Chapter 152

Guan Suiyue didn't pull out the pistol her [Avenger] class provided. Instead, she drew her longsword. The Avenger's level hadn't risen yet, so the pistol was still just a D-rank skill. Last time, if not for the sneak attack, she might not have been able to take down No. 62 in one shot.

"By the rules of diplomacy, those who trespass upon my domain shall be punished, no matter how far they flee." Guan Suiyue held her sword before her, pointing at the six people trapped in the cornfield. "Wherever my sword points, there lies my enemy—no evasion, no escape. You are confined to this place until you look me in the eyes and challenge me!"

Her golden hair danced in the frigid air, a few snowflakes settling among the strands, making her eyes seem even colder.

A moment passed. When no one met her gaze, Guan Suiyue used [Avenger] to kill one, then sheathed her sword.

The remaining six were utterly defeated. All they could see was corn. They couldn't escape, and when they tried to issue a challenge, they realized... were you kidding them? How could you challenge someone you couldn't even see? What was even more terrifying was that a gunshot rang out, and they felt someone collapse beside them.

"Hey! What are you doing! Let us out!"

Lin Tu casually tossed another roll of barbed wire outside the cornfield, sealing the screams inside.

Guan Suiyue walked over to Lin Tu and saw that she was already pulling out warm gear, looking speechless. "Your tricks are really something. Why do you have to trap them here?"

"To grind my daily quest," Lin Tu said curiously. "Did your Avenger class level up?"

Different classes had different leveling mechanics. The [Cannibal] could only eat once a day, and each meal raised its level by one. The [Serial Killer] had to kill a specific, randomly assigned target daily and leveled up after a certain number of kills. The player from earlier, a [Cannibal Hunter], could only act against enemies with defects—like those caught in traps or suffering from negative statuses.

Guan Suiyue shook her head. "My [Avenger] gains one experience point each time it triggers and I successfully kill someone. I don't have enough experience yet—I need to trigger it once more."

"Then there you go." Lin Tu shrugged. "Go rest on the ship. Wait until I get the [Cannibal Hunter], then you come down and watch me kill, and you can grind a bit more experience. Then it's one for you, one for me, one for you, one for me... Anyway, they've all hurt people, so treating them as an EXP pack isn't unfair to them."

Guan Suiyue: "..." You're a real genius!

The only problem was: "What about when the cornfield's time runs out?"

Lin Tu fished a big handful of corn cobs out of her backpack and placed them on the ground.

Guan Suiyue: "..." She wordlessly returned to the ship.

Half an hour later, worried that Lin Tu might fall into a negative status, Guan Suiyue came back down and saw Lin Tu curled up in a sleeping bag she'd somehow pulled out of nowhere, clutching a hot water bottle, resting it on her tablet to keep it from freezing, sipping hot water from who knew where, and watching a TV drama.

When the ten-minute mark was about to hit, her phone would chime, and she'd toss a corn cob in a precise arc to land at the group's feet.

From what Guan Suiyue could see, her gaze didn't even leave the tablet.

If this were any other time, Guan Suiyue would have admired her cleverness. But now, thinking of her sister following her, only four words came to mind—slacking off and being useless!

Guan Suiyue was frustrated. Did she even need to worry? She turned and walked away without looking back.

An hour passed. The former [Cannibal Hunter] finally died. With no [Doctor] around to save him, the card on his body dropped.

Lin Tu quickly used the card, then waited for Guan Suiyue to come back down.

Seeing that the other woman's expression was unchanged, Lin Tu asked curiously, "Aren't you worried about whether I can survive the cold with these items?" That didn't seem like Guan Suiyue. With her sister in a disaster world, she should be extremely vigilant about any potential danger.

"Can you?"

Lin Tu finally explained, "I can. But the requirements are strict. I have to stay wrapped in the sleeping bag, and keep the temperature inside around 30°C—which means at least two hot water bottles—to prevent hypothermia. I tried to exploit a loophole: stay outside for 29 minutes, then return to the sleeping bag for 1 minute, then go out again. That method works."

Guan Suiyue finally focused and gave her a nod of approval. In a way, despite her "slacking off," Lin Tu was indeed resourceful and brave. Otherwise, Guan Suiyue wouldn't have been comfortable letting her sister follow her through the mission.

By now, the remaining five members of the villain alliance were in terrible shape.

An hour had passed. They lay weak and wasted on the snow.

Only now did the two women truly understand the negative status [Partial Freezing] that the NPC had warned about—[Freezing] truly froze every part of the body solid.

At this point, each of them had four parts frozen. Some had an entire hand turned to ice, others were unluckier with a whole leg frozen solid. Based on Lin Tu's observations, the affected parts included individual hands, forearms, upper arms, soles, or calves.

