Because Everly cracked the password incredibly quickly, only five minutes had passed from the official start of the ga to her successful escape from the cell.
Aside from Everly—and Misha, who had received hints from her while they were in the car—there were probably no other contestants who had managed to solve the puzzle and leave their tiny prison cells yet.
Even so, Everly moved with extre caution, because the organizers of this ga were filled with malice and had not revealed the full truth to the contestants.
The killing ga was a specially organized death-match escape ga created to satisfy the twisted tastes of certain powerful elites and wealthy people. The entire process of the ga would be livestread to those rich spectators through the collars worn around the players’ necks, as well as fixed surveillance caras installed across the island. Each round also featured gambling pools worth tens of millions, with bets placed on who would ultimately secure the final survivor slot.
At the sa ti, in order to satisfy the wealthy spectators’ perverse desire for slaughter, the organizers would release five precious “island entry slots” every season. These five individuals were known within the killing ga as “Butchers.”
The Butchers possessed an extrely high degree of freedom. They were allowed to land on the island three days in advance to familiarize themselves with the environnt or set traps, doing whatever they pleased.
As VIPs of the ga, the Butchers received enormous privileges. The organizers placed no restrictions on the items they could carry, nor did they ever prohibit the Butchers from killing anyone. Before the ga began, the betting pools even included an option for “all contestants wiped out, Butchers win.” It was one of the most popular betting choices, and in many past gas, every player had indeed been massacred by the Butchers.
This round of the ga also featured five dangerous Butchers.
For example, one of them was nicknad “Turret” by movie fans. His trademark was being heavily ard from head to toe, carrying all kinds of guns and ammunition and turning himself into a walking weapons platform. Everywhere he went, it was “rat-tat-tat,” gunning people down on sight.
“Turret” killed several of the male protagonist’s companions and was considered the most troubleso enemy the protagonist faced during the first half of the movie. Later in the film, the protagonist used the firearms seized from “Turret” to defeat one enemy after another, eventually even hijacking a helicopter.
Fortunately, “Turret’s” operating area was near the southern foot of the central mountain peak. Because he carried so much weight, he could not travel far, so he simply camped there and waited for victims to co to him. As for Everly’s current location—if the entire island were evenly divided into four concentric zones from the center outward—she was roughly at the border between the second and third rings, still far from the border between the first and second rings where “Turret” was active.
The person Everly was truly wary of at the mont was another Butcher who called himself “Hunter.”
True to his na, “Hunter” was obsessed with hunting. He preferred using all kinds of traps—bear traps, snare traps, falling-rock traps, pitfall traps, and more—to capture contestants. He would then drag them back to his hunting cabin, hang them up like livestock, and slowly torture them until they died.
The guy’s brain seriously seed broken. During the three days before the ga, when he had landed on the island early, he had set up hundreds of traps across the island. The closer one got to the central mountain, the denser the traps beca. So were hidden beside pathways, others concealed deep within the forest—extrely insidious. Even the cautious male protagonist accidentally triggered one and was injured while heading toward the mountain, let alone everyone else.
When the movie ended and the numbers were tallied, nearly a quarter of the contestants had been killed directly or indirectly by this man’s traps alone. He truly was a legendary Butcher.
While watching the movie, it had not seed like a big deal. After all, it was the protagonists suffering through the traps, not the audience. But now that Everly herself was inside the ga, these traps had beco incredibly annoying.
To avoid injuring herself and wasting her precious panacea, Everly probed the ground with the wooden stick in her hand before every step, carefully checking here and there, terrified of accidentally falling into one of the traps.
Moving quickly through dense forest was difficult to begin with, let alone while constantly watching out for traps. Waving the wooden stick in her hand as she pushed through the thick undergrowth, Everly traveled for nearly twenty minutes before a desolate building hidden deep within the woods finally appeared before her—the abandoned hospital, her destination.
No one knew why such a facility existed on this naless deserted island in the Atlantic Ocean.
It clearly had many years behind it. The architecture carried a heavy last-century style. Its doors and windows stood wide open, every pane of glass shattered. Bare concrete walls were overrun with vines and moss, mottled and cracked, silently bearing the marks left behind by ti.
