amaotonovel Chapter 4665 Desperate Escape (37)
Chapter 4665 Desperate Escape (37)
Chapter 4665 A Desperate Escape (Thirty-Seven)
As the lights in the cubicles lit up one by one, the game officially began. The mechanism slowly rose, retrieved a slip of paper from the bottom of the lantern above, and then descended to the top of the cubicle. A robotic arm-like part of the mechanism gripped the slip of paper and lowered it down. An opening appeared at the top of the cubicle, just big enough for the robotic arm to enter.
However, seemingly to facilitate their observation of the mechanism's rotation and to formulate their own strategies, the cubicle's ceiling was transparent, appearing less like glass and more like some kind of highly transparent resin material. The opening was located in the very center of the cubicle. As if to prevent sound leakage, the opening was very small. The robotic arm only stopped above the opening and tossed down the note.
Superman went to the center of the cubicle and picked up the note. He turned to Batman and asked, "What do we do now?"
"Go out, clockwise." Batman sat in the corner of the cubicle, recovering his strength, trying to be as concise as possible. Superman didn't ask any further questions; he turned his head to look around, didn't find a pen in the room, and simply waved him over.
He pointed to his collarbone, and Superman's eyes widened as he said, "What? Your wound was almost healed..."
“It can’t be healed, Clark,” Batman said, shaking his head. “Just dab some blood on the tip of a skewer and write it down.”
Superman was clearly dissatisfied. He pouted, but not wanting Batman to waste his energy arguing with him, he walked over angrily, dipped his finger in Batman's blood, and casually wrote a couple of lines.
"How are we going to send the note back?" Superman looked up in confusion. "We can't just throw it up, can we? I'm not that good at throwing."
“Wait a moment,” Batman said. “There should be time.”
Sure enough, after about three minutes, a small door suddenly opened in the wall behind the cubicle, revealing what appeared to be a passageway. This passageway was about half a meter square and sloped downwards. It was very dark inside, and nothing could be seen.
“Oh, how could this happen?” Harley complained. “I thought the robotic arm would reach in.”
"It's precisely to keep people like you out," Pamela said with a laugh. "When it reaches in, you grab it, break through the ceiling defenses, and kill everyone up there with a Rising Dragon followed by a Counterattack, right?"
"Tch." Harley, her thoughts read, pouted. Stark above breathed a sigh of relief. Actually, he had originally designed it so that the mechanical arm would extend inside, but after seeing how these people operated it, he quickly adjusted the mechanism.
The passage behind the wall was originally intended for blood transfusions or storing sacrificial offerings; the note didn't go through there. But in the current situation, Stark was truly afraid to let any part of the mechanism into the room, even if it was beyond their reach. Who knew if they would suddenly jump up and grab the mechanical arm and refuse to let go?
The problem is that the items they sacrificed weren't originally intended to be sent up; they were thrown directly into the waste bin, which is located below with no access to the top. Now it's too late to change it. So they need to send someone down the staff access route they came through to the maintenance room of this facility, and then retrieve the note from the waste bin.
“I’ll go,” the agent said. He stood up, opened the door on the floor, and climbed down the ladder. The staff passage was hidden in the pillar supporting the lantern, behind the various cubicles.
The agent only climbed a few steps down, and when he was almost there, he jumped down. His jump startled everyone in the cubicle; almost everyone heard the sound.
This is because, in order to prevent them from communicating, the side walls and ceiling of the cubicle were soundproofed, making it impossible to confirm the identity of other people by shouting in the room.
However, the pillars at the back and the floor underfoot were missing. Logically, those areas should be empty. The design didn't include any climbing up and down for voting. Normally, the six people at the top should have remained seated. This led to the first flaw in the game—the agent was discovered.
The detective retrieved the note from the scrap yard. He didn't read it; he simply put the note in the box, packed it away, and continued climbing. But as he climbed, he heard someone knocking on the wall of the central pillar.
"Da da da... da da... da da..."
It was very simple Morse code, but the typing was so fast that it was slightly difficult to decipher. The agent, however, managed to decipher it thanks to his strong professional skills. The words were also very simple: "Who are you?"
It turns out that the players didn't think the agent was an employee; they suspected the agent might be a hidden mole, deliberately announcing their presence in this way. And they immediately thought of a way to respond.
While shouting directly is possible, those guys upstairs said before that anything they say here will be heard. If they directly accuse someone of being a mole, wouldn't that expose them?
However, if direct communication isn't possible, indirect communication is also an option. Anatoly reacted the fastest, speaking his mind without hesitation—a testament to his KGB background. He immediately started talking to Lucifer about the past, their conversation completely masking the sound of him knocking on the wall.
The five people sitting upstairs were also listening to the gossip with great interest. What could be a more interesting bedtime story than the Soviets and Satan teaming up to solve a series of murders?
