“Hell, of course I’m starving!” Hu Dashan said irritably. “This little bit of food isn’t enough to fill the gap between my teeth! Looking at what’s left in that glove, there’s barely anything stored. Tomorrow, if your team shoots down our drone again, I’ll die before you do! Starved to death!”

Tan Xiao hurriedly said, “Untie me and I promise I won’t target your drones anymore!”

Hu Dashan gave him a long, complicated look, then quietly said only, “Get some sleep.”

He walked off alone to the mouth of the cave to keep watch.

Tan Xiao was not about to give up. He tried to use the sharp edges in the stone wall to saw through the rope, but the rope was thick and tight. After grinding away for a long time with no give, he’d only exhausted himself into breathless panting, and his wounds had begun to split open.

Tan Xiao was out of options. He held on for a while longer, then finally fell asleep…

—

In the night, Bai Youwei and Shen Mo observed the situation from a hillside.

“…The elephant is gone. And the fox.” Bai Youwei gazed at the lights of the safe house and slowly spoke. “Ye Chong wouldn’t assign himself too low a tier, so the animal he corresponds to should be the bear.

“During the first attack, he brought the man in the cap, the muscular man, and the ponytail girl — four people in one group. My inference is that he keeps the mouse close to him, and the man in the cap is the leopard, so the mouse must be either the muscular man or the girl.

“That said, now that their elephant is gone, we don’t need to rush. The more times we engage, the clearer the animal tiers become.

“I’d guess their side has also figured out our animal assignments by now, more or less.”

“That’s right.” Shen Mo gave a slight nod. “In this most recent attack, their focus was mainly on Tan Xiao, A’Long, and Ashalina — they’ve likely deduced that those three are lower-tier animals.”

He paused, then continued: “Actually, the most effective approach would be to eliminate the White Glove first. Catch the ringleader to defeat the gang — if the White Glove is eliminated, the remaining subjects will naturally fall into chaos. The problem is that the White Glove is a tricky one to handle. He can fire bamboo spikes nearly twenty meters from his glove in an instant, which essentially gives him a ranged weapon that no one else has.”

Bai Youwei thought about it and asked, “Can you tell how far the range goes?”

Shen Mo furrowed his brow, thought back for a moment, and said, “As for the range… it should be calculated by the distance between the point of impact and the launch point. But his bamboo spikes — the tail end starts right at his feet.”

“So the weapon’s length determines how far the target can be hit?” Bai Youwei said. “Back in the hide-and-seek game, Shen Fei was also injured by a White Glove player — I remember it was an extremely long metal pipe that pierced through Shen Fei’s shoulder and continued flying forward at high speed, until the entire length of the metal pipe had come out of the glove…”

Bai Youwei stopped mid-sentence, involuntarily freezing.

“I think I understand now…” she murmured. “The White Glove… might very well be a bugged item.”

Shen Mo raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

Bai Youwei looked at him. “What if it’s a storage item? For instance, it allows the player to store things inside the glove, then retrieve them at any time.”

Shen Mo listened, considered for a moment, and grasped what she meant.

“Assuming the time needed to retrieve an item is consistent — say, one second — then the speed generated by pulling out a five-centimeter matchstick versus a five-meter wooden pole would be completely different.”

Bai Youwei nodded. “That explains it. He deliberately stores items with extreme length inside the glove. The moment they’re retrieved, the acceleration imparts tremendous impact force. Bamboo spikes, steel pipes — these are all items that cause devastating damage to the human body when moving at high speed!”

Items that disrupted balance almost never appeared in the game. Even Bai Youwei’s own rabbit was a special item, and it was still constrained by a charging limitation. By comparison, the White Glove was outrageously overpowered.

Bai Youwei looked toward the forest to the north, her expression slowly cooling. “…He cannot be allowed to walk out of here alive.”

—