Evolution game, nothing more than that!

"Yes, there are many abilities that can do this, such as curses, illusions, or ghosts and spirits that are invisible to the naked eye. Although my ability can make most people unaware of my existence, if it is something invisible, I will not be able to detect it either."

In this regard, Yi Shen's elemental vision is more advantageous. He can directly observe the flow of various energies. In theory, he should be able to discover intangible monsters such as ghosts and spirits. Even spells such as curses and illusions that are released through the air should be able to detect some traces.

Unfortunately, the captain acted too quickly and disposed of the body before Yi Shen had a chance to investigate.

"Any other information?"

Yi Shen continued to ask.

"It really does."

Assassin nodded.

"Oh? Tell me!"

"When I came here just now, I passed by the doctor's room and happened to hear the captain say to the doctor, 'I don't want to see this happen again', and the doctor replied, 'It was an accident, I will take care of it'. Obviously, John's death should be related to the doctor, and the captain knew what happened."

"Well, considering the information about the doctor possessing occult books, this seems to be the case. Our ship's doctor might be a spellcaster, and that 'it' might be some kind of summoned creature or ghost."

Yi Shen frowned and looked at Assassin:

"But the doctor said it was an 'accident'. Do you think that's true?"

Assassin:

"It's hard to say. I didn't meet the doctor face to face, so I can't tell whether he was lying when he said that."

"Tsk, things have become even more complicated!"

Yi Shen frowned even more tightly.

At this time, Assassin made a suggestion:

"Perhaps, we can be a little more radical and arrest the doctor directly and force him to explain why he did this?"

"..."

Upon hearing this, Yi Shen looked at the other party in surprise.

Is this serious?

Are you such a reckless person?

Well, although cutting the Gordian knot is sometimes a good way to break the deadlock, the situation is obviously not that urgent now.

Therefore, after thinking for a while, he shook his head and rejected it:

"There's no need to do that for now. After all, we don't know the doctor's spellcasting system or strength. If we don't capture him immediately and cause a big commotion, it will be difficult for us to stay on this ship."

After all, their mission was to reach the Arctic on this ship. If they were kicked off the ship by the captain because of trouble, not to mention whether they could survive in the ocean, the mission would fail.

Of course, there are ways to solve this problem. In the most extreme case, Yi Shen can use his powerful force to forcibly seize the ship and completely take control of the entire mission.

But the problem still remains. Without knowing the captain's specific strength, acting rashly may not necessarily lead to the immediate defeat of the opponent. And if the ship is damaged during the battle, everyone's mission will fail!

However, Assassin's proposal is not without merit.

"We can't attack directly, but we can use a more covert method to test it."

Yi Shen said this.

"What are you going to do?"

Assassin was curious.

"Well, let's do this. At night, I'll do this and that, and you can take advantage of the opportunity..."

Yi Shen lowered his voice and told the other party his plan.

After listening to this, Assassin nodded to show that he understood.

"Alright, this is a bit more troublesome, but it should at least give us some more information."

Chapter 45: Collective Hysteria, Throwing a Stone to Test the Water

That night, just as the sailors were about to go to sleep, another howl woke everyone up.

"Here he is! Here he is!"

Sam, who was chopped by John the night before, ran out of his room screaming, looking back as he ran, as if something was chasing him.

However, there was no one behind him. Even his roommates who were awakened by him stayed away from him, fearing that they would be hurt by the crazy person like him.

"Fuck! Why are you here again? Are you going to let me sleep or not?"

The bearded player who was also woken up saw this familiar scene and immediately became furious. He didn't care about anything else and just stepped forward to trip the other person, then grabbed the guy's neck and lifted him up.

Sam, who was captured, was waving his limbs to struggle, while shouting loudly:

"Hurry, let me go! I saw him, he's coming for me!"

"Who? Who did you see?"

The bearded man didn't let go, but asked with a frown.

He hadn't expected this seemingly crazy guy to give him an answer, but unexpectedly, the other party actually answered:

"It's John! I saw John's ghost! He's right here, on this ship! He came looking for me! He wants to drag me to death with him!"

When the bearded man heard this, he felt a chill and his hair stood on end.

If someone had said this before entering this evolution game, he would have just thought that person was crazy, or was making up a story to attract attention.

But in this evolutionary game where all kinds of incredible things exist, he couldn't possibly regard these words as crazy talk or lies.

Considering the strange death of John before, coupled with the disturbing descriptions in the mission prompts, maybe there really is something unclean on this ship?

Just then the captain came over.

His sleep was disturbed again and his face looked even gloomier than yesterday. After seeing Sam subdued by the bearded man, he didn't say much. He just had him put in the confinement room as usual and wait for the doctor to check on him tomorrow.

I thought the matter was over and everyone returned to their rooms.

But just half an hour later, there was another howl, no, several howls came from everywhere, and several sailors in different cabins, like Sam before, ran out of the rooms screaming, shouting "there is a ghost", "John's ghost appeared", "this ship is cursed" and so on.

Now the whole ship became lively. After subduing those "crazy" sailors one after another, no one wanted to sleep anymore.

Everyone felt that something unclean had indeed appeared on the ship.

The captain, in particular, had an extremely gloomy expression. After locking all the sailors into the confinement room, he went to the infirmary angrily without saying a word.

