Chapter 1204: Passageways and Players
"But each player can hold a maximum of six cards," Lin Qian said. "If you have more, cards will be randomly lost."
"Can acquired cards be voluntarily discarded?" Xu Huo asked.
Lin Qian and Big Tiger exchanged a glance. "They could before, but it's unclear now."
Xu Huo understood. The publicly announced rules were actually quite misleading. For example, some number cards helped with clearance, flower cards could teleport directly to the correct passageway, and safe passages corresponding to specific card faces would appear on the maze walls.
These three rules all seemed to help players clear the instance, but in reality, they were likely downplaying the difficulties.
For instance, "some number cards help with clearance" didn't mean all number cards could help players clear the instance. The same applied to the maze walls—cards could be found on them, but most would definitely be traps.
In fact, these three rules were designed to induce players to fight over the playing cards. Compared to clearance, the second rule about changes in the number of players on both sides was actually less important.
After releasing the power of his Cube Space, Xu Huo could advance about three to four hundred meters through the winding maze passages. With his current evolutionary ability, he couldn't see through the maze walls—or rather, with the instance's power backing them, ordinary players couldn't see through them either. Thus, the effect of the Cube Space was also diminished.
A distance of just three to four hundred meters wasn't enough for him to determine in time whether the passage ahead was a dead end, so he could only try each path through trial and error.
Of the 162 correct passages mentioned in the background introduction, their overlapping sections were all less than one-third of the entire correct route. This meant the maze was incredibly large. In comparison, 54 cards and 54 players were very few.
"Forget about whether cards can be discarded—where are we even supposed to find people?" Big Tiger looked ahead and behind.
Indeed, aside from the five of them who had met upon entering, no sixth player had been found so far.
As for the rule that some playing cards were beneficial for player clearance—other than the first card they had received, they had no idea what effects their cards had.
It was unclear whether the first card lacked special effects, or if the instance deliberately concealed information about the first card, or if the card's traits could only be known when obtaining someone else's card.
At the scene, there were only three of them. If they wanted to verify this, there was only one way.
The three knew it in their hearts, but none of them voiced it. Instead, they heightened their vigilance and slightly widened the distance between them.
Xu Huo walked at the front, Lin Qian in the middle, and Big Tiger lagged behind reluctantly.
The fourth rule of the game was that after a cardholder died, the playing cards they held might return to the maze walls. There were two scenarios: one was the cardholder being killed by a trap on the maze wall, and the other was someone obtaining more than six cards, resulting in random cards.
Regardless of which scenario, the playing cards wouldn't appear on the maze walls too early. So, during this initial stretch, none of the three intended to touch the maze walls.
However, after walking for about another half hour, a rumbling sound echoed through the maze, as if something was moving.
"It's underground..." Before Big Tiger could finish, the maze wall beside them suddenly split open from the middle. A white figure shot out rapidly, followed closely by three others. The maze wall closed quickly, so only the first two managed to get out. The last person was crushed inside the wall and vanished without a sound.
The two who followed out clearly had their sights set on the young man in white clothes at the front. One of them threw out several liquid pills. When those pills hit the plants on the maze wall, they instantly exploded, splashing out what seemed to be some kind of growth agent. It caused the plants inside the maze to grow rapidly and even become aggressive!
The man in white, who had been rushing toward a turn in the passage, was forced back by the plants. The two behind him quickly blocked his path, while another raised a giant bubble machine and blew out over a hundred transparent bubbles the size of human heads. These bubbles flew out and exploded on contact, trapping the man in white and Xu Huo's group of three inside.
The wildly growing vines had already affected Xu Huo's group. Now, with these bubbles flying, they exploded one after another outside their defensive barriers. Big Tiger, in particular, had a barrier that covered a large arc-shaped area, and the bubbles practically surrounded and bombarded it, inadvertently acting as a shield for the man in white behind him.
Although these bubbles weren't enough to fully breach the barriers, the dense light spots they produced upon explosion could interfere with vision. Under siege, it felt like being simultaneously illuminated by hundreds of reflective mirrors.
"Damn it!" Big Tiger cursed, then hoisted a cannon-like prop and pressed the switch toward the direction the bubbles were coming from!
The buzzing rotation of fan blades brought a fierce gale, blowing back the continuously advancing bubbles while also preventing the two players from moving forward—the strong wind almost formed an invisible wall!
But just a few seconds later, a black metal shard as thick as a finger cut against the wind and shot into Big Tiger's prop. With a "bang," the wind prop was destroyed!
The man in white hadn't run yet. He held four transparent crystals, each less than ten centimeters long, in each hand. He tossed them into the air, and the eight crystals flew high before exploding in midair, scattering down like countless raindrops!
Of course, these weren't real raindrops but corrosive liquid comparable to sulfuric acid. In an instant, the maze walls and passage floor were all sizzling and smoking!
The two pursuers and Xu Huo's group retreated to opposite sides. Since Xu Huo and his group were standing near the man in white, they maximized their avoidance of the rain attack and successfully turned into the passage ahead!
The maze walls were both traps and means of self-preservation. After the four turned into another passage, the man in white and Big Tiger triggered the maze walls on both sides, each summoning a giant mutant plant that instantly blocked the entire passage!
But the distance was too close, and the people behind could still catch up. So, the two sprinted at full speed, as if they wouldn't stop until they completely shook off their pursuers!
Xu Huo slowed down slightly midway and glanced at the two ahead who were just blindly running without caring whether the passage was correct. He felt that the flower card wasn't very reliable either.
Seeing him stop, Lin Qian asked in a low voice what was wrong.
"We'll take another path," Xu Huo said, turning toward a different fork.
Lin Qian looked left and right but ultimately chose to go with Xu Huo. By then, the two pursuing players had already caught up. One of them sneered, "They've gone into a dead end!"
Big Tiger and the man in white had entered a dead end, meaning they would have to backtrack. To block them, all they had to do was wait at the fork!
Sure enough, not long after, sounds came from that passage.
The two pursuers exchanged glances and worked together to erect a barrier about fifty meters long and two meters thick across the passage. This completely sealed off the entire passage while also deflecting the hidden weapon prop the man in white had thrown!
One more chapter coming later.
(Chapter End)