Killer Sequence Guild, rest area.
The Judge was slumped on the sofa, drinking water frantically. Beside him sat another person who looked as though they had been dried into human jerky by the sun. At their feet was a pile of empty bottles that had once held mineral water, physical recovery agents, and mental recovery agents.
“The desert instance really is hot enough to kill someone.” The person sitting on the far left, cheeks still flushed red from the heat, muttered to himself while listlessly hugging a bottle to his chest. “The game pool even damn well banned the shop, so we couldn’t buy water. I thought I was going to die of thirst in that instance.”
“It was our oversight.” The Judge rubbed his brow. “We didn’t expect to be trapped, our cooperation hasn’t been polished enough yet, and most importantly, we didn’t bring enough supplies.”
The person suddenly sat bolt upright, looked around, and asked curiously, “What’s going on? Why hasn’t Spades come back yet? Usually, he’s already waiting here in the rest area by the time we come out of a game. Where is he today?”
“He bought a huge pile of strong acid and fuel and entered the Ice Age instance,” the Judge said with a smile. “He’s trying to hit the [True End] route.”
At that, the person beside him immediately understood. He slumped back down, looked up, and let out a long, inexplicable sigh.
“How many times has it been? He still hasn’t given up?”
The Judge shook his head, seemingly amused. “I don’t know. Anyway, it’s been many times. Every time we pass the Ice Age poster before entering the game pool, Spades takes a few extra looks. I feel like if anyone let their guard down and didn’t hold him back, he’d probably jump right in and leave us behind.”
“He got the [Normal End] route for Ice Age ages ago,” the person said, puzzled. “Doesn’t Spades usually stop paying attention to games he’s already won?”
“What exactly is so attractive about that game’s [True End] route? Isn’t it just a corpse-part collection mission? Why does he run there every day? Is he that determined to dig it out?”
The Judge tilted his head back and downed another bottle of mineral water, letting out a long breath as though he had finally come back to life.
“I remember that in Spades’ corpse-part collection mission in Ice Age, he’s always missing one last piece. I think the missing part is the heart. He’s looked for it many times but never found it.”
“Anyway, you know Spades’ personality. If he can’t find it, he’ll keep looking. Let him be. Consider it tempering his character.”
The person bit the rim of the bottle with a complicated expression and said unclearly, “Even Spades’ character needs tempering? Then wouldn’t I need to be thrown back into the furnace and remade?”
The Judge tightened his grip on the bottle, his expression going still.
The person fell silent too.
That sentence had gone a bit over the line.
The Judge was the tactician who controlled the overall situation. It was not a team member’s place to question his decisions.
Perhaps it was because the Judge had not been here long, and because his temperament was not especially sharp. Compared to other tacticians, whose personalities and methods tended to be extreme, he integrated into the team silently, like a gentle breeze moistening everything without sound. It often made these members forget his status as tactician.
But a tactician was still a tactician, and not someone a member could offend so casually.
The person tested the waters and said, “Sorry.”
“It’s nothing.” The Judge waved his hand dismissively with a kind smile, skipping over the unpleasant topic. “You worked with Spades for a year. Can you tell me which match left the deepest impression on you?”
This kind of routine conversation was not a first.
Whenever Spades could not smoothly integrate into the team, the Judge would occasionally pull the other teammates aside for a heartfelt talk and ask for their views on Spades.
The person fell into deep thought like Winnie the Pooh clutching his bottle.
“Actually, every match left a deep impression, but if I had to pick the deepest, it would be the one against the Russell Cemetery team.”
The Judge recalled for a moment and quickly picked up the thread.
“Ah, that one. It was a brutal fight.”
The person nodded with lingering fear. “More than brutal. It was the most terrifying match of last year. Toward the end, I really thought we were going to be wiped out.”
The match between Russell Cemetery and Killer Sequence was the sixteen-to-eight round.
