Even when they couldn't hear the cries, the locals remained convinced that the cries existed. That meant this had to have happened more than once. So even when they couldn't hear anything, they still chose to intervene forcefully instead of dismissing it as a child's prank or imagination.
If that deduction was right, it would be easy to distinguish the real "Hidden Friend" from a player playing the role.
Another point that needed special attention was the game's requirements for the player chosen to play the role. They couldn't pick the wrong person, nor could they fail to find anyone. That meant they couldn't target a local or someone who wasn't a player in the instance. And since the "Hidden Friend" only needed one friend each day, one player had to go missing every day—no more, no less. No matter how the players rotated their roles, only one player could go missing each day.
Two people had gone missing from the instance today.
The first to disappear was Deng Guang, the one who had come to call for Xu Huo. According to Bubble Bean and the other player, he had indeed been the first to play the role. The game had given them a notification, and the way he disappeared really was strange...
At that thought, Xu Huo suddenly paused. There had been 39 players in the instance when he arrived, but that didn't mean 39 was the total number of players in the instance.
So it was entirely possible that someone had broken a hidden rule before he arrived and been called away by the real "Hidden Friend."
What hidden rule had they broken?
Killed a local? Killed a player without playing the role? Pretended to be the "Hidden Friend"? Had too many people died?
"Young man," the old