When Ma Xiaobo saw clearly what was on his arm, he completely 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 didn't respond quickly or move. From where she looked, she could only see the boy's trembling elbow covering his face.
Her heart sank, and she immediately stepped inside. The other person 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 going to die."
The girl's eyes fell on him.
The two originally intact arms were now covered with dark blue sharp scales, extending from the elbows to the wrists, and were rapidly spreading in all directions!
Holding the shield tightly, she rushed in and pulled the man out. As soon as she grabbed Ma Xiaobo's shoulders, an extremely cold chill surged into her palms.
The girl's movements paused imperceptibly.
At this moment, the touch of Ma Xiaobo's body is exactly the same as the elf's body...!
Even though her mind was in turmoil, she was not the type who was good at analysis. She could only take the person to the balcony and then ask Tang Xin Jue for help through the mental connection.
However, in this instant, the scales on Ma Xiaobo's body had spread to his face at an unimaginable speed, and all the exposed skin below his neck was completely covered with them, reflecting an ominous blue light.
"Boss...I...don't...dormitory..."
Ma Xiaobo strangled his throat in pain, his vocal cords became twisted and strange, and he couldn't make a complete sound.
The students on the nearby balcony who noticed this were all startled. Someone squeaked and asked in surprise, "Classmate, is there an elf in your dormitory?"
The shield girl gave him a cold look, and the man shuddered and shrank his neck before he noticed something was wrong.
The head of this "elf" is clearly that of a human test-taker?!
Or rather... this is a human boy's head with the body of an elf growing out of it!
Shouts of shock and fear continued to ring out, drawing more and more people's gazes towards the balcony of 307. The shield girl ignored all this, listening to Tang Xinjue's words seriously and intently.
Tang Xin Jue's voice was also filled with coldness: "The punishment rules have begun. He has already mutated. There is no time."
As early as Ma Xiaobo just entered the balcony of 307, she reminded the shield girl not to let the other party stay too long.
Now it has come true.
It is known that this competition has many rules that cannot be violated, including camp rules, attack rules, task rules, death rules... The annihilation of the short and thin boy shows that even the location of the candidates is part of the rules.
If you leave your dormitory, you will be punished.
The shield girl's face was expressionless, but her voice in the mental connection was urgent: "Is there no way at all? I have a shield, I can scrape the scales off."
Tang Xin Jue: "..."
Do you think Guan Yu was just scraping his bones to heal his wounds?
She used her mental power to look at the boy, whose pupils had begun to dilate, and pursed her lips. "Two options. One is to let him complete the level now and leave the dungeon to recover automatically. The other is to send him back to his own dormitory. There's a 10% chance he'll survive."
But in the other 90% probability, the deadlock still cannot be reversed.
The shield girl didn't hesitate, "I'll take him down."
She lifted Ma Xiaobo up and placed him on the guardrail. The boy let his arms hang down obediently. Even though his scales had covered most of his face, he never puffed up and released venom because of extreme pain and fear. He remained flat against the skin until his mind began to become confused.
He raised his head and looked at the shield girl, still uttering the same single syllable as before, as if he wanted 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 Xin Jue looked at Ma Xiaobo's gradually extinguished spiritual flame and sighed silently: "He can't hold on any longer. When he turns into an elf, his roommate won't be strong enough to control him, and he will kill him instead."
"If he stays with you, and you put him in your cloak, I'll give you one point."
She repeated Ma Xiaobo's last words:
"Just consider it as a thank you for saving him and taking him in here."
Ma Xiaobo lowered his head completely, his dyed golden hair withered and fell off, and a monster's rugged and sharp tentacles grew out of it.
The shield girl instinctively grabbed him to prevent him from falling, but the next second, the head in front of her suddenly lifted up. Fluorescent green eyes were filled with malice, black lips cracked to the ears, and a familiar hissing sound came out.
A long tongue covered with mouthparts suddenly shot out from the mouth!
"Completely mutated."
Tang Xinjue opened his eyes and rubbed his brows, which felt a little tired after using his mental power.
The moment she saw Ma Xiaobo's mutated form, she shared her mental vision with the four people in 606. Now everyone's face was quite serious.
The elves they saw this time were different from the ones that appeared in the previous three rounds.
In the past, no matter whether the elves were big or small, with wings or not, they always maintained the body shape of a "monster", which was very different from humans.
But now, although "Ma Xiaobo" has completely turned into an elf, his limbs and torso still maintain a human form. He has the attack capabilities of a monster, while also maintaining the attack and movement methods of a human.
Even more problematic is...
Zhang You's eyebrows seemed to be tied in a knot: "It has intelligence."
"hiss!!!"
A sharp scream was heard from the third floor. The long-haired girl shook off her bloody hair and inserted her shield into the elf's throat.
If a human's neck was half penetrated like this, he would definitely die on the spot, but "Ma Xiaobo"'s body was still shaking strangely.
