I don't want to conquer witches anymore.

The stone lion is indeed quite strong, but it's not a match that Ida needs to fight. Among the people present, even the armored witch Stephanie could probably kill the stone lion single-handedly. Why would Ida lower herself to deal with such an opponent? Logically speaking, she shouldn't have much interest in bullying the weak.

"Because of the Witch Game." Annie's voice rang out beside him, her expression very serious as she looked at Duke. "Duke, something terrible has happened! Amber has been kidnapped by Carol!"

"Huh?!" Duke was stunned. He rubbed his temples and asked uncertainly, "How long was I unconscious? What happened during that time?"

“You were only unconscious for about ten minutes, but just seconds after you passed out, the Little Prince appeared. To protect you, Amber teleported with the Little Prince to the other side of the room, and at that moment, time in the world stopped. When the time stop ended, Amber and the Little Prince disappeared.” Annie calmly recounted what happened after Duke fell unconscious. “After that, a Crown-level Witch Game suddenly affected this core chamber, temporarily trapping us here.”

"Amber and the Little Prince have been kidnapped by Carol? Is there a Crown-level witch's game here?"

Duke blinked, then frowned.

Whether a Witch Game reaches the Crown level isn't determined by its strength, but solely by its ability to influence the real world. Clearly, when the apocalypse arrives, every alternate dimension invading the floating city is a Crown-level Witch Game. However, the Crown-level Witch Game appearing in the core chamber of the floating city at this moment is somewhat strange.

"What kind of witch game is this?"

"Duke, have you ever heard of Animal Chess?"

"of course."

Duke had certainly heard of Animal Chess. This simple puzzle game was something everyone had played as a child. It was a cyclical battle game where strength was ranked in cycles: Elephant > Lion > Tiger > Leopard > Wolf > Goat > Cat > Mouse. But the strongest elephant could be defeated by the weakest mouse.

“The content of this witch’s game is actually Animal Chess. Our strength is fixed by some kind of force, forming a ladder-like ranking.” Annie shrugged and pointed to Ida, who was beating up a stone tiger, next to her: “Ida is our ‘elephant,’ Alice is the lion, I am the tiger, and Zun is the leopard.”

At this point, Annie lifted her bangs, revealing a strange magical character on her forehead, which meant "tiger".

Duke glanced at everyone in the order Annie had given them, noting that the power marks were etched in different places on their bodies. Some were quite obvious on the back of their hands, while others were completely invisible, clearly imprinted in more private areas.

Moreover, it is obvious that the order of the pieces is based on the strength of everyone. Ida is undoubtedly the strongest, followed by Alice, the apostle of the mute, then Annie, the top necromancer who has mastered bone transformation, and the mechanical dragon girl, Zun.

But what about him? And aren't they outnumbered?

Duke frowned, and then he heard Annie continue:

"Stephanie is a cat."

Duke: "?"

Why skip over the leopard and the wolf?

I suspect you are persecuting Miss Armored Witch, and I have evidence.

“As for Duke, you were unconscious during the witch game evaluation, so…” Annie clicked her tongue and pointed at Duke’s collarbone with her finger, “you were judged as a ‘rat’ by the witch game.”

Duke: "..."

Duke's lips twitched slightly, and he said with a somewhat expressionless face, "What you love is your life."

Annie: "?"

Chapter 455 Quiet down, I'm playing against AlphaGo

"What you love is your life."

"What nonsense are you talking about?" Annie naturally didn't understand what Duke was talking about. She shook her head and asked somewhat seriously, "Duke, what do you think we should do?"

“The space here isn’t sealed off. If Amber is freed, she’ll definitely come back here immediately.” Duke sensed the space in the core chamber. Although he couldn’t use spatial magic and didn’t have the talent for it, after spending so much time with Amber and benefiting from her spatial teleportation so many times, Duke could still sense whether the space was sealed off or not. “Since Amber hasn’t returned, it means she’s still being held captive by Carol… Who knows what Carol is planning? We have to go rescue her.”

Carol is probably not hostile, and she won't really pose a life-threatening threat to Amber, but Duke doesn't know what she's up to. This city lord's ultimate goal is always to save the floating city, and she'll stop at nothing to achieve it... If Amber can be rescued as soon as possible, it's best not to delay until things get complicated.

But no matter what, Duke has to complete this witch's game.

"Is there anything difficult about this Animal Chess Witch Game?" Duke frowned and asked Annie, who remained conscious throughout. He knew Annie's abilities; they had solved the Truth or Dare Witch Game together back then. Duke felt that Annie couldn't have been completely clueless during his unconsciousness. "Annie, do you have any ideas?"

Anne shook her head, then said to Ida, who was still playing with the stone lion, "Ida, don't kill it yet. I'll prepare a Duke to demonstrate the situation."

