Xia Jing withdrew his gaze and gave the others a gentle smile, “Yes, he is not a monster.”
Jia Qing, Liu Yi: Damn, he’s not a monster, yet you’re so ruthless? This smiling guy is so scary!!
As if hearing their thoughts, Xia Jing blinked innocently and said, “I controlled my strength, I didn’t even get any points deducted.”
Song Yang, who had just been deducted ten points by the system, twitched his lips: You’re very capable, huh?
The smile on Xia Jing’s lips widened, “Likewise.”
Song Yang, Jia Qing, and Liu Yi: Do you have mind-reading skills?!
Jin Nan reacted, his eyes widening in disbelief. He got up from the ground, ran over, pushed the others aside, and looked inside the broadcasting room—
He turned his head and asked angrily, “You… did you know?”
The other three looked at him.
Know?
Know what?
Xia Jing also looked at Jin Nan, his eyes curving into a smile, “Your ability is very interesting, is it control? Or just the ability to push objects from a distance?”
Jin Nan clenched his fists.
Xia Jing: “Ah, it seems to be the latter.”
Jin Nan: “You—”
Song Yang frowned and quickly glanced at Jin Nan, “He has an ability?”
Jia Qing opened his mouth wide, “He’s a superhuman?”
Jin Nan gasped, his expression changing.
After entering Smiley City, countless ordinary human players realized that there really were many people with superpowers in this world.
As long as they entered instances a few more times, everyone would always encounter one or two—either able to hear other people’s thoughts, or having透视, the abilities of superhumans varied.
Of course, superhumans were always a minority in any environment, but the density of superhumans in Smiley City was definitely much higher than in the real world. This made countless players wonder, was Smiley City selecting players with standards?
—No solution, no one has gotten the answer yet.
“Taking the initiative can allow you to get more points after surviving, but taking the initiative also means risking your life.”
Xia Jing’s rough voice sounded in the quiet corridor.
He picked up the microphone, held it in his arms, and stroked it gently, as if caressing his own toy.
Song Yang’s gaze swept over the microphone.
Jin Nan stared at him fixedly. Realizing that his purpose had long been seen through by Xia Jing, and that he might have been played all along, his face was extremely ugly.
“Is there any way to ensure your own safety and get more points? Although you have an ability, you also know that your ability is difficult to protect yourself with. The most your ability can do is—when someone is standing very close to you, you can gently push them in front of the monster.”
With Xia Jing’s words, Liu Yi and Jia Qing’s faces darkened.
With such a “partner” by their side, anyone’s situation would become very dangerous.
Xia Jing was still chuckling, “But that’s enough, isn’t it?”
He raised his head.
Jin Nan gritted his teeth, his face flushed red.
“Before taking action, you would assess the other party’s abilities, whether they possess powerful props, whether they have high points representing sufficient experience. After making a rough judgment in your mind and feeling that the other party’s ability is lower than yours, you would start to act, feeding them to the monster.”
“If the other party’s ability turns out to be stronger than you expected, then you can use your ability to deal the final blow when they are about to finish off the monster. Your ability can evade the system’s detection, and the system will not judge that it was you who killed the player.”
“If the other party’s ability turns out to be weaker than you expected, then it doesn’t matter. After they die, you can judge whether you can handle the monster through their battle process. If you can’t handle it, you can also run away directly.”
“And your ultimate goal is not to gain points for yourself by ‘taking the initiative’.”
“What you want are the headcount points, the monster’s body parts, and its attack parts.”
Jia Qing and Liu Yi finally understood—
The parts of a monster could be broadly divided into two categories: attack parts and other body parts.
Attack parts were “monster props” with many strange abilities that could be directly taken from the monster. Many capable players would try their best to obtain them during instances.
Although monster body parts seemed useless, any player who paid more attention to the overall situation in Smiley City, even if they had never been to the Safe House, knew about its existence, and they knew what monster body parts meant!