In less than half a second, its hands and feet began to stretch like melted liquid, the claws under the scales turned into mouthparts, and the entire body seemed to be differentiated into a core trunk and five identical "tongues", continuing to attack the shield girl.
The girl did not draw out her shield, but whispered a spell, and four identical "shields" instantly appeared around her body, blocking the attacking mouthparts at the same time.
This was the technique she had been using to fight the informer remotely: Shield Shadow.
But before this, there was only one phantom in front of all the candidates, but now several of them were summoned at the same time, and each of them moved and changed as if it had consciousness, and there was no difficulty on the face of the shield girl.
It turns out that she had been hiding her abilities before, and her true level of strength has only been revealed now.
From a few steps away, Yue Qiong watched the battle scene leisurely, with no intention of helping nor taking advantage of the situation.
He was like an interested spectator, watching the show with great interest and commenting on it:
"Your emotions have reached their peak... I see. A comrade's murder, this is your unacceptable weakness, right? As expected, stubborn behavior is always accompanied by inner demons..."
"Shut up!"
The shield girl had never thought that a person's voice could be so loud, even louder than the incessant and quiet male voice at the beginning who always called himself "I".
She exerted force with her hands, and red blood spurted out from "Ma Xiaobo's" neck, as if this body still belonged to a human being.
Despite being splattered with blood, the shield girl calmed down a bit. She pulled out her shield, ignoring the four still-flashing proboscises, and directly pulled out her cloak. With a cold expression on her face, the black cloak fell over "Ma Xiaobo."
The person is dead, her anger is meaningless, and everything should end.
On the countless balconies of the two dormitory buildings, other candidates also watched this scene silently.
Among them, the candidate who had just escaped from the claws of the elves and was standing on the unfamiliar balcony of other dormitories had a pale face and no blood.
From Ma Xiaobo at this moment, they seemed to see their future selves in a trance.
If this is really a game penalty, then will they also become like this——
tear——
At this moment, something unexpected happened to everyone: two mouthparts suddenly clamped the cloak under the hood and lifted it up!
The shield girl took a step back and caught the cloak. Fortunately, she did not leave the combat state. She blocked the elf's attack at the first moment and was once again engaged in a stalemate.
On the third floor, Guo Guo suddenly opened his eyes from his spiritual perspective and said in astonishment, "The cloak is no longer usable?"
"It's not the cloak failing."
Tang Xin Jue closed his eyes and said, "Because it is still partially human in its current state."
The cloak can only be used to "cover" elves. If the elves hide in human skin, the cloak will no longer have the power to restrain them.
unless……
She expanded her mental power and probed deeply.
The shield girl rolled on the ground to avoid the attack. Just as her sharp, blade-like gaze fell on "Ma Xiaobo", she heard Tang Xinjue's voice:
"Cut open its trunk about a third of the way from the top to the bottom. That's its core!"
The voice entered her mind. Without hesitation, the girl raised her shield, stepped on the guardrail, turned around, and inserted the metal that could cut through gold like dirt into the monster's torso, digging fiercely -
A rotten heart, half scarlet and half dark blue, which had been stuck to the chest cavity, rolled out.
The elf's wildly twisting body seemed to have stopped, or as if it had lost its power source. For a moment, Ma Xiaobo's facial features reappeared on its blood-stained face, and it looked at the shield girl with an expression that only humans could understand.
He seemed to want to say something, but only opened his mouth slightly, no sound came out. Then he dimmed again and disappeared completely.
Its body collapsed and quickly shrank into a lifeless ball. This time, it was covered by the cloak without any resistance and turned into a new Poké Ball.
[Ding, a student has died, the difficulty is stacked by 1%, and the current total stacking is 89%]
At the moment when Ma Xiaobo was completely declared dead, the mutant elves circling in the sky seemed to have received some kind of call, and they dispersed and disappeared into an invisible place on the roof, and disappeared without a trace.
"The third round is over." A candidate looked at the sky and murmured softly.
The end of one round means the beginning of the next.
So where are the fourth round of elves now?
No one spoke. In the eerie silence, many people looked at the same place.
Located in different dormitories of the two buildings, there were ten extremely pale-faced candidates. They stood straight on the edge of the guardrail, staring at the direction where Ma Xiaobo died.
"Classmate, classmate?"
On the balcony of Dormitory 612, Building A, three short-haired girls stood hesitantly behind a fat boy and tried to call him, but received no response.
The fat man had just been thrown down by the elves and was hanging near their dormitory. They had pulled him up out of pity. But when they saw what happened to Ma Xiaobo, their hearts began to beat fast.
Fatty was originally normal, aside from being overly frightened. But within a few seconds, as the game announced Ma Xiaobo's death, Fatty seemed to be drawn in by something, standing still, motionless, and showing no reaction to the outside world.
The three girls looked at each other, and a guess came to their minds at the same time.
Sure enough, in the next second, with a scream from a distance, the fat man suddenly twitched violently, and large pieces of his skin fell off, as if he was cut open from the inside, and in his place came out a fat and huge blue elf!
