Game of Deception Chapter 3: The Story of the "Bear"

— Execution. The crimson words hovered in the air, gripping the minds of all the players.

Compared to the other text, these two words appeared noticeably more grotesque and blurred, as if they had been heavily bolded or italicized... It looked like a ssage scrawled in blood on a window pane, violently sared before it had the chance to dry.

After Ming Po finished reading the rules, he narrowed his eyes slightly and looked up at the stone pillars suspended from the ceiling.

'This is...'

He feigned panic, muttering in a suppressed whisper. Seeing his reaction, the others instinctively followed his gaze upward.

Upon seeing those massive, precarious stone greatswords hanging above them like the Sword of Damocles, they imdiately understood. People quickly realized how the

"execution"

in this ga would be carried out.

It felt like staring unblinkingly at an approaching needle, or sitting in a dilapidated house with a groaning ceiling raining dust; Or walking along a mountain path and watching the boulders above slightly loosen and begin to slide down— Even soone as composed as Lawyer Chen could not stop himself from shivering.

He instinctively straightened his spine, as tense as a student about to be called on. His pupils trembled, his breathing quickened, cold sweat continuously seeped from his palms, and a chilling numbness radiated in waves from the back of his head.

He even felt as though the giant swords suspended in the air had begun to sway slightly. As if they could fall at any mont!

He could not tell if it was an illusion born from staring too long, or if they were actually coming loose. Finally, soone let out a scream of pure terror.

"I... I'm not playing anymore!"

It was the player at Table 1, a silent young man wearing a

"Cat"

mask. He abruptly vaulted out of his chair like a madman, startling Lin Ya, who was sitting next to him.

The mont his feet hit the floor, his legs gave out. He collapsed straight onto his knees with a heavy thud, producing a sickening, muffled crack from his joints.

"Ah... ahh..."

Fragnted, aningless sounds mixed with sobs forced their way out of his throat. His terror was so absolute that he could not even stand back up; instead, he began crawling forward on his hands and knees.

He reached out, seemingly trying to grab onto soone else's chair or hand to pull himself up. But Lin Ya was genuinely frightened and quickly shrank back, dodging the young man's frantic grasp.

The young man did not pay her any mind. He did not even try to grab Lin Ya again, keeping his eyes entirely fixed on the main doors.

Crawling on all fours, scrambling and stumbling, he desperately tried to escape the room. But right at that mont— The stone sword suspended directly above his original seat broke loose.

Amidst a brief chorus of shrieks, the glowing greatsword carved a bizarre, tracking arc through the air, chasing him down and smashing him into a paste of flesh and blood! Lin Ya was already the closest person to the young man.

The instant she felt a violent gust of wind sweep toward her, she instinctively squeezed her eyes shut and curled her body tight. At that exact mont, a warm, wet sensation, accompanied by a sharp impact, splattered against her rabbit mask.

It felt just like a teacher throwing a piece of chalk at her head during class. A lingering sense of a foreign object prompted her to subconsciously wipe at it, but her hand only t a thick, sticky wetness.

'...What...

is this?' Realizing what had bounced off her, Lin Ya's pupils contracted violently.

Her body began to shake uncontrollably. Because it was a severed finger.

It had not bounced away. After striking her mask, it had slipped perfectly down into the collar of her pajamas.

She began to scream hysterically! As if it were not a finger but a lit firecracker, she convulsed wildly, frantically fumbling to dig it out of her clothes and hurling it as far away as possible.

All the knowledge she had acquired over her lifeti seemingly turned into aningless scrap paper in that instant, offering zero comfort for her helplessness, terror, and hysteria. Yet, it was not entirely aningless— Under the crushing weight of extre fear, a sudden flash of insight pierced through her panic.

Her face painted in shock, she looked toward

"Mr. Ai"

beside her. Ming Po had also just turned his head to watch Number Two attempting to flee from behind them.

Because of this, his face too was splattered with streaks of blood. But he looked so incredibly calm, as if the young man's death had been entirely within his expectations.

