Just as the two were talking, the wall-mounted TV on the wall suddenly turned on.

......The shrill sound of electricity interrupted the conversation in the room, and everyone looked at the wall-mounted TV in unison—

A few seconds later, the judge in a medieval top hat appeared in front of the screen, his head slightly bowed, the brim of his hat covered the bridge of his nose, the high collar covered the jawline on both sides, in front of the TV screen, he only exposed the part above the shoulders, the background was red, he seemed to be broadcasting the rules of the game in a secret room, and he was full of eerie atmosphere.

"Congratulations to all players for coming to this game, the virtual scene of this game is the 'Octavian' luxury cruise ship, the first alarm has sounded, the [Minghe system] has entered a state of criminal innocence, and the NPC killing feast has officially begun." [Judge] stared at the camera, saying word by word, as if he could see everyone in the control room through the camera.

As soon as [Judge] finished speaking, a crack slowly opened in the wall on the right side of the room, and then the walls on both sides protruded to the middle and moved to both sides, the walls were separated, and two wooden doors hidden behind the walls appeared in front of everyone, one on the left and one on the right, both of which were ash wooden doors. In addition, there is also a bulging dark grid under the wall-mounted TV, and the black blade closest to the TV steps forward to take a look, and finds that the dark grid is a red round button, and he looks back at everyone and presses the red button.

I only heard the sound of "drip-", and the console on the other side of the control room, which was originally full of buttons, was dented, and then, several dark compartments rose up, and everyone got up to take a look, and found that the dark compartment was full of guns and ammunition, from light pistols, to shotguns, to rifles, to daggers, iron rods, everything, like a small arsenal, suddenly displayed in front of everyone's eyes.

Seeing those cold weapons, the people present immediately became vigilant.

It's like a silent teaser of what a sinister killing game they're going to face.

Then, [the judge] began to read out the rules of the game—

[This game is the 13th round, the 3rd game]

[Name of the game: Mermaid Hunter]

[The rules of the game: This round of the game is a team battle, the 12 players present will play the role of mermaid hunters, after the game starts, the 12 players will be divided into two groups, the first group of players is responsible for finding the silver dagger hidden in the cruise ship, and the second group of players need to hunt mermaids - catch mermaids from below sea level to the deck. After finding the Silver Dagger, players need to plunge the Silver Dagger into the merman's heart in order to successfully kill the merfolk and win the team battle. The Minghe System will be based on the player's performance in the game, and the more dangerous the task or the more seriously injured the player, the more points will be earned. In order to give players the maximum choice, the specific grouping of 12 players is determined by each player, after the grouping, please leave through the two doors on the left side of the control room, the players who enter the left door are responsible for finding the silver dagger, and the players who enter the right door are responsible for catching the mermaid, and finally the two scenes will be connected together to facilitate all players to converge and kill the mermaid. 】

[End of this game: Kill the mermaid with a silver dagger]

[Number of players in this game: 12]

[Game system: Death system]

[Hunters will appear in this game]

[Hint: After the third round of alarms sounds, an aggressive unknown organism will appear, the highest level V-level]

【Good luck to all players】

……

After the judge read out the rules of the game, the TV screens flickered and went black again.

[At this time, the second alarm sounded.] 】

[Warning: The killing game of players has officially begun.] 】

In the control room of Nuoda, it fell into a deathly silence.

No one spoke, everyone was thinking about the rules of the game that [the judge] had announced.

This game is a team battle.

In other words, the open and secret battles between players have no meaning in this game.

Only by working together can we win.

The only way to get a higher score is to take on the initiative to take on a difficult task or get seriously injured in order to complete it, which seems to be the only criterion for this game.

One-eyed leaned on the sofa, crossed his legs, looked at everyone's solemn expressions, and whistled: "This team battle ...... Wow, okay, how are we going to group up? Lottery? Drawing? ”

"12 people, how to group? A group of 6 people? The Duke frowned.

"One group looking for a dagger, one group catching a mermaid, and on the face of it, a group of 6 people is the most balanced grouping method, but ...... Maybe one of the two tasks is easy and the other is difficult, and if the number of people in the more difficult tasks is too small, maybe it will fail. Mars spoke in a rare way.

He asked a question that no one expected.

Two tasks, are they equally difficult?

