Chapter 1013: The First Victim
Xu Huo closed the secret room door and went over to open the door. "Is there something?"
Chi Minghong had chosen the room next to his.
"Nothing much. I forgot to mention earlier, since we're acquaintances, why not cooperate to clear the instance?" she said. "I don't think any of those people outside are good news. Even if they find the little note, they probably won't share what's on it. That'll just delay our clearance."
"No problem." Xu Huo also hoped to finish the instance as quickly as possible. Before the instance rules were fully disclosed to the players, his disadvantage wasn't that obvious.
Of course, there was also another, faster way to clear it.
"Straightforward!" Chi Minghong smiled and waved, then turned and went back to her own room.
Xu Huo looked up and saw Miss Ding and Teacher Fan walking up the stairs. The two averted their eyes after meeting his gaze.
It seemed the players in the hall couldn't wait any longer either. If the little note's appearance location wasn't fixed, it could also appear in the rooms. Grabbing a room early was a way to try their luck.
After these two left, the other players also gradually departed, until finally only two people remained in the hall. But just before midnight, another one left.
The twelve players were distributed in different rooms on different floors, each person in a single room. The earliest to leave, Miss Ding and Teacher Fan, were also rooming across from each other.
The silence lasted until twelve o'clock. Just as the players began to move, the lights in the villa suddenly went out completely. After a fleeting pause, the sounds of activity upstairs and downstairs gradually grew louder.
The villa itself wasn't very soundproof. The sounds of objects hitting the floor and footsteps were clearly audible. After about two minutes, the players gradually left their rooms, crisscrossing to search other rooms.
Xu Huo, Chi Minghong, and the round-faced female player living across from them came out one after another. After exchanging glances, they started searching from the first room at one end of the corridor.
The villa's electricity had gone out for an unknown reason, but no one cared about that at the moment. Everyone was frantically searching for the little note.
After searching the empty rooms, they moved on to rooms occupied by other players, but the players would automatically skip rooms that were currently inhabited. After searching both upstairs and downstairs, the players returned to the hall one after another.
Lighting items were brighter than the villa's own lights, enough to clearly show everyone's expressions to others.
"Who got the note?" the eyebrow-pierced player spoke first.
Everyone looked at each other. Suspicion and doubt were written on every face, but no one admitted to having found the note.
"What's this supposed to mean?" the eyebrow-pierced player said with a dark face. "Trying to hog it all for yourself?"
"Could it be that no one found it?" the glasses-wearing man said. "There are so many nooks and crannies in the villa. We don't know how big the note is or what form it takes. It might not be visible at first glance."
"Except for the occupied rooms, we've searched all the other rooms once," the muscular man said. "I don't think there should be any omissions. I'm more inclined to believe the little note would appear directly in a player's room. Maybe that person had the note from the very beginning."
The current situation was clearly that no one was admitting it. Teacher Fan looked around. "What would be written on the little note?"
"That's hard to say," Miss Ding said. "Look at this instance's name, 'The Last One.' Maybe only one person can survive. There are quite a few instances that force players to kill each other."
"The situation is pretty clear now," Chi Minghong said. "Maybe the content on the note is to kill a player."
"The villa is only this big, and the instance background is vague. I can't think of any other possibility besides this one," the hat-wearing player said.
"Perfect," the round-faced female player said with a smile. "Everyone knows that entering an instance means people will die. Now that the goal is clear, just be careful, right? If we happen to run into each other, it's anyone's guess who lives and who dies."
She looked petite and cute, but her words were extremely intimidating, causing the people present to take another look at her.
"Why don't we just wait in the hall until tomorrow?" Chi Minghong clapped her hands. "That way, whoever got the note won't dare to make a move. No matter what's on the note, they can't act on it, and we won't be in danger either."
"What's the point of that?" the lip-pierced player said. "We're here to clear the instance, not to see who lives the longest."
Just like before, he was the first to leave. The second to go was the hat-wearing player, who nodded to everyone. "See you all tomorrow."
In fact, a few people were tempted by Chi Minghong's suggestion. The local zone player said, "I want to stay in the hall."
But Miss Ding said, "The instance requires us to be in single rooms. We've all chosen rooms, but if we don't sleep in them at night, would that count as a violation?"
She had a point, which made the other two players who were considering it change their minds.
Next, except for the local zone player, everyone else returned to their own rooms. On Xu Huo's side on the first floor, the round-faced female player proactively introduced herself. "My name is Zhou Yuanzhu. Since we're staying on the same floor, take care of me."
Returning the courtesy, Xu Huo and Chi Minghong also gave their names, then closed their doors to sleep.
The villa quieted down again. Xu Huo lay on the sofa, briefly paying attention to the movements upstairs before closing his eyes to rest.
Nothing else happened that night. But when morning came, the others discovered that a player had died upstairs.
A death wasn't surprising, but the method was too brutal.
"This is... too inhuman." Chi Minghong took one look and instinctively covered her nose.
The room door was wide open. Blood trailed from the bedside all the way to the doorway. The short-haired female player who had been taking photos lay naked at the entrance, her head facing outward, her eyes wide open in death. She had died from a cut throat, but her chest and abdomen were wide open. Her internal organs looked like they had been hastily desecrated, some on the floor, some still on her body.
Besides that, there was a circle deliberately drawn in blood beneath her, perfectly encircling her.
"Doesn't this look a bit like some kind of evil ritual?" Miss Ding kept fanning herself with a small fan. "Could the note's content be asking us to do this?"
"There are similar bloodstains in other rooms from before," the muscular man said. "This instance definitely isn't opening for the first time. Maybe we can find some information from Under Dimension."
"It's just an ordinary C-grade instance. I doubt there's any guide," the hat-wearing player said. "The killing method is a bit brutal, but this instance really isn't that difficult."
"Is this really what the little note requires?" Xu Huo looked around at everyone. "Killing is one thing, but I couldn't do something like this. Maybe a very twisted person has mixed in among us. Whether they even got the note is another question."
"You mean the person who got the note is someone else?" the eyebrow-pierced player said, as arrogant as ever. "Look at the marks on the body. It was clearly done in a hurry. The person has been dead for at least three hours. We didn't hear any noise last night. With that much time to work, and still doing it so sloppily, it shows the killer isn't skilled and was panicked. Besides the instance's requirements, there's no other motive that would drive him to mutilate the corpse."
(Chapter End)