Time seemed to stop.
The Rot Crab's raised claw froze in midair as it stared at the god across the room.
In the suffocating silence, sound itself seemed to vanish.
Fear made no noise. An invisible pressure felt almost solid, making it hard to breathe. No one dared utter a sound. Only their hearts hammered inside their chests.
The "god" had done nothing unusual since awakening.
Yet, for some reason, they felt a fear rising from deep within their genes. Their bodies trembled uncontrollably.
Several seconds later, the Rot Crab suddenly moved. As though faced with its natural predator, it whipped its eight enormous claws into motion and fled backward.
They alternated so rapidly that it crushed several Aberrants in its path without daring to slow down.
He Zheng stared. He had expected a "god" to be special, but he had never imagined this "Goddess of War" would exert such terrifying intimidation merely by waking up.
Bang!
The Goddess of War pushed herself upright and leaped out of the pod.
She gave Hu Jia, the nearest person, an expressionless glance. Then she crouched, bent low, and charged out like a savage beast!
She moved so fast that the gust she raised forced Hu Jia's eyes shut.
He couldn't put what he felt into words.
He was closest to the "god." He saw her most clearly.
Her chest had been hollowed out. She was like an empty shell. Yet this "divine corpse" named Morrigan defied all common biological knowledge, unleashing unimaginable strength.
They barely had time to react. In just a few breaths, the "god" reached the Rot Crab. A deathly white arm shot out and seized an enormous claw. With a crack, she ripped it off by brute force!
Foul green blood, thick as pus, spurted several meters into the air.
The giant crab wailed. Its mass of eyeballs spun wildly, piercing screeches summoning the Aberrants to attack.
It was all meaningless. Facing the rush, the "Goddess of War" lowered her head, opened her enormous jaws, and gulped down several of the nearest creatures in one mouthful.
Horrifying chewing sounds echoed through the air.
As she ate them alive, foul green fluid sprayed from her mouth.
Perhaps not quite dead, several severed Aberrant legs hung from the corners of her jaws, twitching madly with reflexive spasms. Then her jaws closed, reducing them to pulp.
After eating, the Goddess of War reached for one of the Rot Crab's rear claws and savagely tore it off.
Crack!
The Rot Crab screamed.
With several claws ripped away in succession, it now resembled a bare round ball.
Driven by excruciating pain, it could only try to bite her with its mouthparts.
But the instant they opened, she seized them on both sides at a terrifying speed.
A shrill scream rang out. Her arms kept pulling, tearing its "face" and mouthparts together into two halves.
Morrigan plunged her head into the exposed brains and gulped greedily. She was going to eat it from the inside out, hollowing every scrap of flesh from its shell.
Gulp. Gulp...
...
"Urgh...!"
Hu Jia couldn't stop himself from retching.
Watching the bloody scene, he no longer knew which one was the monster and which was the "god."
There was no technique to the fight.
Only the most savage instinct.
This so-called "god" was nothing more than an unimaginably cruel biological weapon.
More screeches sounded. Apparently roused by the Rot Crab's dying cries, masses of Aberrants poured out and surrounded her.
Facing the creatures charging like insects, the six-meter-tall Goddess of War turned her arms into scythes, mowing them down in swathes. Those struck were crushed to pulp on contact. The occasional Aberrant leaped over the sweep, only to be caught and stuffed into her mouth a moment later.
It was simply feeding.
With the Aberrants drawn to the god and ignoring them, the group helped one another up and moved as far away as they could.
This was no longer a fight they could take part in.
Watching Aberrants being stuffed into her mouth like ants, He Zheng couldn't speak for a long time. He could only lean against the wall and keep swallowing.
"Fuck. That's seriously messed up."
"It's eating them like bugs. One bite apiece."
The scene was so bloody that even he could hardly stomach it. If this "monster" hadn't been on their side, he would rather have killed himself than face it.
"Still, thank fuck... It's finally over..."
