Chapter 132: Dormitory Friendship League
When Ma Xiaobo saw the thing on his arm clearly, he froze in place.
Outside the dormitory, the shield girl immediately noticed something was wrong and raised her voice: "Ma Xiaobo?"
For the first time, the boy in the room did not respond quickly or move. Looking from her direction, she could only see the boy's trembling elbow covering his face.
Her heart sank and she immediately stepped inside. The other party seemed to have just come to his senses, his arms drooping, and a smile uglier than crying appeared on his pale face.
"Boss." He opened his mouth. "I feel like I'm dying."
The girl's eyes fell on him.
Those two arms that were originally intact were covered with dark blue sharp scales, spreading from the elbows to the wrists, and were rapidly spreading in all directions!
Holding the shield tightly, she rushed in and pulled the person out. As soon as she grabbed Ma Xiaobo's shoulders, an extremely cold chill surged in her palms.
The girl's movements froze imperceptibly.
At that moment, Ma Xiaobo's body felt exactly like the elf's...!
Despite her turbulent thoughts, she wasn't the analytical type, so she could only take the person to the balcony and then seek help from Tang Xinjue through a mental connection.
However, in the blink of an eye, the scales on Ma Xiaobo's body spread to his face at an unimaginable speed, completely covering all the exposed skin below his neck, reflecting an ominous blue light.
"Boss... I... don't... dorm..."
Ma Xiaobo clutched his throat in pain, his vocal cords twisted strangely, unable to utter a complete word.
The students observing from the nearby balcony were all startled. Someone uttered a surprised cry, "Classmate, there's an elf in your dorm?"
The shield girl gave him a cold look, and he shuddered and shrank back, realizing something was amiss.
This "elf" had the head of a human student?!
Or rather... a human boy's head, with the body of an elf growing from beneath it!
Shouts of shock and terror echoed, drawing more and more eyes toward the balcony of Room 307. The shield girl ignored them, listening attentively and solemnly to Tang Xinjue's words.
Tang Xinjue's voice was equally chilling: "The rules' penalties have begun. He's mutated. There's no time."
She had warned the shield girl not to let Ma Xiaobo stay too long, even after he entered the balcony of Room 307.
Now, her words had come true.
This competition had many unbreakable rules: faction rules, attack rules, mission rules, even death rules... The annihilation of the short, thin boy showed that even the candidate's location was part of the rules.
Leaving one's dorm would result in a penalty.
The shield girl's face remained expressionless, but her voice through the mental link was urgent: "Is there nothing else we can do? I have a shield. I can scrape off the scales."
Tang Xinjue: "..."
"Do you think it's Guan Yu, scraping his bones to heal his wounds?"
*Guan Yu was a general during the late Eastern Han dynasty whose arm got wounded. The wound healed, but he still experienced pain in the bone whenever there was a heavy downpour. A physician had to cut open his arm and scrape away the poison in his bone to heal it.
She used her mental power to observe the boy, whose pupils were already dilating, and pursed her lips. "Two options. One is to let him clear the dungeon now and recover automatically after leaving the instance. The other is to send him back to his own dorm. There's a ten percent chance he'll survive."
But with the other ninety percent chance, there's still no way to reverse the situation.
The shield girl didn't hesitate. "I'll get him down."
She lifted Ma Xiaobo and placed him on the guardrail. The boy lowered his arms obediently. Even though scales covered most of his face, he didn't flare in agony or fear, releasing venom. He remained flat against his skin until his thoughts began to blur.
He raised his head and looked at the shield girl, uttering the same monotonous syllables as before, as if trying to express something.
The shield girl didn't understand, but Tang Xinjue did.
"He doesn't want to go back to his dorm."
The girl paused, her eyes sharp. "Why?"
Tang Xinjue watched Ma Xiaobo's gradually fading spiritual flame and sighed silently. "He can't hold on any longer. When he transforms into an elf, his roommate won't be strong enough to control him, and he'll kill them instead."
“If he stays with you, he wants to give you a point for putting him in your cloak."
She repeated Ma Xiaobo's last words:
"As a thank you for saving him and keeping him here."
Ma Xiaobo's head dropped completely. His dyed-blonde hair withered and fell, and he sprouted the jagged, sharp tentacles of a monster.
The shield girl instinctively grabbed him to stop him from falling, but the next moment, the head in front of them suddenly rose. Fluorescent green eyes were filled with malice, black lips split to the ears, and a familiar hissing sound emanated—
A long tongue covered with proboscises suddenly pierced from its mouth!
"Completely mutated."
Tang Xinjue opened her eyes and rubbed her brow, tired from using her spiritual power.
The moment she saw Ma Xiaobo's transformed form, she shared her mental vision with the four people in 606. Now, everyone's faces were solemn.
The elves they saw this time were different from the three previous rounds.
Previous elves, whether large or small, winged or not, always maintained a "monster" form, starkly different from humans.
But the current "Ma Xiaobo," though completely transformed into an elf, retained a human form in his limbs and torso. He possessed the offensive abilities of a monster while retaining the attacks and movements of a human.
Even more troubling was...
Zhang You's brows were knitted together: "It even has intelligence."