At that time, Spades’ dominance had already become prominent. Every side was trying to gather information on this new player of unknown origin, but among the guilds making inquiries, the most conspicuous was Russell Cemetery. This guild exhausted every possible method to dig up Spades’ secrets, trying to uncover his weaknesses.
Russell Cemetery was the guild ranked twelfth the year before last, but this team was different from other famous teams. It had no star players and was not aggressive. The team members underwent a major overhaul every year, and every year, the ones who went onstage were unfamiliar, nervous faces. There seemed to be nothing memorable about them.
Of course, that was not entirely true.
The only memorable characteristic of the Russell Cemetery team was that they loved to forfeit in single and double matches. Because of this, Russell Cemetery was nicknamed the [Double-Barreled Shotgun Team], meaning that after going onstage, they did nothing but surrender twice to clear the field.
However, this team’s style in team matches was surprisingly steady. In certain battle situations, they could always astonish everyone, winning with a single strike and even defeating star teams.
Last year, Killer Sequence almost met its Waterloo against Russell Cemetery.
In that match, Spades nearly died.
Based on Spades’ combat style, Russell Cemetery had deliberately sought out a certain player with a skill capable of restricting him, making that player serve as a temporary tactician for the match against Killer Sequence.
It was a skill with an exceptionally cruel method of use.
As soon as the match began, the Russell team suddenly erupted. They grabbed one of their own members and forcibly killed him as {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} a sacrifice.
Through this sacrifice, the Russell tactician forcibly activated his skill, transforming the ground beneath Spades’ feet into a massive quagmire.
That was his skill.
This quagmire could nullify all of a player’s attacks and slowly kill the player by swallowing him. It could be called a foolproof skill. Its only drawback was that the cost of use was too high.
It required sacrificing a teammate to activate.
The stronger the player being swallowed, the slower the quagmire devoured him.
Spades endured a full seven days inside the game while suffering from the quagmire’s negative buff, which prevented him from attacking. His role shifted from [Attack] to [Shield], and he ground the opponents down until they had no strength left to fight back, even trapping them inside a game impact map.
But the moment finally came when the quagmire was about to swallow Spades completely.
Half of Spades’ face was submerged in mud. His teammates tried every method they could to pull him out. Kneeling beside the danger-ridden quagmire, they dug for him with their bare hands without regard for their lives, all while fending off opponents who came to ambush them.
At that time, the distorted expressions on every member of Killer Sequence were unforgettable to the audience.
Distortion, rage, dread, and fear intertwined, filled with an intense emotion that could not be put into words. Turbid tears ran down their twisted faces, and low, hoarse, frenzied roars burst from their throats.
It was a pure terror of impending [Death].
Every one of them knew perfectly well that if Spades died there, they would definitely fall in this match.
Yet Spades did not feel that kind of terror.
He merely looked at these people calmly as the quagmire swallowed him inch by inch, and said, “You can run now.”
But still, no one ran.
Some of them wailed heart-rendingly as they fought the opponents like madmen.
Spades still won that game.
Under the influence of fear, his teammates’ collective eruption held back Russell’s offensive line. After one of them broke through and cut off both arms of the opposing tactician, disarming him and preventing him from using his staff, the quagmire skill trapping Spades was deactivated.
A Spades who could attack was invincible, so victory naturally descended.
In that match, when Spades, holding his whip and covered in silt and blood, crawled out of the bottomless swamp, the entire venue erupted.
They stood up and screamed and cheered for Spades, for this demon who seemed to have crawled out of the abyss.
He was covered in mud from head to toe. The seven-day tug-of-war had left Spades’ body covered in conspicuous stains and terrifying wounds. Several broken bones protruded through his skin, jutting out sharply, mud mixed with blood clots congealing over the bone.
Even in such a wretched state, no one doubted that the final victory would belong to this wretched figure.
Ten minutes later, Spades stood before the defeated opposing team, who were kneeling on the ground.
His expression was ordinary. His hand hung at his side, holding the blood-stained whip. The game core item that symbolized victory was held in his right hand, while mud dripped from his jaw and knuckles.