As long as they had monster body parts that met the standards, players would have the opportunity to enter the Safe House if they encountered it in an instance in the future, and they could even directly exchange monster body parts for monster props that couldn’t be bought in Smiley City’s official supermarket!
That’s right—in the official supermarket, the only weapons sold were ropes, knives, axes, and the like.
But in the Safe House’s small supermarket, it was full of dazzling monster props!
Therefore, monster body parts and attack parts were very valuable to players. Jin Nan was obviously also planning this, but he insidiously used Xia Jing as a knife in his hand!
What Xia Jing said almost completely hit Jin Nan’s thoughts, and he was extremely annoyed at this moment, veins bulging on his forehead.
He was afraid of death, and being afraid of death also meant that he naturally wanted to quickly accumulate 10,000 points to leave this damn terrifying world.
Originally, if Teacher Zhang was the monster, then he had the best position in that classroom.
Eight players were in the same place, and he was in the last row, farthest from danger. He could wait until almost everyone else was dead before rushing forward, trying to get as many headcount points as possible, and then find a way to get the monster body parts.
But that Teacher Zhang wasn’t the monster.
Later, when Song Yang and the other two planned to go to the teachers’ office, Jin Nan also tried to get involved.
After all, if Song Yang and the others really dealt with the monster on this trip, then the players could leave the instance.
If Jin Nan didn’t do anything, then his instance evaluation points wouldn’t be high.
Even if the other two people besides Song Yang died, plus Huang Mo, there were only three people’s headcount points, not much.
As for monster body parts, he wouldn’t get any.
Then wouldn’t this instance be equivalent to entering for nothing?
At that time, Xia Jing mentioned the school broadcasting room, and everyone realized that the broadcaster in the broadcasting room might also be a monster.
Jin Nan quickly weighed the pros and cons and chose to follow Xia Jing.
His plan was very hasty and crude. He even hesitated halfway, but Xia Jing looked deaf and couldn’t hear his shouts, so Jin Nan felt that this was fate, and this fatty had to die here today.
He thought through the whole process very quickly, so he thought he was doing it without anyone knowing, but now it seemed that this young man named Xia Jing had guessed his plan from the beginning and used it to his advantage.
If there really was a monster in the broadcasting room, seeing how easily Xia Jing handled it, all the benefits must have been monopolized by this guy!
Jin Nan was so annoyed when he thought of this. He reached out to grab Xia Jing’s collar, but in the next second, the black vertical microphone in Xia Jing’s hand suddenly cracked from the top, and rows of fine teeth appeared in the crack—
The pole suddenly extended, the vertical microphone opened its mouth wide, and with a “hee hee hee hee” laughter, it bit Jin Nan’s arm hard.
With a crisp and loud “crack”, blood splattered out. Jin Nan howled, frantically struggling with his arm. After struggling a few times, he finally broke free from the microphone’s mouth. By then, a large chunk of flesh had been bitten off, faintly revealing the white bones.
Liu Yi and Jia Qing were stunned by this sudden change.
Song Yang was also stunned. Although he had already noticed this microphone and guessed something, he thought that since this microphone could be taken out by Xia Jing, it should be “dead”…
Jin Nan rolled on the ground, the pain making his face pale and his body covered in sweat, moaning constantly!
The vertical microphone was still opening and closing its mouth with a “crack” and “crack”, its two rows of teeth making terrifying sounds, mixed with “gasp” and “gasp” sounds, as if still thirsting for more flesh and blood, ferocious like a beast.
A beautiful hand landed on the top of the vertical microphone.
The microphone froze, its mouth movements stopped, a thin strip of fresh red flesh still dangling between its teeth.
That hand gently stroked it again.
…The microphone obediently closed its mouth, slowly retracted into the pole, and in one second, it turned back into an ordinary-looking microphone.
