Fei Ming seized Olive’s arm and flung it aside in one sharp motion, the force sending the other man stumbling a step.

"My goals are different from yours, Olive. Leave it at that."

Blood from the fresh corpses had spread across the floor between their boots, sticking against the soles each time they shifted.

Olive’s face twisted with fury.

His chest heaved, veins bulging along his neck and temples as the frustration of the entire game boiled over.

Everything had been going according to plan until this bastard showed up to ruin it all. In a final, desperate surge, he lunged forward and roared at the top of his lungs. "But YOU’LL DIE!"

His shout struck the chamber wall and bounced back.

Fei Ming angled his head toward him, dark hair slipping over the nape of his neck. He regarded Olive with the mild curiosity of a man watching a struggling animal.

"You’ll die!" Olive’s voice wavered, cracking under the strain. He pushed forward another step, his heel slipping in blood as he shouted. "Don’t you even care? This all amounts to nothing."

His voice broke at the edge. "The wrath event triggers three times. Out of five rounds, you die in the fourth o-or fifth. They’ll keep voting you out until you’re gone! Stop being reckless!"

Fei Ming let out a short, flat scoff that cut through the chamber air. "That’s a shame. It won’t happen."

Convincing him was no use. At that moment, he understood what Xia had meant about honeybees. Creatures that sting to defend the hive, only to die in the process.

However, humans weren’t bees. Neither were they mindless creatures.

They could only hold back when the cost of surviving was uncertain, and hide when the threat could clearly overpower them.

No one wanted to be the one who pulled the trigger when they might be the target. So the voting power dwindled.

Olive’s eyes darted rapidly, pupils trembling.

He had solved the riddle of the game, seen the cruel shape of it clearly, yet he could do nothing to stop what came next. ’What to do... What to do...’ The same helpless knot twisted in his gut that he had felt during the carnival’s puppet show, where knowledge meant nothing without power.

His eyes lost focus for a second as his breathing shortened.

’I’m not useless, I’m not useless. I’m not useless... I’m grown now. I’m not useless—’

—until a hand struck his shoulder, pulling him back into reality.

Xia had stood behind him, her palm still planted against his shoulder.

She studied his face, catching the broken rhythm of his breathing.

"Hey. Relax," she said, giving him a gentle push forward and away from the nearest corpse. "I know it’s a scary situation. But don’t panic. We’ll figure this out."

Her hand pressed once against him before dropping.

Olive swallowed and dragged air into his lungs.

Xia pointed at Fei Ming. "Now I see why Helena reacted that way. He’s a fucking crackhead, sure."

Then she sighed. "But he’s our group’s prophesied player."

She shoved Olive forward. "Our goal is surviving. Protect him first. Figure him out after."

Across the chamber, the runic board screen appeared.

[Round 2 begins.]

The floor shook beneath their feet.

Many beasts dropped into the arena from above, their limbs hitting stone with enough force to crack the surface.

Their bodies were thick, shoulders swollen with muscle, mouths hanging open with strings of saliva and blood.

Movement exploded across the chamber.

Players rushed to formation to defend themselves.

Fei Ming moved within his group, his polearm blade cutting into the neck of the first beast as it lunged.

The body twisted under the force, claws dragging against stone as Xia slammed her baseball bat into its ribs from the side.

A beast broke past Olive and lunged at another player, its teeth locking into the man’s shoulder before Xia stepped in with a war cry.

She swung her bat at it with brutal force.

Crack!

The beast’s jaw cracked.

Delivering the final blow, Xia broke the beast’s jaw.

Blood spurted across her hand.

It was warm.

The body collapsed against her leg, then it slid away.

By the time the round ended, his group remained intact.

Across the chamber, Misfortune’s group were missing two players.

One corpse lay on its back with the throat opened so wide the spine could be seen through the torn flesh.

The other had collapsed near the wall, his stomach split and emptied onto the floor. Soon, the whole chamber smelled of blood.

Fateless examined Misfortune once again. The way she stared into nothingness and maintained no eye contact with her group proved a suspicion of his.

’A blind Hawk officer. That’s unique,’ he thought.

However, the previous challenges had targeted Misfortune one too many times. This to him, could either prove she was a prophesied player—although a decoy, or just another high stakes player.

He wasn’t sure.

Looking at Helena’s group, they had no fresh deaths.

When his eyes met hers, her gaze sharpened and she turned away fast.

The runic board flashed open.

[You may vote]

Two minutes passed, then the board reappeared.

[Calculating votes...]

[Player ’Fateless’ has 5 votes]

[Player ’Kieran’ has 7 votes]

[Player ’Misfortune’ has 8 votes]

[Unfortunately, Player ’Misfortune’ is not a prophesied player.]