He Zheng let out a long breath.
At last, his tense heart relaxed completely.
Plenty of Aberrants remained, but from the looks of things, the group wasn't needed anymore.
They had found the "god" in the system's hint. All they had to do now was wait for the exam to end and leave this world.
They exchanged strained smiles.
Yes. Finally over.
"Ye Lin?"
Noticing that Ye Lin still looked troubled, He Zheng couldn't help patting his shoulder.
"Hey, what are you thinking about? Relax. You can start planning how to spend your points when we get back. We're only in the second round, but once you have sixty points, you can 'turn in your paper.'"
"Damn, you must have at least eighty or ninety already, right?"
The number of rounds in each Death Gaokao exam varied. Once you earned sixty points, you could "turn in your paper" and leave.
They had killed nineteen Aberrants along the way. Most had fallen to Ye Lin's gun. He Zheng had helped a great deal, but with rewards assigned by kills, Ye Lin had taken at least fourteen points.
That put his total for this exam at eighty or more.
He Zheng's eyes burned with envy.
"The settlement notice hasn't appeared. The second round... doesn't seem to be over yet..."
Ye Lin shook his head, looking down at his watch.
The countdown was still running. Twenty-two minutes remained.
And the system hadn't said they had completed the second round.
Huh?
He Zheng paused, then casually pointed at the "Goddess of War."
"It's fine. It probably has to finish killing the Aberrants, right?"
"Shit, wait! Does the system expect us to clear the whole base? If a few of them are hiding somewhere, aren't we fucked?"
His expression changed, his heart leaping into his throat.
The others grew tense as well.
They remembered that these Aberrants had poor eyesight. If a few were trapped in rooms and hadn't come out, twenty-two minutes wouldn't be enough to clear the entire base.
Before He Zheng could hurry to his feet, Ye Lin caught him.
"That's not what I'm worried about. Have you forgotten the question? Find ??, and with ??'s help, evade the Aberrants' attacks."
"The system never told us to kill every Aberrant."
He Zheng gave an embarrassed smile and sat back down. Hu Jia quietly confirmed it.
"That's right, Brother He. The system only wants us to find the god. Then we just have to follow it."
"Actually, we nearly picked the wrong one. The god is really..."
Finally finding an opportunity to speak, Hu Jia wanted credit.
Only Lin Ya knew how he had chosen the correct god. The others had no idea. Nobody even realized that identifying the Goddess of War had been the hardest part.
He Zheng had no interest in hearing it. He impatiently waved Hu Jia into silence.
Then he turned back to Ye Lin.
"So what are you still worried about?"
Ye Lin raised his head. After a brief silence, he answered in a slightly hoarse voice.
"I'm worried we've overlooked something."
"It feels as if something has just vanished. Maybe the answer isn't that simple."
His gaze was hesitant, uncertain.
Since the second round began, their reasoning had been logical. And nothing unexpected had happened after they found the god.
He had even guessed what Hu Jia had worked out.
After seeing the angel mural, he had noticed Hu Jia's excitement. Combining that with the differences between the images, he too had realized that choosing the god involved a trap.
He hadn't spoken up because, essentially, he wanted Hu Jia to volunteer to "test" the answer.
They had only found so much information. By normal logic, they really should have completed the exam.
But...
Something still felt wrong. Many of the clues only seemed to connect on the surface...
Especially...
Ye Lin turned and looked into the distance.
The "Goddess of War," surrounded by attackers, was holding an Aberrant in each hand and stuffing them into her mouth.
Ignoring their struggles, she bit off a head without expression, as though eating a silkworm pupa, then greedily sucked the "juice" from the body.
For some reason, watching her feed filled him with an inexplicable unease.
...
...
"Not that simple?"
He Zheng faltered, looking at him in bewilderment.
Simple?
How many times had they nearly been wiped out on the way here? Since the first round, they had hardly had a second to breathe.
