When everyone had entered the game, two pieces of information had surfaced in their minds.

【Mission: Retrieve the king’s sword.】

【Rule: No killing.】

The system had explicitly stated that killing was prohibited. What would happen to those who deliberately broke the rule?

Max’s words brought everyone back to reality.

Never mind that there was no evidence—even if they could prove it was Tan Xiao, what were they going to do to him?

“So what now? Do we just do nothing?!” someone protested.

Another offered a solution: “Even if we can’t touch him, we should at least tie him up to keep ourselves safe.”

“Hey! That’s going too far!” Tan Xiao was furious. He raised the sword in his hand and smashed it hard against the ground—thud!

“Who dares try tying me up? Go ahead!” he snarled.

The seven people across from him didn’t move.

This wasn’t a bare-knuckle brawl—with weapons in hand, even seven against one was no guarantee that everyone would come out unscathed.

After all, these people had been hastily recruited by Vilard within 24 hours. Their ability to work together was extremely poor.

They couldn’t stand Tan Xiao, but at the same time, none of them wanted to be the first to pick a fight with him.

“Enough,” Max said, a trace of irritation in his voice. “We don’t even understand what’s happening yet—what’s the point of fighting now?”

He looked over his own group and said with a furrowed brow, “Finding the king’s sword is still the top priority. Earlier, we discovered a room upstairs—from the decor and layout, it appears to be the princess’s bedchamber, but there was no sign of the princess. I believe the princess may be one of the key clues, so our best move now is to work together to find out where she is.”

Someone finally made the connection: “Oh… could it be that fairy tale? Sleeping Beauty?”

“Sleeping Beauty? In that story, the whole castle falls asleep—but then why isn’t the princess in her bed? Shouldn’t she be lying there waiting for the prince?”

“Hahaha, so are we supposed to be the princes? Not a bad game!”

“Stop joking around. I don’t think it matches the fairy tale exactly…”

Max had no patience for their back-and-forth and cut them off again: “The princess is approximately 165 to 170 centimeters tall, with long golden hair, and a slender build. Keep that in mind—she may not be dressed as a princess. She could be disguised as a maid, or she may already be dead, her body tangled in the vines. Either way, let’s start looking. We have no other leads right now.”

With that, he walked off, leading Ken upstairs.

The remaining five looked at each other, then eventually split into two groups and went off to search for the princess as well.

Tan Xiao stood where he was, gripping his sword and muttering to himself: “They’re going to look for the princess, so I should look for the princess too… Princess, princess…”

He glanced left and right, then left the banquet hall.

Still completely lost.

“Actually—maybe I should just look for the sword!” Tan Xiao said to himself as he walked. “At least I know what a sword looks like…”

As for the princess—who knew what she even looked like? What if she didn’t look human at all…

At that thought, Tan Xiao gave up on finding the princess entirely. He focused his energy on searching for the sword. Every guard he came across still carrying a blade, he stripped of it. Before long, he had accumulated quite a pile—dozens of swords balanced on his shoulder, roughly fifty or sixty catties in weight.

If he kept this up, every guard in the castle would be relieved of their weapon.

“I haven’t come across an armory. Where could it be…” Tan Xiao reached the foot of the staircase and hesitated, unsure whether to go up or down.

At that moment, a distant roar rang out!

“You bastard!!! Who did this?! WHO?!!”

—