“So you mean the woman with the birthmark on her face was replaced while we were separated.”
In the dim corridor, a man and a woman stood side by side.
Gessalin shone her flashlight on the door plaque ahead. Three large characters were clearly printed on it — Archive Room.
She sounded uncertain, and repeated what she had said.
“Yes.” Ichimura Kota nodded, “That woman is likely doomed.”
“That’s... regrettable,” Gessalin replied with an ambiguous tone. She reached out, looking as if she intended to push the door open.
“And who are you, then?”
“What?” Ichimura Kota was taken aback.
The next second, several glossy, round beads slipped from Gessalin’s wrist and clattered onto the floor. They rolled purposefully toward the man and faintly formed a circle that trapped him in the center.
Without hesitation, Gessalin pushed open the archive room door and walked straight to one wall, searching the file cabinets there.
Even with danger looming outside the door, she remained composed.
Gessalin had no interest in playing the show’s ridiculous three-day challenge any longer. She scoffed at Winifred’s talk of “cooperation first.”
She was certain he had never intended to cooperate.
Who among the other players would believe his lies?
After a few breaths, Gessalin finally found what she was looking for.
“Click—”
A floorboard near the corner trembled and slowly slid aside, revealing a narrow gap just wide enough for one person.
Gessalin’s face lit up.
This was an emergency passage deliberately left by one of the craftsmen when the camp was built. Even after the camp had been turned into an exhibition, the passage remained.
She wasn’t sure if it led to survival, but it had to be tried.
Gessalin sprinted for the gap. Before slipping down, she instinctively glanced back at the doorway.
But the man who should have been restrained outside was nowhere to be seen.
“!”
Gessalin froze in shock. Just as her guard rose, a thick arm shot out from inside the gap and clamped around her throat.
“Ugh—”
Before she could react, the hand dragged her into the dark void.
*
Inside the storage room.
Daisy watched with wide eyes as the woman in front of her raised an iron hammer and took step after step closer.
She silently screamed inside—Damn it, move!
But her body felt nailed to the spot, unable to respond no matter how she wrenched at her will.
In Daisy’s final vision, the black iron hammer—twice the size of the one in her hand—rose high, aimed at her skull.
“Bang—”
*
Yurien stared at the corpse in the water tank and was about to turn and leave when the body slowly opened its eyes.
At the same time, the silver coin in his palm grew unbearably hot.
Only then did he realize something and spun around.
A tall man had appeared behind him. In the dim light, his face was blurred.
He gripped an iron hammer, the head smeared with blood.
The blood was fresh, tracing the pattern and dripping, heavy drop by drop, onto the ground.
It landed, too, in Yurien’s chest.
*
The silent passage twisted and darkened, and only Winifred’s heavy breathing echoed through it.
Though no one pursued him, he dared not stop, not even for a step.
Winifred felt his strength ebbing away. His lungs burned like fire, and an inexplicable chill bit at his back, forcing him to keep running.
The dungeon’s so-called escape route was fake.
He had understood that the moment he saw the suited man’s corpse.
Then he’d realized he’d fallen into a thinking trap.
This was an island cut off from the world. Where could an escape route possibly lead?
Even the camp’s former leader—the rebel chief—had not fled via the dungeon in his final moments, choosing suicide instead.
Winifred cursed himself for realizing this too late.
Although he knew he couldn’t keep running aimlessly, he gritted his teeth and forced himself onward, still searching his mind for a last chance.
Until he saw a broad-shouldered figure standing silently ahead.
As if it had been waiting for him.
Winifred finally stopped.
He felt for the pistol in his sleeve.
One last bullet.
He smiled bitterly; he knew this instance would be where he fell.
He wondered how many players were still alive, whether the production team had noticed anything unusual, and... what the two players who had withdrawn were doing now.
—
Xu Xi shook the water droplets from his hand.
Having stayed in the player space too long, he’d nearly forgotten he had bodily needs.
It was the players’ break and meal time. He couldn’t make out what anyone was discussing anyway, so he took the opportunity to step out for a moment.
But the next instant he froze.
Not far away, a food cart sat idly parked halfway down the road.
If he’d seen correctly, it should have been carrying the players’ lunches.
By rights, the cart ought to have been brought inside the camp by the show staff at this time.
Xu Xi’s chest tightened. An indescribable premonition rose in him.
He exhaled softly and walked slowly toward the monitoring room.
It was empty.
Xu Xi scanned the room. Partially eaten meals still gave off faint heat, but the staff in the monitoring room had vanished as if they had evaporated.
He looked to the display screens.
All black.
Without hesitation, Xu Xi headed to the production team’s camp.
Both along the route and inside the various tents, there was not a soul.
For a moment he almost wondered if he’d entered some kind of otherworld.
Then his peripheral vision was suddenly tugged—
A few hundred meters away, the boat moored at the shore silently slid onto the water.
The brown-haired, blue-eyed young man stood at the stern, his smile tinged with an odd pity.
His lips moved, but he was too far; Xu Xi couldn’t hear him.
Xu Xi wasn’t interested.
He only knew that his death seemed to have finally arrived.
Before him stood a burly, unfamiliar man whose face was washed with a gray pallor. He grinned, and the chill radiating from him felt as if it would seep into Xu Xi’s bones.
When the man had gripped his throat, Xu Xi had understood he could not possibly resist with his own strength.
He wondered why he hadn’t been killed outright.
Only when he glanced back at the boat, seeing it head away without waiting for anyone to disembark, did he understand: these “people” had been deliberately tormenting his mind.
The brown-haired, blue-eyed young man had probably died on that boat.
In the final second before losing consciousness, Xu Xi suddenly thought of the shaman he had conned in the earlier sessions — had that man actually managed to escape?
The sudden change in the live stream left the barrage of comments dead silent for a moment.
All debates, analysis, and even the meaningless spam quieted at once.
This ending had come too fast, too abruptly, with no warning; nobody could process it.
Outside the screen, only one cold realization spread silently through every viewer’s heart: this round—
No one survived.