But generally, it started from the hands and feet, then crept upward. Nobody had a frozen torso or head, which made it easy for Lin Tu to interrogate them.

"One last question. Do you have any accomplices?" She looked down at them.

"Really, there aren't any! We only killed one... The body is hidden in the deepest part of the storage room on the second floor. We genuinely have no accomplices!"

What a pity. They'd squeezed this batch of sheep dry. Lin Tu used [Cannibal Hunter] to finish him off.

Having witnessed another murder, Guan Suiyue's [Avenger] triggered again. She silently shot another one, successfully leveling up her skill—

[Level 3 Avenger (Green): Your resolve for revenge has grown stronger. You may suppress one instance of revenge and use it at a more opportune moment.]

"Hold onto that for now." After Guan Suiyue used her skill, Lin Tu killed another one, and Guan Suiyue's [Avenger] activated once more.

It really was one for you, one for me... Guan Suiyue numbly shot another, leaving only one person.

Without a word, Lin Tu killed the last one. By now, her [Cannibal Hunter] had jumped two levels—

[Level 2 Cannibal Hunter (Red): You may now designate one person per day to be afflicted with a negative status. You may still only attack targets who are under negative statuses or caught in traps.]

"This is really useful!" Lin Tu was quite satisfied. The only downside was that of the roughly thirty red-name players on the ship, ten were already dead, leaving twenty. But Lin Tu didn't know any of the remaining red-names, so she couldn't infect them even if she wanted to.

"If only I could find that White Glove who tried to kill me," Lin Tu said regretfully.

Unfortunately, Guan Suiyue had already told her earlier that she hadn't found detailed information on the White Glove, but she was certain their core skill was [Divine Descent], which allowed Guan Suiyue, as a fellow Temple member, to sense it. As long as they used the skill, Guan Suiyue, being in the same disaster, could locate them.

Those were concerns for later. Right now, Lin Tu just wanted to raise her skill level a bit higher, so that if she did run into White Glove, she could take them down.

She spent the whole afternoon wandering the ship alone, trying to fish for red-names, but she didn't catch another big fish like No. 12. The evening court session, lacking any new information, failed to produce a verdict.

At night, all red-name players—armed or not—gained the ability to kill.

So Lin Tu and the others gathered in one dormitory, taking turns on watch, and managed to get through a hard night.

Oddly enough, when it was Lin Tu's turn to rest, she tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep, feeling inexplicably hot. In the end, she had to hide inside her [Anju] shelter to sleep.

She noted this strange phenomenon. The next morning, she realized why last night had been so hot.

Because right now, the temperature on the ship was terrifyingly cold. One breath nearly turned to ice crystals before it left her lips.

Lin Tu received another message from the NPC—[Dear Passenger: The current temperature on the ship is approximately -60°C. Prolonged exposure may lead to hypothermia!...]

Actually, it wasn't just her—everyone had received the notification.

"What happened?"

Yi Ying opened the door. The ship was in an uproar; most people had no idea what was going on. Because of the sudden temperature drop, many were scrambling to pull clothes out of their backpacks.

"All the firewood was thrown into the heating system and burned up last night!" Luo Yongzhi said through gritted teeth after asking the Captain. "Our mechanics take turns watching the system at night, so we'd know immediately if a red-name tried to sabotage anything. Who would've thought they'd be this stupid!"

"If you want to sabotage, destroy the quests or the heating system, fine! But burning all the firewood—what good does that do you? You'd suffer negative statuses too, right?! Come on! Freeze! Freeze together!"

He was already cursing and shaking his fist at the invisible red-names in the air, clearly furious.

His anger wasn't unjustified. As he said, the villains' mission was to sabotage the ship's facilities—eight major systems in total, including the heating, water supply, and power systems. Destroying all of them meant success.

But villains weren't robots. They, like the good guys, also had to survive. From a rational person's perspective, the optimal strategy was to first sabotage the power system, which didn't affect survival, to prevent the ship from moving.

No one would start by wrecking the heating system and burning all the wood—that would only hinder their own mission. It just went to show how despicable these wood-burning villains were.

Lin Tu returned to her little cabin, quickly burned a pot of charcoal just in case, packed it up, and followed the others toward the Captain's cabin on the deck.

Quite a few players were on deck, but they all clustered together, eyeing each other warily—clearly they had lost trust in one another.

About ten minutes had passed since the warning. In another twenty minutes, without extreme insulation measures, everyone would fall into negative statuses.

Even worse, the NPC issued another warning right then—

[Warning! Warning! The prolonged low temperature will attract Snow Beasts! Please raise the temperature promptly! Otherwise, a crisis will invade. Snow Beast invasion countdown: 29:59... 29:58...]

