Hide and Seek: The Mad Girl Sees All novel Chapter 97

Chapter 97

Ivana hovered in midair while Lyra pulled up a chair and sat down, looking up at her.

“Go ahead. Start from the beginning,” Lyra said.

Ivana closed her eyes for a moment, her soul’s outline rippling in the air.

“I died in the third round,” Ivana said.

Garrett’s pen flew across the notepad, scribbling down every word.

Lana hit record on her phone.

“The mission was called ‘Rotting Campus, and the Wraiths were a bunch of kids in school uniforms,” Ivana continued.

Lily’s skin prickled with goosebumps.

Lana’s expression stayed neutral. They’d already gone over the game details countless times in the livestreams and post- game analyses.

“And after you died?” Lyra asked, her attention back on Ivana. “What happened before you turned into a cat?”

Ivana’s soul dipped lower, like she was dredging up a painful memory.

“When I got ripped to pieces, my mind went blank for a second. When I came to, I found myself somewhere else,” Ivana said.

“Where was it?” Lyra asked.

“It was pure darkness. I couldn’t see a thing or hear a thing.

Lily instinctively edged a little closer to Lyra.

“I have no clue how long I was stuck there. It could’ve been a second or a year. Time meant nothing there,” Ivana continued.

“And then what?” Lyra asked.

“Then I heard a voice,” Ivana said.

Ivana looked Lyra straight in the eye. “It was the game’s voice.”

Lyra moved her hand from her knee to the armrest.

“What did it say?” Lyra asked.

“It said, ‘Soul ID 2941, Rating: D Tier, Assignment: Storage Unit,” Ivana replied.

Garrett’s pen paused. “Hold on, you died in the third round. There weren’t that many players gone by then. So how did you end up with Soul ID 2941?”

“I don’t know. I just heard the voice,” Ivana replied.

“Maybe the Wraiths aren’t just from our planet.” Lyra guessed boldly. “Think about it: if it was only players from our planet, where did the Wraiths in the first round come from?”

Everyone went quiet, thinking hard. Lily chimed in, “Maybe the game finished off other planets first, and now it’s our turn!”

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14:45 Sat, Jul 4.

Chapter 97

“Or maybe the game runs on multiple planets at once,” Garrett said, remembering the food transfer. “That would explain the freedom players get. Only core-rule violations, like waking a Wraith’s soul, make the game step in.”

No one really knew what was going on. All they could do was speculate and tread carefully.

“You said you were assigned to a Storage Unit? Does that mean there are other types of units too? Lana asked,

“Yeah, Storage Unit.” Ivana nodded. “After that, my consciousness went blank again. When I came to, I was already in the cat’s body.”

“So you have no idea what happened between the Storage Unit and ending up as a cat?” Lyra asked.

“No idea,” Ivana replied.

Lyra tilted her head, her fingers tracing circles on the armrest.

Soul ID.

D Tier.

Storage Unit.

Lyra thought, ‘All three terms point to the same thing: the game is collecting souls, grading them, and sorting them into different units.

“Ivana, in that dark place you mentioned, were there any other souls?” Lyra asked.

Ivana shook her head. “I didn’t feel any others around, but since the game gave me Soul ID 2941, there must have been at least 2,940 souls before me.”

“Assuming the numbers aren’t random,” she added.

The room fell silent. 2,941 souls, maybe even more.

“The game is collecting the souls of dead players, assigning them IDs and ratings, then stuffing them into Wraiths’ bodies to use as batteries,” Lyra said, her words coming out faster than usual.

“There’s something else,” Ivana said, lowering her voice. “When I was inside the cat, I could feel everything: the cat’s feelings, its hunger, the urge to hunt or grab things. I sensed it all.”

“It felt like I was actually a real cat,” Ivana added.

Lyra narrowed her eyes. “So you’re saying your memories as a human disappeared?”

“Yeah, or maybe they just faded away without me even noticing,” Ivana replied.

Ivana looked at Lyra. “I have a guess, but I’m not sure if it’s right.”

“Go ahead, say it,” Lyra said.

“Souls are fuel, but not for the cat. They’re for the whole mission,” Ivana said.

Lana paused. “How did you figure that out?”

“When I was inside the cat, I could feel something pulling at me every now and then,” Ivana said, her soul shimmering again. “It wasn’t coming from the cat. It came from somewhere beyond, from the mission’s walls themselves.

“Every so often, a tiny bit of my soul would get drained away,” Ivana added.

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Chapter 97

“Drained away?” Lyra repeated.

“Yeah, just a little each time, like a mosquito bite: small but constant, always draining me bit by bit, Ivana explained.

Lyra stood up. “So your soul is D Tier.”

Ivana gave a wry smile. “Maybe I wasn’t D Tier when I first died. After being drained for so long, maybe that’s all that’s left of me now. Or maybe I was always D Tier.”

Lana and Garrett exchanged a look. The game was using dead players’ souls as fuel to power the mission.

That was a lot to take in.

Lyra thought, ‘After players die, the game doesn’t just wipe their memories and turn them into Wraiths. It also drains their souls to keep the mission running. It really milks them dry!

“There’s one more thing,” Ivana said, her voice suddenly dropping.

She lowered her head, her eyes landing on the card Lyra was gripping. “When I was inside the cat, the soul-draining thing didn’t happen at a steady rate.”

“What do you mean?” Lyra asked.

“Sometimes it sucked out just a little, other times it pulled a lot,” Ivana explained.

“What makes it change?” Lyra asked.

Ivana looked up. “It depends on how many people died in that round.”

The air in the room felt tight, like someone was choking it. “When more people die, the mission gets fresh souls, so it drains the old ones slower,” Ivana said.

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