"Hiss!!!"
A sharp scream echoed from the third floor. The long-haired girl shook off her bloodied hair and plunged her shield into the elf's throat.
A human with half their neck pierced like that would have died instantly, but "Ma Xiaobo"'s body continued to tremble strangely.
In less than half a second, its arms and legs began to elongate like molten liquid, its claws beneath its scales transforming into mouthparts. Its entire body seemingly split into a core and five identical "tongues," continuing its assault on the shield girl.
Instead of drawing her shield, the girl muttered a spell, and four identical "shields" instantly materialized around her, simultaneously blocking the incoming mouthparts.
This was the technique she had been using to remotely combat the informant: Shield Shadows.
Previously, only a single shadow had appeared before the examinees, but now several were summoned simultaneously, each shifting and transforming with conscious awareness. The shield girl showed no sign of fear.
It turned out she had been hiding her abilities before, her true strength only now revealed.
From a few steps away, Yue Qiong leisurely observed the battle, neither offering assistance nor taking advantage of the situation.
He was like an interested spectator, watching the show with relish and commenting on it:
"Your emotions have reached a peak... So that's what's going on. Killing a companion is your unbearable weakness, right? As expected, stubborn behavior is often accompanied by inner demons..."
"Shut up!"
The shield girl had never felt that a person's voice could be so noisy, even louder than the beginning of the incessant male voice who always called himself "zaixia".
*"在下" is a humble term used in ancient China to refer to oneself. It means "I," especially when speaking to someone of higher status, indicating one's junior status or lower position. While less commonly used in modern Chinese, it can still be found in some costume dramas and martial arts novels, often used to create the atmosphere of ancient conversations.
With a firm grip, crimson blood spurted from "Ma Xiaobo's" neck, as if the body still belonged to a human.
Splashed with blood, the shield girl calmed down a bit. She drew her shield, ignoring the four still-flailing proboscises, and yanked out her cloak. With a cold expression, the black cloak fell over "Ma Xiaobo."
The person was dead; her anger was pointless; it was time to end.
From the countless balconies of the two dormitory buildings, the other students watched silently.
Among them, the students who had just escaped the elf's claws and stood on unfamiliar balconies in other dormitories were pale and bloodless.
In Ma Xiaobo's present form, they seemed to glimpse their own future selves.
If this truly was a penalty, would they, too, end up like this?
Rip!
At that moment, something unexpected happened: the two proboscises suddenly clamped onto the cloak beneath it, violently lifting it!
The shield girl took a sharp step back to catch the cloak. Fortunately, she hadn't withdrawn from combat, immediately blocking the elf's attack and engaging in another stalemate.
Three floors above, Guo Guo shuddered, opening her eyes from her psychic perspective. She exclaimed in astonishment, "The cloak is useless?"
"It's not that the cloak is useless,"
Tang Xinjue said with closed eyes. "It's because it's still partially human."
The cloak can only be used to "contain" the elf. If the elf hides within a human's skin, the cloak will no longer have any restraining power.
Unless...
she unleashed her psychic power, probing deeply.
The shield girl rolled on the ground to avoid the attack. Her sharp, razor-sharp gaze had just fallen on "Ma Xiaobo" when she heard Tang Xinjue's voice:
"Cut open its torso about a third of the way from top to bottom. That's its core!"
The words sank into her mind, and without hesitation, the girl raised her shield, stepped on the guardrail, swung, and plunged the metal, which could slice through gold like dirt, into the monster's torso.
With a fierce dig, a rotting heart, half scarlet and half dark blue, now adhered to its ribcage, rolled out.
The elf's frantic thrashing seemed to have been stopped, as if it had lost its power source. For a moment, Ma Xiaobo's features reappeared on its bloodstained face. With an expression only humans could decipher, it gazed at the shield girl.
He seemed about to speak, but only opened his mouth slightly, no sound coming out. Then, dimming again, he vanished completely.
His body collapsed with a thud, rapidly shrinking into a lifeless mass. This time, it was enveloped by the cloak without resistance, transforming into a new Elf Ball.
[Ding, student dead, stacking difficulty 1%, current total stacking 89%]
As Ma Xiaobo was declared dead, the mutated elves circling in the sky seemed to have received some kind of summons, dispersing and disappearing into the invisible rooftops, never to be seen again.
"The third round is over," a candidate whispered, gazing at the sky.
The end of one round marked the beginning of the next.
So, where were the elves from the fourth round now?
No one spoke. In the eerie silence, many glanced in unison at the same spot.
Ten extremely pale students stood in separate dormitories across two buildings, their faces fixed on the edge of the guardrail, their gaze fixed on the direction where Ma Xiaobo had died.
"Classmate, classmate?"
On the balcony of Dormitory 612, Building A, three short-haired girls hesitantly stood behind a portly boy, tentatively calling him out, but received no response.
The boy had been dangled near their dorm after being dropped by the elves, and they had pulled him up out of a moment of pity. But upon witnessing Ma Xiaobo's fate, their hearts began to race.
Aside from his excessive fear, the boy had been acting normally. But within a few seconds, as the game announced Ma Xiaobo's death, the boy, as if drawn to something, stood still, motionless, unresponsive to the outside world.