Beneath the mask, his clear, transparent eyes seed to shine even brighter! Noticing Lin Ya's shocked and terrified gaze, Ming Po tilted his head slightly.

Beneath his mask, an invisible smile surfaced.

'Though this girl doesn't look too bright, her intuition is quite sharp.'

'But having intuition that is too sharp might not necessarily be a good thing.' Lin Ya trembled and whispered, "Could... could you be..."

"—Since you have already put on the masks."

Before Lin Ya could finish, a deep, magnetic voice echoed ominously from the center of the round table:

"Do not even think about escaping halfway."

It was the Host's voice. The

"mouth"

hanging off the black cat's back was no longer acting erratically. It had beco incredibly stern and unusually cold.

It even gave Lin Ya a slight sense of whiplash. It felt as though a teacher had arrived early to the classroom, happily chatting with the students and animatedly recounting amusing anecdotes; but the very second the class bell rang, the teacher's expression turned frigid, strictly declaring,

"Class, settle down"... The right hand dangling from the cat's neck was now thodically stroking the black cat's head and rubbing its ears. The sleek, impossibly black cat purred comfortably, rubbing its head against the Host's palm. anwhile, the Host's single eye looked toward Ming Po with keen interest. '—This guy is not simple.' The Host was absolutely certain—Ming Po had noticed the Swords of Damocles overhead much earlier, but he had remained completely silent. It was only when the ga officially started that he acted as if he had just discovered them... 'I see, he was testing the rules.' Whether leaving the seat would result in imdiate execution, whether attempting to escape would trigger a premature punishnt... these were indeed vital pieces of intelligence that needed to be confird in advance to seize the initiative. But if he had simply asked out loud, he would have effectively shared that intelligence with everyone. Beyond that, he had also used the death of another player to apply pressure, forcing everyone to take the situation seriously—and the more serious people beca, the more predictable their behavior was. 'Interesting.' the Host thought. 'If he manages to win, I will tag him as a seeded player.' The Host completely ignored the pulverized remains of Number Two, now nothing more than a puddle of blood pinned beneath the stone pillar. The right hand draped over the cat's neck pointed straight at the elderly man sitting at the twelve o'clock position. "—Starting from 'Zero'. Bear, you are first."

"Ah..." Suddenly called upon, the old man looked a bit lost.

Yet, surprisingly, he had not shown much fear upon seeing the corpse, and the giant swords overhead did not seem to scare him either. Among the twelve people at the table, this swarthy, inconspicuous old man was actually one of the few who remained relatively composed.

"What should I talk about..."

"Bear"

hesitated for a mont, his voice slightly muffled behind the mask.

"Then... I will just tell a story. A story about... a bear." As he spoke, his voice grew much lower and steadier. "Back in my village, there was a saying. Folks said there was a bear spirit living in the mountains! Black fur, red eyes—terrifying thing. It only ate people at night, and it especially loved young n and won with tender skin!"

"Everyone in the village was scared. They all took detours. They warned the kids not to go out at night. But I was not scared—I never believed in that superstitious nonsense!"

"So, one winter night, I deliberately went into the mountains to chop wood. And, what do you think happened?"

At this point, the old Bear's eyes suddenly lit up. A bizarre sense of unease and a sudden chill made Lin Ya shudder.

"Hah! I actually ran into that beast!"

As he reached this part, the old

"Bear"

raised his voice. He slamd his hand on the table, his emotions surging.

"When it ran into , it did not seem to want to eat ... It acted like it was too full to move. But I was not going to let it go!"

"Look at , my whole life, I never had any kids to carry on my line. And at the end of it all, I got diagnosed with a terminal illness. If I could take a wicked bear down with before I go, I could at least face my ancestors with pride!"

"I swung my axe and aid right for that bear's skull! But... no good, I am too old. My eyes are blurry, my hands are weak. I missed, and the axe sank right into the beast's shoulder."