[Note: Since Snow Beasts are a common enemy, both good and bad players can deal damage to them.]

Snow Beasts. That didn't sound like a good thing.

"Where's the Lumberjack?" someone shouted. "Lumberjacks, save us!"

"I've got some wood and charcoal stashed. Can we use that?"

"I'm a Guard. I haven't bound to a protectee yet. I can protect the Lumberjacks!"

Amid the crowd's desperate pleas, the Captain finally emerged from the forecastle, though his expression wasn't great—

"If anyone has spare wood or charcoal, you can put it in this basket. It'll buy us a little more time."

Wood and charcoal were among the essential survival supplies. Almost every player had some. One by one, they pulled wood or charcoal from their backpacks. Lin Tu and her group contributed as well, though to avoid standing out, she only gave a bit more than the largest contributor.

The full basket eased the Captain's tension somewhat. He estimated, "This should last at least a day and a night. I'll have the Guard patrol nearby. This will never happen again!"

At that, the players started cursing again: "Are they even human? Burning wood—hurting others and themselves!"

"Are the red-names here?! Use your brains! If I catch you, you're done!"

"You want to see the Snow Beasts?! Go see them yourself!"

But the Captain cleared his throat, indicating that wasn't all: "There's one more piece of bad news to announce—one of our chefs... was killed last night."

Yi Ying clenched her fists involuntarily. The other players instinctively moved closer, surrounding her in the middle. Lin Tu discreetly glanced around but saw no suspicious figures who seemed to be eyeing Yi Ying.

A game had 100 players, and only two professions produced food: [Cook] and [Cannibal]. The system had assigned ten [Cooks] and three [Cannibals]. When a cook distributed food for a day, they could produce one extra portion the next day; when a cannibal leveled up, they occasionally got a chance to produce another portion as well. In total, these thirteen people could produce at least 306 portions of food every day.

That seemed like enough to feed all 100 people three meals a day—but it actually wasn't.

Most professions needed ingredients to activate their skills, let alone the fact that if one cook was lost, it meant ten people went hungry that day.

"What about the Doctor?" someone asked. "Couldn't they be revived?"

"I'm sorry," the Captain sighed. "It seems they were lured out by either a [Shapeshifter] or a [Thief]—professions that can appear green-name. By the time we found the body, it had already been over an hour, and their profession card was taken. We didn't report it because court requires a vote, and we were still investigating their acquaintances. We have no leads yet. Also, we hadn't gotten the heating system running, so we were worried the cold would affect the proceedings."

True enough. If they were locked in court for half an hour, with hypothermia setting in, wouldn't everyone freeze together?

Lin Tu was imagining that scene when the Captain continued, "And there's another bad thing: today we've already lost thirty portions of food. The Lumberjack consumes thirty portions of food for every day of wood they cut. But since yesterday the cooks all used their skills, they can each claim one extra portion today, so we're short a total of fifty-one portions—that's food for seventeen people."

There were still 86 people alive on the ship. Looking on the bright side, only three people would have to go hungry.

Fortunately, everyone present was an [Infinite Calamity] player, and most had brought their own food. The only problem might be... a lack of nutritional variety, which would require everyone to share. But this would only last a day or two—tomorrow the cooks would gain experience, and the day after, they'd level up again, adding nine more portions, which would cover those three people.

"Does anyone have extra food? Our boxed meals really aren't enough..." The Captain was just thinking this when a cry of alarm rose from the crowd.

"Wait! Carly—I mean No. 2—where is she?!"

The Captain's face changed. No. 2 was one of the ten cooks.

"Who's No. 2? Maybe she went to the bathroom..." someone said, barely finishing before the Captain shoved through the crowd toward the speaker, gripping her shoulders tightly. "Where did No. 2 go?!"

Now, the loss or even death of any cook was a fatal blow to the ship.

"Don't panic. I'll ask her on the communicator." She typed quickly, then said, "Just now! She was right next to me a second ago! It seemed like she left right when you mentioned [Shapeshifter]. I assumed she went to the bathroom. No, wait—the more I think about it, the weirder it gets..."

Her expression slowly grew grim. "Since this morning, she's been acting really strange. No matter what you asked her, she wouldn't say a word. She's a clean person, and she always washes her face in the morning no matter what. But today, she didn't even wash her face before rushing out the door... Could it be..."

[Shapeshifter (Red): Upon touching a person, you can transform into their likeness. This form persists until you transform into the next person. Please note: this ability only changes your appearance, not your voice!]

"So that's a Shapeshifter?" someone said in horror. "The reason they wouldn't talk is because their voice is different!"