The Russell Cemetery team trembled. These new players, appearing onstage for the first time, cried and begged for mercy incoherently.
Spades, who was also a newcomer, looked at them without saying a word.
Between them lay the distance between winner and loser, the chasm between life and death.
This was a game where life and death were borne at one’s own risk. They had used everything to scheme against Spades, and Spades had every reason to kill them all to vent his anger.
The excited shrieking from the spectator seats merged into one sound as someone strained his voice and shouted:
“Kill them!”
“Kill them!”
The people of Russell Cemetery closed their eyes in despair.
They had paid the price of another person’s life for victory, but in the end, they had to pay with their own lives for failure.
They thought they would surely die.
Everyone thought they would surely die.
Finally, Spades asked them a question.
Spades’ eyes were hidden beneath his mud-covered bangs as he spoke.
“You inflicted death upon your teammate, and my teammates strove to prevent my death. All of it was because of the fear of death.”
“But when you entrust your life to others,” Spades looked down at the group, his eyes beneath his hair devoid of emotion, “can’t you see that your fates in death are tied together just the same?”
The group looked up at Spades, speechless.
Spades waited quietly for an answer.
Then the tactician whose arms had been cut off answered hoarsely, “...It’s not like that. If one person dies, we can all live. This is our tactic, and this tactic is effective. Didn’t even you, Spades, get trapped by it at first?”
“Doing this protects more members! Killing one person can save so many!”
He explained excitedly and endlessly, tears in his eyes, though it was unclear whether he was trying to convince others or himself.
After he finished, Spades nodded calmly, as though he had obtained his answer.
“I see. You cannot see your own fate.”
“I will not kill you. You have your fate. Your death does not belong here, nor is it granted by me,” Spades continued without the slightest ripple of emotion. “You will die in your own mire.”
The tactician looked at Spades’ departing back in shock, tears still in his eyes.
In the end, Spades did not kill them.
But not long after, when the Russell Cemetery team attempted to sacrifice a teammate again in the next league match, they were killed first by the enemy team.
That tactician drowned in the quagmire skill they had been about to activate.
After finishing his recollection of the match, the person could not help sighing.
“I couldn’t understand what was going on in Spades’ head back then. If it were me, I would have killed those people on the spot while I was angry.”
“But I think it was because of that incident,” the person looked at the Judge and said sincerely, “that Spades finally realized the importance of a team, which is why he scouted you over this year.”
The Judge fell into thought, then suddenly said, “Actually, I also asked Spades why he chose me to be your tactician.”
The person asked curiously, “How did he answer?”
The Judge smiled. “He said, ‘I saw that your fate is to be my tactician, and then die on the battlefield.’”
The person spat out his water.
“He said that right to your face?! That’s too...”
Threatening a prophet with death right in front of him.
Truly worthy of you, Spades!
“Let me correct you. My skill isn’t prophecy. It’s called [Listening to God’s Brief Words].” The Judge shrugged. “Sometimes I can’t even tell whether he’s the prophet or I am. This guy’s intuition is terrifyingly accurate, even more useful than prophecy.”
“For instance, the [Ice Age] instance. We’ve actually all been there. The derivatives of that Unknown Organism X that can turn into humans are quite troublesome. Even I find it difficult to distinguish who is real and who is a monster. Even though our abilities aren’t low, we struggle to make progress in this instance because we can’t identify the right target to attack.”
The Judge looked at the teammate sitting across from him.
“But do you remember how Spades cleared this instance when he was with us?”
The teammate muttered, “As soon as he went in, he killed all the replicas except us...”
The Judge nodded. “Yes. As soon as Spades went in, he quickly identified Edmund hiding inside Fang Xiao Xiao’s body. After killing him and stopping his conspiracy to influence the global climate with the particle device, the main quest of global warming could be achieved, and the game was cleared.”
“That is the [Normal End] of this game.” The Judge spread his hands. “From the time we entered the game until we found Spades beside a pile of replica corpses, it took him less than thirty minutes to clear it.”
