Legacy of Forgotten Times 162 The Friendship Game

"Don't forget our deal, old pervert. You can't disappear all by yourself!" Linri shouted as he watched Richard's back. He hoped that this conversation was enough to change the future. If possible he didn't want to fight with him.

Now it was his turn to leave too. He got up and walked through the door. It was another long corridor. Eventually, the road diverged into two. His watch directed him to take the left path. At the end of the corridor, there was a bright light. When he walked towards it, his eyes couldn't get used to the light. When they finally did, Lini found out that he was standing on top of something like a balcony. There were nine other similar ones around him and they made a complete circle. In front of him was a tablet and there were eight other people standing on the other balconies. One of them was empty which was kinda weird. Normally everyone should have already arrived. Anyway, that was not important for now.

Linri looked at the inspected all the balconies searching for a certain someone. His eyes stopped moving around when they fell onto a girl with short brown hair. Her eyes were brown and she was wearing a little flower clasp on her hair. She was Riku's older sister and a senior in Autumnfall. She was Muffin's second student character and a carbon copy of the railgun from the Certain Scientific X series. Basically, she was a lightning mage.

"What are you looking at?" she asked Linri with hostility.

"Your flat chest" Linri replied with his trademark sarcasm.

Her background was a little special. She was the oldest child of the Hagane clan, an established family of darkness mages. Normally she was supposed to be their heir but it turned out she had no affinity with darkness and instead her affinity lied in lightning which the clan did not appreciate. That was why she was ostracized. Riku, on the other hand, did not want to be the heir but the job fell into his shoulders which strained their sibling relationship.

"You!" Rina seemed like she was about to explode. Her flat chest was a taboo that shouldn't be mentioned along with her family.

"What? Can't a man appreciate a perfectly good flat chest?" Linri replied again in his sarcasm.

He did not like her at all. Personally, there was nothing wrong with their interactions or anything. It was just that since Max really liked ATLA series he always saw lightning as a more advance form of fire hence his character Linri had a one-sided rivalry with her but Rina never paid attention to it. Of course, Linri tried to find ways to beat her and Muffin made fun of Max's actions. He wasn't a good RPer and when Muffin learnt that Max was making combat simulations in his mind to find a way to beat Rina he didn't let him see the end of it. Ugh, just the sight of her was enough to make him angry. He did not remember the last time he was humiliated so much. Yeah, maybe he was wrong with taking out his anger on Rina but he did not really care.

"Can you guys stop with your bickering?" a boy with green hair told them to shut up. His name was Ryan Moore. He was another freshmen in Linri's class and he was a little bit on the short side. From his appearance, he looked like he was one of those little cute shota types. You know, the ones you would want to protect and pinch their cheeks. However, unlike his appearance, Ryan had a very harsh personality.

*FWOOOOSH*

Linri looked behind to see that the corridor he took to come here was not there anymore. Then the tablet in front of Linri suddenly lit up. On it, there were the rules of the game they were about to play.

---

The Friendship Game

1- All the players start with 5 antidotes

2- In order to win the game you have to have 20 antidotes

3- At the start of each round the players can vote either cooperate or betray each other. Depending on the choice they made the round will have different outcomes.

4- At the start of each round before they make their choice the players will have to bet a certain number of antidotes. The minimum number is 1 while there is no set number on the maximum amount of antidotes they can bet.

5- In the case of cooperate; if every other player in the game has chosen the same option the players will gain the same amount of antidotes they have bet. If there is only a single player that chose to cooperate he will gain all the antidotes the betrayers have bet.

6- In the case of betray; the betrayers will gain the amount of antidotes cooperators bet divided by the number of betrayers. If all the other players choose to betray, they will all lose the antidotes that they have bet. If the betrayers win that round all the players will lose antidotes by the highest number of antidotes a betrayer has bet.

7- If a player's antidotes reach 0 it is game over for them. The collars all the players wear has a deadly poison inside of them and in order to stop that poison from taking effect, an antidote will be consumed. If at the start of the next round a player only has a single antidote left it will be consumed to stop the poison and it is game over for them. If at the start of a round a player doesn't have any antidotes they will die due to poison.

---

"Okay, so everyone cooperates right?" asked one of the participants. Linri did not remember her name but she looked like Weiss from that series which went to shit after its creator passed away in surgery.

"Yes," said six other voice... wait! There was something wrong with the math. There was a total of nine players and if you subtract the one who asked the question shouldn't there be eight voices that agreed?

"I am choosing betrayal and will bet 5 antidotes," said Linri.

Obviously, he was one of the people who didn't give his reply. Cooperating with others while his life was on the line was definitely not something Linri would do. Especially when the game itself was favouring the betrayers. It was almost as if saying them to betray their classmates and friends with all the perks of choosing to betray. And aside from the fact that you knew you would kill your friends, there was really no side effect to choosing betrayal... well, that was assuming there were two people dumb enough to cooperate. If everyone chose betrayal it would be game over for him.

"How can you say that!?" said 'Weiss'

"Why? I don't see any benefits in cooperating. Just look at the rules. It clearly favours the betrayers. You can't win this game by putting your faith in others. Even if maybe you can go a couple of turns with no one betraying each other but eventually someone will fall into the temptation and choose to betray. Considering I don't want to be backstabbed, I made my declaration. And most of all we are on the clock. Every round we will lose 1 antidote so if we want to achieve the win condition that would mean we will have to bet at least 2 antidotes. Then what if in the first round someone betrays? You will lose the 2 antidotes you bet and you will lose at least another one because of the betrayer and next turn another one will be consumed to stop the potion making it a game over. That is assuming the betrayer was human enough to give you another turn to live but if someone already chose to betray his fellow students I don't think they would show you mercy, instead they would bet at least 2 antidotes so that you would die the next round. If the game is already stacked this much against us why show any pretences? I am not cooperating. Instead, I will bet all five of my antidotes to kill all of you. Since we are going to die why not make it sooner? Either you live or I live. There is no in-between" said Linri in madness. He looked like some kind of evil demon lord who was out to destroy the world. The fact that his silver serpent bracelet was giving an eerie red light didn't help either. Everyone could see that he was dead serious in his decision to kill them. The air in the room suddenly got heavy. They were having a hard time looking at him. Actually, they were even having trouble with just breathing. Some of them couldn't handle the pressure from his killing intent and fell to their knees in panic.

He was really planning to kill all of them. To him, they were just some game characters. In recent times his outlook might have changed and he might have started to treat them as real people but in his core, he still thought of them as nothing more than a figment of other people's imaginations. If he had to kill them so that he could live, he wouldn't even bat an eye to do so. This was the kind of person he was and nothing could change that.

Chapter end