“Oh.” Ida nodded without turning her head. She seemed to be holding back her anger, mostly because Carol had kidnapped Amber and the Little Prince in front of her. She casually picked up the stone lion, carried it to Anne and Duke, and placed it in front of Anne: “Here.”

The stone lion struggled frantically, waving its limbs. Under Ida's control, it looked like a harmless big cat. But when Annie reached out and made slight contact with its flailing limbs, a surprising scene unfolded—Annie's outstretched right hand was easily broken by the stone lion!

Anne frowned slightly. Her right hand was fractured at a horrifying 90-degree angle. She endured the pain and used Bone Transformation, while chanting a necromancy spell. In no time, she healed her right hand completely... But Duke still remembered the exaggerated effect vividly.

From any perspective, this stone lion wasn't very strong. How could its casual, struggling attacks have so easily broken Annie's arm? The only explanation is the rules of the Witch Game world.

“See? My rank is ‘Tiger,’ while this stone lion’s rank is ‘Lion.’ Although I’m stronger than this elemental creature, I’d be instantly killed in a real fight.” Annie clicked her tongue, speaking with lingering fear, seemingly unaware of the cost they’d paid for this information. “The only exception is Ida. As a top-tier legend, she has a natural resistance to the rules of the alternate dimension… but her rating in the witch game was originally Elephant, and aside from ‘Rat,’ no one could defeat her.”

Duke frowned.

He touched his collarbone, where a mouse pattern was drawn. Duke, marked by this pattern, would be the weakest person in the room, the only noob who couldn't beat anyone except "Elephant"... Although, strictly speaking, Duke's strength was among the best in the room. Apart from Ida, whom he couldn't beat, Duke could easily defeat everyone else.

Although his combat prowess wasn't as impressive as Cecil's, and he was far from being able to participate in the legendary battlefield on his own merits, Duke had unknowingly become a remarkable high-level professional. With his past experience of igniting divine fire and becoming a god, as well as his superb omnipotent trickery and spell thievery, Duke's strength was already worthy of a hero-level rating.

Unfortunately... even a cat couldn't beat the hero Duke at this point.

"I'm going to get angry, you little rascal!"

Ignoring Duke, who was having another episode, Annie continued, "Ever since the rules of this world invaded the floating city, elemental creatures like the ones we just saw have been constantly appearing in this room. They also have the characteristics of the game of Animal Chess, and they've been using a series of challenges to keep us here."

"Besides earth element, are all the elemental creatures (wind, fire, water, earth) present? Are there any shadow creatures?"

Upon hearing Duke's question, Anne immediately turned to look at Stephanie beside her.

The armored witch with the cat-shaped engraving on her chest in the Northern Hemisphere trembled slightly. She didn't struggle for long before resignedly walking out of the room with a mournful face. A few seconds later, she ran backwards, waving her arms and legs wildly. Behind her was a water elemental monster shaped like a large dog, dripping large amounts of liquid into the room.

Before the water elemental could splash onto the vessel's main body, Ida took a step forward and arrived in front of the water elemental, then kicked its core, causing it to shatter.

“Look, all four elemental creatures—wind, fire, water, and earth—have appeared… but we haven’t seen any shadow creatures. Once we try to leave this room, elemental creatures will spawn at the door, forcing us to come back and survive under Ida’s protection.”

Anne said casually, but they obviously wouldn't have had such a smooth start if they hadn't yet grasped the rules of the game. Perhaps it was precisely because they had suffered losses that Anne understood this so clearly now. Even so, even with a basic understanding of the witch game, Anne still couldn't think of a strategy for it for the time being.

"The key to this game... is finding an opponent to play against." Duke shrugged. "Once we find her and make her concede, we will naturally win this game of Animal Chess and be able to leave."

Annie frowned: "Finding an opponent and then making her concede? Isn't that a bit too difficult?"

"What's so difficult about that?" Duke looked at Annie with a puzzled expression, then turned to the mechanical dragon girl beside him and said, "Zun, say 'I give up'."

Zun tilted her head, but quickly did as she was told: "I give up."

As she finished speaking, the world rules that had enveloped the core chamber were broken, and the markings that had appeared on everyone did not fade away quickly—but the power that had been restricting them truly dissipated.

Annie was stunned. She never expected that clearing a witch game could be so easy. She turned her head and looked at Zun with surprise (because the mechanical dragon girl was a mechanical dragon girl, she did not show any change in expression). She seemed to be thinking about why the animal chess witch game was really solved when Zun said "I give up".

But soon, Anne subconsciously looked at something in the room that she had been ignoring.

The vessel itself is the supercomputer that maintains the operation of the floating city.

"Wait a minute?" Annie murmured, "Could it be..."