Holding her wooden stick, Everly carefully observed the surroundings. Only after confirming that no one was nearby did she slip in through a small side entrance of the hospital.
Aside from the tiny prison cells that served as spawn points, every concrete building on the island functioned as a supply point. Regardless of size, each supply point contained only one batch of supplies, and every batch followed the sa general configuration: food drinking water weapons one mystery box.
That did not an, however, that every building’s supplies were identical. According to the setting released by the film’s creators, factors such as the size of the concrete structure, the number of nearby “cells,” and the building’s distance from the central mountain all affected the quantity and quality of the supplies.
For example, small buildings located near the edge of the island were relatively low-risk places that few people bothered to visit, so the supplies inside were usually terrible—a single biscuit, a bottle of water, a dull fruit knife, and a mystery box that would most likely contain junk. The organizers could get away with tossing in random scraps.
But for a large structure like the abandoned hospital, surrounded by several prison cells, the quality of the supplies was significantly higher. At minimum, it would contain five or six biscuits, three or four bottles of water, stronger lee weapons such as machetes or crossbows, and a mystery box with a chance of containing firearms.
That was also why Everly headed straight for the hospital at the very start of the ga. There were two buildings near her spawn point: one to the north and one to the east. The northern building was relatively small, with only three nearby prison cells, while the eastern hospital was much larger and surrounded by a far denser cluster of cells, giving it a much higher chance of containing valuable supplies.
The supplies placed inside buildings were never hidden. The organizers deliberately positioned them in obvious spots so they could be discovered at a glance.
The hospital, however, was a special case—the building was simply too large.
The entire structure had five floors, with more than a dozen rooms on each level. In the movie, the male protagonist had never visited the hospital, and the supply locations in the ga spawned randomly among the rooms, making the film useless as a reference. As a result, Everly had no idea where the hospital’s supplies were located.
After searching the first floor and finding nothing, she had no choice but to head up the stairs to the second floor.
Speaking of which, she really had to curse that damned “Hunter.” The guy did not just scatter traps throughout the forest—he even targeted supply points!
There were no traps on the first floor, but that was not because “Hunter” had shown rcy. It was entirely intentional.
After realizing there were no supplies on the first floor, anyone coming here would inevitably go upstairs to continue searching. And after exploring the entire first floor without encountering a single trap, people would likely let their guard down, assuming the upper floors were safe as well—falling straight into “Hunter’s” psychological trap.
The first trap Everly encountered was placed at the stair landing between the first and second floors.
Because of the building’s age, the hospital’s floor tiles had long since cracked apart. Dust and mud blown in by the wind had gathered in corners and crevices, forming thick clumps of wild grass.
If one did not look carefully, it would be easy to miss the enormous open bear trap hidden within the grass. Its surface had been camouflaged, the iron-black trap blending seamlessly with the weeds and moss covering it. One careless step, and a person could very well lose the ability to walk altogether.
The person who designed these traps was seriously rotten to the core!
Everly had no intention of participating in the island’s killing ga, so she did not mind doing a good deed and clearing out a few dangers for the unfortunate contestants. Stepping around the bear trap, she turned, picked up a large stone from the ground, and tossed it into the jaws of the trap.
A loud snap rang out as the sharp tal jaws slamd shut violently, crushing the stone in the middle to pieces.
After triggering the trap, Everly picked up the heavy device and weighed it in her hands. It was far too cumberso; carrying it would affect her mobility. Regretfully giving up the idea of taking it with her, she instead found a room filled with construction debris, tossed the trap inside, and covered it with a broken wooden board.
By the ti she left, the bear trap was nowhere to be seen.
If nobody could find it, then nobody could use it to harm others again.
The second floor was the hospital’s outpatient ward area. Everly searched the entire level and still found nothing.
As she continued up to the third and fourth floors, she encountered three more particularly vicious traps in succession.
The trap on the third floor was a fishing line stretched across the hallway. The line was connected to a trigger chanism, and once pulled, more than a dozen sharpened wooden stakes would shoot down from the ceiling.
The corridor was dimly lit, and the fishing line had been positioned at ankle height. It was only because Everly happened to notice it; if soone else had stumbled into the trap, there was a very high chance blood would be spilled.
