After drinking the [Mint Cooling Tea], Leon didn't immediately discard the "antidote" but instead stored it in a small box for safekeeping.

This was a precautionary measure.

The entire "fate" concerning the [Alchemical Laboratory Infectious Disease] had come too coincidentally and eerily, forcing Leon to be extremely cautious.

He couldn't be 100% certain that the antidote given by his eldest sister was genuine, but neither did he dare take the risk of betting everything on it. So, he decided to drink the [Mint Cooling Tea], something he had originally planned to use in the later stages of the game, to neutralize the negative effects caused by the infectious disease for now.

If, by the later stages, it was confirmed that his eldest sister was unquestionably trustworthy, then the antidote he had preserved would remain safe and usable.

All in all, Leon's approach was conservative.

Of course, he owed this idea to Roswitha.

It was she who had given him the [Mint Cooling Tea]. Without it, Leon would still be agonizing over whether or not to consume the antidote.

After exiting the bathroom and resting for a while, Leon stepped out once again.

He headed to the communal kitchen to retrieve the Black Holy Stone he had hidden under the water tank. Then, he went to the first-floor hall, glanced around to ensure no one was present, and concealed the Black Holy Stone inside a suit of guard armor by the meeting room door.

He had noticed this spot during the morning meeting. The entire first-floor hall only had the meeting room as its functional area, and there were no scenes designed to trigger tasks or fates. Therefore, compared to the communal kitchen, this spot was far less frequented except during meeting times.

Hiding the stone inside the guard armor was a relatively secure choice.

After safely hiding the Black Holy Stone, Leon returned upstairs.

By chance, he encountered the [Friends' Group] daughters.

Muen and Aurora, holding hands, spotted Leon at the other end of the corridor.

"Daddy~," Muen called sweetly before pulling Aurora along as they jogged over.

Leon squatted down with a smile. "What is it? Are you on a task?"

"Uh-huh! But it's a three-person task, so we want to ask Daddy to help us," Muen replied excitedly.

Leon was, of course, happy to assist his daughters with their task, but he casually asked, "Why didn't you ask your sister instead?"

As soon as these words were spoken, little Moon’s face instantly turned cold.

Leon froze, unsure how he had managed to upset his precious daughter.

He turned to look at Aurora.

Luckily, the little pink-haired girl already understood everything.

She leaned close to Leon’s ear and whispered in a low voice, "After the effects of that bound expired, Second Sister was forced to separate from Eldest Sister. Then Eldest Sister started doing more two-person tasks with Helena, so now Second Sister is... like this."

"Hmph! So what? Aurora and I can do tasks too—better and faster than Helena!" Muen huffed indignantly.

Leon scratched his head. **Sister -obsessive girl is so hard to deal with...** the father sighed deeply in his heart.

Leon couldn’t deny that he felt a bit guilty about Muen’s dependence on Noa.

If he had been there to accompany his daughters from the moment they were born, perhaps Muen would have grown to be more independent.

But still, Leon wasn’t the kind of father who would force his precious daughters to change.

Whether she adored her big sister or doted on her younger sibling, as long as the family could remain together, that mattered more than anything.

Gently patting the strand of hair on Muen’s head, Leon said, "Then how about we see if we can find another bound item card? That way, you can pair up with your sister again."

After Muen hearing this, her large eyes lit up. "Really, Daddy? Does the castle still have another card?"

Leon nodded affirmatively. "Yes. Many item cards have duplicates. Your mom and I were hit by that card earlier today, weren’t we? And you yourself found one to use with your sister, didn’t you?"

Muen blinked and tilted her head adorably, asking in her childlike voice, "Daddy, how did you know it was me who used the card on Sister?"

**Come on, the whole world knows! Your little face can’t hide any secrets at all!**

"Alright, Second Sister," Aurora chimed in, trying to redirect the focus. "It doesn’t matter how Daddy found out. The important thing is, since there are more cards scattered around the castle, you still have a chance to bind with Big Sister again!"

"Good! This time, I’ll find three... no, five—wait, TEN bound cards! That way, Sister will be with me the entire time!" Muen proclaimed, puffing her chest out confidently.

Leon could only offer a resigned smile. His second daughter was particularly passionate about two things.

One was eating her father's tributes.

The other? Staying close to her sister.

Leon stood up and, holding his daughters’ hands, left to help them complete the three-person task.

The task wasn’t particularly difficult. With their father joining in, it worked completed smoothly.

After finishing the task, they obtained an intelligence card:

**["That thing is cursed! It must be destroyed... it must be destroyed!"]**

Leon frowned slightly as he read the line on the card.