That ruled out one suspicion.

But then, Fei Ming caught the timid girl staring at him from behind Helena. From his deductions, she was Kieran.

The moment his eyes locked on hers, she flinched and ducked fully behind Helena’s back.

Without causing any more drama, he looked away.

In Helena’s group, Eli, their team’s mentor, moved to where she stood and patted her shoulder once.

"You okay, kid?" he asked.

Helena nodded in response.

"Don’t worry too much. We can always take the safe route. I’ll figure out a loophole in this mini-game to prevent any more deaths. Everything will be okay."

Helena forced a quick smile and nodded again. "Thank you."

But the moment Eli stepped away, the smile fell from her face.

She stared down at the nearest dead body killed from the first Wrath event. Blood still leaked from its wounds.

"Nothing is okay," she whispered to herself.

When she lifted her head, she found Fei Ming again. Beside him was Keres, doing absolutely nothing than staring intently at him.

"Eli’s wrong. The only way we win is if he gets voted out after he exhausts the wrath event uses."

However, the players had grown scared.

Many stopped voting altogether. Random deaths and the threat of stakes reaching zero kept them frozen.

No one died in the second round, but that only widened Fei Ming’s advantage.

[Round 3 begins!]

BAM!

The third challenge for the round started.

Evolved wolves with ridged spines and heavier jaws charged into the chamber.

Players fought in scattered packs, weapons swinging and powers flaring.

A wolf slammed into a player from Group C, its weight driving him flat before its jaws tore through his arm.

Another snapped at Xia’s throat, forcing her to duck low and slam her bat through its chest.

But one thing stood out.

They were all exhausted.

By the end, several people had cuts running down their arms and legs, clothes soaked and sticking to skin.

Breathing across the chamber had turned rough.Their hands shook from visible strain.

Suddenly, a man from Group C shouted, voice thick with rage as he wiped blood from his arm. "What the fuck are we waiting for?!"

Pointing straight at Fei Ming, he shouted. "If we vote him out, this ends!"

Helena wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, chest still heaving. "What do you mean?"

"Don’t you get it?!" The man jabbed a finger toward Fei Ming, arm shaking. "The best he can do is trigger a wrath event! He only has two uses left! We vote him out two more times and this nightmare is fucking over!"

A few players near him nodded, agreeing with what he said.

But then a woman from Helena’s group clutched her head, fingers digging into her scalp. "But then six people die in his place!"

Her breathing rapidly shook. "What if I’ll be one of them?! I don’t—I don’t know what to do... I don’t know what to do... I don’t want to die!" Her voice broke into a sob.

The man turned to her. "What if you’re not?!" Spit flew from his mouth.

"These games have structure! They don’t kill blindly! Come on!" he pressed. "What’s the real probability you die randomly? What if the game only kills the ones who didn’t vote him out?"

He raised a hand up in protest. "All in! Vote him out!"

Eli stepped between them, putting a stop to the short protest. "You can sway your own group, but stop pressuring everyone else."

When the man opened his mouth to snap back, the runic board lit up.

[You may now vote]

Eli moved quickly to Helena’s side. "I found a loophole." Her eyes brightened with hope.

"If we keep the votes equalized, we prevent the wrath event from triggering. The game doesn’t list any penalty if the true prophesied player survives all rounds. The worst outcome is no rewards."

Helena nodded fast and began speaking urgently to her group, gesturing and directing them with sharp motions.

Ding! Ding!

The board updated.

[Voting concluded]

[Calculating votes...]

"Please be equal... Please be equal..." she hoped, squeezing her eyes shut.

[Player ’Leone’ has 7 votes]

[Player ’Kieran’ has 7 votes]

...

[Player ’Fateless’ has 8 votes]

Her stomach plummeted. Hands clenched until her nails bit into her palms.

’our plan... failed?’

Ding!

[A wrath event has been triggered]

Metal shards erupted from the ground again.

Three players convulsed as spikes tore through their bodies.

Blood painted the surface. One body fell close to Helena, limbs twitching once before going still.

In shock, She dropped to her knees beside the corpse, fingers pressing into the cold, sticky blood.

When she lifted her head, her gaze burned

with pure hatred as it locked onto Fei Ming.

He stood untouched amid the carnage, watching the fresh corpses with that small, detached smile still playing on his lips while blood slowly crept toward his boots.

The sight ignited something feral inside her. Hate flooded her veins.

The grip on her bow tightened until the wood creaked. In that moment, her resolve hardened into something unbreakable.

Fei Ming had to die.