Lu Mingfei, become the king of gambling in dungeons!

Under the dim, yellowish incandescent light of the subway car, three gaunt figures sat listlessly on the floor, their desire to communicate seemingly reduced to the bare minimum.

"Have we arrived at our destination?" the man asked, his voice slightly hoarse.

"..."

The girl sitting next to him placed her hand weakly on his and said softly, "It doesn't make much difference whether it's there or not. Maybe a little change is a good thing for us."

The comforted boy forced a smile: "Maybe it really is something good. Compared to last time, it seems to have stopped several stops earlier this time... seven stops. The location is different. I didn't know the subway here could have accidents too. After you get off, is there anywhere you want to go?"

A ray of light briefly appeared in the girl's previously empty eyes, but she didn't give a reply in any language. Instead, she squeezed the boy's hand even tighter, giving a more definite answer.

Their shoulders touched.

If we can get out of here alive, it doesn't matter where we go together.

Gao Mi, a 04 graduate of the Department of Alchemy and Mechanical Engineering at Kassel College, is currently an executive specialist.

Wan Boqian, a student from the Department of Mechanics at Kassel College, Class of 05, and Gao Mi were in the same group as executive department specialists.

Gao Mi and Wan Boqian were already a couple who knew each other well in private, but due to the strict rule that members of the executive department were not allowed to date, they were still underground. The original plan was to accumulate enough experience to be sent to the Korean branch before officially informing their parents, but now that was obviously not possible.

They are trapped here, trapped in a land where the living should not set foot.

Because of the special use of Wanboqian's "Blood Ties" spell, the two were recently transferred to this city to serve as explorers. In ancient times, they would be considered "scouts." Their combat strength was not outstanding, but their ability to gather intelligence was definitely not lacking.

Gao Mi's gaze seemed to fall on the last of the three, a dejected young man named Zhao Menghua, who was squatting in the corner of the subway car with a scruffy beard.

The only two ways to leave this subway station maze are to kill the maze's owner or to win the betting games and accumulate enough chips.

Killing the master of the maze was too impractical for them; the only remaining option was to play Texas Hold'em.

The rules of the game are that those who lose all their money must leave immediately, board different subways, and wander alone in this maze until the next round of gambling. Only then will the subway stop at Wangfujing Station, where people can gather, board the same subway, and find the gatekeeper, the Kamaitachi Queen, to start the next round of gambling.

The stakes are loneliness, personal loneliness.

Everyone's loneliness is limited, so you have to keep winning over others until you accumulate enough to escape this maze.

If she wanted to go out with him, she could only keep sacrificing her own loneliness... Gao Mi thought with a pang of guilt.

He felt guilty, but when it came to actually doing it, he would show no mercy or be careless, because it concerned him and his girl.

However, the chips of just one person are not enough. In state poker, there is only one winner in each round, and the loser pays the winner. The more gamblers at the table, the more efficiently the chips are accumulated. If five or six more people come to the maze to participate in this game, then he will be confident that he can take Wanboqian away from here.

Hearing the conversation, Zhao Menghua slowly raised his head: "When do you think the rescue team will arrive?"

He would ask this question out of the blue almost every twenty to thirty minutes, initially with a strong sense of resentment, but later with deep despair.

He had become numb after being trapped here for so long. At first, he struggled desperately and kept calling for help from the outside world because the subway train would occasionally miss its stop.

The platform was brightly lit, and the passengers were so calm that they couldn't hear him or see his waving arms. He could see passengers waiting outside the carriage, and occasionally he could see someone enter the carriage.

But no one actually comes in, and he can't leave either; it's a misalignment of time and space.

Zhao Menghua tried shouting out the window until he lost his voice, but people outside continued reading, listening to music, or daydreaming, and no one paid attention to his breakdown.

Outside the subway window, bat-like creatures fluttered and rose from the fallen stone fragments. They were weasels, gracefully swirling upwards before suddenly accelerating, leaving a series of afterimages in the air.

They flew away from their nest in panic, too afraid to stay there.

Footsteps could be heard coming from outside the window.

The hurried footsteps seemed to be dragging something heavy.

This was the first time in days that they had heard footsteps that sounded like humans.

All three of them suddenly raised their heads.

Are they rescuers? The out-of-control Zhao Menghua was the first to rush to the nearest window in the carriage. Once he had this thought, he didn't care about anything else.

He needed to take a look; he needed to confirm whether he still had a chance of survival.

It was a long-haired man in a black trench coat—sure enough, some kind of professional rescuer! Zhao Menghua was so surprised he couldn't speak, and raised his arm to bang on the window.

He was then forced down onto the subway seat, his hands were firmly locked, and his mouth was covered.

Sweating profusely, Gao Mi pressed him down and tried to communicate with him using lip reading.

"Don't make a sound, hold your breath."

His excitement at hearing the footsteps was no less than Zhao Menghua's, and perhaps even greater.

But in an instant, the rationality expected of an executive officer suppressed his excitement.

The person who arrived was so quiet; their pace was quick but not chaotic at all. In this godforsaken place, they were still strolling leisurely.

Driven by curiosity and a sense of wishful thinking, he glanced out the window, only to feel as if he had fallen into an ice cave.

In all his years at the academy and the executive department, he had never seen such demonic, molten gold eyes. The intense fear made him feel completely disoriented, and if Wan Boqian hadn't been holding him back, he would have knelt down on the spot.

If there is this level of bloodline oppression even without eye contact, then it is almost impossible for them to be a mixed-blood from the academy who came to rescue them.

The rusted partition between the old-fashioned carriages was being slowly pulled open, making a sound of rust peeling off.

It's time to get off the bus.

Gao Mi and Wan Boqian remained motionless.

The trembling and fear in her body had not yet subsided when Gao Mi thought of the "Wild Hunt" related to Norse mythology. It was often regarded by people who once believed in gods as an ominous sign before disaster. The Secret Party had also studied this unverifiable phenomenon.

Myths say that witnesses may have been kidnapped to the underworld or had their souls taken away to a distorted spacetime... In fact, the concept of "Wild Hunt" is quite widespread and belongs to the category of folk legends, far beyond just one type of mythology in one region.

Its leader may be the legendary hunter Hern the Hunter or the red dragon King Arthur, or even the goddess Freyja... but the most famous and widely known is Odin, the Norse god-king.

The god of death walks at night, sword in hand.

What was He going to do with those weapons? Go and kill another god?

Through the carriage door, they finally saw what the man in the trench coat and black hair was dragging: the mutilated corpse of the Kamaitachi Queen, the heart area a bloody mess, with thick, black blood flowing endlessly.

Seemingly for traffic safety reasons and to avoid disrupting subway traffic, the man dragged the Kamaitachi Queen, whose heart had been crushed, out of the tunnel and dumped her body on the nearest platform.

Gao Mi, Wan Boqian, and Zhao Menghua remained silent.

"Huff... huff..."

Only after the figure in the trench coat completely disappeared at the end of the tunnel did they begin to breathe again, still filled with fear and lingering apprehension.