"Literally, it seems that catching merfolk is a little bit harder." The beauty dragged her chin and thought, "Not only do you need the player to go to the sea, but you also need to catch the mermaid...... If a merfolk are aggressive, diving into the sea to catch them is undoubtedly quite a dangerous move. ”

"Merfolk?" One-eyed turned his head and looked at Caesar, Blackblade, and Icarus, "Hey, you three old men who have participated in three rounds of games, have you ever seen a mermaid?" ”

Caesar glanced at Blackblade, who shook his head slightly, and she looked back at Icarus, who looked at her with the same solemn expression.

Finally, Caesar looked at One-Eye and shook his head.

It seems that no one has ever seen a mermaid.

This appears to be a "newly listed" unidentified creature.

"That...... I heard in fairy tales that mermaids are beautiful, with human upper bodies and fish tails, and they will sit on the reef and sing, waiting for their prince! "Ogal sat in front of the console, holding up his little arms and gesturing," said in "Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales", the Little Mermaid has long red hair, the scales on her body shine like jewels, and her singing voice is as beautiful as an organ, I have always wanted to see what the mermaid looks like, it must be a very beautiful sister......"

"Stop, stop." J smiled slightly, "Ogar, now we are in the [Minghe System], there is no little mermaid waiting to save the prince here, maybe there may be a lot of mermaids waiting to eat people." ”

"Well, it's possible, after all, the unknown creatures here all eat people." The Duke nodded.

"This ......" Ogar was stunned for a moment, his face red and white for a while.

She suddenly didn't want to see the mermaid so much, and the feeling of disillusionment didn't seem to be very good.

"If you want to catch a mermaid, you have to dive into the sea." Colin sat in front of the computer, turned sideways slightly, and looked out the window at the dark sea, "It's twelve o'clock in the middle of the night, and I just called up the map of the nearby sea area, and found that this sea area is not the four oceans we are familiar with...... It should only be a virtual sea area of the system. I found the crew's mapping data on my laptop and found that we were on a continental base, and there were no reefs or islands jutting out of the sea, and if we wanted to catch a mermaid, we would be able to get into the water. ”

"What is a continental base?" Lorraine looked at Colin with her head propped up, as if she had just recovered from the intoxicating effects of alcohol.

"The continental base is formed by the accumulation of turbidity currents and landslides at the foot of the continental slope. The thickness of the continental base is very large, with an average thickness of 2,000 meters, which is one of the prospective areas of offshore oil, generally distributed in the water depth of 2,000-5,000 meters, with an area of about 20 million square kilometers, accounting for 5.5% of the total area of the ocean. Colin explained briefly.

"Okay, okay, I don't care if it's 'Continental Base' or 'KFC', I just want to know how we're going to group it now." One-Eye impatiently stuck a dagger on the table in front of him.

He has always been a lone ranger.

But this time the game is really a team battle.

The 12 people who have always chased each other as soon as they met, now have to work together to do one thing?

It made him sick how he thought.

Hurry up and end this ghost game is the truth.

At least, that's what he thought.

"12 people, 5 looking for daggers, 7 catching fish?" The Duke proposed.

"No, I don't think it's appropriate." It is rare for a beauty to speak seriously, "What if the task of finding a dagger is more difficult?" You see this cruise ship is so big and has thousands of rooms, how do you know where the dagger is? What if a mermaid catches it but the dagger isn't found? Or what if the person in charge of finding the dagger is all dead? ”

Oh, she found the blind spot.

However, the cruise ship itself is a complex treasure hunt map, full of dangers, and it is estimated that 75% of the unknown creatures are on the cruise ship, so it can be seen that the difficulty of finding a dagger is not necessarily lower than catching a mermaid.

"Besides, this game is [death], and no one can afford to lose." Icarus added.

"[Death]?" Ogal looked at Colin on the side suspiciously.

Colin shrugged, saying he didn't know.

"In the [death-based] game, as long as you die, you are eliminated, and you will always be an NPC and stay in the game." The Duke muttered, "This is the most disgusting of the three life calculation systems. ”

"Hmph, what are you afraid of, don't we 6 old players have two lives, it's those rookies who should be worried." One-Eye said lightly, pulling out the dagger and holding it in his hand.

"You have two lives in every [death] game?" J looked at One-Eyed suspiciously.

"Of course not stupid, the number of deaths will add up, if this game is ...... She's dead. One-Eye pointed at the Duke with a dagger, "Then at the beginning of the next [Death] game, she will only have one life left, just like you, one, vibrate, out, game." ”

"Blind, don't make an analogy with me." The Duke was dissatisfied, and knocked out the dagger in One-Eye's hand.

