Chapter 2453: The Instance's Protective Tendency
In truth, they weren't too far from the stream. After walking forward for a short while, players with their hearing could already make out the sounds of children playing by the water.
"Big brother, it's not that I'm afraid of death and trying to fool you, but those two missing people really did vanish without a trace after killing someone." The woman walked ahead, still deeply worried about her own life. Her space teleportation item had failed, which meant that Xu Huo's carried items were interfering with hers. Unable to instantly create distance, her chances of successfully escaping were extremely low.
"Did they disappear on the same day, or on separate days?" Xu Huo asked.
The woman paused. "There was a day in between. At first, the others and I didn't believe it. It wasn't until the second person disappeared that we started to take it seriously."
"With so many players gathered together, they could have been killed by you or another player," Xu Huo said flatly.
The woman wanted to argue that among players of the same level, even if one side was stronger, without a one-hit-kill method, it would be impossible to silently eliminate another player without anyone noticing... but then she remembered that Xu Huo was a Mental Super Evolver, which made it entirely possible.
So she said, "I definitely couldn't do it."
Xu Huo let out a soft laugh from behind. "Still, for a B-level player to have absolutely no room to resist, even an ordinary A-level player wouldn't be able to manage that. A fight would inevitably create some noise."
"So, big brother, what you're saying is that it's still because of the instance?" the woman ventured. "Like what happened to you just now?"
"Can you see me?" Xu Huo asked instead of answering.
"Yes, I can see you and even hear your voice." The woman caught on. "That's different from the situation with those two missing people."
"Exactly. Different situations mean two different interference patterns," Xu Huo said.
His earlier experience was probably similar to what happened to Yang Tian and the middle-aged man. They had lost their sense of direction and become trapped in a fixed location. This could be the effect of a special magnetic field or some kind of particular spatial power, making it difficult for players or evolvers to find a way out.
But this situation wasn't a dead end. Strictly speaking, they hadn't been completely isolated from others or other places. If someone approached, or if the forest's conditions changed, they could be discovered and find their way out.
Based on the information gathered so far, this situation only seemed to occur when someone was alone.
The player disappearances the gaunt woman mentioned were different. They vanished right under the noses of multiple players. How they disappeared and what happened before they vanished was completely unknown, which was somewhat different from the middle-aged man's departure.
Xu Huo then asked the woman if they felt drowsy at night. She firmly told him no, saying they had people on watch duty at night, working in pairs.
"Did the people on watch fall asleep?" Xu Huo pressed.
The woman hadn't considered this. "I dozed off for a bit. I didn't notice whether the people on watch were asleep or not."
Even if she hadn't fallen asleep, she wouldn't have been watching the watchmen constantly. Besides, everyone had defense items or location items, and when resting at night, they all stayed within the safe zones they had marked out.
Being alone might lead to "ghost wall" encounters, and after a while, one might even hear calling voices. But the buffer time in between was too long, and death wasn't guaranteed. This was somewhat similar to the state players were in when they first entered the forest, where human figures seemed to appear everywhere.
The vegetation throughout the forest was very similar. If there was any real difference, it was that they had been far from the village before. When the "ghost wall" situation occurred, they were closer to the village, and they had to be alone.
But if a non-performer killed someone, the difficulty of the predicament they faced would increase. Mysterious disappearances and mysterious self-departures—these processes seemed difficult for outsiders or even the person themselves to intervene in.
From these two situations, the dangerous aspects of this instance were almost written in the background introduction from the very beginning.
First, killing was not allowed casually—neither players nor locals.
Second, one could not be alone. The more people traveling together, and the closer one was to the populated village, the safer it was.
And the "hidden friend" mentioned in the background introduction only needed one friend per day, which was actually a supplement to the rule against casual killing.
This obvious bias made it hard not to think that the instance was intentionally protecting the people living here.
The instance's requirements for performers were aimed at other players in the same instance. Losing the opportunity to perform was equivalent to failing the instance, and the person would only become a target for the performer's calls. Naturally, there was no possibility of player protection. Therefore, the biggest "beneficiaries" of controlling players' desire to kill and limiting the number of kills were actually the local villagers.
This meant that players couldn't use the villagers to test the instance's rules. If someone did, the instance would prioritize eliminating that person. The deaths of the gaunt woman's previous companions and the player deaths that Xu Huo's group had learned about overlapped in dates, so it didn't mean that if someone died in the forest, the hidden friend wouldn't kill anymore. "Only needing one friend per day" was a restriction on both the hidden friend and the performers. Whether it was the real hidden friend or the performers, the people they killed were the ones that met the instance's requirements.
Therefore, it was very likely that if a performer successfully killed a "friend" on a certain day, the hidden friend wouldn't come out to kill that day. The instance time limit was thirty days, but forty-two players had entered the instance. Ideally, there should be at least one performer per day. This was also hinted at in the instance introduction. Over the past seven days, there should have been at least seven performers.
Considering that in the first few days, some people might have been wandering in the woods without even meeting anyone, plus the nine who had died, among the remaining people, Xu Huo's group accounted for almost half. No matter how the random selection worked, it should eventually fall on someone in their group. So, the next person who insisted on leaving the group might be the one randomly chosen as the hidden friend.
Of course, the middle-aged man might have truly left on his own.
Even the children playing by the stream didn't make too much noise. Besides various mushrooms, they had also caught some small fish and shrimp from the water.
"See, I didn't lie to you. After the fog comes down, a lot of mushrooms grow." The little girl remembered what she had said earlier and brought her basket over to Xu Huo for him to see.
Xu Huo nodded, and then he saw the painting woman run over, asking him for an old-fashioned camera. She wanted to take pictures of the children.
In the current game, technology was advanced, and holographic projections from communicators had almost replaced the function of photos. But for this village, they wanted tangible pictures.
Xu Huo bought one and stood by the stream, taking pictures of the group standing in the water.
"How about you go over there, and I'll take one of you?" he asked the gaunt woman standing beside him.