The agent initially didn't want to respond, but considering he would have to make at least six trips up and down like this, all because the guys above him hadn't designed the level properly, he slowed down and quickly knocked back.
"Hunter (I am a hunter)."
When Anatoly knocked, the two teams next to him heard it, but those further away couldn't hear it, as the walls have limited sound transmission. But when the agent knocked, he was knocking on the metal ladder he was holding, and that sound echoed in the circular tunnel, making it audible to almost all the teams.
The hunter was the mole. Everyone started thinking, but no one spoke. Now they understood why, instead of simply hanging a sign on the cubicle door, the people wearing different masks had chosen to do so. Otherwise, the mole wouldn't have been able to clearly and concisely explain their identity.
"Help us."
"Yes."
The group immediately began to think again. Their main concern was what the mole could do for them. They knew that in a one-against-five situation, the mole absolutely could not reveal their identity, or they would definitely be ganged up on. Manipulating mechanisms or directly leaking exam questions was out of the question. That left them with only the option of tampering with the voting process.
However, voting is a matter of majority rule, so what can one person do?
However, after thinking about it, even though the others weren't the mole, they might still vote randomly, so every vote counts.
Almost every group tapped the number of squares they wanted on the wall: "One (only one turn)."
Then there was silence, and they didn't know if the other person had heard them. However, by listening to the sounds of people in the two nearby rooms knocking on the walls, they realized that the other person was thinking the same thing as them, and they were using the same problem-solving approach.
They were about to continue knocking on the wall to introduce themselves, but then another slip of paper was thrown down, asking them to vote. This time, they voted on the direction of rotation. Everyone was speechless. Why not just use a single slip of paper? Why go through all this trouble?
Stark was also a little embarrassed. He explained in the team chat, "I was thinking of using the mechanism to deploy and retrieve things, doing more steps would make things clearer and increase the tension. Who knew..."
This time it was another detective who went to collect the note. He thought, "Great, I'll have to make twelve trips now."
He jumped down again with a thud. The others were puzzled; what excuse was he using to go up and down here so frequently, especially to the toilet?
However, since he always landed shortly after the paper was collected, most people guessed that he was retrieving it. But this drew even more criticism. Seriously, if they'd gone to make a mechanism, couldn't they have included an automatic recycling system? Was it really that expensive?
However, the players were also adept at convincing themselves. They reasoned that there might have originally been a recycling device, but since the mole wanted to tamper with it, an automatic recycling device would have prevented him from escaping. Therefore, he must have broken the recycling device beforehand, then volunteered to collect the notes, using this opportunity to communicate with them and conspire to swindle the wealthy man.
The process was entirely wrong, but the answer was entirely correct. The automatic recycling device did exist, but no one dared to enter it. The agent wasn't the mole at all; he was just a resentful office worker.
They all voted clockwise. Greed said, "Alright, now it's time to vote. Besides me, who else could be the mole?"
Mephisto raised his hand. Greed nodded at him: "Alright, let's stick to the script. Come on, everyone vote."
They also found a piece of paper and wrote down the number of rotations to be made. This step was necessary because if, after the level was completed, players disputed a particular puzzle, the administrator would need to provide evidence to prove that the level design was sound. Therefore, the role-playing couldn't be a mere formality; concrete evidence had to be left behind.
After the votes are cast, the vote counting begins. One vote rotates two spaces, one vote rotates three spaces, one vote is abstaining, and the remaining three votes remain one space.
Greed raised an eyebrow. Then, they checked their individual action plans one last time, only to find that all six groups had chosen to go out.
This leads to a very strange phenomenon—the house swapping.
The six groups of animals each jump one space clockwise from their current position. Since no one has left their starting position, everyone jumps, and each jumps one space to the next player's left. This means everyone changes their role, becoming the animal one level below them. In other words, the hunter becomes a tiger, the tiger becomes a wolf, the wolf becomes a weasel, the weasel becomes a chicken, the chicken becomes a scorpion, and the scorpion becomes a hunter.
A piece of paper with a picture was thrown down, depicting the animal that had jumped to your location in this level, along with whether you had successfully hunted it and whether you had been hunted. Charles unfolded the paper and saw that, besides the animal picture, the two lines below it were both crossed out.
In other words, they were neither preyed upon nor successfully hunted. This also means their animals won't be coming home for dinner tonight, and others will have to decide what to do next.
"Our plan worked," Charles said with a sigh of relief. "We didn't catch any of the predators that came to hunt us, and we didn't catch anyone when we jumped over. I just don't know if anyone got caught today."
“It’s hard to say,” Eric said. “After all, the results aren’t being shared with everyone; it’s all guesswork. Maybe someone has already been bitten.”
“Then tomorrow…” Charles hesitated for a moment before saying, “I think they’ll still go clockwise tomorrow, so let’s choose not to go out. What do you think?”
(End of this chapter)