"It sounds like something someone said," he mused aloud.

Aurora rubbed her chin thoughtfully, her sharp mind already racing. "If you think about it in the context of this game, this line likely reflects the main task of one of the players. His or her task is to destroy 'that thing.'"

Muen glanced at her father and younger sister with determination before activating her own rarely-used brainpower. "Then, this so-called 'thing' must refer to the Black Holy Stone, right?"

"That's my guess as well," Leon replied in a low, contemplative voice. "But who could have said that line?"

When Leon had been bound to Roswitha previously, they uncovered another clue card. It had revealed that there were at least two lone-wolf players in this game.

Leon, of course, was one of them. The likelihood that the line was spoken by the other lone wolf seemed high.

His primary task was to safeguard the Black Holy Stone until the game's conclusion. If the other lone wolf’s mission was indeed to destroy the Black Holy Stone, the situation had become clear—

The two lone wolves were destined for a brutal showdown.

As the trio deliberated, a sound suddenly emanated from Aurora’s **Recording Stone**:

**“[Friend B], you have been ‘eliminated’; [Friend B], you have been ‘eliminated.’”**

Eliminated?!

That short system notification left the family dumbfounded.

"What happened? Aurora, how did you suddenly get wiped out like that?" asked Leon, still reeling with shock.

Aurora, the pink-haired mischief-maker, was just as stunned. "I... I don’t know, Dad."

As she spoke, Aurora instinctively patted herself down for any strange item but found nothing.

Turning back toward the room where the three-person task had been completed just moments earlier, she saw no trace of abnormalities either.

Just like that... she was inexplicably eliminated!

A wave of fear instantly erupted among the trio.

Even Leon, usually calm and composed, felt shaken by this bizarre elimination method.

General Leon’s original expectation of a sneak attack:

_Approach quietly, strike swiftly, and take the opponent down in a flash._

What the actual elimination turned out to be:

_Carefully strategized from afar, unleashing death from a thousand miles away!_

Aurora ran her fingers through her hair, her sparkling gemstone-like eyes brimming with frustration.

"Ugh... Aurora, don’t worry," Leon tried to comfort her. "There may be a resurrection item card somewhere."

"That’s right, Aurora! I won’t look for bound cards anymore— I’ll help you find revival cards!" Muen added, speaking earnestly.

Aurora, however, shook her head resolutely.

"No, no, no, Dad, Sis— I’m not sad. It’s just... it’s such a pity that I won’t get to watch you all stab each other anymore!" she cried dramatically.

Leon & Muen: ......

Aurora lamented dramatically, "Ahhh, why did it have to be me?! All I wanted was to watch everyone scheme against each other—what’s so wrong with that? Boohoo~"

Before long, a staff member arrived briskly.

**“[Friend B], Miss Aurora, please come with me. We will escort you to the God Observation Room, where you may observe the entire game from a god’s-eye view.”**

**_Bling!_**

Aurora’s eyes sparkled in delight.

Having a God's-eye view of the drama was going to be so much better than watching it unfold from a first-person perspective!

**Why didn’t you say so earlier? If I’d known, I would’ve purposefully gotten eliminated right from the start!**

And so, the pink-haired mischief-maker, who had just been wallowing in self-pity moments earlier, gleefully followed the staff member to the God Observation Room.

Leaving her father and second sister standing there in stunned silence.

"Dad! Here we are panicking over a murderer who can strike invisibly from halfway across the map, and Aurora’s chilling out and enjoying a luxurious spectator seat!" Muen exclaimed, smacking her hands on her cheeks in disbelief.

Leon could only cover his face in solenm, reluctant agreement. "Alright... let’s call an emergency meeting before that mysterious attacker eliminates us, too."

"Okay."

[Emergency Meeting]: When a [body] is discovered, a player may call an early meeting.

Ten minutes later, everyone except Aurora had gathered in the first-floor meeting room.

Unsurprisingly, Roswitha was the first to notice the absence of her youngest daughter.

"Aurora’s missing. Where did she go?"

"She’s been eliminated," Leon stated. "Muen and I called this Meeting because Aurora was suddenly... struck down in our presence. There was absolutely no warning."

Aurora, the first player to be eliminated after more than twenty hours of gameplay, had understandably captured everyone’s attention.

"No warning at all?" queried Noa.

"None. The three of us had just finished a task and were casually chatting when Aurora was... just gone," Leon replied, shuddering faintly at the chilling recollection of the mysterious elimination that had seemingly come out of thin air.