Fight. Run. Get attacked. Run again.
One dead at the start, plus a bunch of dead weight.
If he hadn't been willing to risk his life, and if Ye Lin hadn't had a gun, they would have died in their first encounter with an Aberrant.
If they'd chosen the wrong route afterward, they would have died too. Find the original chapter at g.com.
Then, if they hadn't found supplies in the armory, they would still have died. And apparently, choosing the wrong god could have killed them as well.
If that counted as simple, He Zheng had no idea what difficult meant.
"Ye Lin, I think you're overthinking it."
"Honestly, even I think there's something wrong with this difficulty. It's way higher than I expected!"
"A seven-person exam, and your first one at that? In my experience, however fucked up the Death Gaokao is, it shouldn't throw something like that at us!"
He gestured toward the hollowed-out Rot Crab, his expression darkening.
Just moments ago, he'd thought death was certain. A few seconds later, and there wouldn't even have been a corpse left.
Ye Lin paused. Then his face changed, and he jerked his head around.
"Seven-person difficulty?"
"The exam's difficulty is based on the number of people?!"
His expression turned grim as a powerful unease surged through him.
"Yeah. It's based on both your exam count and the number of people. You didn't know?"
"Oh, right. You're new. Fuck, I forgot."
Hearing the rules being discussed, the others turned curiously.
He Zheng smacked his forehead. Without even realizing it, he had forgotten Ye Lin had only just arrived.
"Five, seven, nine, twelve. Maybe higher too, but that's roughly how the difficulty is divided."
"The more people, the harder the exam. Your exam count determines how likely you are to get a 'certain-death' question. Not that death is actually certain. It's just that some scenarios are practically impossible to survive."
Fear flickered in He Zheng's eyes, as though he had remembered something profoundly painful.
One more exam... and he might run into that thing...
Suppressing his dread, He Zheng failed to notice how awful Ye Lin's expression had become.
"For seven people, the death rate is about ten to forty percent."
"Nine is around fifty percent. Twelve, seventy. It's not that different from the real world. The more people taking the exam, the lower the admission rate."
"We've only lost one person this time. We've been pretty lucky."
"Of course, that's also because of you..."
"Five, seven, nine, twelve? Are you sure those are the numbers? If too many people enter, could they be split evenly into two teams?"
Before He Zheng finished, Ye Lin abruptly stood and fired off the questions.
He Zheng's mouth fell open. He had never seen Ye Lin like this.
"What's wrong, Ye Lin?"
"Those should be the numbers, right? They've been the same every time for me. As for splitting into two teams..."
Ye Lin's reaction made He Zheng's heart skip. He too began to sense something was wrong.
"They can... split us into two teams..."
"That's what happened last time. The two sides had different questions, and we made the wrong call because of it. In the end, I was the only one who survived..."
Ye Lin's heart jolted.
They were safe now. The exam seemed almost over.
Yet at that moment, a chill crawled up his back. Every hair on his body stood on end!
He knew. He knew what was wrong!
He also knew why he had kept feeling something was missing!
Huang Liang!
Huang Liang!
If Huang Liang was here too, the two sides together had fourteen people! And Huang Liang had other clues!
If the two sides hadn't shared their information, then all their conclusions were wrong!
"For fourteen people...!"
"What's the death rate?!"
He Zheng shuddered. Faced with the blood-covered Ye Lin demanding an answer, he found it hard to breathe.
Somehow, he thought he understood something too.
"Ninety percent...?"
"I don't know! Last time there were twelve! I don't know how many would die with fourteen!"
"Ye Lin, what are you trying to say...?"
Beep-beep! Beep-beep!
Suddenly, five urgent communication alerts shrilled.
On their system watches, An Ke was sending a message to everyone.
"Ye Lin!"
"The gods are fake!"
"Don't let He Zheng and the others look for a god! There are no gods here! They're the real Aberrants!"
...