As for the players, they sat on their beds, looking at each other solemnly.

"Something's not right. There was only one last night, why are there suddenly so many today?"

It was still the bearded man who started talking first and raised the problem.

"What's so strange about this? In horror movies like this, doesn't the situation always get worse day by day?"

The girl shrugged, looking as if she was used to it.

"No, this is the most abnormal part!"

The high school student beside him shook his head and said:

"Even in horror movies, the rampage of ghosts is gradual, gradually creating a terrifying atmosphere. But it's only the second night now, and it's moving too fast!"

"Yes, now the entire ship knows that there are ghosts or some other evil things on board, and most people are panicking. I feel that this ship won't even make it to the North Pole, and morale will collapse halfway!"

The pastor said this, his words filled with worry that the mission might not be able to continue.

"This shouldn't be possible, right?"

The cowboy frowned and said:

"In order to allow us to participate in the mission, the Evolution Game even gave each of us a free copy of the [Sailor] skill. With its ability, it will definitely make the mission go forward!"

"No, we can't be blindly optimistic. We're still unfamiliar with the mechanics of this evolutionary game. Although the main mission should occur after we reach the North Pole, we can't rule out the possibility that the expedition team collapses midway, the ship can't reach the North Pole, and the mission fails outright."

The high school student refuted the cowboy's statement.

"Then what should we do? Are we just going to sit there and watch?"

The bearded man looked at everyone anxiously.

Although everyone is not an ally, and their positions may even be hostile to each other, everyone is the same in terms of "getting the mission going forward."

And he believed that the smart ones among these players would definitely be able to come up with a solution!

Especially that high school student, he looks the smartest among everyone!

Being stared at by the bearded man, the high school student rubbed his temples and said with a frown:

"Let's not talk about how to continue the mission for now. After all, the crew is just a little panicked right now, not completely collapsed yet. But what happened today... I have a feeling that it seems a little different from yesterday's situation!"

"Oh? What's different?"

The bearded man asked quickly.

However, the high school student glanced at him and uttered a few words stiffly:

"...I won't tell you."

Obviously, he seemed to have noticed something, but was not willing to tell others for free, especially this bearded man who didn't seem to be very smart.

The bearded man was a little angry, but after looking at the other people in the room, he finally suppressed his anger, snorted coldly, and stared at the high school student fiercely, as if he wanted to kill him with his eyes.

The conversation ended in a bad mood, and the players, having lost interest in chatting, lay down to sleep.

And in the silent darkness, a small snake crawled in from outside the door and quickly drilled into Yi Shen's bed.

The moment the snake's body touched his body, it seemed to melt and merge into his body, leaving only an eye-like accessory, which was held by Yi Shen.

That’s right, today’s collective ghost-seeing incident was actually done by Yi Shen!

The method he used was the "flesh and blood mimicry snake" that he had used in the novice mission.

However, compared to last time, he did not use as much flesh and blood as an arm this time, so the resulting snake body was much smaller.

It was precisely because of this that, as very little flesh and blood was separated, and with his current physique, there was nothing abnormal about him from the outside, so no one noticed him.

The snake's mission is to move around the ship with its "Five Visions", looking for opportunities to cast "illusions" on the crew members, making them feel like evil spirits are taking their lives.

Chapter 46: Identity Confirmed, Sacrifice Possible

Of course, Yi Shen's purpose in creating hallucinations was not to drive those poor crew members crazy, but to further test the captain and the doctor.

The intelligence Assassin had brought back earlier said that after John died, the captain talked to the doctor and warned him that he did not want to see such an incident happen again, and the doctor gave him a guarantee.

But the current situation is that less than a day has passed since the guarantee was given, and a second, larger-scale incident of crew members going crazy occurred that night.

What would the captain think from his perspective?

I guess he must have thought that the doctor was just being perfunctory during the day, or even deliberately going against him!

In this case, he is very likely to go directly to the doctor to confront or even warn him, and the doctor, who has never done such a thing, will definitely defend himself. Then Assassin, who has been following him in stealth, can take this opportunity to hear more of the conversation between him and the doctor and obtain more information.

In fact, everything happened just as Yi Shen had imagined.

Assassin saw the captain angrily find the doctor and start asking him:

"You promised me it wouldn't happen again! But you completely ignored my words! What the hell do you want to do?"

The doctor, who was scolded, waved his hands and said:

"Listen to me, it wasn't me this time!"

"Oh, of course it wasn't you. It was all 'that thing' that did it, wasn't it? Hunting human souls is the nature of this monster. There's nothing you can do as its master, right?"

The captain spoke in a sarcastic tone, obviously taking the other party's words as a sophistry.

"No, no, no, Captain, you really misunderstood. It has nothing to do with it this time. I never relaxed my control over it the entire night. Those crew members went crazy for other reasons!"

The doctor quickly explained.

"Oh, what a joke! What were those ghosts the crew members saw? Could it be that they were just driven crazy by too much mental stress? And there were so many of them at once?"

The captain sneered and didn't believe it.

"Of course it can't be a ghost... You know, John's soul has been eaten, there can't be a ghost left."

The doctor continued to defend himself:

"But you see, there's a problem here. Ghosts clearly can't exist, but those crew members all claimed to have seen them. What does that mean?"