Chapter 231: Battle Royale (8) |
Q: How do you legitimately remove the last surveillance camera in the room?
A: Simple—just let Kurt help.
In the past, this was exactly how it worked. After restraining a female player’s mobility, Kurt would actively use the remote control to remove her collar first.
Each collar corresponded to a live broadcast room in the killing game’s viewing hall. To avoid wasting resources on dead players’ streams and real-time tracking data, the collars had a special built-in system: once removed from the neck, their monitoring, listening, and positioning functions would all be disabled.
Kurt didn’t want anyone sharing his “sweet private time” with the female players, so before beginning his torture, he would always remove the collar in advance using the remote control.
But Everly couldn’t wait for him to initiate it. By then, she would already be immobilized and completely at a disadvantage.
She needed Kurt to remove the collar earlier.
And that wasn’t difficult.
After finishing her long, ear-piercing scream, Everly turned around, her face still pale with fear, and pretended to try to flee through the door.
A bloodstained leather apron, various knives stuffed into its pockets, and—above the collar—a sudden, unsettling pig-head mask identical to the earlier pursuer’s.
It turned out that the moment Everly had opened her mouth to scream, Kurt had already silently put everything on, fully preparing for the act of slaughter.
“You… you’re with that guy from before?!”
Everly’s pupils trembled as if she had finally realized the truth.
“Oh, not bad, Lily. Your reaction is pretty quick.”
Kurt’s voice came from beneath the mask, trembling with excitement.
“You saw those two before you, right? When you already figured it out, they were still sniffling and stupidly asking me if I was joking… haha, their expressions were just perfect. I could savor them for a lifetime!”
His voice was thin and sharp, like a rat scraping through a dark corner underground.
“Unfortunately, even though you’re smart… you still fell into my trap.”
With that, a shing sounded as Kurt pulled a sharp knife from the pocket of his leather apron with one hand. With the other, he ran his fingers slowly and almost lovingly along the blade, as if admiring it.
“No! Don’t—please… please let me go!”
Everly hurriedly stepped back, her face twisting into a pleading expression.
Kurt didn’t react at all.
He raised the knife and advanced slowly, toying with her like prey. Behind the eyeholes of the mask, his gaze never left her face, greedily and joyfully savoring every trace of fear.
So beautiful… the purer and more innocent the girl, the more soul-shaking her final screams became.
But… was it just his imagination? Lily’s expression felt a little off… not quite right—
“Don’t—don’t come closer! If you take another step, I’ll detonate a bomb immediately!”
Before he could think further, a trembling threat rang out, instantly pulling Kurt’s attention away.
Kurt shifted his gaze from Everly’s face to her neck, only to see that the girl had actually raised both hands and grabbed the collar around her throat.
“The rules video said there are explosives inside this collar. If I pull it hard enough, it will explode… If you don’t want to be blown up with me, then back off!”
Everly huddled pitifully in the corner, like a frightened rabbit putting on a bluff, shouting at him with forced courage.
Kurt froze for a moment—then threw his head back and laughed out loud.
“Haha… hahahahaha! I thought you were going to do something impressive, but you’re planning to blow me up with that collar?”
“Didn’t you hear what the host said? There’s only a small amount of explosives inside the collar—just enough to snap a person’s neck. Do you really think it can kill everyone around you? Aren’t you overestimating it?”
“W-what…”
“However…” Kurt muttered to himself, “if you die too easily, I really would lose a lot of fun.”
As he spoke, he suddenly lifted his free left hand and reached into his chest pocket, pulling out a necklace.
The pendant was a thumb-sized brass watch face—plain and unremarkable at first glance. But when Kurt pulled out the crown at its edge and twisted it clockwise, a soft click sounded, and the surface of the dial split open into two halves, revealing a tiny button underneath.
This was the true form of the remote control.
“Stay away! Don’t come any closer—what are you going to do?!”
Seeing Kurt step toward her again, the girl trembled uncontrollably. In her panic, she stumbled backward and accidentally tripped over one of the female corpses on the ground. Glancing back, she realized she had already been forced into a corner.
And in that brief moment of distraction, when she turned her face forward again, Kurt had already silently appeared right in front of her.
Beep!
He aimed the remote at Everly’s neck and pressed the button in the center.
With a soft click, Everly felt her neck suddenly lighten. The collar that had been chafing against her all afternoon loosened its grip and fell to the ground with a plop.
—This was exactly what she had been waiting for!
The moment the collar hit the floor, the emotions she had been forcibly suppressing all this time surged up violently.
Finally. At last.
Once the collar was removed, all monitoring, listening, and tracking functions would stop.
In other words, from this moment on, to the outside world, this room had become a complete “sealed chamber.” No one would know what happened inside. She could do whatever she wanted.
In the dim light, Kurt noticed that the girl had changed.
The panicked expression she had worn just seconds ago vanished completely. Instead, she looked down at him with an expressionless face—like she was staring at trash.
Wait… something was wrong with the perspective.
They were roughly the same height, so why was he suddenly looking up at her?
A delayed wave of pain shot up from his legs into his brain.
Kurt widened his eyes, finally realizing that in that instant, he had been attacked—and knocked to the ground.
