Mr. Reporter—or rather, what Merlin told Iver when they first met was not wrong.
This ritual originally had two paths.
The closer one got to the Top Layer, the more detached it became from reality, making it easier to investigate the story from beginning to end... and thus obtain a higher score.
But the closer one got to the Bottom Layer, the higher one's chances of victory became.
Because under these circumstances, the advantage of dying quickly was greatest.
The ritual Weizhe created was actually not difficult. Its main challenge was that it began immediately after the rules were read, leaving no time for discussion or thought.
On one's own layer, there was no need to conduct any investigation.
One only needed to kill everyone immediately and then commit suicide... then begin investigating on the next layer. As long as one discovered corpses on the next layer, one could immediately commit suicide again and pursue the ascender on the same layer. This way, one would possess the initiative of "one layer."
As long as one ensured that they were the first to die, then confirmed after committing suicide that there were no ascenders on that layer at the very beginning, they would have found Layer Zero.
Therefore, the farther down someone was, the more say they had.
With this strategy, whoever reached Layer Zero first would be certain to win—not only would they be guaranteed victory, they could also eliminate anyone they pleased.
"Because once someone who killed everyone from the layer where he was born successfully reaches and identifies Layer Zero, only he will know whether this is Layer Zero. Everyone else's information will inevitably be flawed. He only needs to find anyone who isn't on his team, then kill that person by making him suspect that person is