“Holy shit this—” When she saw the letter on the capsule, Xia Li had to mobilize her entire self-control before she could avoid shouting the curse out loud.
Then, while striving to squeeze a smile onto her face, she began questioning the certain great precious sword that had just moments ago been vowing and guaranteeing to her, in a silent manner.
“Hey, you bastard garbage scrap iron! This is the bug you claimed could be exploited?! What about the guarantee you just made? Hmm?! Are you shameless or not?!”
“I was originally a sword, what else?” Weeping of the Shadow directly retorted, “Incidentally, this kind of situation is precisely within my expectations. No need to worry.”
“But ‘L’ is the lowest rank…”
“I said, no need to worry—also, under no circumstances open the capsule right now; just leave it like this.”
“Mm…” Xia Li pondered for a moment, and ultimately decided to believe the words of this sword.
She held the capsule in her hand and looked at it for a while, then stuffed it into the carrying pouch at her waist.
“What’s wrong? Not opening it to see what it is?” Nefiria asked.
“I… mm…”
“No problem. After some people draw ‘L,’ they indeed become too depressed, or even do not want to look at what is inside; this is also human nature.” Rom laughed, “Anyway, our current materials are already very sufficient. Even if it is not opened it does not matter.”
Although she did not know whether Rom said this intentionally or unintentionally, Xia Li indeed breathed a long sigh of relief because of it.
Next, she and Lunene did not return to the dormitory—after all, according to the duty schedule, in another half hour it would be their turn to patrol.
After swiftly and decisively eliminating the enemies inside the campus, the first thing Baron Xushinige did was to transform this school into a defensive base—in the zombie films Xia Li had watched in her previous life, this kind of practice was quite common.
He first used various miscellaneous objects to block the entrances and establish defensive lines, then set up a series of sentry posts and patrol lines, lest those fellows wandering in the forest outside the school drill their way in.
Up to the present, the performance of this defensive line could still be considered reliable.
In the span of half a night, more than ten monsters, either acting alone or teaming up in twos and threes, attempted to approach the school from different angles, with the result that all were met with a head-on strike at the first moment; a cumulative total of five heads were killed, while on the defending side only one person suffered light injuries because of falling while running.
In addition, considering that targets which newcomers could not resolve might appear later, Xushinige also specially emphasized that once a strong enemy was encountered, one must immediately sound the alarm whistle and request reinforcements from him—worth rejoicing was that up to the present, such a situation had not yet appeared.
Xia Li sat quietly like this in the corner of the music classroom; only after those players who had come to draw capsules had successively departed did she carefully take out the capsule written with “L” that she had just obtained, and twist it open.
Appearing on the plastic stick inside was written “Servant Transformation Card ×1: Heart-Powered Psychic Maid Who Brings Surprises.”
“This is… what?” Lunene, who was obediently sitting to the side like an elementary school student, curiously watched that plastic stick turn into a card.
Drawn on the card was a little maid of an age similar to Lunene’s but with a rather lively expression, holding a broom in her hand, with a long ahoge on top of her head that looked exactly like the feather plume inserted on the helmets of the ancient Imperial Guards.
Above the card was also drawn a five-pointed star; she did not know what it meant.
“Nothing!” Xia Li immediately said, “This… mm… this… this is just a card from Yu-Gi-Oh.”
“What is Yu-Gi-Oh?”
“Uh… that is a kind of… game of the people of the heavens,” after realizing she had spoken vocabulary that did not belong to this era, Xia Li continued in a manner of talking nonsense all over the place, bullying the inexperienced cat-eared loli, “In short it is useless! This card at most can later be taken to a game shop to exchange for a few yuan. After all, L-rank capsules can only produce this kind of goods.”
“One star… among Servants it does not count as very powerful, but it is still a benefit unique to UR.” In Xia Li’s mind, Weeping of the Shadow said, “If used well, the power will be extremely astonishing.”
“Clearly an L-rank capsule, yet it produced a UR-rank item… this is the bug-exploiting you spoke of?”
“Correct. In this Game, the earliest highest-rank cards were SSR rank. Later, in order to increase interest, extremely low-probability UR-rank items used for providing Servants were added. However, because of an error in the underlying code, when drawing the worst L-rank item, as long as one forcibly designates ‘Servant Card appears,’ one will necessarily obtain a UR item… but the capsule on the outside still looks like L rank.”
