Tokyo: The Player Behind the Scenes

"There are just too many rules in the manor. It feels like we can't explore even the places where we can find clues. Or is there another way to circumvent them?"

Ping Shenglong silently walked up behind him and gently patted his shoulder.

Kurosaki suddenly raised his head, looking ethereal, with what appeared to be smoky eye makeup around his eyes—a mark of long hours of overtime work.

"Your bonus has arrived."

Ping Shenglong handed him an envelope.

Kurosaki blinked slowly, his gaze fixed on the envelope, his mind seemingly blank for a few seconds. A bonus?

Then, the fragments of memory pieced together that the bonus that Ping Shenglong mentioned was the one he had previously told him: if his "Extraordinary Games" theory was officially adopted as the official basic theory, there would be an extremely generous bonus.

At the time, he also promised to give Ping Shenglong one million dollars to help him write a report.

I didn't expect it to be implemented so quickly; this speed is really not like Japan at all.

Upon opening the envelope, there was a symbolic check and a bank card; the actual funds had already been deposited into the bank card.

Kurosaki blinked, then rubbed his eyes, carefully counting the long string of zeros above.

"one two three."

Perhaps because I've been hunched over my desk for too long, my eyes are sore, and now I see double when I look at these small numbers. I've counted them three or four times, but I still can't count how many zeros there are.

"Hey, I'm seeing things. How many zeros are there on this?" Kurosaki asked Taira no Ryu directly.

Ping Shenglong took it, glanced at it, and handed it back to him.

"Eight."

"Oh, 500 million yen. Wow, the official team is really generous." Kurosaki clicked his tongue, his tone not so much surprise as a playful one. "If I'm not mistaken, I'm thanks to the mysterious game, right?"

Ping Shenglong hummed in agreement.

The reason the official response was so quick and decisive is mainly because the existence of the game "Extraordinary Game" was confirmed, and Kurosaki indeed deserves great credit.

However, there are other factors that could contribute to such a generous reward.

Judging from the players' descriptions, it's safe to assume that the later parts of the game will feature a lot of mystery-solving content with an occult theme, requiring all the experts to work together and use their imaginations. Money can play a role in motivating players to some extent.

Compared to the extraordinary, hidden, and lucrative benefits, money is indeed just a number to the authorities.

"After tax?"

"After tax."

Kurosaki carefully examined the check, then clicked his tongue. "In the past, money would have been quite useful to me, since collecting ghost stories takes a lot of money. But now..."

He pulled out his bank card and casually tossed it to Ping Shenglong: "I promised you a million. Help me find a reliable platform to donate the rest. It would be best to donate it to the residents of Yamanashi Prefecture who were affected by the disaster. First, there were floods that turned the area into lakes, and now there is volcanic ash that has turned the area into snow. Most people are homeless."

Ping Shenglong caught the bank card steadily and said nothing more: "Okay, I'll arrange it."

“Oh, right,” Kurosaki added, as if remembering something, “I still have my salary from the past few months in my card, don’t donate it too.”

Ping Shenglong paused slightly in his hand holding the bank card, standing still with his brows slowly furrowing.

Kurosaki was about to resubmit his research when he saw Taira no Ryu standing there, seemingly lost in thought, and looked at him with a puzzled expression.

After a long pause, Heisei Ryu finally spoke, somewhat uncertainly: "Do you remember when players mentioned that every new game comes with a line related to the storyline?"

“Hmm,” Kurosaki nodded, “The introductions in the previous games felt more like background setting or character monologues, and weren’t very relevant to problem-solving strategies, so…”

Kurosaki suddenly stopped talking.

He reached out and accurately picked up a piece of draft paper from the pile of papers. On it was the name of Silver Cup Manor and a sentence whose meaning was currently unknown.

Does the angel's closed eye mean our prayers cease to exist?

After muttering it to himself several times, Kurosaki thought about it more and more and felt that it was possible.

I glanced at the time; it was 11:50 p.m.

The new round of the game hasn't even started yet.

The two exchanged a glance. Taira no Ryu knew what Kurosaki meant. He picked up the phone, hesitated for a few seconds, and dialed Muramasa Taki's number.

Shortly after.

At exactly twelve o'clock, a new round of games began, and the consciousness of the twelve players was simultaneously pulled into the above-ground and underground world of Silver Cup Manor.

Muramasa Taki opened her eyes, and the familiar dizziness and strong urge to vomit instantly overwhelmed her. She silently endured it for a while, and after recovering, she got out of bed and touched her ring.

How full are you?

Multileggedness is a characteristic typically found in insects or arthropods.

"Multi-legged means there are only two possibilities: scarab beetles and tarantulas."

"The scarab beetle is known to be countered by the raven and the shadow cat, while the tarantula is countered by the scarab beetle, the shadow cat, and the goat."

"The common point is that they are shadow cats."

In each round of the game, the players have the same number and the same identity, but they represent different animals.

Otherwise, you can just memorize it by rote and go through several rounds of memorization until you know which animal corresponds to each person.

