Pyro was utterly speechless.
In fact, after calming down and thinking, what Ghostface said was indeed correct. The plan he proposed would be considered an unforgivable heresy by Imperial citizens, but from a player's perspective, it was just a... well, a somewhat creative way to achieve a goal by utilizing game mechanics.
Taking his hand completely off the bolter, Pyro sighed, accepting reality: "Alright then, what are you guys planning to do next? Don't tell me you're just going to wait here for the dark eldar to appear and open the Webway gate from the inside."
"What else can we do?" Ghostface shrugged, pulling out a beautifully packaged card box from who knows where. "Of course, we're going to play a round of Gwent!"
Pyro's eyes instantly lit up: "Oh, great! I'm really good at this; you definitely won't be able to beat me..."
Halfway through his sentence, he suddenly realized: "Wait a minute, you mean... we're really just going to wait here?"
Ghostface had already skillfully drawn the cards from the box: "Unless you can catch a Necron right now, this is our only option."
"You're so unreliable!" Pyro felt his blood pressure rising again. "What if the dark eldar don't come out for another year? Are we just going to wait here for a year?"
"Heh heh, don't worry," Ghostface said in a profound tone as he shuffled the cards. "Statistically speaking, the dark eldar could also arrive in one second."
"If you're not going to tell me where your confidence comes from, or answer me with a phrase like 'Because I'm Batman!', then I'm not playing with you," Pyro said, crossing his arms and adopting a non-violent, non-cooperative stance. "You can find someone else to make up your lucky number."
"Sigh, you're impossible." Ghostface shook his head, his tone like he was dealing with a temperamental child. "Alright, no harm in telling you.
"Because I can feel that Terror and Dread are gradually approaching."
"Uh, is that your skill?" Pyro asked subconsciously, then felt it might involve the other party's privacy, so he waved his hand. "In that case, I won't ask too much..."
"It doesn't matter, no harm in telling you everything." Ghostface had already begun separating the cards of various factions, his movements practiced. "This is indeed my skill, but it's not from the game."
"Not from the game? You mean it's from reality?" Pyro quipped casually.
"Correct!" Ghostface snapped his fingers, the sound crisp. "I've been able to perceive other people's fear since birth. And the more afraid they are, the more dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin I secrete. In simple terms, the more others fear, the more excited and happy I become.
I call it The Dark Passanger."
At this point, Ghostface shrugged: "At first, I thought everyone was like this, until I was sent to a private sanatorium by my parents, and then I realized that I seemed to be an anomaly."
After hearing such a shocking answer, Pyro decided to immediately stop delving deeper into this topic. He didn't want to know any more about a psychopath's childhood.
"Anyway," he forcibly pulled the conversation back, "you can confirm that the dark eldar will be here in a short time, right?"
"Yes," Ghostface said confidently, placing the sorted card piles on the ground. "They'll be here very soon. In this world with the warp, my abilities have been unprecedentedly enhanced. I can feel the shadow of fear getting closer and closer, like an Alien about to burst out. Freddy knows, right, Freddy?"
Freddy, who had been sitting cross-legged on the ground organizing cards, said coldly without looking up: "You schizophrenic madman, don't drag me into your ramblings. So, are you two coming or not? If you don't want to play cards, go somewhere else and babble."
Pyro then noticed that besides him and Ghostface, everyone else—Jason, Michael, Leatherface—had already chosen their factions, laid out their cards, and were quietly sitting cross-legged on the ground. No expression could be seen beneath their pitch-black full-face helmet visors, but their poised stance clearly indicated that the game could begin immediately.
"Damn it! You pedophile with a sense of style like a pile of shit, how dare you verbally attack me..." Ghostface grumbled in a low voice, gritting his teeth, then quickly sat down on the ground. "Come on then, I'm not afraid of you!"
Then, everyone's gaze converged on Pyro, who was still standing. Those silent stares startled Pyro, who was deep in thought about whether Freddy's pronoun for Ghostface and Ghostface's pronoun for Freddy were simply playing on a movie original meme, or if there was truly something to it in reality, or both.
"Uh, well, first, I have a question," Pyro felt like a husky who had wandered into a pack of wolves. "Do you guys... know each other in real life?"
"Isn't that obvious? Otherwise, how would we all have names related to horror movies? We must have agreed on it offline," Freddy said impatiently, tapping the cards in front of him. "So, rookie, are you in?"
Anyway, he was probably going to face a near-certain death jumping into the Webway later, so he might as well stay in this mental asylum for a while... Pyro sighed resignedly, finding an empty spot among them and sitting down.
"I'll choose the Northern Realms."
...An hour later, on the desolate wasteland.
"Ha! Scorch warning! Burn the strongest unit on your field!"
"Useless! My Commander's Horn is already thirsty for battle!"
"Damn it, he even has a spy card..."
Just as Pyro was meticulously calculating and setting up an inescapable trap, seemingly about to defeat Ghostface's monster army with a perfect Northern Realms deck and secure his first victory in front of these madmen, Ghostface suddenly looked up and slammed his cards onto the ground.
"Alright, game paused."
As soon as he spoke, as if receiving some pre-set command, Freddy, Jason, Michael, and the others immediately began tidying up their cards without a word, their movements uniform and decisive, which left Pyro stunned.
"Hey, hey, hey! Why did you suddenly stop playing?" he called out hastily, pointing to a row of gleaming hero cards on his field. "Don't! I was finally about to win a round! Look, you'll definitely lose if you play one more card!"
"No, you're really getting addicted, aren't you?" Ghostface looked at him speechlessly, his gaze like he was watching an internet-addicted teenager obsessed with gambling. "Have you forgotten what we're here for?"
As Ghostface said this, Pyro came to a sudden realization, the excitement of playing cards instantly replaced by cold reality. He suddenly reacted: "Are the dark eldar arriving?"
"They are already at our doorstep." Ghostface stood up and turned to face the pink Anywhere Door standing amidst the pile of rocks.