Could it be that all those elemental creatures were summoned by the Zun itself? And that it was their opponent in the game?

"That's right, it seems our opponent in this intense game is none other than AlphaGo... Thank you AlphaGo for the two free single draws, thank you boss."

Duke shrugged and nodded at AlphaGo with a grin. During the limited-time event, his rewards for clearing the Witch Game were doubled, and upon receiving a single draw opportunity, Duke didn't hesitate to use it... Soon, he pulled out two apples.

One apple looks as red as a poisonous fruit, while the other looks as bright as gold.

Those are poisoned apples and golden apples.

[Item Name: Poison Apple]

[Item Name: Golden Apple]

These two apples are the real grand prize in this limited-time pool.

Chapter 456 The Madman and the Little Madwoman

[Item Name: Poison Apple]

[Item Description: The princess who bit into the apple fell into an eternal sleep. But reality is not a fairy tale; in reality, a prince's kiss will have no effect, and miracles of resurrection will not happen because of love.]

[Item Effect: Highly Poisonous.]

[Item Name: Golden Apple]

[Item Description: Power, wisdom, strength, courage, heroic glory... Clearly, in the eyes of a true hero, none of these things compare to a perfect love. Yet, the hero who chose love ultimately ignited the fuse that sparked war.]

[Item Effect: Get everything you want.]

Duke lowered his head, looking thoughtfully at the two apples in his hand—one was as red as blood, and the other looked as dazzling as gold. He had originally thought that the poisoned apple and the golden apple were probably one poison and the other an antidote... But now it seemed that the two apples had no relation to each other. The latter was not the antidote for the former, and the former was not another form of the latter. The only thing they had in common was that they were both apples.

One comes from "Snow White," and the other is the direct trigger for the Trojan War in the Greek mythological system.

It seems that the items featured in this limited-time gacha machine aren't so bad after all.

"What are these two apples?" Annie, who was standing nearby, leaned over and asked curiously, "Is there any significance to them?"

“I don’t know what effect this one has.” Duke shook the golden apple in his left hand, then raised his right hand. “And this one is a highly poisonous apple.”

Annie blinked. As a qualified necromancer, she was extremely curious about anything that could cause death, and the poisoned apple was no exception. She stretched out her finger and tried to poke the bright red apple, which was as red as blood, and asked in surprise, "Poisonous? How poisonous? How poisonous can something that can be touched directly with your hands be?"

"I do not know."

Duke shrugged, then casually raised his right hand, which was holding the poisoned apple, to his mouth and took a bite without hesitation, swallowing the toxic flesh. Annie instinctively reached out to Duke, but the gesture was largely ineffective, as her brain couldn't process his actions. Before she could react, Duke had already devoured most of the poisoned apple in a few bites.

After eating most of the poisoned apple, Duke's muscles began to undergo alarming changes as if boiling. The immense pain caused Duke to convulse and almost fall to his knees. In a short moment, his skin was burned to ash by the boiling muscles. He then swayed slightly before collapsing to the ground.

Anne was stunned.

Almost everyone present was stunned. The instant they realized "Duke is dead," they didn't even feel surprise or shock. This was partly because they had already witnessed "Duke's death" earlier that day. And partly because Duke's death this time was so inexplicable. He clearly knew the apple in his hand was poisonous, so why did he still eat it?

Has he gone mad?

But Anne was the only one who didn't think so. After a brief moment of stunned silence, her eyes lit up, and she realized the only problem with the Duke plan—it was herself.

So, almost without hesitation, Anne activated her bone transformation, turning her arm into a bone knife, and then without hesitation slashed it into her throat.

Anne's head flew off, and her headless body fell beside Duke, who had turned into a pool of boiling flesh and blood.

The shock of death and the pungent smell of blood filled the nostrils of the remaining people, and no one could understand what they were doing... until time stopped and began to rewind.

……

Duke suddenly opened his eyes. He was about to get up when he realized to his surprise that he was inside a transparent coffin. He frowned, kicked open the already incomplete lid of the crystal coffin, and looked around at his companions outside the coffin.

There is no amber.

Ida is playing with a stone lion.

"Is the save point for the time loop delayed until Amber is kidnapped? Carol seems a bit anxious."

Duke gave a faint smile and muttered a couple of words under his breath.

He was certain that Carol would not let him die. Although Duke did not know why she had kidnapped Amber, Duke himself was definitely more important! Carol kidnapped Amber and the Little Prince most likely to provoke him and lead him somewhere—so Duke almost without hesitation chose to commit suicide, hoping to trigger a time loop and return to the time before Amber was kidnapped.

However, the time loop was under Carol's control. She did not choose to send them back to their original save point, which was the daytime of DAY0, but instead sent them back to the time when Duke had just woken up after getting the body.