"That beast let out a howl and turned around to kill . Terrifying! But I was not afraid of dying. I charged right at it and swung my axe again, burying it straight into the bear's forehead! And then three chops, five chops—I hacked that bear spirit's big face into mush! Finally, I chopped its head clean off and tossed it in a ditch. If I did not handle it like that, it would not have died." Saying this, the old Bear chuckled, seeming sowhat relieved, yet also sowhat dazed.

He tilted his head, looked at the others around the table, and asked,

"Do you all think I did the right thing?"

"The first round's narrative phase has ended. Entering the discussion phase."

After

"Bear" finished his story, the Host spoke coolly. "The discussion phase will end when everyone has voted, or when the ti runs out."

Ming Po noticed two glowing panels quietly materialize on the left and right armrests of his chair. The left one was blue and read

"Correct"; the right one was red and read "Incorrect". Intrigued, he first tapped "Correct,"

watching the blue light flare up. Imdiately after, without drawing any attention, he subtly flexed his right middle finger and lightly brushed the right armrest—unlike his first movent, an action this slight was entirely undetectable by anyone else under such dim lighting.

He watched as the blue light on the left extinguished, replaced by the red light on the right. Ming Po then used the sa technique to press the left button again, watching the red light vanish and the blue light return.

At the sa ti, he realized he could not see the lights on anyone else's chairs; nor could anyone else tell what button he had pressed.

'...A hidden vote, then.'

With this, Ming Po had a rough grasp of the situation. He smiled, calmly withdrew his hands, and crossed his arms over his chest, no longer touching either side of the seat.

Lin Ya, anwhile, was feeling a bit lost. She had sowhat figured out the rules of this ga—the rule of the so-called

"Death of the Minority"

was obviously not to beco the minority. In other words, you had to guess how the others were thinking.

Predict what the majority wanted to vote for, and follow suit... Guess wrong, and you get executed.

'—Without a doubt, this is a ga that tests your ability to read the room.'

This was exactly the Domain Lin Ya excelled in. But...

This made absolutely no sense! Because the

"Narrator"

needed to provoke disagreent and conflict among the others in order to survive! If everyone chose the sa answer, the Narrator himself would be eliminated.

From that perspective, the Narrator held the biggest advantage—because while the players might struggle to figure out if they were the majority or minority, proposing a topic guaranteed to cause a dispute was a much simpler task.

'—But is not the story

"Bear" just told entirely one-sided?' "...Putting aside whether a 'bear spirit' actually exists or not, should not a man-eating, wicked bear be killed anyway?"

The girl wearing the Raccoon mask at the ten o'clock position spoke up timidly.

"Or,"

Yang Shuang, wearing a Sparrow mask at the five o'clock position, chid in,

"is the point of contention about animal protection? I recall that the Asian black bear is a protected species."

"Exactly, killing a bear is illegal!"

"Dog," sitting at the eleven o'clock position, shouted loudly. "He definitely should get prison ti, otherwise why would bear paws be so hard to buy!"

The

"Raccoon"

girl argued back,

"The man was about to die! Who has ti to care about whether the animal is protected or not!"

"Old sir, what you an,"

Lawyer Chen, wearing the

"Fox" mask, asked cautiously at that mont, "by 'correct or incorrect'... are you referring to whether the act itself was illegal or not?"

If that were the case, then this was purely a legal question.

"Bear"

did not answer him. Instead, he looked at the Host.

"Do I have to answer?"

"No need." The Host replied calmly. "Even if you do answer, you are not required to tell the truth. This ga has [no additional rules], therefore it operates strictly on the literal rules provided."

'...No, sothing is still off.'

Lin Ya shook her head, feeling bewildered. She could sense that sothing was wrong, but she could not articulate what it was.

"Winter..."

Suddenly,

"Red Panda" at the seven o'clock position spoke up. "Aren't bears supposed to hibernate during the winter?"

As soon as he said this, the table grew noticeably quieter.

"Fox"

suddenly realized sothing, his eyes widening. But right at that mont.

Ming Po spoke up, his voice slow and deliberate.

"Old man..."

"—This 'bear spirit' you killed, was it a human?"