the precise method varied… They demanded that Medurio pay close attention to them and sought to waste his time so as to give the kill opportunity to another one of them.

  As dangerous as they may be, however, they still allowed Medurio to multitask.

  When he was looking for Schwarzolie, he could quickly look at other cameras to see what the others were up to, or hiding from Gelbimi and Braunlili helped prevent angering Weissecilia.

  Magie and Fluch, when performing their duo attack, would make it impossible to check the cameras. One of them would hide somewhere, while the other would do something to fill the screen with just flashes of her face.

  To put an end to it and prevent himself from being butchered, he needed to do the same thing as with the magician, only that instead of looking, he needed to listen to music–Not any music, the specific music the box of the two clowns would play before opening.

  Medurio couldn’t be hasty. The different musics were actually just variations of this very tune, so he needed to pay attention and waste time listening for whether or not there were instruments that shouldn’t be in there, or if the beat was abnormal.

  If he was certain to have the right place, then he needed to use the flash function of the camera to put an end to the attack and regain the ability to actually see what was going on.

  …When yet another shift ended, Medurio felt like his heart was going to fail him. He stopped before the stage once more.

  He could barely handle it and yet… The star of the show had not yet made any move. Purpurnita had not budged at all since he had begun the night shifts, and he dreaded what she was going to do as the leader of the band.

  A hand fell upon his shoulder, making him jump in fright.

  “M-Miss Nebulo? You are here early, the day watcher hasn’t even come yet…”

  “We need to talk, Medurio. You have done a good job watching over the building during nighttime hours… So, how about a promotion?”

  “...What would this promotion be about?”

  “No need to be so defensive”

  Mara Nebulo tilted her head to the side, her face losing all signs of amusement.

  “I have been keeping a close eye on you. The city guard you’ve been meeting with, tell him that you need his help. Tell him that you found a safe in my office, but that you can’t get it open. I want him inside my wonderland tonight”

  The man gulped.

  “This will be the last job I’ll ask of you, don’t worry… My girls won’t be playing with you this time. The security exit in your office will be open tonight. Tell him to get in through there by walking up the emergency stairs outside. If you can’t do this, then expect all thirteen of my sweethearts to give you hell”

  “I-I’ll do it”

  “Good. You don’t want to see what happens when they are taking the game seriously”

  Medurio nodded and, after a few moments, began walking away, preparing to rest.

  “...One last thing”

  “Yes, Miss Nebulo?”

  “The game… Did you think it made for a good… Nightmare Trial…? I wasn’t certain if all of their methods of attack flowed well together-”

  Mara Nebulo cut herself off, frowning as though she had said something she didn’t mean to.

  “Forget it”