Book 4: Chapter 17 |
After drinking the [Mint Iced Tea], Leon didn’t throw away that “antidote” right away. Instead, he found a small box and stored it away.
This was to keep a backup plan.
This “Fate of All” event about [Infectious Disease from the Alchemy Room] had come far too coincidentally—and far too strangely—so Leon had to be extremely cautious.
He couldn’t be 100% sure the antidote Big Sis gave him was real, but he also didn’t dare gamble on it. So for now, he could only drink the [Mint Iced Tea]—which he had originally planned to save for the later stages of the game—to remove the negative effect brought by the current infectious disease.
If, later on, it was confirmed that Big Sis was a rock-solid good person, then the saved antidote would be safe—something that could be eaten.
All in all, Leon’s move here was very conservative.
Of course, being able to think of this solution also required thanking Rosvitha.
She was the one who gave Leon the [Mint Iced Tea]—otherwise he’d still be agonizing over whether to take that antidote.
He went to the communal kitchen, retrieved the Black Holy Stone he had hidden beneath the water tank, then went down to the first-floor hall. After looking around to make sure no one was there, Leon hid the Black Holy Stone inside a guard’s suit of armor by the meeting room entrance.
He had noticed it during the morning meeting: the entire first-floor hall served only one function—the meeting room. There were no scenes for triggering tasks or fate at all. Compared to the communal kitchen, this place would basically never have anyone around outside of meeting times.
Hiding it in the guard armor was a relatively safe choice.
After securing the Black Holy Stone, Leon went back upstairs.
By coincidence, he ran into the two daughters from the [Friend Group].
Mu’en and Xiaoguang were holding hands, and the moment they saw Leon at the far end of the corridor, they spotted him at once.
“Daddy~”
Mu’en called out sweetly, then tugged Xiaoguang along as they trotted over.
Leon squatted down and asked with a smile, “What is it—doing a task?”
“Mm-hmm! But it’s a three-person task. We want to ask Daddy to go with us,” Mu’en said.
Of course Leon was happy to do tasks with his daughters, but he still asked casually,
“Why not go ask your big sister?”
The moment he said that, Little Moon’s face instantly turned cold.
Leon froze, not understanding how he’d upset his precious daughter.
He looked toward Xiaoguang.
Fortunately, the pink-haired one had already seen through everything. She leaned in close to Leon’s ear and whispered,
“After the [Love-Strong-as-Gold Seven-Day Lock] effect ended, Second Sis was forced to separate from Big Sis. Then Big Sis went and did a bunch of two-person tasks with Helena… so Second Sis became… like this.”
“Hmph! What’s so great about that? Xiaoguang and I can do tasks too—and we’ll definitely be faster than Helena!” Mu’en huffed.
Leon scratched his head.
Sister-con kids are really hard to deal with… The old father sighed quietly to himself.
Actually, Leon felt a bit guilty about Mu’en’s personality—how dependent she was on Noa.
If, back then, he had been able to stay with both daughters consistently from the moment they were born, maybe Mu’en would have grown more independent.
Well… but Leon wasn’t going to force his beloved daughter to change anything.
Sister-con or little-sister-con—so long as the family could stay together, that mattered more than anything.
Leon ruffled Mu’en’s cowlick and said,
“Then let’s see if we can find another [Love-Strong-as-Gold] item card. If we do, you can go play with your sister while bound together again.”
Mu’en’s big eyes flashed. “Really, Daddy? There are more [Love-Strong-as-Gold Seven-Day Lock] cards in the castle?”
Leon nodded. “Yeah. A lot of item cards repeat. Your mom and I got hit by Love-Strong-as-Gold once during the day, and you yourself found one and used it with your sister too, didn’t you?”
Mu’en blinked, tilted her head, and asked adorably,
“Daddy, how do you know my Love-Strong-as-Gold with Big Sis was used by me?”
Because the whole world knows, okay?! Your little face can’t hide a single lie!
“Alright, Second Sis,” Xiaoguang cut in. “How Daddy knows isn’t important. What’s important is—since there are more [Love-Strong-as-Gold] cards in this castle, that means you and Big Sis have a chance to be bound again!”
“Okay! This time I’m going to find three—no, five—no! Ten! I’m going to find ten [Love-Strong-as-Gold Seven-Day Lock] cards so Big Sis will be bound to me the whole game~!”
Leon wiped sweat with a wry smile. His second daughter was only extremely stubborn about two things.
One was periodically eating the old father’s tribute offerings;
the other was being with her sister.
Leon stood up, took his daughters’ hands—one on the left, one on the right—and led them to complete that three-person task first.
The three-person task wasn’t hard, and with Dad joining, they finished it smoothly.
After completing it, they received an intel card:
“[‘That thing is a curse! It must be destroyed… it must be destroyed!’]”