Jia Qing and Liu Yi gasped, took a step back, their faces changing drastically, “Th-this thing is—”
Xia Jing smiled, “I said the broadcaster wasn’t the monster, but I didn’t say there were no monsters in the broadcasting room.”
The broadcaster’s voice was smooth and normal, completely different from the hoarse male voice they heard from the school broadcast.
This was because the real monster was this vertical microphone.
It was the one that changed the broadcaster’s voice, adding a demonic, brainwashing element to it.
As long as the words “Don’t think about it” were released through it, the players would involuntarily want to think more.
Any other sound released through it had the effect of disturbing the players and making them restless.
Jia Qing and Liu Yi had already retreated to a corner and huddled together—
No, what they wanted to say was, how could you hold a live monster like a pet dog?!
How could you just hold a live monster and come out to chat with them?!
Is this human, is this human, is this human?!
Song Yang was also speechless for a moment.
He looked back at Jin Nan, who was almost fainting from the pain on the ground, and after a moment of silence, gave Jia Qing a look, signaling him to take out the medical supplies from the spatial bag.
Song Yang wasn’t a saint, he didn’t have much kindness to spare.
If they were in battle now, let alone Jin Nan just losing an arm, even if he died, then so be it. Song Yang couldn’t care and couldn’t save him. Moreover, who in the terrifying world couldn’t see through life and death?
But now was not that time.
Of course, he didn’t say much about Xia Jing’s actions.
Jin Nan deserved it, and this young man in front of him obviously couldn’t be judged by common sense.
Song Yang just closed his eyes and felt it.
If the monster was killed, or completely put into the spatial bag by the player, even if it died, the game would be over.
If the game was over, players would get the option to exit the instance in their consciousness, but there was none now.
It made sense.
The monster in a two-star instance couldn’t just be a mere microphone monster.
The microphone monster was just a small sub-monster.
Song Yang opened his eyes and saw Xia Jing restrain his expression, seriously stuffing the microphone monster into the sachet-like spatial bag, and then stuffing it back into his trouser pocket. He couldn’t help but laugh.
This person looked strange, as if he didn’t have any ordinary human emotions, but this act of eagerly collecting monsters was childishly cute.
Of course, Song Yang would also collect monster body parts and attack parts in instances, but he didn’t bother to compete with Xia Jing for just a microphone monster.
He only asked, “How did you guess that Jin Nan has an ability?”
Xia Jing calmly analyzed, “His intention to use me was obvious, and his method of verifying that my ability was weaker than his was just a brief test and observation. A person must have something to be so arrogant.”
“If his ‘something’ was a monster prop he had obtained from other instances, then everyone knows that using monster props on players would be judged by the system as harming each other, deducting points and locking them in the little black room. The same goes for personally framing players. Besides that, his reliance was only on some abilities that could evade the system’s monitoring.”
Song Yang raised his eyebrows, “Then how did you determine that his ability was just a ‘gentle push’, and not something that would make you worse off?”
“If he really had such a powerful ability, would he need to pull others to be his scapegoat?” Xia Jing raised his lips.
If he really had such a powerful ability, with Jin Nan’s greedy personality, he would have rushed forward to dismember the monster and put all the monster body parts into his bag.
Indeed, Song Yang could probably guess the answer without asking.
But he could hear from Xia Jing’s tone that this person was really playing with the game, even playing with the players.
Song Yang shook his head, not sure whether he felt more surprised or weird. He kicked open the door of the broadcasting room, scanned around, and said to Liu Yi and Jia Qing, who had finished treating Jin Nan’s wound, “There’s still some time, let’s search this place together and see if there are any other clues.”
The broadcasting room wasn’t big, and it took the four of them only ten minutes to check everything.
There were no very clear gains, only Liu Yi found a school rules booklet and stared at it.
Author’s note:
Microphone monster: I’m very well-behaved .jpg
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T/N: they really want to mess with XJ huuuuh?? O_o
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Update: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
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