Who Is the Murderer?

With the appearance of Rule 6, the game had now changed from a battle of wits involving mutual deception into the simplest kind of survival game.

Three minutes to escape, then fifteen minutes without being killed by the murderer.

Simple?

Not at all. The difficulty was immense.

Facing that madwoman—his supposed girlfriend—it was simply impossible.

The difference in physical ability was far too great!

Yimo knew that better than anyone.

After three minutes of running, the other party would probably catch up to him in less than a minute!

After thinking it through, Yimo ran for two minutes, casually opened the door to a room, and gently closed it behind him.

Crash—!

He turned around and saw an astonishingly beautiful sight.

It was a classroom. Desks and chairs were arranged neatly, and some math problems were written on the blackboard.

It could be inferred that this was a high school classroom.

That alone was nothing special. But outside the windows, the dazzling evening glow illuminated the branches and leaves of several huge maple trees. They swayed rhythmically in the late-autumn breeze, making a rustling sound. The scene was truly breathtaking!

It formed a stark contrast with the dark, supposedly haunted mine tunnel from before.

After spacing out for a moment, Yimo suddenly covered his face with his right hand. His left hand gripped the small jade pendant Lone Supporter had given him, and he bent over, unable to hold back his laughter.

"Hahahaha, how ironic!"

"They actually let someone who never attended high school see this sight before dying."

"It's simply too twisted."

"Trying to awaken my will to survive?"

"I'll survive. I definitely will!"

Yimo looked completely abnormal. After laughing in an incredibly chuunibyou fashion several times, he looked around the classroom and finally hid inside a storage cabinet in the corner.

To put it plainly, hiding was all he could do for the time being.

In this pitch-black, cramped environment.

He could only quietly wait for death.

He had tried to see whether he could escape through the window, but unfortunately, he couldn't. That was why he had resorted to this desperate measure.

He opened the system's game-rules page, glanced at it, then closed it again before looking at the countdown in the upper-right corner of his vision.

The hunt had begun!

Thump... thump...

In such a cramped space, the body's five senses were magnified infinitely.

Compared with the rustling maple leaves outside, Yimo could hear his own heartbeat far more clearly.

He was still alive.

He had been inexplicably dragged into a Death Game. There were eight players in total, and he was one of only two people still alive.

No.

If that knife-wielding madwoman was the ghost, then he had become the only survivor!

Just as his faction indicated.

At that moment, he prayed and repented ceaselessly.

He prayed that the madwoman wouldn't find him.

He repented for the sins he had committed out of selfish desperation to survive!

Outside, it was extremely quiet.

With the doors closed, sound was completely isolated between the room and the mine tunnel, as though they were two entirely different spaces.

Fifteen minutes. He only needed fifteen minutes.

He just had to hide until the timer reached zero!

Yimo would occasionally look up at the time in the upper-right corner, repeatedly confirming it.

But time, which usually passed in the blink of an eye, moved so slowly now.

It was even slower than sitting through his most hated class in this very classroom!

Tick-tock...

The countdown finally changed from two digits to one.

Nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds remained!

Yimo kept mentally repeating to himself, Don't come, don't come!!!

Creak—

Yet the things people least wanted to happen were precisely the ones most likely to happen beneath fate's merciless hand.

The sound of the room's door opening reached Yimo's ears.

"Only nine minutes left~"

"Let me guess. Is that man who inexplicably became my boyfriend in this room?"

Her sickly, coquettish laughter echoed throughout the room.

Swish—shrrk—

Then came the sound of a cleaver scraping across the floor tiles. It pounded against Yimo's heart, as though urging it to run harder and faster.

Gulp—

But humans had limits. Yimo didn't know how fast his heart was beating now, but it was still beating.

He covered his mouth, and his throat involuntarily bobbed.

"Huh?... Huh? Huh?"

"He doesn't seem to be in this room..."

Swish... shrrk...

The sound of the cleaver drew closer, then moved away again. Listening to the girl's puzzled voice, Yimo felt like an ant in a frying pan, suffering unbearable torment.

