Volume 3: High School Arc - Mirror Game
I sat in the car, eyes closed, thinking about the information I had just heard from Shan Xuelin.
He... as a regional leader of a survivor alliance, similar to a guild in a game, and even the person in charge in the provincial capital, actually didn’t know Lu Haochen?
I clearly saw the surprise in the eyes of the three, and thus understood just how shocking it was for a high school student to survive in this game.
But... my situation didn’t count, because it was too unique to be considered among the general population.
Was Lu Haochen’s situation also that unique?
No... at least I didn’t see any sign of an Evil Spirit Form on Lu Haochen.
There was no coldness from an Evil Spirit Form emanating from him either.
Which meant at the very least, Lu Haochen himself wasn’t carrying a prop-type or parasitic-type Evil Spirit.
On the other hand, it also indicated... if Lu Haochen really was a game player, then what he had experienced must have been far from ordinary.
But... without the help of any Evil Spirit, could an ordinary person truly survive in the game?
I didn’t think so.
Then... what was going on with Lu Haochen?
He saw the Evil Spirit, and even made a move similar to preparing to fight back.
And in the end, he even said those words to me.
No matter how I looked at it, he should be one of us...
Could it be, he was someone from the Death Coffin?
That was also a possibility.
If that was the case, then perhaps Death Coffin wasn’t as cold-blooded as its name sounded.
As a game player, Lu Haochen still worried whether I would implicate ordinary people.
So that was why he said those words at the hotel during the gathering...
Birds of a feather flock together, and people form groups.
From that, it could be inferred that if he really was a player, and also from Death Coffin, then our initial impression of them might need to be revised.
As I thought about this, sitting in the car looking at the scenery outside, something suddenly came to mind...
"Shao He, can you drive a sports car?"
Shao He was slightly stunned and instinctively turned to glance at me.
"Sports car... I’ve never tried, but it should be fine."
After she spoke, she turned slightly and looked at me with a hint of puzzlement in her eyes.
"Did you think of something, Miss? Why are you asking such a question?"
"You tell me... if it were you, would you choose a sports car or a sedan?"
"...That depends on the situation, Miss..."
"In a dangerous moment."
There was a bit of confusion in Shao He’s eyes, but she still answered my question.
"If it were abroad, then of course a sports car would be the right choice."
"But the road conditions in our country are more complicated, with few flat sections."
"So sports cars aren’t really suitable here."
"If we were pressed for time, I’d recommend some ordinary sporty sedans."
"But if it’s as urgent as you said, Miss... I would actually recommend this car."
"This Maybach S680 is more than enough for your usual needs."
"In an emergency, it can still accelerate from zero to a hundred kilometers in 4.9 seconds, which is already fairly fast by comparison."
Emmm... alright, it seemed I wouldn’t be able to get anything more useful out of Shao He.
It was obvious she was probing me, though not for any special reason.
She probably just wanted to test whether she could get something I was hiding out of me this way?
Unfortunately, I clearly couldn’t tell her any of this.
Otherwise, it would definitely be dangerous.
So, for now, the only thing I could do was remain silent.
From what I learned from Shan Xuelin, in this city, the currently known number of players was around two hundred.
Because the elimination rate for players was too high, this number could change daily.
Also, due to special circumstances, it was very likely that some players had never encountered others before.
The number of people hidden beneath that figure was at most a dozen or so.
It wasn’t that I looked down on those people—just as Shan Xuelin said, lone wolves didn’t last long.
As long as you weren’t alone, your information would eventually be discovered by other players, since teams could form more than once.
Every year in our country, roughly 3.2 million people die from various accidents, close to 3.3 million.
Though this number was spread out across cities, it didn’t seem like much, but based on probability, about one in every thousand people died from an accident.
Among those possibilities, the proportion due to suicide was fairly high.
The rest should mostly be traffic accidents, right?
Based on that ratio, in this large provincial capital with nine million people, the average number of accidental deaths in a year should exceed 9,000.
Accidental deaths were more common in cities than in rural areas, so surpassing 10,000 shouldn’t be a problem.
Out of 200 players, the number of people who might die in each game was probably under ten.
There were twelve permanent missions a year, and even if each one killed ten people, which was unlikely, that wouldn’t be a huge number.
In my opinion, many of these people had already reached the level of advanced players.
According to Shan Xuelin, once you reached advanced player level, the permanent missions would be canceled.
Among the 200 players, about twenty or so were advanced players.
There were nearly a hundred beginner players, and the rest were intermediate players.
This number of players could change at any moment.
Beginner players could be replaced at any time.
But Shan Xuelin said that even at the most crowded time, the number of players in this city never exceeded 240.
At the lowest, it dropped to less than sixty.
And this fluctuation had occurred within just half a year.
That alone showed how high the elimination rate in this game was.
Often, new players would survive the first game by pure luck, but wouldn’t make it through the second—just GG right there.
Only those who survived more than three horror games could be considered intermediate players.
Only after reaching that level could one be considered to have survived properly.
At least, compared to beginner players, intermediate players had a better chance of surviving future games.
That wasn’t wrong.
Strictly speaking, I had experienced four games before being promoted to intermediate player.
As for the advanced players they talked about, nearly all of them had some sort of Evil Spirit Form.
Or perhaps some kind of special survival ability.
At the very least, they didn’t rely purely on props.
According to what they said, in the later stages of the game, props would gradually lose their effectiveness.
By the time it reached S-rank games, even the Substitute Doll would have only a quarter of its original duration.
Also, there would be no more free Substitute Dolls.
Which meant, you could only bring one doll per game.
Based on that logic, the pause time for the World Watch might only be 1.25 seconds.
And there might be a long interval between uses.
It was even possible that in some games, you’d only get one chance to use the World Watch.
If that were the case, then things would get very bad.
If there were no other reliable life-saving means, then once you encountered another S-rank game, you could very well die on the spot.