Before his confused mind could process what had happened, a sharp rush of wind came from beside him.
The woman’s next attack was already upon him.
Bang!
A knee strike packed with speed and force slammed directly into his face. The sound of cracking bone followed immediately.
Kurt felt as if he had collided head-on with a speeding train. His head was forced backward, his nose shattered, his cheekbone caved in, and his upper teeth broke one by one, tearing into his mouth and tongue. Blood poured uncontrollably, instantly filling his nasal cavity and throat.
The intense dull pain arrived a half-beat late, then surged in like a tsunami.
His ears seemed to have been damaged by that strike as well. At this moment, Kurt felt as if his head had turned into a massive bell tower bell, reverberating with a terrifying hum under the merciless blows of the bell ringer.
“You… ugh… you, you—”
Before he could finish, the tall girl stepped forward.
She braced both hands against the back of his head, her leg muscles tensing like springs. Then she drove her knee upward again—straight into his face.
Crack!
With that strike, Kurt’s face beneath the mask completely caved in. A gush of blood sprayed out like a fountain from under the mask, quickly staining his leather apron a vivid red.
Horror Movie Survival Rule #15: always finish the job.
Even though the man in front of her had gone completely limp and stopped moving, Everly wasn’t about to be fooled.
Seeing that Kurt’s collar still hadn’t fallen off, she immediately concluded he was only stunned—not dead. Seizing the rare opening, she snatched the knife from his hand and drove it precisely into his carotid artery, cutting open his throat and severing the major blood vessel in one clean motion.
“Hk… hhk…”
Kurt’s body twitched twice where it lay on the ground. Before long, he lost consciousness due to blood loss and oxygen deprivation, and stopped breathing entirely.
After his death, the system could no longer detect vital signs. The collar around his neck suddenly loosened and fell into the pool of blood.
No problem.
Throughout the journey, Everly had been deliberately suppressing her combat ability. Up until the moment the monitoring link was cut, the situation had been overwhelmingly in Kurt’s favor. Under those circumstances, even if his collar fell off, outsiders would only assume he had used the remote himself to remove it for some reason (such as preventing someone from pulling it and triggering an explosion), and would never suspect that he had been killed and counter-killed.
And that was exactly why Everly had endured everything up to this point.
Everly picked up the collar and glanced at the countdown: 16:23:17. Not bad—because of Kurt’s foolish behavior, it had taken less time than expected.
In about ten minutes, it would be completely dark outside. By then, due to the lack of visible prey, Kurt’s brother “Cleaver” would likely return to the base. Before that happened, she had to handle everything here.
With that thought, Everly crouched down and quickly began stripping Kurt’s clothes.
About ten minutes later, the tightly shut iron door creaked open. A figure wearing a pig-head mask and carrying a black backpack stepped out. “He” turned around, pulled the iron door closed again, and casually hung a lit oil lamp on the handle before disappearing into the forest ahead.
That pig mask was, of course, Everly disguised as Bean.
After killing Kurt, she had immediately swapped their clothing and put on the mask. To make the disguise more convincing, she had even put the fake collar back on.
Once she changed clothes, Everly spent some additional time thoroughly looting the butcher brothers’ base.
The items the butchers brought onto the island had no restrictions. Among their belongings, anything she deemed useful was packed without exception into her backpack.
After finishing the cleanup, she left the hidden base in an open and unhurried manner.
To be honest, her original plan in attacking Bean was only to obtain the remote control. She hadn’t expected that after actually killing him, the gains would be unexpectedly substantial. Every item in the heavy backpack was something she couldn’t afford to discard.
Next, as long as she successfully left the northwestern outer ring and moved out of Cleaver’s activity range, she would be completely safe.
With that thought, Everly quickened her pace, moving through the forest like a nimble deer, swiftly weaving through the trees.
Unfortunately, when it came to moments that required luck, Everly had never been particularly fortunate.
What she feared most happened.
She hadn’t even made it halfway through her escape when her sharp ears caught a rustling crash in the distance.
Everly turned her head and, under the dimming light of dusk, looked toward the source of the sound.
Through the trees, she saw it—
A figure wearing a pig-head mask, drenched in blood, dragging a massive cleaver through the undergrowth.
It was actually Bean’s mentally unstable and brutal older brother—“Cleaver.”
Not long ago, Cleaver had just finished off a new prey. The kill had been too quick, leaving him unsatisfied. The violent urge inside him surged through his veins with nowhere to go. At the same time, because night was falling, the people in the forest had mostly stopped moving toward the mountain, making it even harder to find targets.
With no one left to kill, Cleaver could only wander back toward the base, bored, planning to see whether his younger brother had “finished playing” yet.
He hadn’t expected that halfway there, he would run straight into his brother—out in the forest.
Cleaver was briefly confused.
His intelligence wasn’t particularly high, but he did know one thing: after his younger brother took female players away, he usually needed some time alone to “play his game” properly. During that time, if Cleaver carelessly went inside and interrupted him, his brother would become very angry—hitting him, kicking him, and shouting at him.
That was why Cleaver had never dared to return early.
But now… the time clearly wasn’t up yet, yet his brother had already left the base and appeared in the forest.
Why?
A big question mark slowly formed in Cleaver’s small brain.
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