Horror Movie Survival Rules Chapter 225: Battle Royale (2)

Slaughter Island is a classic escape-and-kill film. It mainly tells the story of a group of unlucky travelers who are dr*gged and abducted during a trip, fitted with collars around their necks, and transported to a deserted island, where they are forced to participate in a killing ga with their lives as stakes.

Each participant is fitted with a tal collar around their neck. The collar’s initial countdown is 24 hours; once the tir reaches zero, it explodes and kills the wearer.

These collars are high-tech devices equipped with GPS tracking, vital-sign monitoring, audio and visual surveillance, and anti-removal functions. Any attempt to forcibly remove the collar will trigger an imdiate self-detonation. In addition, if a wearer carries the collar beyond a certain range of the island, and the system determines they are attempting to escape by unauthorized ans, the collar will also explode.

In the rule explanation video shown before the ga began, two ways to remove the collar were given:

First, if the wearer dies, the collar can no longer detect vital signs and will automatically detach, with the death countdown also being suspended.

Second, the final winner of the “killing ga” boards the helicopter leaving the island, and after the aircraft takes off, staff will remove the collar for them.

It is worth noting that the winner not only gets the chance to safely leave the island, but also receives 1 million USD worth of gold. In other words, as long as you win the ga, you can basically retire comfortably once you return to the mainland.

At this point, you may notice a contradiction in the rules: the helicopter only appears after 72 hours, yet each participant’s initial survival countdown is only 24 hours. It is impossible for any player to survive three days on their own.

This is where another key rule of the ga cos into play—“stealing ti.”

Participants in the ga can transfer survival countdown ti to one another through interfaces on the collars.

The thod is simple: if soone wants to take ti from another person, they open the “ ” port on the left side of their own collar, then take the transmission cable from the “−” port on the right side of the other person’s collar and plug it into the port on their own neck. Once the connection is established, the ti the other person holds will be transferred to you at a rate of one hour per minute.

The reverse works the sa way.

Of course, it doesn’t take much thought to realize that life is precious. Unless they are extrely close relatives or lovers, no one would willingly transfer their own survival ti to soone else.

To extend one’s survival countdown, most people still rely on violent plundering. Kill a participant, wait for their collar to automatically detach after death, then take the collar and find a safe place to transfer all the deceased’s remaining ti to yourself, thereby extending your own survival ti.

Of course, you could also choose to beat soone to the brink of death and secretly siphon off their ti while they are incapacitated. However, the connecting cable on the collar is very short, and during transfer both people must be shoulder-to-shoulder. The process is also inefficient and often takes over ten minutes.

If the other person suddenly regains mobility during the transfer, struggles free and pulls out the cable—or worse, goes all out and grabs your collar and yanks it, triggering a mutual “blood firework”—then things will not end pleasantly.

Therefore, for most people who want to survive, killing every opponent they encounter is the safest and most foolproof thod.

However, these rules are only for ordinary participants. As a “seer,” Everly also knows a third way to remove the collar, so she has no intention of taking part in this bloody ga.

As for her and Misha’s next move, Everly already had other plans.

She stood in the room, looking around.

The room was completely empty except for a cara and a door. The floor, walls, and ceiling were covered in chaotic graffiti painted in colorful spray paint, with strange, aningless words and letters scattered throughout. In the corners, there were still remnants of splattered bloodstains. Judging from their color and shape, they had likely accumulated over a long period of ti.

The air in the room was poorly ventilated, carrying a nauseating stench of mold and decay.

Because the graffiti and writing obscured much of the surface, it took Everly so ti before she finally found an area on the wall where the cracks were relatively dense. She went over to that corner, lightly tapping various spots on the wall with her curved fingers. Before long, she located a hidden hollow space.

This hollow required pressing inward by hand to trigger a chanism, which popped out a small “drawer.”

Inside the drawer were a bottle of mineral water and a note.

At this point, after a long-winded introduction, the video behind the door finally reached the explanation of the first stage of the killing ga—

“…As all participants should have already realized, ti is extrely precious in the Killing Ga. ‘Ti and tide wait for no man.’ To help you truly experience this, we have prepared a small trial at the start of the ga. All participants are currently locked inside a sealed room. Within this room are clues needed to open the door. You will have a total of one hour to find them.”

“Attention. If you are still inside the room after one hour, the collars around your neck will explode—BOOM! After that, like countless predecessors before you, you will be reduced to a pile of flesh and bones, resting here forever. So please pay attention to the ti—don’t be too slow, okay~?”

With that, the killer rabbit on the screen winked cutely at the viewers and raised a hand to wave.

“Well then, enough nonsense. Let’s officially begin this exciting killing ga!”

As soon as the words fell, the animation on the screen abruptly disappeared.

In its place, a red countdown appeared: 00:59:59.

Everly did not pay much attention to the screen behind the door.

She unscrewed the bottle of mineral water and took a sip to moisten her dry throat. She stuffed the remaining water into her pocket, then casually glanced at the note before imdiately lying down on the floor to search for hidden chanisms.