But this parable gives the newcomers an idea of what the system of death is.

"In other words, in the [Death] game, the old player will have one more chance than the newcomer." J muttered.

"Don't look at the fact that there is only one more life, sometimes it is this one life that determines the final victory." The beauty looked at J and smiled charmingly, "Of course, if you need me to save you, just ask, you're so funny, I don't want you to be eliminated in this game." ”

"Becoming an NPC, won't you be able to see him often?" Icarus teased, "You can do whatever you want." ”

He specially emphasized the last few words, which have a deep meaning.

"Oh, that's not necessarily, NPCs aren't so easy to find, Julius Caesar has been looking for an NPC codenamed [Will] for so long, isn't it still not found?" The beauty looked at Caesar.

Caesar looked up and gave the beauty a cold slap in the eye.

The beauty shut up in amusement.

At the mention of Will, Arthur's heart jumped, and Arthur looked at Caesar and fell silent.

All he could think about was what Icarus had just told him.

Will looks exactly like himself......

Could he actually be Will?

But why didn't he know anything about Will?

Was it the system that cleaned up his memory?

If that's the case, what is the system's intent to re-include an out-of-game player into the game?

Why did he use a new codename [Arthur] instead of "Will......

Arthur was silent, his face becoming more and more ugly.

Just when everyone was disagreeing, the black blade, who had not spoken, walked to the table with a small pen holder and put the pen holder on the round table: "Then draw lots, a group of six people." ”

In his opinion, things are much simpler.

Six or six groups of six, split up, find the dagger, catch the mermaid, kill the mermaid, and end the game.

Do you need to argue here for a long time about these steps?

With this kung fu discussion, I have already caught the mermaid and found the dagger.

The other players looked at each other, and for a moment they couldn't seem to find a word to refute Blackblade.

Caesar stood up, walked to the table first, and took out a crumpled note from the small pen holder: "I'm the first." ”

"I'm the second." The Duke stood up and followed.

"I'm the third." Lorraine rubbed her head and followed behind the duke,

Seeing this, the other players had to walk up to the pen holder and take out a small paper ball at random, until only the last paper ball was left in the pen holder, and Arthur walked over.

He took out the small paper ball, opened the paper ball, and saw the word "mermaid" written on the crumpled little paper ball, he raised his head, and the other players also had the answer-

[Players in charge of finding the Silver Dagger: Colin, Lorraine, Blackblade, Duke, Icarus, One-Eye]

[Players responsible for catching mermaids: Caesar, Mars, J, Beauty, Ogar, Arthur]

There were six people in each group, with the weakest Ogal and Colin in two groups, and the strongest Caesar and Blackblade in different groups.

The distribution of personnel between the two groups seems to be a relatively balanced state,

"So we're going our separate ways?" The beauty raised her eyebrows and looked at the other 11 people.

"So how do we converge?" Lorraine looked at the beauty puzzled, "After we find the dagger, how do we give it to you?" ”

The Duke pondered for a moment: "[Judge] just said that although we set off from different doors, the last two scenes will be connected, and the door to the deck may be opened when the dagger is found." ”

"That's a reasonable guess, and it's unlikely that the merfolk would be transported to the cruise ship to find your dagger group." J nodded, "I think you're going to join us with our merfolk." ”

"But I don't think it's that simple......" Colin sat in front of his laptop and typed on the keyboard for a long time, finally speaking.

"Oh? Glasses you will always make new discoveries. ”

Icarus stepped forward and saw Colin's computer pull up the entire cruise ship's NavInfo.

"I just tried to unlock the encrypted files in the computer and found the design drawings of this cruise ship, which has a total of 18 decks, 13 of which are open to tourists - it is open to tourists from the bottom of the six floors, and the six floors below are the engine room, cargo holds, flight attendant rooms and some medical facilities." After Colin typed a string of codes, the stereoscopic image turned 360 degrees, and a large cruise ship was divided into different levels like a multi-layered cake, "but just as I was about to open the details further, I noticed that something was wrong—"

"Huh?" Everyone was stunned.

"Although the ship is equipped with surveillance, the surveillance camera images are all black, and the ship looks perfect from the outside, but the mapping of each functional zone inside cannot be found at all, even if we are in it now, we don't know the inside of the hull."

