It seemed he had been wrong earlier.
This battle royale wasn't confined to Linmu No. 2 Middle School.
Liang Chen woke up too. Rubbing his eyes, he asked in surprise, "Players can actually get killed?"
"You heard right," Yin Chao replied.
Then he turned to look at Midnight, who stood at the edge of the roof with a black sword in his hand.
The wind stirred the hem of his clothes, as though he might dance on the breeze at any moment.
"Stay here. Don't wander off."
With that, he leaped into the air and vanished from their sight.
Liang Chen's eyes sparkled. "Holy crap! So cool! Is Midnight going off to kill monsters?"
Probably, Yin Chao answered silently.
Midnight couldn't pinpoint every player's location. All he could do was kill as many hunters as possible.
The sky grew darker and darker, and the campus was eerily quiet.
As though nothing had ever happened.
Liang Chen had sharp eyesight, and after Midnight left, he took it upon himself to keep watch.
That was when something unexpected happened.
"Hey, isn't that... that kid from earlier?"
Liang Chen pointed at the classroom building opposite them as he spoke to Yin Chao.
Yin Chao followed his finger. Through the clear windows on the first floor, he could see what was happening inside a classroom.
It was Linmu.
He was bracing himself against a door that trembled under repeated blows. The creature outside was immensely strong, and the door looked ready to shatter at any moment.
Yin Chao instinctively wondered whether the werewolf game could continue if its host was killed.
The answer was obvious: no.
"He can't die. If he dies, nobody can clear this game."
Yin Chao muttered to himself.
Liang Chen was close enough to hear him, though his words left him confused.
Before he could ask, Yin Chao urgently told him to take him down.
Liang Chen moved incredibly fast, carrying Yin Chao on his back as he jumped down along the outdoor air-conditioning units.
They landed outside the window of the classroom where Linmu was hiding, then kicked the glass to pieces.
Linmu had already lost all hope. Despair and terror filled his pale face as his body mechanically resisted the hunter outside the door.
He had been with his classmates earlier, but they had abandoned him.
He still remembered how happy he had been when he found them.
So happy that when they told him everyone else had already taken a turn keeping watch, and that it was now his turn since he had just arrived, he hadn't suspected a thing.
Linmu didn't dare dwell on whether it had been coincidence or deliberate that the classmates he spent every day with had sent him outside to keep watch at such a dangerous moment, only for him to run straight into a hunter.
But several mangled corpses lay by the door. A closer look revealed the resentment and anger on every face...
Linmu's limbs gradually stiffened. He didn't think he could hold on any longer.
Soon, he too would end up like those mangled bodies, filled with resentment and anger.
Suddenly, the glass before him shattered.
Clear, glittering shards fluttered down like the first snow of winter. Linmu's eyes widened, and he didn't even notice when they cut his cheek.
Yin Chao and Liang Chen landed before him, bathed in the sunset glow.
"Hey, you look familiar, classmate."
A trace of unmistakable smugness showed on Yin Chao's finely sculpted face.
Liang Chen chimed in, "He sure does. I remember him telling us not to follow him."
Their lively, easygoing exchange brought a wave of relief to Linmu, who had been trapped beneath the shadow of death and despair.
His limbs gradually lost their strength, and the hunter outside sent him flying as it forced its way in.
The classroom door swung wide open, revealing a Rat-Headed Man covered in brown fur.
"A little rat, huh? Squeak, squeak, squeak." Liang Chen mocked him as he assumed a fighting stance.
Liang Chen had drawn the Rat-Headed Man's aggression, and the creature lunged at him with startling speed.
Yin Chao seized the chance to pull Linmu behind a desk. He stared at the Rat-Headed Man, trying to inspect his stats panel.
A moment later, the system sounded.
[Ding. Hell Hunter, S-rank monster, level 20 HP: 10,000, stamina: 5,000, mental power: 100, intelligence: 50 Specialized skills: evasion, hiding]
So the twelve monsters had different stats!
Fortunately, this Rat-Headed Man's stats weren't as high as the goat-man's.
Watching Liang Chen trade blows with the Rat-Headed Man, Yin Chao realized that he had never checked the kid's stats all this time.
He decided to take a look, if only to get a better idea of their chances.
Before the system notification could sound, Linmu interrupted him.
"Can he really handle this? Should we help him?"
Worry filled Linmu's delicate face. He looked like a terrified little rabbit.
Yin Chao suddenly grew curious. Is he really pretending? Is his acting that good?
"Y-you... why are you looking at me like that?" Frightened by his probing gaze, Linmu leaned back.
"Nothing. So who exactly did you kill?" he asked.
Linmu's face grew even paler. Unable to understand what he meant, he stammered, "Wh-what? Kill who?"
Not a single crack in the act, Yin Chao thought.
Just then, the Rat-Headed Man slammed Liang Chen, who had been fighting on the front line, into the floor. The force smashed a whole cluster of desks behind him to pieces.
Small wounds covered Liang Chen's body. He looked as though he had been dragged out of a pool of blood.
The Rat-Headed Man let out two squeaking laughs, his voice hoarse and eerie.
It sounded like a middle-aged man deliberately forcing his voice into a high pitch.
Yin Chao clicked his tongue. He had expected the Miracle Squad's assault specialist to have some trump card or lifesaving item.
Instead, he had relied purely on hand-to-hand combat from the start.
If Yin Chao took out the Myriad People Umbrella now and summoned Anna, he would have roughly a thirty-percent chance of survival.
But if he used Liang Chen as bait and seized the chance to escape, his odds of survival would rise to seventy percent.
Behind him, Linmu happened to catch the gleam in Yin Chao's eyes.
At that moment, it seemed all too easy to read what the man before him was thinking.
He quietly clenched the hem of his school uniform, his eyes filling with bitter hatred.
Suddenly, Yin Chao stood up and hurled a box of chalk he had grabbed at the Rat-Headed Man.
The chalk seemed very old, with a thick layer of dust accumulated inside the box.
The Rat-Headed Man raised an arm to block it. Chalk dust scattered everywhere, briefly obscuring his vision.
Liang Chen managed to slide out from beneath the desks.
The Rat-Headed Man turned and found Liang Chen gone. Furious that the prey within his grasp had escaped, he focused all his hatred on Yin Chao.
Yin Chao took off running, hoping to lure the Rat-Headed Man farther away.
But he seemed to have overestimated his own abilities. He had barely made it a few steps out of the classroom before the gap between them shrank to less than two meters.
It seemed the Rat-Headed Man's next swipe could pierce his chest.
Before you continue