He looked at the system countdown in the upper-right corner.

Eight minutes remained!

He frowned slightly.

He suspected that he had been discovered and that the madwoman was deliberately tormenting him.

The kind of torment that kept him hovering on the brink of life and death!!!

He couldn't help wanting to rush out of this cramped space where he could barely move and fight the madwoman to the death!

But he couldn't!

Hold on!

"Hey... he doesn't seem to be here. I'll go check the other rooms."

Finally, as Twilight's voice filled with disappointment faded, the sound of the cleaver scraping across the floor grew more distant. Then came the sound of the door closing.

"Phew... was I saved?"

Although it felt somewhat unreal, Yimo's heart suddenly relaxed. He murmured in a voice so faint that only he could perceive it.

Then.

Creak—!

"But no. The boyfriend player who inexplicably became my very first boyfriend..."

As the cabinet door opened, a voice carrying a hint of seductiveness yet as cold as an abyss reached Yimo's ears.

The evening glow suddenly shining into the cabinet was somewhat dazzling, and Yimo instinctively raised a hand to shield his brow.

He looked up and saw Twilight. Abnormal black mist radiated from her body, and scarlet bloodlight gleamed from her crimson pupils.

She stood bathed in the classroom's evening glow, as though draped in a vivid wedding gown.

Compared with the sunset, her sickly expression made her look even more beautiful.

She resembled a newlywed bride gazing lovingly at her beloved.

Except...

He wasn't her beloved. He was the person she hated!

Mixed with the joy before victory, the sight made her burst into laughter.

To Yimo's ears, it was exceptionally grating.

To him, the bride blocking the cabinet's exit was no charming newlywed.

She was nothing but a crazed murderer!

"I'm not your boyfriend. Why don't you just kill me?" Yimo stopped looking at her, lowered his head, and spoke with some indifference.

Twilight froze. She couldn't understand why the man who had always been madly devoted to her would refuse to acknowledge being her boyfriend after the system's assignment. For a moment, she was caught off guard.

"Oh?"

"No, no, no. The system is absolute."

"For example, you have to participate in these absurd games, you have to kill people, and you must die if you lose the game."

"And yet, when the game began, I received a system notification telling me that you were my one and only exclusive boyfriend."

"Hehehe... It even told me to enjoy the pleasure of romance to my heart's content. Isn't that ridiculous?"

Twilight looked at the countdown, completely unhurried.

"Six minutes remain, my boyfriend. Guess at which second I'll bring this blade down?"

Twilight turned around and looked at the evening glow outside the window, savoring the joy before victory and the beautiful sunset. Her pale pink hair swayed continuously over her shoulders.

Then she felt that, at such a sacred moment, it would be a pity not to admire the sight of her first boyfriend struggling before death.

So she walked to the cabinet and bent down.

Her right finger slowly traced across Yimo's chest as she teased, "You're actually quite handsome. Your hair's just a little too long."

"Hehe... What a pity~"

"Tell me, at which second will I strike?"

Twilight had been affected to some extent by the murderer faction. Under normal circumstances, she would have brought the blade down long ago instead of teasing her enemy like this.

Perhaps being a murderer truly amplified the desires in one's heart without limit, driving people insane.

Just as the murderer's description said:

When a person picks up a knife and kills, are they still human—or have they become a ghost?

Twilight eagerly awaited the answer from the boyfriend before her.

"If you were my girlfriend, then I'd guess you wouldn't kill me." Yimo kept his head lowered. His eyes were obscured by his broken bangs, making them difficult to see, and his voice grew colder and colder.

It was as if he didn't care about death at all.

The instant Yimo finished answering, the red glow in Twilight's eyes became utterly intense. She swung her blade toward Yimo inside the storage cabinet!

"Wrong. Right now!"

"Huh?"

But... the scene of blood spraying everywhere never happened.

Instead, Yimo's loud laughter echoed through the beautiful classroom.

It was somewhat sick, somewhat insane, and impossible to describe or understand.

"Haha... Hahahaha...!"

"So, who exactly is the murderer?!!"