Acting in the public interest once again, Everly destroyed the chanism from a safe distance using her wooden stick. Then she stepped forward to collect the spoils, successfully obtaining a three-ter roll of transparent fishing line and a large bundle of straight, sharpened wooden stakes.
The trap on the fourth floor was a “chain trap.”
The first part of the trap was placed above a half-open wooden door: a tal basin filled with transparent liquid.
Through the gap in the open door, one could see a conspicuous red circle painted on the floor in the center of the room. Inside the circle were piled biscuits, drinking water, weapons, and other supplies.
The long-sought supplies were right in front of her. Anyone standing outside the room would easily be drawn in by the loot and lose all awareness of their surroundings. The mont such a person stepped into the doorway and reached out to push it open, the plastic basin above would instantly lose its balance and flip over, pouring the unknown liquid inside directly onto them.
Everly was experienced enough to recognize it at a glance. That basin most likely contained so kind of corrosive acid.
Pure concentrated sulfuric acid is a colorless, odorless oily liquid. It would be quite useful for self-defense. If it really was a strong acid, Everly would have gladly taken so with her.
Because of that, she did not rush to destroy the chanism. Instead, after careful observation, she chose to take a detour through an adjacent room.
The room containing the supplies and the neighboring room were not completely separate; they were connected by a shared balcony. After years of wind and rain, the balcony had deteriorated badly, and even parts of its railing had collapsed.
Everly approached the balcony and first leaned out to look down.
The entire hospital was located within a dense sea of forest. At the edge of her vision, between the lush green canopy, she could faintly make out a small clearing in the woods, with a set of stairs extending downward.
At the end of the stairs was a tal door. Clearly, it was one of the players’ prison cells.
It had already been nearly forty minutes since the ga began. Unless soone was truly foolish, even a slightly careful person would have had enough ti to solve the puzzle and leave their cell by now. The door of the one she saw, for example, was already open.
Aside from Everly’s own starting point, there were four similar prison cells around the hospital. And as a large structure, the abandoned hospital was very easy to locate within the forest—making it very likely to beco a primary target for other contestants seeking supplies.
The distance from the prison cells to the hospital was between two and three kiloters. At full speed, an average adult would need about 12 to 17 minutes to cover it. She had to speed up.
Thinking this, Everly took a deep breath. Pressing herself against the wall, she crouched low and carefully moved from the suspended balcony into the adjacent supply room.
As expected from one of the island’s largest structures, a quick glance showed that the supplies here included five packs of compressed biscuits, three bottles of mineral water, one Nepalese curved machete, and one mystery box.
Above the supplies, in an inconspicuous corner of the room, a surveillance cara had been installed. Detecting movent, the red indicator light turned on, and the lens subtly adjusted and zood.
Everly could imagine it clearly: right now, there were probably many people watching her through their screens, staring at her with those sticky, malicious, and mocking gazes, eagerly waiting to see how this insignificant ant would win—or die.
If it were possible, she truly wished so bored hacker would break into their livestream site and replace the broadcast with the death footage of the “Butterfly Fall Incident.”
Unfortunately, that was not possible.
Worried that she might attract attention and alert the cara operators, Everly did not even dare to smash it. She could only swallow her frustration and endure it.
The only fortunate thing was that, in order to ensure the fairness of the betting, all five Butchers had remained “offline” since arriving on the island. They could no longer communicate with the outside world. Even during the ga itself, they could not see the island’s surveillance feeds; they could only use the radar devices they carried to locate contestants within a limited range around them.
So, as long as no one else witnessed her taking this batch of supplies, it would remain a secret to everyone else on the island.
Walking up to the supplies, Everly imdiately reached for the mystery box on the ground.
The packaging of the box resembled a Christmas gift, though it was much larger. After picking it up, Everly quickly weighed it in her hand. It felt almost weightless, and her heart imdiately sank.
When she opened the lid, her prediction was confird: inside was not the coveted firearm she had been hoping for, but a small glass vial. Inside the vial were white crystalline substances, and a skull symbol was printed prominently on the label.
According to the chemical formula on the bottle, it was potassium cyanide powder.
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