Chapter 255: A Progress Report from Siri
Translator: Pluto Editor: Vermillion
The sneak attack by the team from the north wing had backfired. After losing one of their members for no apparent reason, the morale of the north wing team had visibly lowered. After all, it wasn't that easy to kill a posthuman with additional lives. Nobody knew how powerful that attack was since it managed to, in a single instance, use up all the lives that the victim had accumulated.
When they continued fighting with Lin Sanjiu and her team, they started losing focus and accuracy. Even though Reno risked getting slashed by one of their enemies from the back, he created an opportunity for his sister to gain more lives. Finally, the number on Rena's back rose to 4. With that, Top Hat's team had already lost one member and two lives.
Worried that a third party would take advantage of the current circumstances and afraid that his members might lose more lives, he lead the team back to the north wing when he noticed an opportunity while Lin Sanjiu and her team counter-attacked. Lin Sanjiu stopped the siblings from chasing after the group and only watched coldly as the enemy team left.
"Don't forget. There might be other teams out there," she reminded the kids. She gestured at Siri's work desk with her chin. "Our team is small, so let's not stupidly provide an opening for others to attack us."
The bloodied corpse was still lying in front of Siri's work desk. The desk was situated in an open area within the central hall. Anyone from any wing could see the work desk when they looked down, so, naturally, his teammates didn't plan to collect his body from that spot.
Hearing Lin Sanjiu's advice, Rena immediately peeped out from the gaps of the bookshelves. Even though she couldn't see a thing, she couldn't help feeling nervous.
"From the looks of it, we can't go out there for the meantime—" Before she finished her sentence, she heard a raised voice from a woman.
The woman's voice suddenly echoed through the hall. "My dear friends in the central hall, you aren't hurt badly, right? Don't worry. We, people from the south wing, detest such mindless massacres. We just helped you out a little. Don't worry about it."
The three of them exchanged glances and found themselves a little loss for words.
Detest such mindless massacres? It was evident that even the woman who said those words couldn't believe her own lies. That corpse which was full proof of a "mindless massacre" was still lying on the ground without a face. However, why did the people from the south wing help them?
Oddly, the members from the south wing didn't help when the fight first broke out. They only intercepted when the fight was getting heated and people were hurt, stepping in and killing a person like a thunderbolt.
"I don't think they are trying to help us," Lin Sanjiu said calmly, "they are just grabbing an opportunity to wear down the north team. The south wing team must have arrived earlier than the north wing team. They must have noticed that the other team had six members, so they were guarding against them."
This wasn't complicated, and the siblings immediately understood what she said and nodded in agreement. "What should we do now?" Rena asked.
Lin Sanjiu paused for a moment and her lips slowly curled. Before the kids could say anything, she suddenly raised her voice and replied. Her voice was cold but clear, and certainly no one would suspect that it was a voice from a skinless person. "Thanks for helping, but we could have handled it ourselves. I am just going to give everyone a heads up, we aren't afraid if you guys want to fight… We have already killed two people from the previous team."
The siblings were stunned. They gave it some thought and immediately got a sense of what she was doing. Strangely, the people from the north wing team remained silent, as if the top hat man, going along with her lie, concurred with his silence that there were only three members left in his team.
Lin Sanjiu did that not to help the people from the north wing team, but she just wanted to make the situation a little more confusing. The woman from the south wing team seemed to be caught off guard by that reply. Very quickly, there was only silence from the south wing.
After the library fell into an awkward silence for a few seconds, a man with a nice, gentle voice suddenly laughed. His laughter rang out through the silence and was so clear that it was almost as if he was laughing beside each person.
"Alright, since you guys stopped fighting, we are going to look for Miss Siri and ask her some questions," Silvan's brisk voice came from the second floor of the east wing, "I hope you don't mind? After all, we came here last. We hadn't even finished reading the rules and Miss Siri had already chased us up here."
The library was silent. No one replied.
Silvan whistled once and said, "I take that as your approval." Following which, everyone heard the sound of soft discussion from the east wing. After that discussion, the flax-colored hair woman sprinted down the stairs noisily.
"Why didn't he come down here himself?" Rena had just frowned her brows when she heard a extremely sharp whistling sound as something like a lightning attack shot out from the west wing. It was directed at the flax-colored hair woman. She turned her head and looked at it in horror, but she didn't attempt to evade it. The next second, everyone understood Silvan's decision.
"Peach, you have to be a little more careful," Silvan's gentle voice caressed the audience's ears. That lightning attack had been shattered by a sharp "arrow" which had been shot from the east wing. Everyone only noticed afterward that it was not an arrow, but a dart. They had never seen a dart being shot out at such velocity and intensity. The sonic boom created by the dart as it pierced through the air and the clash with the Special Item was so loud that it stunned everyone for a moment.
"Let's fight after we have searched through our own respective sections. We have plenty of time. There is no need to target Peach now." He used the same natural and intimate way of speaking. If Lin Sanjiu had not spoken to him before, she would probably believe that Peach was someone important to him.
The people from the west wing seemed shaken up by that attack. They did not take any action even after Peach ran back to the east wing. Everything seemed to return to the situation 30 minutes before. Lin Sanjiu and the siblings continued searching through the bookshelves with their guard up.
Unlike previously, they would pull out books with titles that seemed powerful and put them in a pile on the ground, just as a backup.
"Hey, do you think the other teams have also discovered that these books are Special Items?" Rena asked softly as she pointed at the books on the bookshelves. Reno shook his head and was just about to speak when Lin Sanjiu, who was not far from them, replied, "At the moment, I think only our team and probably the people from the north wing know about this… But, this isn't something we can hide. Eventually, they will all find out."
"I am just curious. Why don't the people from the library wings on the same side fight with each other? Are the east-west and north-south wings connected in some way? Could that be the reason why they're trying to attack each other?" Lin Sanjiu mumbled quietly as she analyzed the situation.
"This is very plausible." When the siblings thought about this, they heard Siri's monotonous, emotionless voice through the speaker. Her voice resonated through Kisaragi library:
"Progress report: as of now, one book has been found."