"Oh... you can talk."
Iver stopped and looked over with interest. "I thought you had sworn never to speak. Or perhaps you had developed compassion and wanted me to save him."
"There is no need to say more of those meaningless words. They only wear down one's will and make one weak."
When Iver stopped, the monk nodded slightly and continued in a low voice. "Mr. Aleister, please be patient and listen to me.
"This ritual has special victory conditions, unlike a normal New Moon Ritual. Under normal circumstances, even if you killed everyone, you would still lose if you failed to complete the mission.
"But this time, there is a Mad Killing rule, so killing everyone in advance will also complete the mission. Even if the mission is not completed, anyone who survives until the end will still win. The simplest way to win is to reduce the number of people to three. The giant will prioritize choosing corpses, so the remaining three will automatically win regardless of how many points they have.
"But this strategy has a flaw. If the other six are not all killed and some of them survive... they might obtain a very high score. That could result in one of the three being eliminated.
"Therefore, besides the person with the highest score, the most stable victor is the person with the most kills. If someone kills one person while the other seven remain alive, then as long as the giant chooses the dead person as food, that ritualist will definitely win.
"From this perspective, killing one person in each of the three storage rooms is the safest method. That way, no matter which room the giant visits, it will not choose a survivor as food."
"You're right," Iver said with a nod. "But can