The game now eliminates this possibility entirely. Even if they cooperate, at the very beginning of the game, players won't even know what animal they are.

This is only one of the problems.

In the second round of the game, they planned to survive for as long as possible for nine days, gather as much information as possible about countermeasures, and try to get at least one person to kill two people and leave the dungeon.

However, the results showed that the randomness was too strong, and coupled with the uncertainty of the animals representing them, it was very difficult for a player to actually kill two people.

More importantly, they discovered that there were more than nine species of animals.

Instead, there are twelve.

They could only guess that the three servants actually represented an animal, but it was unclear what role they played.

However, this introduces more variables and makes it even more difficult to determine the animal identities of different players.

Even now, in the sixth round of the game, no player has managed to successfully kill two of the animals that counter them and escape the dungeon.

Thinking back to the hurried phone call from Heisei Ryu before she entered the game, she had an idea.

He was right.

Since this game is called Angel Game, why are the angels completely absent?

Considering the rules in the manor that could only be discovered through trial and error, she felt that there were still many hidden mechanisms in the game that had not been revealed to them.

Now, if they were actually people from that time, and fully immersed in the role, what would they do first when faced with such an incomprehensible situation?

prayer.

Clang.

The nine cells opened automatically, and the players walked out one after another.

Muramasa Taki walked to the angel statue. During the day, the angel's eyes are open.

His eyes revealed neither joy nor sorrow, but were filled with a sense of holiness and superiority.

The question now is, what should we pray for?

"May the angels grant me permission to leave the dungeon."

Taki silently recited in his heart.

Whether it was her imagination or not, the angel's eyes seemed to move.

Immediately, a sharp pain shot through the ring.

[Not agreed]

It really works.

Taki thought for a few seconds and then changed his request.

"Please, angels, tell me who Shadowcat is?"

[Not agreed]

"Please, angels, tell me what animal number 2 is?"

【Shadow Cat】

They actually told them?

Taki thought she would only receive some hints, but she didn't expect it to be so straightforward.

Number 2 is Nobita, implying that it wouldn't be difficult for Nobita to kill her.

As she was still pondering, the angel statue dropped today's restraint prompt. Uesugi casually opened it and found a restraint relationship that had never appeared before.

Crocodiles are effective against rats, deer, and lizards.

".Um?"

Uesugi's expression froze on that spot.

If she remembered correctly, in the restraint relationship given earlier, the lizard also restrained the crocodile. Could it be that these two animals restrain each other?

No, the rules only mention restraint and being restrained, not mutual restraint.

So, is the rule-based information lying? Or is the restraint chart itself misleading?

If that's the case, she's more inclined to believe that the image is problematic.

Players with good memories saw this new restraint relationship and clearly thought of it as well. Park Min-woo sat in a chair and used cookies from the dining table to represent animals, arranging the food to recreate the restraint relationship he had seen before. Jeon began to look through the rule letter on the table, seemingly looking for some clue.

Only Number 5 and Hayato were squatting to one side, whispering something, but it probably had nothing to do with reality, as they weren't seen choking each other.

Uesugi thought about it carefully and indeed found something wrong. There are currently twelve kinds of animals. They have played five rounds and successfully made it to the ninth day in several rounds, but failed in the end because they did not complete the goal.

But over all these days, all that has appeared is a chart showing the restraint of nine different animals.

It's as if there are three animals that are very reluctant to give them to them.

They are a crocodile, an owl, and a goat.

I initially thought those three animals were related to the players in the servant group, but now it seems they will actually be given, just with an unusually low probability.

"You can try praying to the angel statue."

Taki then told everyone about the prayer, but worried that going into too much detail would be considered a violation of the rules, so she didn't go into what they could pray for.

Uesugi was right next to him. Upon hearing this, he temporarily abandoned his thoughts on restraint and became the first to start praying.

She clasped her hands together and placed them near her mouth, silently reciting something.

A few seconds after he finished reciting, he secretly opened one eye, quietly turned the statue around, and acted as if nothing had happened.

"Does your ring react at all?" Taki asked her.

Uesugi shook his head: "I prayed to know what kind of animal I was, but there was no response."

Takii understood; she probably only had one chance a day to pray to the angel statue.

I'm not sure if it's the same on Iwasaki's side.

Inside the manor, at the statue.

Iwasaki finally figured out the effective range of this prayer to the angel.

That is to open the room.

The manor has many rooms.

However, a significant portion of them are locked and inaccessible.

If you pray to the angels and tell them the exact location, the door will open.

But only one room can be opened at a time.

Iwasaki did not arrange for Yui or Oshima to go in, but chose to go in himself.

After confirming that no one was in the corridor, he pressed down the handle.

There was no noise as I had imagined, and the door opened smoothly, suggesting it was in regular use.

Once opened, the most eye-catching thing is the large scarab emblem hanging on the wall.

The wall beneath the large emblem is carved with reliefs of three animals that are preyed upon by the scarab beetle.

The area is filled with scarab beetle specimens of various shapes and sizes, each with a unique and lifelike appearance.