“This can also be designated?”
“Of course. The background of the Game allows specifying the type of item that appears, and my authority happens to be able to see and modify the background—but which rank of item is obtained is completely random under normal circumstances. If you draw N, R, SR, or SSR, then I will have no way. But… since because of the Mark of the Sinner your luck when drawing is fixed at the lowest, therefore I can guarantee that every single time a UR will come out.”
“Whew…” Xia Li forcefully took a deep breath before she could prevent the smile on her face from appearing too brilliant—it seemed that agreeing to Xushinige’s request and coming to participate in this Game was truly wonderful!
If every time she could draw UR, perhaps it would not take long before she could use those Servants absolutely loyal to herself to forge a legion! At that time…
“However, I do not recommend that you use this card right now,” Weeping of the Shadow continued, “After all, this kind of Servant Card used on people, whether used on oneself or on others, will cause a certain degree of change in appearance. Considering that the Game still needs to continue for several days. If everyone discovers that you who theoretically only drew an L-rank capsule actually obtained a UR card, then we would… not find it very easy to explain.”
“After all, this kind of ability to exploit bugs also counts as a hidden trump card on our side.”
“Correct, that is how it is.”
“Moreover, the difficulty of this Game should also not have reached the degree of needing me to use this card… right?” Xia Li nodded, for the first time reaching an agreement with Weeping of the Shadow so easily.
After another while, as the 4th patrol group that was ranked in front came to hand over the shift with her, Xia Li and Lunene left the music classroom—these two-person patrol groups respectively had different areas of responsibility, changing shifts once every six hours.
And the task of the 4th group was precisely to patrol back and forth along the route between the warehouse and the dormitory building.
Among the areas of responsibility of all the patrol groups, this one was farthest from the walls; theoretically speaking, the 4th patrol group should be the safest among all the rotating personnel.
But even so, after the patrol began, Xia Li still maintained the highest degree of vigilance.
One of her hands remained resting on the .38-caliber revolver hanging at her waist, and she constantly paid attention to even the most minute signs of disturbance in the surroundings.
As for Lunene… after coexisting with this fellow for so long, Xia Li had already discovered that this fellow was not merely a problem of being unsuited for clearing Death Games, but rather fundamentally unsuited for doing any relatively complex work.
Lunene was not only petite and frail in stature, but her brain was also not very bright; her entire person long-term remained in a muddle-headed state of silly cuteness.
Even this simple patrol route that started from the west side of the dormitory building and ended at the east side of the warehouse, forming a three-point one-line between the dormitory building–water tower–warehouse, Xia Li had to say a full three times before Lunene could barely remember it.
“Hey, Lunene,” after the two completed the first circle of patrol, Xia Li asked the little cat girl who was carrying the Angel Capybara body pillow on her back.
This cute SR-rank item seemed to have scaling ability; after the patrol began, it had been reduced by Lunene from life-size to roughly the length of her own forearm, and therefore could be carried rather conveniently.
“Why exactly did you think of coming to clear Death Games and become a Seeker?”
“Meow-hehehe… I myself also don’t know…”
“What? Don’t know?!” This unexpected answer made Xia Li startled.
“Don’t know means don’t know… there are actually many things I don’t know,” Lunene swayed her little head, “For example, who my papa and mama are, where home is, exactly how old I am, and which day my birthday is… because I grew up in an orphanage.”
“Is… that so?”
“Mm-mm, but the orphanage teacher estimates that Lunene is probably already fourteen or fifteen years old. Although many people in the orphanage were adopted away, Lunene was fundamentally unwanted by anyone, because her brain is not bright. The teacher also said that Lunene’s fate is probably to clean in the orphanage for a lifetime.”
While conversing, the two had already approached the warehouse inside the school.
For some unknown reason, when looking toward this building that appeared plain and ordinary, Xia Li felt a very uncomfortable sensation.
The blood-red eight-pointed star mark on her face also began to ache faintly.
The last time this mark had ached was when she saw that suspicious black inn in the slums.
Was it an illusion?
In order to divert this unease, Xia Li once again turned the topic back onto Lunene: “Since you had always stayed in the orphanage, why did you think of doing this job?”
“Because… Baron Xushinige came to my orphanage,” Lunene said, “Moreover, he specifically named Lunene to join.”