The Pity Olympics

"Oh, my God! My trial was walking a tightrope ten thousand meters in the air, with an endless abyss below!" The blond, blue-eyed contestant from Eagle Country was still pale as a sheet. He patted his chest, looking horrified to have survived. "A damn clown monster was floating right beside me, grinning and asking me riddles! 'What has a long neck but no head?' Damn it, the answer was a beer bottle! Who would've thought of that?"

The more he spoke, the more worked up he got. "Every time I got one wrong, the tightrope beneath my feet went soft as noodles, and I'd drop a huge distance! I almost fell!"

Beside him, the samurai from Cherry Blossom Country, who had been silent all along, gave a cold snort and flexed his bandaged wrist.

"My opponent was a faceless woman." His voice was hoarse. "Several corpse-white arms could reach out from beneath her kimono, each clutching a rusty razor. You had no idea where to attack, because she had no physical form, but her blades could cut through your flesh with ease."

He paused, a ruthless glint flashing in his eyes. "Then I noticed a mirror in the corner of the room. Only in the mirror could I see the one face hidden beneath her hair. I smashed the mirror, and she vanished with a scream."

"What's so bad about that?" A bespectacled man from the USA, who looked like a mild-mannered intellectual, clutched at his hair on the verge of a breakdown. "I had to play mahjong with three monsters covered in eyes. If I lost, they'd eat me on the spot. I only survived by pure luck!"

One bizarre trial after another had been thrown at them. Some people had been trapped in a room full of oil paintings and had to figure out which painting contained a living monster. Others had been made chefs in a huge kitchen for a monster with only a mouth. They had three chances to make a dish it liked; if it didn't enjoy the food, they'd become the ingredients for its next dish.

In short, everyone had endured a trial that had nearly cost them their lives. Some had been terrifying, others absurd, but every one of them had been mentally and physically exhausting.

And even getting into the dormitory didn't mean it was over.

Passing the trial only earned them "permission to move in."

Every dorm room already had a monster resident.

They couldn't attack anyone outright, but they had endless ways to torment people.

"My roommate was a stitched-together monster. It kept dropping parts in the middle of the night—one moment its arm was on the floor, the next its leg was missing—and it made me look for them!" A burly man from Gaul Country looked ready to cry. "Where the hell was I supposed to find a leg for it? In the end, it stuck my pillow under its neck and said that would do for a leg!"

"I slept in the same bed as a lump of flesh covered in mouths. They snored all night long. The sound... was like hundreds of sewers bubbling away at once!"

The contestant from Kimchi Country was a beautiful woman. Frowning, she said, "My roommate was a tentacle monster. All night, it whispered in my ear, saying my skin was like fine porcelain and my eyes like the brightest black obsidian. It wanted to take me apart and turn me, piece by piece, into the perfect specimen for its collection."

"It was just trying to scare me. It didn't actually do anything, but its slime-covered tentacles wrapped around me all night!"

The horrific stories made everyone's scalp crawl.

The players looked more haggard and bedraggled than one another. Every face bore the same dark circles, the result of a double ordeal of body and mind.

When they looked at one another, they found a twisted kind of comfort in each other's misery.

"Looks like none of us got much sleep last night." The Eagle Country contestant gave a bitter smile, his voice full of relief at having survived.

Chu He stood not far away, listening quietly to it all.

He looked at their expressions—some fearful, some furious, some on the verge of collapse—then unconsciously rubbed his sore lower back after an intense struggle.

So... that was why they had dark circles under their eyes.

They'd all been tormented all night by fear and disgust.

And he...

Chu He's expression turned instantly complicated.

If he told them the truth now, he'd be hated by everyone!

He understood a little about human nature. Apart from your parents, there was hardly anyone in the world who wanted you to have a better life than they did.

Just then, the Eagle Country contestant noticed Chu He standing off by himself, looking dazed. He saw that Chu He's eyes were ringed with purple-black circles and that he looked utterly exhausted. A sense of kinship welled up in him: We're both in the same boat.

He went over and clapped Chu He hard on the shoulder. "Brother, judging by the look of you, you had a rough night too, huh?"

The blow nearly made Chu He drop to his knees.

"Ugh—" He sucked in a sharp breath, feeling his lumbar vertebrae groan under the strain of the earlier struggle.

Seeing his strong reaction, the Eagle Country contestant became even more certain of his guess. He said sympathetically, "What was your trial? And what was the monster in your dorm like? Tell us. Maybe we can help you figure it out. Don't bottle it up."

In an instant, every survivor's gaze turned to Chu He.

This guy must have faced something even more terrifying and difficult than all of them combined!

Chu He opened his mouth. Looking at their expectant, sympathetic faces, he found himself at a loss for words.

He couldn't exactly say he'd had an opponent who was too strong and wildly aggressive, and that they'd kept up an intense struggle all night—from the bedroom to the living room, then from the living room to the desk—until they'd only just managed to reach an uneasy truce as dawn broke.

That would be way too much.

When he kept silent, everyone imagined an even more horrendous battle.

"Brother, don't be afraid. It's all over now," the Eagle Country contestant comforted him.

Chu He took a deep breath under everyone's concerned gaze. He forced a smile that looked worse than crying, then spoke in a voice heavy with the weight of experience.

"My roommate... How should I put it?"

He paused, as if searching for the right words, then let out a long sigh.

"She was really persistent, incredibly strong, and spent almost the whole night struggling against me. She didn't let me get any rest."

Still, all that effort in the middle of the night hadn't been for nothing.

As he supported his aching waist, sore from overexertion, Chu He silently brought up the system panel that only he could see.

[Intimacy level increased! Xia Yao's intimacy toward you has reached: Infatuation!]

[Infatuation: She will be unable to bear being apart from you, and her possessiveness and dependence on you will increase rapidly. Warning: Any attempt to harm you may trigger her rampage.]

[Your skill 'Eye of Nirvana' has absorbed enough emotional energy to advance to intermediate level! New ability: See Through Illusions]

See Through Illusions? What did that mean?

With a little time to spare, Chu He raised an eyebrow and immediately tested the change.

He found that his vision seemed sharper, and the colors of the whole world had become a few shades more vivid.

An idea struck Chu He, and his gaze instinctively turned to the Eagle Country contestant not far away.

He focused and activated the Eye of Nirvana.

The next second, an unbelievable sight unfolded before him.

The Eagle Country contestant's jacket and T-shirt seemed to peel away layer by layer before Chu He's eyes, revealing the energy fluctuations beneath them. At last, he could clearly see the Superman "S" printed on the man's underwear. The emblem gave off a faint psychic energy, as if it were a projection of the man's innermost beliefs.

"Pfft..."

Chu He nearly choked, barely managing to suppress his laughter.

Well, who would've guessed? The guy looked like a big, strapping man, but inside, he was harboring dreams of being a superhero.

His gaze then drifted toward the beautiful Kimchi Country contestant, who was complaining in a pitiful voice. After activating his ability, he quickly coughed and immediately looked away.

He'd just been through an entire night of intense struggle. He needed to stay focused and not get distracted.

Just as he was smugly admiring his new ability, which was practically a cheat, and thinking about how he could make good use of it, a thought came crashing down over him like a bucket of ice water!

Wait...

His Eye of Nirvana was only at intermediate level, and it could already do this.

What about Xia Yao?

She was a genuine SSS-class monster. How powerful were her senses...?

If she wanted to sense something, was there any detail in the world she couldn't detect?

Chu He's expression froze.

Holy crap! Did that mean he couldn't hide anything from her?!