A drop of sweat appeared on Kirk’s forehead, slowly rolling down his sharply defined Western features, bringing with it a slight itch.

But Kirk didn’t have the mood to wipe away the sweat, nor did he feel any itch. He only felt his whole body go numb.

How could this happen...

In his mind, images flashed by like a revolving lantern, scenes from the moment the game started to what he was witnessing now...

Every word spoken by Tom, standing before him.

“Please call me the Great Tom!....”

“Welcome to Demon Asylum...”

“You can talk to each other, get familiar with your abilities...”

“The relationship between you is both cooperation and competition.”

It sounded like a competent game staff member, but...

Isn’t this all just bulls**t?!

There’s absolutely no useful information!

The game rules were announced in a mechanical voice, the game’s goal also came from the mechanical voice, and then appeared on the wall.

The beginning of meal time, the end of meal time—everything was just mechanical voice directly transmitted through the air!

Even the warnings were mechanical voice!

Kirk was shocked to realize that it seemed like this game didn’t have any problems at all with the iron-skin robot Tom beside him!

Huh?

Kirk’s whole body went numb, as if he had swallowed a whole prickly ash tree.

Why hadn’t he noticed before?

The words Lu Ce had said earlier were like sharp knives, deeply stabbing into his psychological defenses, giving him a strong sense of defeat.

—"You keep saying you want to break the norm, but you’re still bound by the rules!"

Yeah, why hadn’t he thought of this before? Why hadn’t he felt something was wrong?

Because he had defaulted to the game’s absolute authority, believing it was the game host, and never considered the possibility.

He actually felt that what Lu Ce said made so much sense!

He actually thought a madman’s words made sense! When did this madman notice these things and remember them?

His mental interference had backfired. The other person was clearly mentally confused—he had truly gone insane, hadn’t he?

How could this be...

“Heh heh....” Suddenly, eerie laughter echoed in the silent space.

It was Lu Ce laughing, the sound behind his mask growing louder, until it became a full-on cackle!

“Ha ha ha ha ha!”

No one knew what he was laughing at; it seemed like he was going mad again, but also mocking. In any case, for a moment, even Jiu Tian thought it made sense that the Masked Man was the one truly sick.

“Uh... sorry, Mr. Kirk, I still respect you, I didn’t mean to mock you, hahahaha!”

“I just... started losing control a bit....”

Jiu Tian listened to his words, his gaze dropping, his eyelids twitching.

He saw that Lu Ce’s right hand was fully sunk into the ground, his fingers twisting and turning wildly as if crushing a piece of tofu.

As Lu Ce’s rationality increased, the aura around him surged again.

The boundary between them seemed like it was tied to a wild beast.

“No, wait... let me think.”

Just as Kirk’s mind was in chaos, Tom, who hadn’t spoken the entire time, finally spoke for the first time.

His iron-skin head mechanically twisted to look at Kirk.

【Kirk Player, deduction correct!】

【You have found the one most seriously ill, now, begin to deal with him!】

【Kill him!】

The iron-skin robot Tom announced the game result with no change in tone, just flat and calm.

But hearing those words, Kirk shuddered.

He didn’t know why, but he felt like something was off about the way Tom was speaking now.

Shouldn’t he be reacting to what the red-masked man said?

“But, if we have to say Tom is the host, there’s really no major issue.”

“And your abnormal and crazy behavior seems even more inexplicable.”

Kirk didn’t respond to Tom, instead turning to Lu Ce and speaking.

“My behavior? My behavior has always been very clear.” Lu Ce sat on the ground and shrugged.

“Because I’m hungry, so I need to eat.”

What kind of explanation is this!

This is the problem itself!

It was as if a thousand grass mud horses were galloping through Kirk’s mind, but now he dared not look at Lu Ce like a mental patient anymore.

Lu Ce, sitting on the ground, shook his head and muttered:

“I’ve already told you all, the food and the medicine are problematic.”

“Especially the medicine... that’s not a completion item, that’s what our great Tom prepared, right?”

“That’s not medicine to stabilize the mind! It’s medicine that makes you lose control, that worsens the condition!”

Kirk’s brow twitched, and he subconsciously asked:

“How do you know?!”

But as soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted it—wasn’t this right in front of him....

This guy had already become like this after eating it...

“You don’t need to know how I know... it’s just how it is.”

Lu Ce couldn’t explain too much here, because it was actually part of his own mask’s ability.

The Gluttony Mask stores the energy from eating, but if not released, it could explode the body.

If it was just a meal with over a hundred cans of food, with Lu Ce’s current physical strength, he shouldn’t have had any trouble. But when he ate for the first time, he felt something was wrong.

The energy surged in an abnormal way.

And under Gluttony, if you eat something toxic, you become immune to poison, but with the accumulation of food energy, your mental confusion increases.

If those medicines were really calming ones, they should have been like sugar pills to Lu Ce!

But with such violent energy and mental confusion, the medicine definitely had “poison”—highly toxic.

Toxic enough to make everyone here think they were sick, toxic enough to drive everyone mad, even altering their consciousness to make them think they needed that medicine!

“Actually, when I entered the asylum and saw the task, I thought of a very simple way to complete it.”

“—Just kill everyone, and wouldn’t that complete the game?”

“But later, I realized something was wrong... that patient said, someone tortured him.”

“Who tortured him? Previous players? No, they couldn’t defeat Wang Ao, and this wouldn’t make him go insane.”

“Plus, look, the red light is still flashing, but the punishment hasn’t come yet.”

“Who’s going to punish me?!”

“Who’s torturing them?!”

Lu Ce stood up, took a step, and looked down at the iron-skin robot Tom, whose mouth on the mask was wide open, as if to swallow Tom whole.

“Why aren’t you answering me, the one truly sick!”

“Tom.”

“You smell so good... I’ve already smelled the human meat on you....”