Hide and Seek: The Mad Girl Sees All novel Chapter 160

Chapter 160

Chapter 160

The room began to flip.

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Lyra’s body was wrapped in soul power. She didn’t even glance at the paper, just shouted, “Clara! The poison needle! Get it out, quick!”

Clara’s soul power shot out, snatching the poison needle from Alex’s neck just before the flipping tossed his body aside!

As soon as the needle was in her hand, everything spun.

Ten seconds later, the flip ended.

Lyra turned to Clara. “The paper.”

Clara unfolded the paper and handed it to Lyra.

Lyra looked down. The front of the paper was almost identical to the ones Blake and Jung-hoo had, same layout, same wording.

But there was one difference.

On Blake and Jung-hoo’s papers, “Lily, Draconia Player” was printed in the same font as the System’s auto-generated text.

On Alex’s paper, the “Target” section looked blank at first, no, wait, someone had actually scribbled something in by hand.

“Lily, Draconia Player.” The handwriting was sloppy and crooked, with the ink smudged across the paper.

Lyra stared at that messy line for a moment, then told Clara to flip the paper over. On the back, there was a line of small text in the System’s font.

[Hunter Exclusive Reward: You may write one designated hunt target below. Once filled in, that target’s information will be randomly synced to this round’s Hunters’ cheat sheets.]

Got it.

The “Target: Lily” on the other Hunters’ cheat sheets wasn’t randomly generated by the System, it was Alex who wrote it.

He got a blank hit list and put Lil Lily’s name down, so every Hunter’s cheat sheet ended up showing “Target: Lily, Draconia Player.”

If he’d written “Lyra” instead, then every Hunter in the round would’ve been chasing her.

“Guess we really didn’t wrong him,” Lyra muttered.

Lyra told Clara to put the paper away, then looked up, suddenly frowning.

“Clara,” Lyra called out.

“Yeah?” Clara replied.

“Did you hear the announcement for Alex’s death?” Lyra asked.

Clara paused. “No.”

Lyra replayed the events in her mind. From the moment the poison needle pierced Alex’s neck, to the room flipping, to her checking the paper, almost two minutes had gone by. When Blake died, the broadcast was instant. Same for Jung-hoo.

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But what about Alex? Why was there no announcement? Could he still be alive?

Lyra glanced up at the wall. The player map was still active, red dots scattered across the squares.

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She did a quick count, thirteen red dots left. Before the flip, there had been fourteen. Now one was gone. And since the flip. the game hadn’t reported anyone dying.

The missing dot could only be Alex.

He’d vanished from the map, but the game hadn’t announced his death.

“Why isn’t this matching up?” Lyra muttered.

Lyra had just broken free from the immobilization, stretching her limbs while thinking. The poison needle was supposed to kill in five seconds, she’d seen his face turn from red to blue, his limbs go stiff, his head loll to the side.

By all appearances, he should’ve been dead.

But the game hadn’t broadcast it, which meant the System didn’t recognize him as dead.

But his red dot was gone from the map, that usually means he’s dead, right?

Lyra was genuinely confused. She thought, ‘What the hell is going on? Did the game just steal a kill from me?”

Lyra thought, ‘No, no, no. Just because his red dot is gone does not mean he is dead for sure, but it definitely means he is not here anymore. He is off the game’s radar, out of the mission’s monitoring.’

Lyra’s mind flashed back to the last moment before the flip..

Right before Alex’s head lolled to the side, he’d managed to squeeze out a few words.

“It’s not over till one of us is dead,” Alex had said.

Lyra thought, ‘Would someone who is about to die really say something that hardcore? No way. Normally, they would go with, “Even if I die, I will haunt you.” That makes way more sense, right?’

Thinking about it, the only reason Alex would say something like that is if he knew he couldn’t die.

Lyra felt a mix of emotions. “Clara, Alex might not be dead.” She thought, ‘Man, this guy is just unkillable.

Clara drifted over. “Are you sure? I could sense he was dead at the time.”

“Right now, if the game didn’t announce it, then he’s not dead. And if he’s not showing up on the map, maybe he found a way to escape the maze, or slipped into some place the game can’t track,” Lyra said.

Lyra thought about the Safehouse Chalk and the Soul Wrap, those let you vanish from the map. Was Alex pulling the same trick right now?

But Clara had already taken all his stuff. And how the hell did he survive the poison needle?

“Clara, when you searched him, did you find anything else?” Lyra asked.

“No,” Clara said, thinking back. “I took everything that was on the surface. Unless he had something hidden.”

Lyra closed her eyes for a moment. She thought, ‘Of course there are hidden items. My Veilmist is one of them. As for how

he survived the poison needle, maybe he had some kind of life-saving item, like my Decoy Doll.

“Alright,” Lyra sighed.

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Chapter 160

She thought, ‘Man, this guy has got nine lives.

The countdown on the wall was ticking down: [00:16:22]

Lyra pushed the door open and stepped out. She glanced at the map, thirteen red dots left, and Alex’s dot was still gone.

Lyra stopped worrying about Alex for now. Dead or alive, she’d find out in sixteen minutes. She headed toward the nearest red dot on the map.

The game’s death announcements started blaring again.

One, two, three.

Both Hiders and Hunters were dropping like flies, their red dots vanishing from the map one after another.

Lyra walked through two rooms, and when she pushed open the third door, she saw Lil Lily’s soul dragging a player over o her. Lil Lily had sent her another “gift.”

It was another Aurelia player, tightly bound by soul power, a cloth stuffed in her mouth, eyes bloodshot.

Lyra raised an eyebrow. She thought, ‘Lil Lily is seriously hard-carrying me this round.

She didn’t waste any time. She walked over, clenched her fist, and the tip of the Hidden Edge Ring popped out.

Click.

[Aurelia Player Daisy has been captured and declared dead.]

[Current kill count: 5.]

[Congratulations, Hunter Lyra! You’ve met the requirements for the designated reward pool!]

Lyra flicked the blood off her hand and kept moving, her eyes glued to the map.

The red dots kept dwindling, thirteen, then eleven, then nine.

Alex still hadn’t shown up. Lyra frowned, still puzzled. She thought, ‘If he used something like Safehouse Chalk, should there not be a time limit?’

As time slipped away, the game’s announcements started to slow, and the red dots dwindled down to eight.

Lyra checked the card spirits’ locations. Lil Lily was safe in the southeast; Lina was safe in the west; Lydia and Sergei were each in different directions, their red dots still lit.

The countdown on the wall hit the final ten seconds, and the game’s announcement rang in everyone’s ears.

[Hunt countdown: 10, 9, 8…]

Lyra stood in the middle of the room, unmoving. Eight red dots remained. Other than the five she knew, the other three were a mystery.

[… 3, 2, 1.]

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