"Could it be that the computer doesn't have these drawings?" Lorraine looked at the screen suspiciously.

"Generally, the computer will store the details of the cruise ship, which is really cutting corners, and the specific zoning of each floor will also be roughly marked, not only for archiving during design and construction, but also for follow-up management. But I couldn't find any such information on my computer, even if I connected it to the cruise ship's control system. Colin shook his head, "It's like...... It's like the [Minghe System] only has an empty shell model on the outside, and the inside of the boat is blank. ”

"Cut, what do you want to do so much, just go in and see."

One-eyed snapped Colin's laptop shut, startling him.

"One-eyed, it is indeed a wiser choice to understand the internal structure of the ship in advance." Icarus looked at the blind man who didn't do things through his brain, "It's a team battle now, any mistake could cause all 12 people to lose, it's better to be cautious." ”

"Icarus, don't think you're the third to dictate to me." One-Eyed squinted dangerously at him, "Here, the cards will be shuffled one day, and you will still be there then, another story." ”

Icarus snorted, noncommittal.

So everyone thought about it and chose the weapon they had in front of the weapon table. Pistols, shotguns, daggers, knives...... It's like a self-service locker, where players can choose their weapons.

After selecting their weapons, the two groups of players stood in front of the wooden gate where they were ready to set off, and finally checked the weapons in their hands.

"Wait." Just as everyone was about to set off towards the two doors, Mars suddenly spoke, "I'm going to change the group." ”

"Muscular man, don't you understand that you don't like our group?" The beauty glanced at him with a smile in her eyes, "Look at it, we have Lori, there are beauties, and there is an ace Caesar guarantee, what are you afraid of?" ”

Mars didn't rush to answer, he subconsciously looked at the position of his left chest.

The beauty understood what he meant.

She also knows the secret of Mars's tattoo on her chest.

While at the Belvoir Hotel, she was in charge of delivering the cards, and she also saw the tattoo of the woman on Mars's left chest.

(Yes...... Lorraine? ）

The beauty looked at the young woman with short silver hair a few paces away, and at first glance, her face did indeed resemble the tattoo on Mars's body.

It seems that these two people have a relationship.

(It's better to push the boat down the river to do a favor, maybe there will be a need to use this favor in the future.) ）

Thinking so, she cleared her throat and looked at the Black Blade, "Big man, how about you swap things with Mars?" ”

The black blade looked at the beauty vigilantly: "What are you planning again?" ”

"Don't be so vigilant, it's a team battle now, and I'm your close comrade-in-arms." The beauty smiled.

Blackblade looked away disdainfully.

The beauty tapped her chin with her fingertips, looked at the black blade and said slowly: "If you think like this, that nerd with glasses can also operate a computer, which can be regarded as having a little effect." But this little girl named Ogar is not only ineffective, but also a burden, so in comparison, the strength of our group is weak, what if you can't catch the mermaid because of this, 12 people lose the game? It's better to replace you with high combat effectiveness and balance the lagging Ogal to be fair. ”

The beauty explained word by word, and her reasons seemed to sound good as well.

When Aojiaer heard this, she looked at the beauty a little aggrieved, but she also felt that she was right, she was indeed a burden, if it wasn't for the team battle, she was afraid that she would be the first to be sent out.

It's sad.

Blackblade was silent for a few seconds, then glanced at Icarus and the Duke.

“…… Blackblade, you don't think that without you, our group would be wiped out. The Duke looked at him coldly.

"Go ahead, someone will need you." Icarus's words have a deep meaning.

Blackblade thought for a while, and walked over to Mars, who understood, switched groups with him, and stood in Blackblade's original position.

Two groups of people stood in front of the two doors, and they were grouped, and a group of six people, namely-

[The players in charge of finding the silver dagger are in a group: Colin, Lorraine, Mars, Duke, Icarus, One-Eye]

[The players responsible for catching mermaids are in the second group: Caesar, Black Blade, J, Beauty, Ogar, Arthur]

The first group, led by Icarus, pulled out his pistol and grabbed the doorknob.

In the second group, Caesar held the goat doll and silently opened the wooden door.

The two groups of people entered different doors and entered different game scenes.

"Smack."

The two doors were shut.

The command room was calm again, and the hour hand on the wall slowly brushed past 12 o'clock.

[The third alarm sounded—]

[Warning: Unknown organism appears.] 】