Leon looked at the line on the intel card. His brows lowered slightly.
“Looks like something someone said,” he murmured.
Xiaoguang stroked her chin, her brain running at top speed. “If we map it onto this game, then this line probably represents a main quest for a certain player. Their task is to destroy ‘that thing.’”
Mu’en looked left at Dad, right at her little sister, and—rarely—started thinking too.
“Then that ‘thing’ should be the Black Holy Stone, right?”
“Mm. That’s what I think too,” Leon said quietly. “But who would say this?”
Back when Leon was bound to Rosvitha, he had found an intel card saying there were at least two lone-wolf players in this game.
Leon himself was a lone wolf—so this line was very likely spoken by the other lone wolf.
Leon’s main quest was to hide the Black Holy Stone until the end of the game, and if the other lone wolf’s objective really was to destroy the Black Holy Stone, then the situation became crystal clear—
Two lone wolves were destined to clash.
As the father and daughters were thinking, Xiaoguang’s projection stone suddenly sounded:
“[Friend B], you have been ‘killed’; [Friend B], you have been ‘killed.’]”
Ki—killed?!
That single short prompt made the three of them go completely blank.
“What’s going on? Xiaoguang, how did you get killed out of nowhere?” Leon demanded.
The pink-haired fun-loving dragon was totally stunned as well. “I… I don’t know, Dad.”
As she spoke, Xiaoguang reflexively patted herself down, checking if there was some strange item on her.
But she found nothing.
She turned to look back at the room where they had just finished the three-person task—still nothing unusual.
She had just… been killed… for no reason.
Fear exploded between the three of them in an instant.
Even Leon was shaken by how eerie this attack method was.
The killing Leon imagined:
A silent approach—take the life in a blink.
The killing in reality:
Scheming within the strategist’s tent—killing from a thousand miles away!
Xiaoguang shoved ten fingers into her hair, her pink-gem-like eyes filled with unwillingness.
“Ah… Xiaoguang, don’t be sad. Maybe there are revival item cards or something,” Leon comforted her.
“Yeah, Xiaoguang, I won’t go look for binding cards anymore—I’ll go find a revival card for you! Don’t be sad,” Mu’en said seriously too.
But Xiaoguang shook her head hard.
“No, no, Dad, Second Sis—I’m not sad. It’s just that when I think about how I won’t get to watch you all kill each other next… it feels… such a waste!”
Leon & Mu’en: “……”
Xiaoguang clutched her chest in grief. “Sigh, why did it have to be me? I only want to watch everyone scheme and backstab. What did I do wrong? Wuwu~”
Not long after, a staff member hurried over.
“Miss Aurora, [Friend B], please come with me. We will take you to the God Observation Room. There, you can watch the entire game from a god’s-eye view.”
Buling!!
Xiaoguang’s eyes lit up like fireworks.
A god’s-eye view for watching drama was way more fun than a first-person view!
If you’d told me earlier, I’d have self-killed right from the start!
So the pink-haired girl—who had looked gloomy just moments ago—immediately followed the staff member happily to the God Observation Room.
Leaving only Dad and Second Sis standing there, totally stunned in the wind.
“Heavens, Dad! We were so scared in here we didn’t even dare breathe because of that murderer who killed from a thousand miles away, and Xiaoguang just goes off comfortably to watch a show?!” Little Moon slapped both hands to her face, utterly incredulous.
Leon covered his face too. “Anyway… let’s call an emergency meeting first. Otherwise that murderer might kill the two of us as well.”
“Okay.”
[Emergency Meeting]—when a [body] is discovered, a meeting can be called early.
Ten minutes later, in the first-floor hall meeting room, all players were present—except Xiaoguang.
Rosvitha was naturally the first to notice her youngest daughter was missing.
“Where did Xiaoguang go?”
“She got killed,” Leon said. “Mu’en and I called this emergency meeting because Xiaoguang just suddenly… got killed right next to us. No warning at all.”
Xiaoguang was the first person killed since the game began more than twenty hours ago. That naturally drew everyone’s attention.
“Killed with no warning?” Noa asked.
“Yeah. The three of us had just completed a task, came out and chatted for a bit, and Xiaoguang just… got killed.”
Even though some time had passed, thinking back to that “remote kill” still made Leon feel a faint chill.
“Did Xiaoguang come into contact with anyone before she got killed?” Noa asked.
Mu’en shook her head. “No one. Xiaoguang and I were together the whole time. Tonight we wanted to do a task, but it needed three people, so we found Dad and asked him to come with us.”
“Leon was with you…”
The one who spoke was Claudia.
The blue-eyed beauty looked toward Leon. “Then is it possible Leon secretly killed Xiaoguang?”
