Someone Among You Hasn't Been Telling the Truth

After carrying the body bag into the kitchen, Xie Qi naturally noticed that someone had been in there.

When he saw the decoration lying on the floor, Xie Qi suddenly remembered that he had left his kerosene lamp at the breeding farm.

But the thought only crossed his mind; he had no intention of going back for it.

After all, his eyes had already adjusted to the dark. He had mainly brought the lamp for the guests' sake.

He crouched down and picked up the intestine.

Nikalos had put a fair bit of effort into his work. The intestine was quite clean, without the slightest trace of an unpleasant smell even when Xie Qi held it close to his nose.

Xie Qi put the intestine in a cupboard, planning to have Nikalos hang it back up tomorrow.

Then he went back to humming as he began preparing tomorrow's ingredients.

Another peaceful night.

After making his customary diary entry for the day, Xie Qi lay down on his bed and opened the system shop.

This had become part of his routine over the past few days. He just wanted to see whether the shop had stocked anything new that he could afford.

Xie Qi wasn't one to save money. He generally spent whatever he had on hand.

It was just that, in his previous life, he had possessed more money than he could ever spend, so this flaw hadn't been as obvious.

There was nothing interesting under daily necessities, so he opened the skill card category.

The pages he had seen before had all been gray, indicating that everything on them was beyond his means. But tonight was different: one of the listings was actually lit up.

He opened it curiously and found a skill card marked in red, meaning it had a major flaw.

[Skill name: I'm Invincible When I'm Crazy]

[Attribute: Active skill]

[Category: Combat]

[Effect: For every 1% of SAN Value consumed, all of the prisoner's attributes increase by 10% of the upper limit for their current level. After the increase, however, the resulting values are not subject to the upper limit.]

[Restriction: Due to an unknown cause, this skill card's effect is halved. This skill can only be used when SAN Value is below 50%.]

[Note: Before you go completely insane, no one can beat you.]

[Overall rating: E-rank]

At first glance, the skill card's effect was absolutely explosive.

Spending 1% SAN Value increased all attributes by 10%. If someone had a full SAN Value of 100, they only had to spend 10% to max out all the attributes of an F-rank prisoner, becoming the strongest among F-ranks.

What was more, those values weren't subject to level limits. In other words, before going completely insane, you could consume SAN Value to your heart's content, stacking your attribute values like crazy and even surpassing D-rank and C-rank prisoners above your level.

As for how long the effect lasted, that depended on whether the prisoner went insane.

Without that restriction, this card would definitely qualify as an S-rank card. Even the big shots on Prisoner Island who had been through countless instances would covet it.

Unfortunately, the restriction that it could only be used below 50% SAN Value reduced the card's value to a tenth of what it would otherwise have been.

Everyone's attribute panel stated how important SAN Value was. Once it fell below 50%, a prisoner would begin to hallucinate and lose control of their actions. Once it dropped below 10%, they would go insane and lose their reason. At that point, forget playing a role—even staying alive in an instance would be an enormous challenge.

Thus, an ordinary person only had 40% SAN Value to work with. That was excellent for an F-rank rookie: the added attribute values were enough to put him on par with a top E-rank expert. But once he reached E-rank, the added attributes would only multiply his strength a few times over, leaving him still far short of C-rank.

On one hand, the increase in attribute values was limited; on the other, the user also had to guard against the various negative effects of declining sanity. The system shop was certainly right to mark it red.

Yet the shop actually dared to charge 2,500 points for such a useless skill card!

Xie Qi found it strange that the card had appeared on his page. After all, everything he owned combined wasn't worth that much.

Could it be that the card was so hard to sell that the shop had forcibly placed it on every prisoner's page?

That seemed quite possible. Xie Qi gave it a few more glances, then closed the shop.

Although the skill card had all sorts of flaws, it was still very appealing to Xie Qi as a newcomer. But with his pockets empty at the moment, he was better off putting it out of sight and out of mind.

Having slept poorly for two nights in a row, Xie Qi decided to turn in early tonight. Unfortunately, although he went to sleep early, he also woke up early.

Early in the morning, someone kept knocking on his door. At least the noises over the previous two days had been farther away; this morning, they rang out right by his ear.

Xie Qi sat up in bed with an expressionless face, turning his head to stare at the trembling door.

There was more than one person knocking outside. After a while, the rhythm suddenly changed. It seemed they wouldn't give up until they got him to come out.

Covering his mouth, Xie Qi yawned, then slowly got out of bed, washed his face, and got dressed.

The knocking continued in his ears the whole time, as though providing him with an accompaniment.

When he was finally presentable, he gave the mirror on the wardrobe a perfect smile.

Saul was the one knocking now. They had gone to Brussels's room to look for him first thing that morning, but no matter how much they knocked, nobody answered.

A sense of foreboding hung over the six of them. Bailey had been the first to lose patience and come knock on Xie Qi's door, followed by Saul.

Just as they began to think the chef wasn't in his room either, the door before them suddenly opened.

Xie Qi appeared before them, dressed all in black. The oppressive presence of his height made Saul take a step back.

Seeing the other man make room, Xie Qi pulled the door shut behind him and greeted them with a smile. "Good morning, my dear guests. I never expected you to be so enthusiastic about me, wanting to see me first thing in the morning. What an honor~"

Xie Qi's appearance startled them for a moment. Then Song Nan asked, "Where's Brussels? Didn't he go out with you last night? Why is there no one in his room?"

"That's right. Yesterday it was Stock, and today it's Brussels. Shouldn't you explain why they disappeared inside the villa?"

Bailey pushed up his glasses, staring intently at Xie Qi's expression.

The others thought the same thing: the disappearances had to have something to do with the chef standing before them.

"Hmm... I don't know why you guests would think that."

Xie Qi seemed very puzzled. His gaze swept over the six of them before settling on Song Nan.

"Before you guests arrived, there had never been a disappearance at the villa. Rather than suspecting me of doing something, perhaps someone among you hasn't been telling the truth?"