Q: How do you legitimately remove the last surveillance camera in the room?
A: Simpleâjust let Kurt help.
In the past, this was exactly how it worked. After restraining a female playerâs mobility, Kurt would actively use the remote control to remove her collar first.
Each collar corresponded to a live broadcast room in the killing gameâs viewing hall. To avoid wasting resources on dead playersâ streams and real-time tracking data, the collars had a special built-in system: once removed from the neck, their monitoring, listening, and positioning functions would all be disabled.
Kurt didnât want anyone sharing his âsweet private timeâ with the female players, so before beginning his torture, he would always remove the collar in advance using the remote control.
But Everly couldnât wait for him to initiate it. By then, she would already be immobilized and completely at a disadvantage.
She needed Kurt to remove the collar earlier.
And that wasnât difficult.
After finishing her long, ear-piercing scream, Everly turned around, her face still pale with fear, and pretended to try to flee through the door.
She slammed directly into a hard, unyielding body.
A bloodstained leather apron, various knives stuffed into its pockets, andâabove the collarâa sudden, unsettling pig-head mask identical to the earlier pursuerâs.
It turned out that the moment Everly had opened her mouth to scream, Kurt had already silently put everything on, fully preparing for the act of slaughter.
âYou⊠youâre with that guy from before?!â
Everlyâs pupils trembled as if she had finally realized the truth.
âOh, not bad, Lily. Your reaction is pretty quick.â
Kurtâs voice came from beneath the mask, trembling with excitement.
âYou saw those two before you, right? When you already figured it out, they were still sniffling and stupidly asking me if I was joking⊠haha, their expressions were just perfect. I could savor them for a lifetime!â
His voice was thin and sharp, like a rat scraping through a dark corner underground.
âUnfortunately, even though youâre smart⊠you still fell into my trap.â
With that, a shing sounded as Kurt pulled a sharp knife from the pocket of his leather apron with one hand. With the other, he ran his fingers slowly and almost lovingly along the blade, as if admiring it.
âNo! Donâtâplease⊠please let me go!â
Everly hurriedly stepped back, her face twisting into a pleading expression.
Kurt didnât react at all.
He raised the knife and advanced slowly, toying with her like prey. Behind the eyeholes of the mask, his gaze never left her face, greedily and joyfully savoring every trace of fear.
So beautiful⊠the purer and more innocent the girl, the more soul-shaking her final screams became.
But⊠was it just his imagination? Lilyâs expression felt a little off⊠not quite rightâ
âDonâtâdonât come closer! If you take another step, Iâll detonate a bomb immediately!â
Before he could think further, a trembling threat rang out, instantly pulling Kurtâs attention away.
Kurt shifted his gaze from Everlyâs face to her neck, only to see that the girl had actually raised both hands and grabbed the collar around her throat.
âThe rules video said there are explosives inside this collar. If I pull it hard enough, it will explode⊠If you donât want to be blown up with me, then back off!â
Everly huddled pitifully in the corner, like a frightened rabbit putting on a bluff, shouting at him with forced courage.
Kurt froze for a momentâthen threw his head back and laughed out loud.
âHaha⊠hahahahaha! I thought you were going to do something impressive, but youâre planning to blow me up with that collar?â
âDidnât you hear what the host said? Thereâs only a small amount of explosives inside the collarâjust enough to snap a personâs neck. Do you really think it can kill everyone around you? Arenât you overestimating it?â
âW-whatâŠâ
âHoweverâŠâ Kurt muttered to himself, âif you die too easily, I really would lose a lot of fun.â
As he spoke, he suddenly lifted his free left hand and reached into his chest pocket, pulling out a necklace.
The pendant was a thumb-sized brass watch faceâplain and unremarkable at first glance. But when Kurt pulled out the crown at its edge and twisted it clockwise, a soft click sounded, and the surface of the dial split open into two halves, revealing a tiny button underneath.
This was the true form of the remote control.
âStay away! Donât come any closerâwhat are you going to do?!â
Seeing Kurt step toward her again, the girl trembled uncontrollably. In her panic, she stumbled backward and accidentally tripped over one of the female corpses on the ground. Glancing back, she realized she had already been forced into a corner.
And in that brief moment of distraction, when she turned her face forward again, Kurt had already silently appeared right in front of her.
Beep!
He aimed the remote at Everlyâs neck and pressed the button in the center.
With a soft click, Everly felt her neck suddenly lighten. The collar that had been chafing against her all afternoon loosened its grip and fell to the ground with a plop.
âThis was exactly what she had been waiting for!
The moment the collar hit the floor, the emotions she had been forcibly suppressing all this time surged up violently.
Finally. At last.
Once the collar was removed, all monitoring, listening, and tracking functions would stop.
In other words, from this moment on, to the outside world, this room had become a complete âsealed chamber.â No one would know what happened inside. She could do whatever she wanted.
In the dim light, Kurt noticed that the girl had changed.
The panicked expression she had worn just seconds ago vanished completely. Instead, she looked down at him with an expressionless faceâlike she was staring at trash.
Wait⊠something was wrong with the perspective.
They were roughly the same height, so why was he suddenly looking up at her?
A delayed wave of pain shot up from his legs into his brain.
Kurt widened his eyes, finally realizing that in that instant, he had been attackedâand knocked to the ground.
