Global Collapse

When I entered the initial room, I was still confused.

From the very first round, he had no idea where he was on the board. This was because in the first round he encountered a teleportation square and was randomly teleported to another square, making it impossible for him to determine his position based on his direction of movement.

Fortunately, he knew what the bonuses his group had drawn were and what the effects of those bonuses were.

The player with the iron pot stewed chicken clearly knows that in the fifth round, the square he is on will become a shared death square. He will then feign death for three rounds and be teleported to another room. After the feigned death state ends, the player will know the location of the treasure chest. All he needs to do is get it within nine rounds.

Before they started, the three of them analyzed the farthest place they could reach in nine steps.

Although you can't move from one corner to another in nine steps, you can still traverse most of the squares.

The chances of being teleported to one of the top corners while the treasure chest is in the opposite corner are extremely slim. Unless you're incredibly unlucky, you won't be that unlucky.

Moreover, the bonuses have already been drawn and cannot be changed, so we can only accept it.

Iron Pot Stewed Chicken didn't want to be a piece at first. He and the other two in Group Two were fighting over what seemed to be the safest position to play the piece. But as they fought, the decision time was exceeded, so the instance made the decision for them, and he unfortunately became the first piece to play.

Now that the "fake death" state is over, the player must already know the location of the treasure chest. Every round, "Iron Pot Stewed Chicken" hopes to walk into the treasure chest slot.

So after entering the room this time, he subconsciously looked towards the center of the room to see if there was a treasure chest there.

Unlike the empty rooms in the previous rounds, this time there was something in the room, and it was a large item.

Iron Pot Stewed Chicken's first thought was that he had walked into the treasure chest, but then he found that the large item in the center of the room looked more and more familiar, as if it was the chessboard in the initial room.

Perhaps the battle before the game started had cleared his head, because Iron Pot Stewed Chicken quickly realized that he had entered an initial room, the initial room of other groups.

He immediately understood the purpose of the chess player sending him in.

As for killing, he had entered many similar competitive dungeons before. His experience in dungeons had taught him that the simplest way to win in such competitive dungeons was to eliminate the person competing against you.

He immediately got into the zone, his eyes flashing with a fierce light as he began searching every corner of the room in an attempt to find the hidden chess player.

He quickly found a hidden chainsaw.

When chainsaws appear in horror movies, they are often followed by brightly colored and thrilling jigsaw puzzle scenes.

The same applies here.

He saw a chainsaw swinging toward his lower body, and then his calf flew off like a jigsaw puzzle piece being torn apart.

Things happened so fast that the body didn't have time to realize that a part of the complete puzzle was missing, and it was still standing.

But his vision immediately began to shift.

With only one leg left, he could no longer maintain his balance, and he swayed towards the wall in a daze, as if he hadn't yet realized what was happening.

When the intense pain shot through his leg, the chicken stewed in an iron pot finally understood what was happening.

He reached out in disbelief to cover his calf, which was gushing bright red liquid, but now even bending over was a luxury.

Before his hand could even touch his broken calf, his entire body slammed against the wall beside him, and then his shoulder scraped against the wall as he slowly, slowly fell to the ground.

It was only then that he noticed the person standing in front of him.

He saw a pair of women's flat leather shoes in his line of sight, and looking up from the shoes, he saw a woman looking down at him.

The woman's face was expressionless, perhaps because the blood-stained chainsaw in her hand and the blood splattered on her face were too conspicuous, making it difficult for the author to notice her expression.

Then, something even more terrifying happened.

The man stewing chicken in the iron pot saw the woman in front of him raise the chainsaw again.

"Don't kill me!" He covered his head in fear, afraid that his head would fly off like his legs in the next second.

But the scene of his head flying off as he had imagined did not happen. He only felt a piercing pain in his other leg, which was still intact. The pain made him scream in agony, and he no longer had the strength to sit upright on the ground.

His head slammed hard against the ground, his body contorted in pain—the woman had been merciful enough not to saw off his other leg, but had simply broken his leg bone with the handle of the chainsaw.

In his hazy state, he seemed to hear the sound of a door opening.

But he didn't know if it was just a hallucination caused by the pain; the sound only appeared for a moment and then disappeared.

He thought he heard footsteps, as if the woman had started to move.

He had never regretted entering a dungeon so much. The intense pain made him almost want to die immediately, but the woman didn't seem to have any intention of killing him.