The three girls exchanged glances, their minds simultaneously forming a hypothesis.
Sure enough, the next second, accompanied by a distant scream, the fat man suddenly convulsed violently, large flakes of skin peeling off, as if being ripped open from the inside. A massive, plump blue elf emerged in its place!
"Quick, get them back to their dormitories!"
"It's no use, it's too late."
Witnessing the simultaneous transformation of ten examinees, some panicked, while others belatedly realized the reality.
From the moment these examinees were captured by the elves, their fate was sealed.
And there was no possibility of alteration.
"This is the fourth round,"
Yue Qiong thought, his eyes narrowing again.
"Ten elves, only ten lucky dormitories. Too many for too little. What a pity! If you had saved a few more people, perhaps there would be a few more elves left."
His tone was lighthearted, as if these dead weren't living examinees but commodities to be cashed in, sending a chill down the spine of those who heard it.
"By the way, there are only ten minutes left until the capture period ends,"
Yue Qiong spoke again, hinting, "If this part drags on, are you sure you can catch your quota?"
Many expressions changed slightly.
They had watched the comrades they had just rescued transform into monsters. Even though they knew they had to kill them to obtain the Elf Balls, they couldn't help but feel a little reluctant.
But the ever-increasing pace of the competition didn't allow them to hesitate.
A dead silence fell on the first and second floors. Just five minutes ago, these roaring "elves" had been their roommates; now, they were monsters waiting to be hunted.
Unable to stop them, they could only hide from the fierce battle above.
[Ding, a student has died, increasing difficulty by 1%, current total increase by 90%]
[Ding, a student has died... current total increase by 91%]
[Ding...]
With the experience of watching the shield girl kill the humanoid elf, the students gradually gained the upper hand. When they felt they couldn't defeat the opponent, they simply hid away, allowing other dormitories seeking points to lure the elf over.
One elf after another was successfully captured, and death notices appeared one after another. At first, no one seemed to realize that something was wrong. It was not until the hunt was nearing its end that more and more people began to realize another serious problem.
"The death toll..."
"There are already more than ninety..."
"How many are left? Wait..."
Wait!
Before the last elf was pierced through the torso, someone finally shouted to try to stop it: "Don't kill it! The death toll has reached 99!"
--As long as the total number of students who died in the game reaches 100, the game will be judged as a failure!
Who knows what the consequences of a failure will be, what if it is a collective annihilation? Who can take this risk?
The machete stopped just in front of the elf. The boy with glasses holding the machete was panting. The shouts from the outside world came into his ears, and a trace of confusion appeared on his face.
"It's useless."
Amidst the chaos, a steady young woman's voice cut through the crowd, reaching the examinees' ears with clarity.
Looking up, Tang Xinjue stood at the top balcony, her hands resting on the railing, watching everything unfold silently.
She spoke calmly, "If we hold on here, the elf won't spawn in the next round, and we'll all be dragged to death."
"Letting it go might harm other examinees, and increasing the death toll will result in the same outcome."
In other words, from the outset, they had no choice but to move forward, with no room for pause, regardless of detection.
The crowd quieted, and the machetes fell.
[Ding, a student has died... Current total at 99%]
Just one more person left to reach 100.
This fact weighed like an invisible mountain on everyone's heart.
For it meant that from now until the end of the competition, no one could die, no matter if that person was an informant or a good student.
Only if everyone survived to the end would they have a chance of passing.
In this oppressive atmosphere, the sudden laughter was particularly abrupt.
Following the source of the sound, they saw a tall, thin man wearing a black mask, leaning on the balcony of Building B, Room 308, laughing uncontrollably.
Who else could it be but Yue Qiong?
When a confirmed informant laughed out loud at this moment, it was like dancing on the shaky hearts of the crowd. Someone couldn't help but yell, "What are you laughing at?"
After more than ten seconds, Yue Qiong straightened up and lazily asked, "The game is over, isn't it normal for me to be happy?"
"Are you fucking crazy? If the game is over and we all lose, what's there to be happy about?"
Yue Qiong raised an eyebrow. "Watch your wording. It's [you] who will lose. But what does your failure have to do with me?"
"The game never said that our mission is the same."
His voice was frivolous, but it sounded like a death sentence.
"Your failure, in some ways, is also a form of our victory—isn't that so hard to predict?"
"Rather, you're just afraid to face it."
A single sentence could ignite a raging fire. Before the test-taker's temper could flare, a calmer voice intervened:
"Don't let him influence the situation. Remember, we've only lost 99 people; the game isn't over yet!"
At this, the man suddenly became alert and quickly stepped back to look at Yue Qiong. "You're not planning on attacking us, are you? Give up; the rules won't allow it."
Yue Qiong opened his arms. "Don't worry, I don't have any such foolish thoughts of breaking the rules."
"It's just that..." he snapped his fingers. "Suicide shouldn't be affected by the rules, right?"
As he finished speaking, the two boys standing behind him trembled strangely.
In full view of the crowd, one of them pulled out a dagger, turned the blade, and plunged it into his own chest!
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