"Quick, send them back to their dormitories!"
"It's no use. It's too late."
Witnessing the simultaneous changes in the ten candidates, some panicked, while others belatedly realized the reality.
From the very beginning, the moment these candidates were captured by the elves, their fate was already determined.
And there has never been a possibility of change.
“This is the fourth round.”
Yue Qiong didn't know what he was thinking about, and his eyes narrowed again.
"Ten elves can only be divided among ten lucky dormitories. Too many people, too little food. What a pity! If you had rescued a few more people, maybe there would be a few more elves now."
His tone was light and cheerful, as if those who died were not living candidates, but commodities that could be converted into cash and calculated, making it difficult for anyone who heard it not to feel a chill down their spine.
"By the way, I'd like to remind you that there are only ten minutes left until the capture time ends."
Yue Qiong spoke again, hinting, "If this process drags on, are you sure you can catch as many as you want?"
Many people's expressions changed slightly.
They watched with their own eyes as the fellow creatures they had just rescued mutated into monsters. Even though they knew they could only get the Poké Ball by killing them, they couldn't help but feel reluctant to do it.
But the tight time frame of the game did not allow them to be indecisive.
The first and second floors fell into dead silence. Just five minutes ago, these roaring "elves" were their roommates, but now they had become monsters waiting to be hunted down.
But they couldn't stop it, they could only prevent themselves from looking up and seeing the fierce battle above.
[Ding, a student has died, the difficulty is increased by 1%, and the current total difficulty is 90%]
[Ding, a student has died...Current total accumulation is 91%]
【bite……】
With the experience of watching the shield girls kill humanoid elves, the students gradually gained the upper hand. Some who were unable to defeat them did not force it, but simply hid themselves, and then other dormitories who wanted points would attract the elves over.
Pokémon after Pokémon were successfully captured, and death notices continued to appear. At first, no one seemed to realize something was wrong, but as the hunt drew to a close, more and more people began to realize another serious problem.
"The death toll..."
"There are already more than ninety..."
"How many are left? Wait..."
etc!
Before the last elf was pierced through the torso, someone finally shouted, trying 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 failed judgment would be? What if it meant mass annihilation? Who could take that risk?
The machete stopped just in front of the elf. The boy with glasses holding the machete was panting heavily. The shouts from outside came into his ears, and a trace of confusion appeared on his face.
"it's useless."
Amidst the chaos, a steady girl's voice cut through the crowd and fell clearly into the ears of the examinees.
Looking up, Tang Xinjue was standing in front of the balcony on the top floor, his hands on the railing, quietly watching everything that was happening. He didn't know how long he had been watching.
She said calmly, "If we stay stuck here and don't catch the elves, they won't spawn in the next round, and we'll all be killed."
"Letting it go could harm other candidates, and the death toll would increase, with the same outcome."
In other words, from the very beginning, they could only move forward, with no room to stop halfway, regardless of whether anyone noticed or not.
The crowd quieted down and the machetes fell.
[Ding, a student has died...Current total accumulation is 99%]
Only one person is left to reach 100.
This fact is like an invisible mountain, pressing on everyone's heart.
Because this means that from now until the end of the game, no one of them can die, no matter if that person is a snitch or a good student.
Only if all members survive to the end will they have a chance to pass the level.
In this depressing atmosphere, the sudden laughter was particularly abrupt.
Looking towards the source of the sound, I saw a tall and thin boy wearing a black mask leaning on the balcony of Room 308, Building B, laughing so hard that he was bent over.
If it’s not Yue Qiong, then who is it?
When a known informant laughed at a moment like this, it was like dancing on the shaky mind of the crowd. Someone couldn't help but yell, "What are you laughing at?"
After more than ten seconds, Yue Qiong straightened up and asked lazily, "The game is over, isn't it normal for me to be happy?"
"Are you fucking crazy? If the game ends and we all lose, what's there to be happy about?"
Yue Qiong raised an eyebrow and said, "Pay attention to your wording. You will fail. But what does your failure have to do with me?"
"The game never said that our missions are the same."
His voice was frivolous, but when it fell it was like a death sentence.
"Your failure, in a way, can be considered a kind of victory for us—isn't that so hard to guess?"
"It's better to say that you just don't dare to face it."
Sometimes a single sentence can ignite a raging fire. Before the candidate's temper can explode, a calmer person will come out and interrupt:
"Don't let him lead you down this path. Don't forget, we've only lost 99 people, the game isn't over yet!"
At this point, the man suddenly became alert and quickly took two steps back to look at Yue Qiong: "You are not going to attack us, are you? I advise you to give up, the rules will not allow it."
Yue Qiong opened his arms and said, "Don't worry, I don't have any stupid idea of violating the rules."
"It's just that..." He snapped his fingers, "People who commit suicide shouldn't be affected by the rules, right?"
As soon as he finished speaking, the two boys standing behind him began to tremble strangely.
In full view of everyone, one of them took out a dagger, turned the blade, and stabbed it into his own chest!
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