Before his confused mind could process what had happened, a sharp rush of wind came from beside him.
The womanâs next attack was already upon him.
Bang!
A knee strike packed with speed and force slammed directly into his face. The sound of cracking bone followed immediately.
Kurt felt as if he had collided head-on with a speeding train. His head was forced backward, his nose shattered, his cheekbone caved in, and his upper teeth broke one by one, tearing into his mouth and tongue. Blood poured uncontrollably, instantly filling his nasal cavity and throat.
The intense dull pain arrived a half-beat late, then surged in like a tsunami.
His ears seemed to have been damaged by that strike as well. At this moment, Kurt felt as if his head had turned into a massive bell tower bell, reverberating with a terrifying hum under the merciless blows of the bell ringer.
âYou⊠ugh⊠you, youââ
Before he could finish, the tall girl stepped forward.
She braced both hands against the back of his head, her leg muscles tensing like springs. Then she drove her knee upward againâstraight into his face.
Crack!
With that strike, Kurtâs face beneath the mask completely caved in. A gush of blood sprayed out like a fountain from under the mask, quickly staining his leather apron a vivid red.
Horror Movie Survival Rule #15: always finish the job.
Even though the man in front of her had gone completely limp and stopped moving, Everly wasnât about to be fooled.
Seeing that Kurtâs collar still hadnât fallen off, she immediately concluded he was only stunnedânot dead. Seizing the rare opening, she snatched the knife from his hand and drove it precisely into his carotid artery, cutting open his throat and severing the major blood vessel in one clean motion.
âHk⊠hhkâŠâ
Kurtâs body twitched twice where it lay on the ground. Before long, he lost consciousness due to blood loss and oxygen deprivation, and stopped breathing entirely.
After his death, the system could no longer detect vital signs. The collar around his neck suddenly loosened and fell into the pool of blood.
No problem.
Throughout the journey, Everly had been deliberately suppressing her combat ability. Up until the moment the monitoring link was cut, the situation had been overwhelmingly in Kurtâs favor. Under those circumstances, even if his collar fell off, outsiders would only assume he had used the remote himself to remove it for some reason (such as preventing someone from pulling it and triggering an explosion), and would never suspect that he had been killed and counter-killed.
And that was exactly why Everly had endured everything up to this point.
Everly picked up the collar and glanced at the countdown: 16:23:17. Not badâbecause of Kurtâs foolish behavior, it had taken less time than expected.
In about ten minutes, it would be completely dark outside. By then, due to the lack of visible prey, Kurtâs brother âCleaverâ would likely return to the base. Before that happened, she had to handle everything here.
With that thought, Everly crouched down and quickly began stripping Kurtâs clothes.
About ten minutes later, the tightly shut iron door creaked open. A figure wearing a pig-head mask and carrying a black backpack stepped out. âHeâ turned around, pulled the iron door closed again, and casually hung a lit oil lamp on the handle before disappearing into the forest ahead.
That pig mask was, of course, Everly disguised as Bean.
After killing Kurt, she had immediately swapped their clothing and put on the mask. To make the disguise more convincing, she had even put the fake collar back on.
Once she changed clothes, Everly spent some additional time thoroughly looting the butcher brothersâ base.
The items the butchers brought onto the island had no restrictions. Among their belongings, anything she deemed useful was packed without exception into her backpack.
After finishing the cleanup, she left the hidden base in an open and unhurried manner.
To be honest, her original plan in attacking Bean was only to obtain the remote control. She hadnât expected that after actually killing him, the gains would be unexpectedly substantial. Every item in the heavy backpack was something she couldnât afford to discard.
Next, as long as she successfully left the northwestern outer ring and moved out of Cleaverâs activity range, she would be completely safe.
With that thought, Everly quickened her pace, moving through the forest like a nimble deer, swiftly weaving through the trees.
Unfortunately, when it came to moments that required luck, Everly had never been particularly fortunate.
What she feared most happened.
She hadnât even made it halfway through her escape when her sharp ears caught a rustling crash in the distance.
Everly turned her head and, under the dimming light of dusk, looked toward the source of the sound.
Through the trees, she saw itâ
A figure wearing a pig-head mask, drenched in blood, dragging a massive cleaver through the undergrowth.
It was actually Beanâs mentally unstable and brutal older brotherââCleaver.â
Not long ago, Cleaver had just finished off a new prey. The kill had been too quick, leaving him unsatisfied. The violent urge inside him surged through his veins with nowhere to go. At the same time, because night was falling, the people in the forest had mostly stopped moving toward the mountain, making it even harder to find targets.
With no one left to kill, Cleaver could only wander back toward the base, bored, planning to see whether his younger brother had âfinished playingâ yet.
He hadnât expected that halfway there, he would run straight into his brotherâout in the forest.
Cleaver was briefly confused.
His intelligence wasnât particularly high, but he did know one thing: after his younger brother took female players away, he usually needed some time alone to âplay his gameâ properly. During that time, if Cleaver carelessly went inside and interrupted him, his brother would become very angryâhitting him, kicking him, and shouting at him.
That was why Cleaver had never dared to return early.
But now⊠the time clearly wasnât up yet, yet his brother had already left the base and appeared in the forest.
Why?
A big question mark slowly formed in Cleaverâs small brain.
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