“Because I collected an intel card saying there are at least two lone wolves in this game. A lone wolf’s mission should be different from everyone else’s, right?”
“And Mu’en and Xiaoguang’s friend group is solidly good. Killing off a member of the good side would give the lone wolf some advantage.”
Facing the suspicion from the “wicked empress,” Leon replied methodically:
“Senior, your logic has a problem.”
“Killing a good player does give the lone wolf an advantage, but you have no reason to assume I’m the lone wolf in the first place.”
“And any inference made based on that assumption isn’t very credible either.”
“Or do you have some especially direct intel that proves I’m a lone wolf?”
Claudia nodded slightly. “I can’t be sure you’re a lone wolf. But Xiaoguang was killed after completing a task with you.”
“I also agree with Senior Claudia’s view,”
Isha spoke up this time.
“My brother-in-law is highly suspicious. This meeting could very well be his self-kill and self-exposure, meant to create the illusion that [a wolf can kill targets remotely]. That way, when he kills again later, people will still think in terms of ‘remote killing’ and won’t suspect him first.”
“But if Dad killed Xiaoguang, then why didn’t Dad kill me too?” Mu’en asked.
Helena—who had been silent until now—answered Mu’en. “The rules say you can only kill if you’ve obtained a ‘kill-type item card.’ Maybe Uncle Leon only had one kill item card?”
“Still wrong. If I only had one kill item card, I definitely wouldn’t use it right away,” Leon said.
“Because then I’d lose my ability to protect myself. If a wolf wanted to kill me, and I happened to still have a kill card, maybe I could trade kills.”
“On the other hand, if I really were a wolf, I would wait until I had more kill cards before I started killing. I would never kill one by one slowly—that would only give the good side plenty of reaction time.”
Rosvitha looked at Leon. “We won’t assume you’re a wolf for now. We want to hear your thoughts.”
Oh—still have to give it to his wife. She gave Leon room to breathe.
Leon organized his thoughts, then said,
“First, my conclusion: I think this wolf truly has the ability to kill remotely.”
“But conversely, for a certain period of time—or at the same time—they can only kill one person.”
“To kill again, they need to wait for some specific amount of time.”
“Otherwise, remote killing would be far too overpowered. There’d be no counterplay at all.”
After hearing Leon’s idea, everyone began murmuring in low voices.
A moment later, Isha spoke again:
“Your speculation makes a lot of sense, brother-in-law, but it still doesn’t clear your suspicion.”
Damn.
Why are Big Sis and ‘Empress Mother’ both biting down on me?! Leon complained silently in his heart.
But if he couldn’t produce evidence to prove himself, Leon might get voted out this round.
Even though his real identity was lone wolf, there was no need to take the blame for the other lone wolf!
Yet proving innocence was always extremely difficult.
Leon racked his brain and still couldn’t figure out how to prove he hadn’t killed Xiaoguang.
For a moment, Leon seemed trapped in a dead end.
“I have the [Great Detective] item card. It can check whether a player has killed anyone in the past six hours.”
The one who spoke… was Rosvitha.
Leon’s eyes lit up, as if he had seized a sliver of hope.
In critical moments, he really had to rely on his wife!
“Game rules don’t allow any item cards to be used during meetings, so after this meeting ends, we can directly verify Leon,” Rosvitha said.
“If he didn’t kill anyone, that proves he’s innocent. If he did, we’ll all keep an eye on him. Then once the next meeting starts, we vote Leon out. How does that sound to everyone?”
Even though verifying Leon was normal game logic, the fact that she offered this assist at such a crucial moment still warmed General Leon’s heart.
Because Rosvitha had just told him personally that no matter what, she would vote against him.
And this meeting was the perfect chance to eliminate Leon—yet she still used [Great Detective] for his sake.
Good wife!
When we get home, I’ll reward you with a third baby.
…
Footnotes:
- Pinyin:liú gè hòu shǒuExplanation: To keep a backup plan or reserve move; “leave yourself an out.”
- Pinyin:tiě hǎo rénExplanation: Gaming slang (werewolf/mafia) meaning “confirmed/rock-solid good guy.”
- Pinyin:dāo rén / chū dāoExplanation: Gaming slang for “killing a player”; “to make a kill.”
- Pinyin:zì dāo zì bàoExplanation: In social deduction games, to “self-sacrifice/self-expose,” often to manipulate suspicion or information.
- Pinyin:bēi guōExplanation: Slang meaning to take the blame for someone else; “be the scapegoat.”
- Pinyin:sǐ júExplanation: A deadlock or unwinnable situation; “no way out.”
- Pinyin:pō zāng shuǐExplanation: To smear someone with accusations; to throw mud.
- Pinyin:qiān lǐ zhī wàiExplanation: Literally “a thousand li away”; used here for dramatic effect meaning “from very far away / long-range.”