Her consciousness was muddy and heavy. The sound of rain and the crackling of the campfire by her ears had completely vanished.
Bai Ci struggled to open her heavy eyelids. The piercing warm light made her squint instinctively, and it took her quite a while to fully wake up.
She found herself lying on a cold wooden floor. Pushing herself up to stand, she surveyed her surroundings. Aside from her, eleven other people were lying on the floor around her.
They, too, woke up from their deep slumber one after another. Every face bore some degree of bewilderment and wariness, clearly just as filled with doubt about the sudden change before them as she was.
They were still in the same theater, yet it was completely different now.
The clothes on her body were dry and soft, and her hair was fluffy and dry, without any of the sticky feeling from being soaked in rain. It was as if her wretched state on the rainy mountain path and her exhaustion by the theater's campfire were nothing but a dream.
The dilapidated scenery around them had completely vanished. The mottled walls were painted as white as new, and the weeds in the corners were gone, replaced by exquisite reliefs and neatly arranged green plants. The collapsed roof was also perfectly intact.
A dazzling crystal chandelier hung in the center of the stage, casting a soft light over the entire space and illuminating everything with exceptional clarity.
Bai Ci looked toward the direction where they had entered earlier. The corridor leading to the lobby was gone, replaced by a solid, completely sealed wall.
This was no longer the abandoned, ruined Magnolia Theater; it was as if they had returned to its most glorious days. A faint scent of incense wafted through the air.
The twelve of them were currently on the theater's stage. The spot where the campfire had been burning was now occupied by a long mahogany table. The tabletop was smooth and polished, with six carved chairs on each side—twelve chairs in total, corresponding perfectly to their group of twelve.
Looking closer at the table, in front of each chair sat a face-down card and a neatly folded sheet of white paper.
“What... is going on?” The capped man climbed up from the floor, patted off non-existent dust from his clothes, and swept a sharp gaze across the entire stage before finally landing on the cards and white papers on the table.
Without a moment's hesitation, he strode to the nearest chair, bent down, and picked up the face-down card and the white paper.
The card was the size of a standard playing card, and its back was pitch black.
The capped man flipped the card over, glanced at its contents, and then unfolded the white paper. His fingertips quickly traced the words on the paper as his brow furrowed slightly, then smoothed out again.
“What's the trick here? Turns out it's just a game.” The capped man waved the white paper in his hand. His voice wasn't loud, but it was enough for everyone who had just woken up to hear clearly. “See for yourselves. Twelve people, divided into factions, with skills. To put it simply, it's a battle royale game, pretty much like Werewolf.”
As he spoke, he reached out to grab the card on the adjacent chair. However, the moment his fingertips touched it, it felt like they passed through an invisible barrier and met thin air. The card remained face-down on the table, completely motionless.
He tried a few more times but still couldn't touch the other cards. “So it's guarded? We can only take our own?”
“Does that mean... every one of us has to take a card? Can we choose not to?” Bai Ci had a perfectly calibrated look of bewilderment on her face, resembling a naive college student frightened by the scene before her.
“What do you think?” The capped man rolled his eyes in annoyance. “Twelve people, twelve cards. Even if you haven't watched movies, you must have read novels.”
After the capped man, Fu Yan and Cheng Xi also picked up cards from the table.
Fu Yan also chose the one closest to him.
Cheng Xi, on the other hand, carefully observed her surroundings first. It was unclear if she had figured something out, but she chose a card from a corner seat and picked it up.
Both of them were players and were already accustomed to the various mechanics of Anomalous Infection instances. At this moment, they quickly got into character, calmly observing the reactions of others while flipping through their own contents.
After quickly reading the contents of the white paper, Fu Yan looked up at Cheng Xi and asked, “Want to try swapping cards?”
Cheng Xi handed her card over without much hesitation, but Fu Yan merely took a glance and withdrew his hand without accepting it.
“I can't see other people's cards,” Fu Yan said calmly. “Everyone can only see their own identity. We can't see anyone else's.”
Hearing this, Cheng Xi raised her eyebrows and tucked her card away. “And here I thought we could exploit a loophole since there's no host.”
With three people already taking action, the rest were prompted to follow suit, picking up cards from the table. Since nothing could be seen from the back anyway, they simply grabbed whichever card caught their eye.
Seeing that Fu Liu had made his choice, Bai Ci casually picked the card from the seat next to him.
Flipping the card over, two words were clearly printed on it.
Her face maintained its naive expression as she quietly slipped the card into her pocket. She then unfolded the white paper and carefully studied the game rules written on it.
The rules were written in great detail, clearly defining the factions and skills of the twelve participants:
There were two factions in total: the Madman faction with 4 people, and the Citizen faction with 8 people, which included 1 police officer, 1 doctor, and 6 ordinary citizens.
The Madmen were similar to the ordinary Werewolves in Werewolf. Each of them held a vial of poison that could be used to poison other participants, but it could only be used once per action phase.
In other words, if Madman A used their poison during the daytime of the first day, the poison in the hands of the other Madmen would be unusable for the rest of the daytime. They would have to wait until the next action phase—the nighttime of the first day—for it to be unlocked.
The police officer was similar to the Hunter in Werewolf, holding a pistol with 1 bullet. It could only be used when they were attacked and harmed by others, allowing them to shoot and kill a suspect.
The doctor was similar to the Witch in Werewolf, holding 1 vial of poison and 1 vial of antidote. They could poison others or save those who had been poisoned.
Ordinary citizens were similar to the Villagers in Werewolf, possessing no skills whatsoever.
In this faction confrontation, if one side was completely wiped out, the other side would win. Only the survivors of the winning side could leave through the door behind the curtain at the back of the stage.
In addition, the rules also specified the regulations for the action phases.
The action phases were divided into day and night, signaled by the tolling of a bell. A single toll announced the start of the daytime phase, during which participants could act freely. Two tolls signaled the transition from day to night, requiring participants to head to the dormitory on the second floor of the theater.
Each participant had to choose a room to stay in, and they could only stay alone. Double or multiple occupancies were not allowed. During the night, no one except the Madmen could leave their rooms.
Bai Ci quickly committed the rules to memory, then quietly opened her Rain's Message panel to check Fu Liu's status.
The information on the panel was no different from before. It seemed this game had not affected Fu Liu's basic status.
Rate on N.U.