In a daze, the chicken stewed in an iron pot watched the pair of leather shoes drift further and further away from him until they stopped next to the chessboard.

His eyes were brimming with tears from the pain, and he no longer had the mind to think about why the other person didn't just kill him.

He felt that the clothes beneath him were soaked, soaked by the blood flowing from his severed leg.

He knew he would bleed to death soon if this continued. He struggled to plug the gap in his broken leg with his hands, but the pain and exhaustion prevented him from straightening up.

"Hell..." he muttered to himself in a daze.

"A door has appeared." In the gold coin compartment, Liu Ruyan looked at the door that had appeared on the wall in front of her.

"The appearance of a door means that 007 is alright and is still in the initial room directing us forward." Gu Mian also looked at the newly appeared door in front of her.

“You left that chainsaw in the initial room; I don’t think she’ll be in any trouble.”

It's now the eleventh round, and 007 is still following the route of the four rooms numbered 605. This time, the door leads to the square below the chessboard.

“But there’s still no news in the group. I guess it’s because that pawn in Group Two is hard to deal with. 007 just finished dealing with him, so he hasn’t had time to send us a message yet,” Liu Ruyan said.

If 007 is alright, did the pieces from Group Two die? Judging from the actions of the players in Group Two over the past few rounds, the treasure chest doesn't seem to be near their starting room.

"Let's go." Gu Mian thought to herself as she pushed open the door and walked to the other side.

This time, 007 rolled a number one, and Gu Mian and Liu Ruyan only moved forward one step.

It turned out to be a long-lost empty space.

"This is really rare. I thought I would never encounter an empty room again." Liu Ruyan looked at the empty room with great interest. Was this room originally an empty room, or did something unexpected happen?

The ghosts in the grid had already escaped once, and they couldn't possibly escape a second time. Gu Mian figured this must have originally been an empty grid. He then looked at the ten-person group chat; 007 hadn't sent a message yet.

"Is it because there's too much information this time that it takes so long to edit?" Liu Ruyan was also paying attention to the group chat. "Speaking of which, it should be the turn of Group Two to act now. I wonder how their pieces are doing."

"Is he dead?" In the second initial room, Passerby A stared at the screen, still unwilling to accept it.

There is a one-minute countdown at the top of the screen, which is the time for the player to choose their move.

Passerby A frantically tapped the square to the right of his starting room, hoping to get the chance to play as the best player in the world.

"I have no choice, I can't let you go..." His expression was somewhat deranged.

The most awesome player in the world looked at the first starting room with exhaustion: "Since the little chicken in the iron pot didn't die, I can't play. This round, you still have to choose the path for the little chicken in the iron pot."

Hearing this, Passerby A completely broke down: "What's the point of choosing a path for him! He'll never reach the treasure chest even if he walks until he dies! If you can't participate this round, we won't be able to reach the treasure chest... We'll all die, and there's still time. What if he dies in the last half minute...?"

Passerby A stared expectantly at the initial room, as if looking at it for a little longer would kill the chicken stewing in the iron pot inside.

But the miracle he hoped for didn't happen; the stewed chicken in the iron pot didn't die even with only a few seconds left.

Passerby A was utterly despondent, and could only make a choice with his mind blank in the last few seconds.

007 saw a door appear on the wall ahead.

It's a strange experience. Last time, I opened the door on this wall for Gu Mian and Liu Ruyan, but now it was opened by other players in this room.

Thinking of 007 looking at the iron pot stewed chicken lying in blood on the other side of the wall, he subconsciously reached out his hands towards the broken leg, but because his hands were not long enough, he could not touch the broken part of the leg.

Anzhi Tinglan saw that in the initial room, the player who had set up the chess pieces had gone to the second set of pieces.

Then she saw the pieces of the second group move together with the pieces of the first group. Soon the two of them arrived at the right wall of the room, and then the pieces of the second group entered the room on the right.

"How wicked." She clicked her tongue as she looked at what was happening in the first starting room. "The player who sets up the first group of pieces must have personally helped the second group of pieces into the room. This way, the second group of pieces will still have to let the first piece move in the next round, and the second piece will not have a chance to play at all. But actually, it is not necessary to do this. As long as the second group of pieces cannot play any new pieces in this round, then they will not have a chance to get the treasure chest in the remaining six rounds."

Just then, Anzhi Tinglan saw that the pieces in the second group had moved again.

The little man was moving to the right at an extremely slow pace.

"Can he still move?" It seems the first player didn't go all out, but judging from the slow speed of the second group's pieces, he must be seriously injured as well.

