My Level Zero System
Chapter 233 - 233: Distrust

This, in fact, was also a trap.

The reason was simple.

Tolimus... was lying.

His proposed plan was quite impressive and meticulously detailed. But it delved too deeply into regulating the damage received by both teams, "overlooking" a critical, very critical issue.

That is... how would they deal with the second enemy?

This was the fatal flaw. If they continued to use the old sequential attack method, they wouldn't be able to do anything to the remaining team.

And of course, that's because Tolimus fundamentally didn't want to do that. The entire plan was merely a diversion to mislead Pegasus.

Pegasus had been trapped by Tolimus in the illusion that she could gain significant benefits after she and her team eliminated another team. She didn't realize that what Tolimus was targeting was precisely her team.

That's why, from the very beginning, Tolimus found a reason to dismiss Pegasus's hypothesis about checking who, between Kain and Faith, was the liar. Because once that was established, they would frame Kain's and Faith's teams with two clearly designated advantages.

These two advantages, ironically, required both to be fully utilized. Thus, to gain practical benefits, Pegasus would have to consider a strategy of ambushing both teams. And at this point, the problem would emerge.

That's why Tolimus had to quickly dismiss this hypothesis from the start. Because from the very beginning, his goal was to completely devour Pegasus's team.

After Pegasus and her team painstakingly achieved victory, she would realize that her own initial deduction was correct and the benefits she received were useless. At that point, Tolimus would lead his team in and eliminate Pegasus's team.

As for how he would do that?

Very simple, this related to the advantage he had received in the box.

It was a map that would display the real-time positions of other team members. Although it could only be used once every short interval, this advantage was still incredibly powerful.

This meant that if he could truly track the movements of the other three factions, it would already be predetermined that Kain's and Faith's plans to trap each other using Tolimus and Pegasus would not materialize.

With a real-time position map, tricking him in this way was impossible.

But here, another problem arose: although Tolimus held a great advantage at this moment, the other teams weren't fools. If he used this advantage too crudely, for example, by repeatedly ambushing and harassing other teams, no matter how foolish they were, they would realize that he knew their positions.

Consequently, despite holding the advantage, Tolimus didn't dare to overuse it.

This could be considered his own Prisoner's Dilemma. But he had found a perfect opportunity!

"I... will win."

Looking at Pegasus's pensive face, Tolimus thought to himself.

But what Tolimus didn't know was that, at this very moment, Pegasus was thinking the exact same thing.

She would win, literally.

Because her team was the one holding the advantage of the direct location of the victory flag.

Just by reaching it and acquiring it, her team would win this round immediately.

The moment she received this advantage from the box, Pegasus was overjoyed, feeling so close to victory. But when that moment passed, Pegasus returned to reality and began to think, realizing that things wouldn't be so simple.

Indeed, all four, Faith, Kain, Tolimus, and Pegasus, could deduce that this was a closed space, so external assistance couldn't appear. And if it wasn't due to external factors, then the box must have been sent to them by the organizer of this tournament. If so, the sender had no reason to favor anyone, so everyone must have a box.

Therefore, Pegasus's thoughts diverged into two possibilities.

The first possibility: everyone had a box containing the flag's hidden location.

The other possibility: everyone had a box, but only hers contained the victory flag's hidden location. In other words, this was an advantage that only her team possessed.

Pegasus was originally still unsure which prediction was correct when Faith arrived, proposing an alliance with her.

At this point, Pegasus could confirm a truth: the teams' advantages were different.

In other words, her team was indeed the one closest to victory!

But Pegasus's thoughts then shifted.

Reconsidering the premise that Kanzax Academy couldn't favor any team, the reason she was given the shortest path to victory was because some other team possessed a contrasting advantage.

Just as Faith had told her that although he possessed tools to activate those weapons, their locations were hidden. It was highly likely that the hidden weapon locations were the advantage granted to another team.

Thus, Pegasus deduced a possibility.

Could it be... that some team could know the positions of the other teams?

Her speculation was not unfounded, because with the advantage of knowing the victory flag's hidden location beforehand, she wouldn't need to expend any effort in combat; she just had to lead her team to the flag's hiding place. After all, the battle map would be very large, making it very rare for four teams to stumble upon each other just by randomly moving.

But if her entire team's movements were perfectly contained within someone's guidance map, the story would be entirely different.

At this point, she couldn't lead her team to the victory flag's hiding place, because if she were caught by the map holder, it would be no different than handing the victory flag's location to that team. The advantage would be lost, and defeat would be inevitable.

Of course, she could pretend, but just as Tolimus had worried, no one here was foolish; if Pegasus moved towards the same location multiple times, the map holder would deduce it.

Clearly, she had an enormous advantage, but using it was almost synonymous with losing it.

This was Pegasus's own Prisoner's Dilemma.

In reality, regardless of Pegasus's or Tolimus's situation, discovering what advantages they held was no simple feat. But due to the inherent constraints of this game, all advantages balanced each other out, leading to everyone having a deficiency.

Their inability to trust each other was the very shackles of this entire game.