Lin Yan looked from the man with the axe to the other two, then down at the goblin still dragging itself across the floor.
"Why?"
The three men exchanged glances before the one with the axe stepped forward.
"Just leave it to us."
Lin Yan watched him for a moment, then turned back and lifted the hammer.
"Wait!"
All three stopped. Lin Yan glanced over his shoulder, waited until they cautiously started forward again, then raised the hammer a little higher.
They stopped a second time.
"Hey!"
Lin Yan lowered it. They moved. He raised it again.
The man with the axe finally caught on, and his face darkened.
"Are you fucking with us?"
Lin Yan looked genuinely puzzled.
"Huh?"
"This isn’t funny."
The goblin continued pulling itself forward between them, its arms scraping across the bloodstained tiles.
Lin Yan rested the hammer on his shoulder.
"So what do you want?"
"You’ve already taken all the experience," the empty-handed man said. "At least leave one for us."
One of Lin Yan’s eyebrows lifted while the other drew into a slight frown.
Experience?
"System."
[Yes?]
"Do they have systems too?"
[I have detected nothing of that nature from any of them.]
Lin Yan’s eyes narrowed.
Then why were they talking about experience?
His gaze moved across the three men again. None of them looked any different from the people in the control room.
"Can another system hide from you?"
[Possibly. I am not omniscient.]
Don’t tell me they have systems too.
The man with the axe mistook his silence for hesitation.
"You killed almost all of them yourself," he said. "You’ve gotten enough already."
Lin Yan glanced toward the surveillance camera above the platform, then back at the three men.
Better feel them out first.
"All right. Answer one question, and maybe I’ll leave the goblin to you."
The three exchanged looks.
The man with the axe answered first.
"What do you want to know?"
"This experience you keep talking about. What exactly is it?"
The man with the fire extinguisher spoke first.
"You kill monsters, you get experience. You level up."
He gestured toward Lin Yan’s body.
"You think we can’t see what happened to you?"
The empty-handed man immediately joined in.
"You went into that tunnel looking normal. Then you came back half a head taller and built like that."
"So?"
"So you leveled up."
Lin Yan said nothing.
The man with the axe pointed at the dead goblins scattered across the platform.
"Every time you kill one of these things, you get stronger. That’s why you came out here alone. You wanted all the experience for yourself."
Lin Yan stared at him, then at the other two.
"System."
[Yes?]
"Why the fuck do you always sound like a customer service rep?"
[Fuck you.]
"They’re guessing, aren’t they?"
[That would appear to be the case.]
Lin Yan’s grip on the hammer loosened.
"So they don’t know about you."
[Nothing they have said suggests that they do.]
"And they don’t actually know what happened to me."
[They appear to have inferred a conventional leveling system from the visible changes to your body.]
Lin Yan was quiet for a moment.
"Damn. I was this close to killing them."
[Yes. You nearly forfeited the 5,000 point reward.]
Lin Yan looked back at the goblin. It had managed to drag itself another half meter.
He stepped toward it.
"Hey," the man with the axe said. "What are you doing?"
Lin Yan raised the hammer.
"Wait! You said you’d leave it to us!"
Crack
The iron head struck the back of the goblin’s skull with a short, heavy crack, driving its face into the tiles. Both arms went slack.
Silence.
A familiar panel appeared at the edge of Lin Yan’s vision.
[Trait Plunder triggered.]
[Trait obtained: Vitality I.]
[Secure relocation progress: 14/14.]
[All remaining goblins eliminated.]
Lin Yan glanced at the notifications.
Vitality?
No wonder it was so damn hard to kill.
"What the fuck?" the man with the axe shouted.
"You said you’d leave it to us!"
Lin Yan rested the hammer head against the floor.
"No, I didn’t."
"Yes, you fucking did!"
"I said maybe."
The man stared at him.
Lin Yan smiled.
"Guess I decided not to."
For a second, none of the three said anything.
Then all of them started shouting at once.
"You fucking liar!"
"What kind of asshole does that?"
"You knew exactly what you were doing!"
Their faces had gone red, flushed almost like teenage boys standing in front of someone they had a crush on.
The man with the axe stepped forward.
"You lying piece of shit."
One of Lin Yan’s eyebrows rose.
"Oh?"
He shifted the hammer into one hand and took a step toward them.
A clear chime sounded.
A translucent panel appeared in front of Lin Yan.
"What the hell..." the man with the axe muttered.
[Convergence cleared.]
[Evaluating participant contributions...]
Almost immediately, the radio at Lin Yan’s waist crackled.
"Lin Yan?" Jason’s voice came through. "Are you seeing this?"
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