[Player roles will now be revealed.]
Ye Chu saw a white panel appear before him. Then two large, blood-drenched characters slowly emerged, glaring against the white background:
[Witch]
He relaxed a little. In a game like this, having a special role was better than having none. Given his luck, he had expected to draw a Villager card, not the Witch.
Ye Chu looked around. He had played Werewolf before, and now he studied the other eight players' expressions, hoping to glean some information.
Player One's eyes still held a gleam of excitement, Player Three looked dumbstruck, and Player Four was trembling...
Before he could finish examining everyone's faces, the system spoke again.
[All players have viewed their roles. Night falls, close your eyes...]
The lights in the cabin abruptly went out, and the air filled with the acrid smell of smoke. A wave of dizziness washed over Ye Chu. When he opened his eyes again, he was no longer inside the little wooden cabin.
[Here I come, gorgeous!!] [Number Seven, with a face like that, you'd better stay alive a little longer! Otherwise, what am I supposed to look at?!]
The sky was pitch-black and blanketed in clouds, without a moon or star in sight. That probably went along with "night falls, close your eyes." Ye Chu surveyed his unfamiliar surroundings. This seemed to be a forest, crowded with trees whose branches twisted together into strange shapes, like... like people fleeing and screaming.
He picked up a reasonably straight stick from the ground, thinking that if he had the misfortune of being targeted by a wolf, at least a weapon would let him defend himself and buy some time. He just had to survive until dawn.
The game would only end once an entire faction had been eliminated, meaning at least three people had to die. How could he minimize the losses...? The finance student's brain, accustomed to calculating investment risks, worked at full speed.
Suddenly, footsteps sounded behind him. They were very quiet, perhaps to avoid being noticed.
Ye Chu immediately spun around, alert, and hurled the stick in his hand. It spun twice through the air and flew straight into the person's arm. "Aah-!" A scream rang out.
Ye Chu stepped forward to retrieve his stick and warily eyed the person before him. It was Player One-Su Fengzi.
The white panel appeared again, and several blood-red words slowly emerged: [You have one vial of poison. Use it?]
No.
The game had only just begun. He couldn't tell friend from foe yet, and he wasn't going to poison anyone rashly.
The man on the ground clutched his aching arm, his face contorted in pain. "You little punk. Did you have to hit that hard?"
[It's Number One! Two handsome guys together-what a feast for the eyes!] [I'm dying. First time I've seen someone attack without even checking who it is.]
Ye Chu felt no guilt whatsoever. Holding his stick, he gave Su Fengzi a distinctly unfriendly look. "Why did you suddenly appear behind me?"
"To give you a scare." Su Fengzi got up and brushed the dead twigs and leaves off himself. "In unfamiliar surroundings, people instinctively follow the strong. Wouldn't you agree, Peking University's star student?"
Ye Chu rolled his eyes. One moment he claimed he wanted to scare him, and the next he said he wanted to follow him. Like hell he believed that.
Su Fengzi could tell what he was thinking from his expression, but he didn't care. His long, narrow eyes curved as his lips curled into a smile. "Since we finally ran into someone, shouldn't we exchange some information? What's your role?"
"Villager," Ye Chu said without hesitation. He didn't know whether the wolves in this game knew who their teammates were, so he couldn't risk claiming to be a wolf, much less reveal his actual role. What if the man before him was a wolf? "What's yours?"
"Me? I'm the Seer."
Ye Chu raised an eyebrow.
Isn't he afraid I'm a wolf pretending to be a Villager? Does he genuinely not know how to play, or is he playing dumb?
Or is this part of his strategy too?
"Who did you check?"
"You." Su Fengzi looked at him. "You're on the good side, so I chose to come find you."
Ye Chu regarded him skeptically. Being declared one of the good guys didn't make him feel much of anything.
If Su Fengzi was a wolf, either he didn't know who his fellow wolves were and was looking for teammates, or he was trying to muddy the waters. Most people, once someone claiming to be the Seer declared them good, would simply accept that person as the real Seer, making the situation even more chaotic.
Whichever it was, declaring Ye Chu good could only benefit Su Fengzi himself.
"What are you thinking about now, star student?" Su Fengzi reached an arm around his shoulders, moving to drape himself over him. Ye Chu dodged backward, and the arm missed his shoulder and dropped.
Su Fengzi shrugged. "All right. Looks like our star student doesn't believe me."
[But you really don't look like a good guy (muttering quietly)] [Why are we watching from a Villager's perspective this round? I really want to know which one's lying, aaah.] [Number One looks so sly and foxy. Don't trick our precious Number Seven!]
Ye Chu said nothing, because he really didn't trust the man before him. He didn't know why, but from the moment he first saw Su Fengzi in the cabin, Ye Chu had felt as though the words "I'm a liar" were written all over his face.
Now that liar found a stick on the ground just as Ye Chu had and swung it through the air a few times. "Hey, you know what? This actually works pretty well. Oh, right." Su Fengzi continued, a hint of seriousness slipping into his casual tone. "The trees here are strange. You can't mark their trunks."
Taking the view that practice was the test of truth, Ye Chu picked up a stone and tried scratching a mark into a trunk. Sure enough, just as Su Fengzi had said, no matter how much force he used, he couldn't leave so much as a scratch.
That meant the players couldn't use this method to find one another.
Tsk. That makes things tricky.
The two continued walking. The forest seemed to have no end, its distant dead trees stretching on forever.
"?"
Ye Chu's gaze suddenly fixed on one tree. It looked different from the others. He turned to look at the other trees again.
"..."
He thought he knew why it looked different now.
Its perfectly good branches had been forcibly pulled to one side. From a distance, it looked half-bald.
Ye Chu reached out and touched the strange branches. They felt odd, slippery and soft. He tugged hard, but no matter how he pulled, the branch wouldn't snap. Apparently, another player had made use of precisely that.
"Whoever did this has some tricks up their sleeve." Su Fengzi looked at the pitiful tree, both surprised and amused.
Using branches pulled to one side as a marker really wasn't something most people would think of.
[?? Now there's an approach I never imagined.] [??? I've watched so many live-action Werewolf games, and this is the first time I've seen anyone leave directions like that...] [Can someone check the other streams and see which genius did this? Hahahahaha, I'm dying.] [Just got back from another perspective. I swear, you'll never guess who it was, hahaha.] [Corpse tree: What did I do to deserve this...]
Before you continue