"Did Aurora interact with anyone unusual before she was eliminated?" Noa pressed further.

Muen quickly shook her head. "No, she was with me the entire time. We just wanted to complete a task, but it required three people, so we went to find Dad."

"Leon went with you two...?" Claudia remarked coolly, her piercing blue eyes locking onto Leon.

"Then isn’t it entirely possible that Leon was the one who secretly took Aurora out?"

She continued, "Based on a clue card I’ve obtained, this game has at least two Lone Wolf players. Their tasks are almost certainly different from ours, right?"

"And since Muen and Aurora’s group is confirmed to belong to the Good faction, eliminating a Good player would naturally give the Lone Wolves an advantage."

Leon responded methodically to the ‘malicious empress mother's’ suspicion,

"Senior, your logic has some issues."

"Sure, eliminating a good player might give a lone wolf an advantage, but there’s no reason to directly assume I’m that lone wolf."

"And any reasoning based on that assumption doesn’t hold much credibility either."

"Unless, of course, you have some direct and compelling evidence proving I’m the lone wolf?"

Claudia nodded slightly. "I can’t confirm that you’re the lone wolf, but Aurora was indeed taken out right after finishing a mission with you."

"I agree with senior Claudia’s observation," another voice chimed in.

This time, it was Isa who spoke.

"Brother-in-law is highly suspicious. This meeting could very well be his self-inflicted wound and self-exposure, intended to create the illusion that ‘wolves can remotely eliminate targets.’ That way, even if he eliminates someone later, everyone would still lean toward the idea of ‘remote elimination’ and wouldn’t first suspect him directly."

"But if Dad was the one who eliminated Aurora, why didn’t he take me out as well?" Muen asked.

Helena, who had remained silent until now, finally replied to Muen, "The game rules state that you can only eliminate someone if you have a ‘Kill-Type Item Card.’ Maybe Uncle Leon only had one such card?"

"That still doesn’t make sense. If I only had one Kill-Type Item Card, I wouldn’t have used it so recklessly."

Leon explained, "Because doing so would leave me without any self-defense. If a wolf were to target me and I happened to have a Kill Card in hand, I might still be able to fend them off."

"On the other hand, if I really were a wolf, I’d wait until I had accumulated more Kill Cards before starting any eliminations. I definitely wouldn’t eliminate one by one—it would only give the good players enough time to react."

Roswitha turned her gaze toward Leon. "We’re not assuming you’re the wolf right now. We just want to hear your thoughts."

Ah, nothing like having his wife around to give him some breathing room.

Leon organized his thoughts and began,

"First, my conclusion is, I think this wolf does indeed have the ability to eliminate targets remotely."

"But correspondingly, that wolf can only target one person at a time or within a specific period."

"To eliminate again, the wolf needs to wait for a certain cooldown to pass."

"Otherwise, the ability to remotely eliminate would be way too overpowered and utterly impossible to counter."

After hearing Leon’s take, the group began murmuring among themselves.

Moments later, Isa spoke up again:

"Your hypothesis is reasonable, brother-in-law, but it doesn’t clear the suspicion surrounding you."

Damn it.

Why are both my sister-in-law and the ‘empress mother’ dead set on pinning this on me? Leon muttered to himself internally.

At this rate, if he couldn’t find evidence to clear his name, Leon was highly likely to get voted out in this round.

Although his true identity was indeed the lone wolf, there was absolutely no reason for him to take the fall for another lone wolf!

But proving one's innocence was difficult.

Leon racked his brain yet couldn’t figure out how to prove he wasn’t the one who eliminated Aurora.

For a brief moment, it seemed like Leon was trapped in a stalemate.

"I have the Detective Item Card, which allows me to verify whether a player has eliminated anyone within the last six hours."

The speaker was none other than Roswitha.

Leon’s eyes lit up—it was as if he’d grasped a lifeline of hope.

In moments like this, you could always count on your wife!

"Since the game rules don’t allow the use of item cards during meetings, we can conduct the verification right after this meeting ends," Roswitha continued.

"If he hasn’t eliminated anyone, it proves Leon’s innocence; if he has, we’ll all keep a close eye on him and vote Leon out during the next meeting. What do you all think?"

While Roswitha’s suggestion to verify Leon was a logical move within the game, this assistance coming at such a critical moment still warmed General Leon’s heart.

After all, she had just told him earlier that, no matter what, she was planning to cast her vote against him.

And this meeting was the perfect opportunity to eliminate Leon. Yet, she still chose to use her Detective Item Card for his sake.

What a wonderful wife!

He’d reward her with a fourth child when they got home.