Despite being so badly injured, he's still moving. After watching for a while, An Zhitinglan understood: "He probably wants to move to the middle to prepare for the next round of action. Judging from his speed, if he doesn't move in advance, he might not be able to reach the door within the one-minute countdown. He hasn't given up even after all this. He's really a tenacious person."

"What a pity, what a pity, he doesn't know that his group has no hope." An Zhitinglan thought about the location of the treasure chest, her expression turning cold.

After the second set of pieces respawned, their positions were the third square below the first initial room. She had calculated that it would take nine moves to reach this position, except for the two squares adjacent to her own initial room.

Since you start by moving upwards, the contents of the top square have already been revealed; it's not a treasure chest.

That leaves only the square immediately to your left.

Originally, Anzhi Tinglan thought that the dungeon shouldn't have placed the treasure chest in the room to her left. Firstly, it was too easy for their group, and secondly, it would mean that the second group would have no chance of getting the treasure chest after respawning.

It was only when she discovered that the second group was dawdling when sending their pieces into the first group's initial room, and only letting the first group of players prepare before allowing their pieces to enter, that she realized something was amiss.

It's illogical that a group of players, who were clearly well-prepared, failed to eliminate the unsuspecting group of pieces.

But if the treasure chest is in the room to her left, then everything makes sense.

After the second group of pieces revived from a false death, the player found the treasure chest in the room to the left of her. However, the position where the second group of pieces revived was impossible to reach there. That's why the player hesitated for so long during the second group's respawn round. He was thinking about how to get the pieces to this square that they couldn't reach at all.

He thought about it.

The respawn positions of the two sets of chess pieces seem to prevent them from reaching the room to the left of Anzhitinglan, but upon closer inspection, it's not entirely without a chance.

If the piece on the field dies within three moves after respawning, Group Two can send a second piece from the second starting room to move towards her. It takes six moves to reach the left square, making a total of nine moves.

However, after the second set of respawns, the squares that the pieces enter will become empty squares, and the pieces will not be in any danger.

The only room that won't become an empty space is the initial room for each group, and the initial room also contains the most dangerous thing in the instance—other players.

Therefore, the two groups of players placed their hopes on the players from the first group.

The two groups of pieces can move three steps up from the respawned square to enter the first initial room. As long as the piece can be killed in the first initial room, the second group can send the remaining piece to her side to get the treasure chest in the fourth round.

That's why the second group made all sorts of unusual delaying actions. Everything the second group of players did was to make it easier for the first group of players to kill their own group's pieces.

However, the first group of players was very clever. After noticing the unusual behavior of the second group of players, they understood their purpose and must have also deduced the location of the treasure chest.

In order to prevent the second group from getting the treasure chest, the player in the first group deliberately did not kill the second group's pieces, but only rendered them unable to move.
If the old pieces don't die, the new pieces in Group Two won't be able to play in the fourth round, and Group Two has no hope left.

“Who are these people…” An Zhitinglan looked at the chessboard and suddenly laughed.

Originally thought to be the dumbest group, the second group actually managed to come up with the idea of ​​killing their teammate to exchange pieces in a moment of desperation. The player in the first group was even more ingenious, guessing the second group's idea just by observing their delay.

If the second group were even more foolish, and instead of considering whether the first group could defeat its own pieces, they didn't give the first group any preparation time and simply let the pieces enter the initial room at the start of the round, the first group's player might even fall for the trap and kill the second group's pieces.

It's so clever that I was misled by my cleverness.

But upon closer reflection, I realize I'm no different.

The treasure chest is in the room to the left of their starting room. They can win the game by moving their pieces one space to the left at the start.

But will she, unaware of everything, go left? No.

Even if she had ten chances to do it all over again, she would still choose to keep moving forward.

The direction she took at the start was not randomly chosen, because as soon as she entered the instance, she understood the competitive relationship between the other three groups and her own group. She went up because the fourth group was easier to kill.

It's easy for the upper group to kill the lower group, but difficult for the lower group to kill the upper group.

At the start of the game, she aimed to eliminate the other groups, starting with the easier ones. So no matter how many chances she was given, she would never go to the left, which was harder to kill, at the beginning of the game.

This really shows how unpredictable life can be.

No… is it just unpredictable, or was it intentionally designed by the dungeon designers? It seems the dungeon designers considered each player's personality when placing treasure chests and designing the dungeon itself. (End of Chapter)