Where's the cute girl we were promised? She's completely wiped out S-rank dungeons!

Qiao Ran: "...I really don't like seeing this guy's face right now."

Song Yuan raised her hand and chopped off two monster heads, responding calmly:

"You'd better be careful not to get controlled again. After all, you've always been the easiest one to bully."

Qiao Ran: "...Oh, okay then."

Upon closer inspection, however, there were 300 students in the top 100 of all three grades. But the number of students huddled in the corner was much smaller. A closer look revealed something bloody buried beneath the pile of keys—heaps upon heaps of student NPC corpses, each one stripped and mangled, the thick, pungent smell of blood attracting the monsters.

"Ah~ you've come too."

Hearing the door open, the puppeteer stopped whipping, tossed the handle to Liu Gaosheng to continue, and then slowly walked forward to talk to Song Yuan and the others:

"So you're all in cahoots now? That's really sad... After being apart for so long, the first time we met you shot me. Even though it's healable, it still hurts."

Xu Tai'an looked at him coldly, feeling only anger and disgust at such provocation: "Shut up."

An Xiaoyou: "?! Ah, so she can talk?!"

Qiao Ran stroked her chin: "Oh right, you're the only one out of the three of us who doesn't know."

The puppeteer smiled: "Don't worry~ I have no ill intentions towards you for now. How about we each do our own thing and fight again after the key is discovered?"

Qiao Ran, with a stern face, simplified his words: "So you mean if we drop a key, you'll all come and steal it?"

Puppeteer: "Hey~ How can you say that? If we were the ones to drop the key first, would you fight over it or not?"

The four people: "..."

It seems so; they'll definitely try to snatch it too.

Song Yuan waved her hand, signaling the other three to get to work: "Alright, alright, let's get to work."

The guards and patrolling teachers below had been almost all killed, and the monsters surged in like a flood. Although they were easy to kill, it wasn't fun to see so many of them coming at once.

Song Yuan, whose luck stat was zero, and Xu Tai'an, who used a gun, were mainly responsible for driving them away, while Qiao Ran, who wasn't good with a knife, was in charge of searching. The task of killing the monsters suddenly fell entirely on An Xiaoyou.

An Xiaoyou killed for ten minutes, then began to get impatient. She felt like a laborer hired by her master to harvest rice during the busy farming season in the old days, with countless monster heads that she could never finish chopping off. She protested:

"Wait! How long are we going to keep killing like this? Can't we just ignore this key? Anyway, no matter which side gets it, as long as the power is cut off, everyone can run away. What does it matter whether we have the key or not?!"

"It's not that simple."

Qiao Ran squatted down at her feet, rummaging through the fallen keys: "If that's the case, then the competition between players disappears. How could something be so cheap in a game? The only possibility is that these crucial items aren't one-time use; we might need them again during our escape, so we have to keep them..."

"There aren't too many monsters yet," Song Yuan said, while driving away the monster horde and taking a moment to check on the puppeteers' situation. "They have the scent of blood as bait, so we're not getting as many keys as they are."

Xu Tai'an clearly noticed this as well, and hesitated, saying, "Should we kill NPCs as bait too? Isn't that a bit inappropriate?"

Qiao Ran stood up and rubbed her knees. "No need, that's bad for increasing your hatred points. Don't worry, I have another way. Hey you, come here."

[Ding~ Player "Qiao Ran" has used the skill "Song of the Siren"]

Qiao Ran spotted a monster with relatively fast movement speed and used a skill on it, saying:

"Go and inform all the monsters in the school that the flesh of this living person next to me is the most delicious. Tell them to come and enjoy it quickly."

An Xiaoyou: "***?! Stop! We can't kill them all now, and you're still yelling! Besides, if you're going to talk about anyone, talk about all four of them, why are you only talking about me?!"

Qiao Ran: "Hey~ don't take it so seriously, it doesn't matter who's the bait. As long as Song Yuan and Tai An come and lend a hand, that's fine."

Qiao Ran's player level is C. Since leveling up, the character limit for issuing commands has increased from fifteen to fifty. Furthermore, the duration of the command has been extended to three minutes. The little monster let out a "roar," straightened its body, as if saluting Qiao Ran, and then "whoosh," it darted away.

Soon, the news spread like wildfire, and all the monsters knew there was food here. A dark cloud of monsters surged in, its attraction no less effective than the student corpses on the puppeteer's side.

An Xiaoyou cursed under his breath, forced to fight and dodge at the same time. Just then, Song Yuan and Xu Tai'an's workload decreased, so they both came over to help An Xiaoyou clear out the monsters that he couldn't kill.

Song Yuan exclaimed with satisfaction, "Well done. It's definitely much more practical after the upgrade."

Qiao Ran: "My skills are actually quite useful, okay? It's just that almost all of these keys are invalid and unlabeled. If this continues, are we going to be fighting until dawn? If that happens, we'll be in real danger."

Song Yuan turned and lowered her head, gesturing for him to explain in detail: "What does that mean? Because sunlight can kill them?"

"Bingo," Qiao Ran snapped her fingers, "That's what that fairy tale book says. They'll dissipate when they encounter the sun, and the main body and all their belongings will disappear together. If the key hasn't exploded by then, we'll have to think of another way."

An Xiaoyou started cursing again: "?! What a joke! There are still four or five hours until dawn. Who has the stamina to last that long?"

Xu Tai'an's response was somewhat forced: "Well, I can only restore your health points. As for stamina... there's nothing I can do about it. At this rate, we can't hold out for long."

Just then, a bright blue object was suddenly tossed high into the air and fell towards their location. Song Yuan vaguely sensed that it was heading towards her, and took a step back just before it hit the ground, letting it fall with her. She turned her head and looked coldly at the puppeteer, who was smiling and waving at her:

"Use this~ Your weapons are too outdated, I'll share half with you."

Song Yuan looked down and saw that it was a whip woven from extremely fine silk threads, densely embedded with tiny shards of glass, each shard stained with fresh human blood.

No wonder Liu Gaosheng was able to damage these monsters when he used it earlier. The [Puppet String] is a puppeteer's weapon; it doesn't cause damage when used by others. What truly harms these monsters are the shards of glass on it.

Song Yuan ruthlessly raised her foot, finding the right angle to kick the whip downstairs:

"No need, we don't appreciate your kindness."

The puppeteer quickly raised his hand to stop him: "No! Don't worry, it won't inexplicably burrow into a person like last time. My puppet strings have a very clear division of labor; the strings responsible for attacking and those responsible for controlling the player won't mix up."

Song Yuan hesitated whether to trust him. Currently, their two teams had contrasting strengths: one team had a relatively weaker attraction but a faster monster-killing speed, while the other had a strong attraction but a slower monster-killing speed. Cooperation would be ideal.

[Ding~ Player "Song Yuan" has used the god-tier item [Oathkeeper's Warning Sign]]

"If you want me to believe you, then use this."