The speculation was genuinely terrifying.

"Is she still alive?"

No. 2's companion kept checking her communicator, but there was no response from the other end.

Now they had to consider the worst-case scenario: another thirty portions lost—food for ten more people.

"Guards who haven't bound to a protectee, guard the cooks! Everyone, stick with your cook teammates. Don't split up!" someone shouted.

But by now, it was too late to say anything. The current crisis was food for twelve people.

The Captain once again asked who had food. Lin Tu stopped the others from raising their hands, and she and Guan Suiyue raised theirs. No one else did.

"You two...?"

"We didn't claim boxed meals yesterday either, Captain. You should remember." As Lin Tu spoke, she pulled out several boxes of self-heating rice, a few bags of chips, some dried meat, and dried fruit in front of everyone. "She and I both brought a lot of snacks, but our supplies won't last long—probably just a few days. We'll still need the cooks then."

She displayed the food in public to clear herself of suspicion of being a [Cannibal]. And she'd chosen all snacks deliberately, to avoid making people think she had a huge stockpile—who would hoard a massive amount of snacks?

In a food-scarce environment, revealing that you had abundant supplies was unwise. The last disaster in the church had taught Lin Tu that lesson.

"Thank you both." The Captain patted Lin Tu's shoulder, his expression still troubled.

There was no point in gathering here any longer, so everyone dispersed.

The missing thirty portions of food naturally couldn't be borne by ten people—it fell to thirty. Each person would skip one meal, carrying a 50% risk of a negative effect. At that point, it was just a contest of luck.

In the morning, everyone could still eat their fill.

Lin Tu continued to wander the ship alone, aimlessly, trying to draw out the red-names. But perhaps because so many had died yesterday, and then the big incident last night—two cooks killed in a row—there was no movement, not in the morning nor through the afternoon.

Before dinner, the special professions rang the bell for court. The total player count hadn't changed.

This court session was because the [Detective] had found some clues from the body of the first chef who died. Unfortunately, clues were found, but the murderer pointed to No. 2, the second chef to die.

Not only did this break the thread of the rare lead, it also confirmed everyone's suspicion that No. 2 was indeed the [Shapeshifter]—otherwise, she couldn't have killed. No. 2's friend burst into tears on the spot, and everyone's mood soured further, because the ship had lost two cooks.

At dinnertime, they drew lots to decide which thirty people would go without food.

As a [Cook], Yi Ying was exempt from drawing. The others, except Liu Sheng and Luo Yongzhi, hadn't revealed their professions, and especially Guan Suixing, who was a [Doctor]—she had to draw.

Lin Tu gave Guan Suixing a subtle shake of her head, signaling her not to show any reaction.

There were still twenty madmen hiding in the shadows. They'd burned wood and killed cooks—who knew what they were planning? If they found out that Guan Suixing and the others had ample food, or even just that one of them was a [Doctor], they'd pounce like a pack of starving wolves.

The draw ended. Unlucky Guan Suixing was chosen to skip her meal.

The whole dining hall was filled with the sound of chewing. Guan Suixing sat quietly at the side, watching her teammates eat, not moving a muscle.

Guan Suiyue desperately wanted to give her own meal to her sister, but she didn't. Instead, she watched her younger sister, who had food in her bag but sat as steady as a mountain, with a touch of pride—her little sister had grown up!

"Come with me to the bathroom," Yi Ying said, quickly shoveling down her food before pulling Guan Suixing away to the restroom, where she could eat her dinner in private.

The others saw this but didn't pry. Protecting the cooks was now a universally accepted priority, and Guan Suixing having nothing to do, accompanying her to the bathroom was perfectly normal.

About half an hour later, Guan Suixing returned. The meal window had passed.

Many people hadn't left, watching anxiously over the thirty players who hadn't eaten.

Just then, one of them cried out, clutching his forearm as bright red blood flowed beneath it. Another suddenly stood up, murmuring, "So many mushroom people. Hey, I'm a mushroom person too. When will it rain... looks like it's going to rain." Another player slid off his stool, clearly exhausted. A few unlucky ones had two or three statuses at once, while others showed no symptoms at all.

Their teammates rushed to help.

Some came through with nothing at all—like Guan Suixing. A portion of them were just lucky, but the other... Guan Suixing raised her hand, frowning. "Damn. Looks like I can't use my skills anymore."

It seemed things weren't as dire as feared.

But just as everyone was thinking that, their communicators buzzed with another NPC warning—

[Warning! Warning! Prolonged hunger will attract Cannibals! Please resolve the hunger issue promptly! Otherwise, a crisis will invade. Cannibal invasion countdown: 29:59... 29:58...]