The note contained the first password digit, along with clues for finding the second one. The clues pointed to the murals and graffiti in the room—you had to find specific patterns within them, then piece together words from those patterns to form sentences in order to determine how to unlock the chanism.

But Everly, having already seen the movie, didn’t need to solve the puzzle step by step.

She inspected the four corners of the floor for a mont, then raised her hand and began pressing the stone slabs in a specific order.

At the four corners of the room’s floor, there were movable stone tiles hidden beneath the surface. The graffiti would tell participants that after finding them, they needed to press them in order based on the number of cracks along their edges—from the fewest to the most.

After all four stone slabs were pressed, a soft click sounded, and the LED light hanging from the ceiling suddenly dropped down to a height level with a person.

Behind the tal panel of the lamp, there was a specially carved recess. Inside the recess were a pack of compressed biscuits and a second note.

Everly casually glanced at the note, then stuffed it together with the biscuits into the pocket of her work pants.

The second note contained the second password digit, along with a new puzzle. That puzzle pointed to a third note, which was stored in a hidden compartnt at the bottom of the tal door. If she rembered correctly, she needed to turn the doorknob upward three tis, push inward once, then pull outward once for the compartnt to open.

However, starting from the third hidden compartnt, there would be no more supplies. Only notes remained inside—and Everly didn’t need the hints from those notes.

She rembered the door-opening code very clearly.

This wasn’t because Everly had an exceptionally good mory, but because the ga she played in her past life had included an Easter egg.

People who often played battle royale-style gas knew that in such gas—where a sufficient number of players is required before a match begins—there is usually a waiting or “assembly” period before matchmaking completes. Slaughter Island was no exception.

To give waiting players sothing to do, and also as a tribute to the original film and a nod to its fans, during this assembly period all Slaughter Island players would be dropped into a prison-like room similar to the one before her, jokingly referred to as the “toilet room.”

Players could jump around inside the cell, pound the walls with their fists, or even imitate the movie’s plot—searching for small hidden chanisms on the walls, floor, and door to piece together a password.

Although solving the password wouldn’t allow players to imdiately leave the holding room, it didn’t matter much—being idle was still being idle, and quite a few players would still bounce around looking for clues.

Because of this, even after being reborn into a new world and living here for twenty years, Everly still rembered that escape code from that movie: 1693.

At the mont, the only two supplies in the cell—the biscuits and the water—had already been obtained. In theory, Everly could have ignored the two notes entirely. But considering the surveillance cara hanging overhead and the monitoring function of the collar around her neck, she decided it would be better not to behave too suspiciously and still retrieve the third note.

Following the instructions on the second note, she casually made a show of walking around the room, then approached the door and used the thod from the ga to open the hidden slot in the tal door, obtaining the third note containing the final password digit.

Once she got the third number, there was no need to continue solving the puzzle. The password consisted of four digits, with unlimited input attempts. Knowing the first three digits ant the final one could be figured out through trial and error—anyone insisting on solving it properly would just be foolish.

Everly squatted down directly in front of the door and began entering the password.

The process was extrely quick. Starting from 1690 and trying one digit at a ti, when she reached 1693, the mont the last digit was entered, a soft click sounded. The locked door instantly released.

She pulled the heavy door open.

Before her appeared a staircase leading upward. At the top was golden sunlight, and beyond it, a lush forest full of vibrant life and greenery.

She had passed the first stage just like that.

After leaving the cell, Everly looked around and quickly used a distant mountain peak as a reference point, aligning the ntal map she had of the island with the real-world terrain before her.

At the exit of the prison building, a narrow path extended diagonally forward. It had been ford by countless people walking it over and over again while trapped here, eventually wearing it into a clear trail. The path ran straight toward the northeast, ending at the mountain at the center of the island.

Standing at the doorway and looking into the distance, one could faintly see the towering peak and its flattened summit. That flattened top was presumably the legendary helipad.

Three days later, the only helicopter that could take soone off this place would land there.

Most people, upon seeing this direct route to the destination, would step onto it without hesitation. But Everly knew that following the path was not safe—and she had no intention of heading toward the mountain.

So after leaving the cell, she bent down and picked up a suitably long branch from the ground. Holding her newly acquired “equipnt,” she crouched and slipped into the forest.

She was heading east, toward the buildings to gather supplies.

Whether surviving on the island or escaping from it, food, drinking water, and weapons for self-defense were all essential.

To ensure fairness in the ga, each spawn-cell had at least two abandoned buildings within a three-kiloter radius. However, these buildings were not necessarily exclusive to any one cell.

For example, the eastern abandoned hospital that Everly intended to head toward was one of the largest structures on the island. Around it, like scattered petals, lay six small cells.

The reason she was rushing out now was to get there before anyone else and loot the hospital first. Otherwise, once others solved their passwords and left their cells, they might compete with her for resources.

In a ga where lives were on the line, she had no intention of making aningless concessions.