“Don’t you find that strange? Why can this guy identify who is human and who is a monster so easily? The monster’s human mimicry in this game is so perfect that even we, the involved parties, would doubt whether we were real or fake.”
The person also rubbed his chin in thought, puzzled.
“True. How did Spades tell them apart?”
“I asked him.” A trace of helplessness appeared on the Judge’s face. “Do you know how he answered me?”
The person asked, “How did he answer?”
The Judge let out a long, deep sigh.
“Intuition. He identified them purely by intuition.”
“Although I really don’t want to admit that his intuition is this powerful, Spades indeed never lies.” The Judge propped his head on his hand and sighed. “But that makes it even more troublesome. For Spades to integrate into the team, he has to trust my tactics instead of his intuition.”
“But if the accuracy of his intuition is that high, I have no way and no confidence to persuade Spades to give up acting on intuition and follow my tactical arrangements.”
The person frowned as he listened. “Is there a way for us to follow Spades’ intuition instead?”
“I’ve thought about it.” The Judge took a deep breath. “But it’s useless. Spades has no way to accurately describe his intuition to us. His intuition is usually a momentary feeling. By the time we react and try to catch it, he’s already run eight hundred miles away.”
The person also seemed to recall the miserable days of chasing Spades around inside games. He slumped over the table with the look of someone who had lost his soul, his tone turning bitter.
“And leaves only us behind to search high and low.”
“The main issue is still communication. Spades starts spacing out before he’s even said a few words to us. I couldn’t attract his attention even by clanging gongs and beating drums.” The Judge’s features crumpled in distress. Resting his head on his hand with a blank stare, he said, “Can someone please make Spades see the light and teach him how to communicate with people...”
——————
Inside the game, beside the Ross Ice Shelf.
After Spades finished packing, he tied his luggage to the sled. Then he fastened the safety rope around his waist so he could pull it along. He lowered his head, took a map from the inner lining of his windbreaker, and used his gaze to confirm the next location on the map, which had been wrinkled by the gale.
After visiting that buoy point in the Ross Sea, Spades had gone to dozens more points. By now, most of the locations on the map had been cleared by him, leaving only a few.
Finally, his gaze swept across the map and landed on the inland South Pole point.
Then he slowly exhaled a breath of white mist.
Edmund Observation Station.
He remembered that this seemed to be the entry point of that player named Bai Liu.
After determining his target, Spades pulled out the whip tucked behind his waist and adjusted the skis fixed to his feet. Then he leaned forward, knees slightly bent, his gaze piercing through the endless blizzard to lock onto a certain direction. He decisively swung his arms left and right, striking the surface of the snow.
The whip lashed out and slammed into the ground, kicking up a thick layer of white snow around him. Spades used the whip as a ski pole, using the tremendous reaction force from the rapid strikes against the ground to glide swiftly over the snow, becoming almost like a flash of orange-red lightning across the vast white landscape.
If the Judge had been there, he would have been screaming at Spades again not to use such an expensive whip as a substitute for sled dogs, and to use the whip’s power to pull a sled.
But he was not there.
So Spades, wearing black goggles and crouching low, swung his whip left and right, gliding smoothly and quickly disappearing into the swirling snowstorm.
Taishan Station.
Bai Liu and the others stayed at Taishan Station only briefly before slipping out while no one was looking. They stole a helicopter parked outside and flew away directly before the people at Taishan Station could notice.
The wind howled outside the helicopter.
Flying a helicopter in weather where visibility was less than thirty meters was practically dancing on the edge of the Reaper’s scythe. They could crash at any moment.
But Tang Erda, as the pilot, could not disobey Bai Liu’s orders.
Their tactician’s eyes were glowing now, and he wore an excited expression as though he were about to pick up a hundred million yuan. Even his breathing was slightly hurried. His slender fingers gripped the back of the pilot’s seat so hard they turned white.
“Where are we flying?!” Tang Erda roared the question.
Bai Liu answered, “Edmund Observation Station.”
