After the Evil God Pretends to Be a Player [Infinite] - Chapter 5

“A… a combat round?”

Li Zhu’s gaze remained fixed, tracking every movement of the Faceless Monster before them. Hearing the question, he replied, “Why? Have you never played before?”

“No, no, no…” Wang Kai waved his hands frantically. “I’ve played, I’ve played. Every TRPG session has a few combat rounds; I was just hoping one wouldn’t trigger here…”

He trailed off mid-sentence.

The curtain-like black hair covering the Faceless Monster’s front moved without a breeze. A single strand began to grow at an alarming rate, extending rapidly until it brushed the floor. Suddenly, it whipped around, lunging toward them.

A crisp, light clicking sound the rolling of dice echoed in both their ears.

This was a ‘Hidden Roll’ performed by the Keeper, intended to determine the target of the attack.

From a distance, the monster’s long hair looked soft, but up close, it resembled a cluster of hardened steel needles. From root to tip, the strands shimmered with the cold, lethal glint of blades. In an instant, they were right in front of Li Zhu.

“Quick, dodge!”

Wang Kai knew from Li Zhu earlier that his Dodge stat was as high as 80 an 80% success rate. Wang Kai’s heart hammered against his ribs as he pressed his hands together in a tense prayer.

However, Li Zhu did not retreat to avoid the blow. Instead, he stepped forward to meet it.

The Faceless Monster was overjoyed, and even more strands of hair clawed through the air like wild talons, rushing toward Li Zhu.

Yet, the moment her hair was about to make contact, every strand suddenly flew back in the opposite direction. Her featureless face was now completely exposed.

The Faceless Monster: “?”

A sense of utter bewilderment actually managed to emanate from that blank face.

Wang Kai was stunned. He watched with wide eyes as the object in Li Zhu’s hand was finally revealed—

It was a pink, rechargeable hair dryer.

But he wasn’t done. With the hair dryer in one hand, Li Zhu raised a steel ruler he had snatched from who-knows-where with the other and brought it crashing down hard onto the monster’s face!

Two lines of small text floated in front of Li Zhu:

Faceless Monster: [Entangle] Check/Result: 75/25 — Hard Success

Li Zhu: [Brawl] Check/Result: 35/5 — Extreme Success

[Damage]: 1d3 = 3

The strike from the steel ruler was so forceful it physically split a crack into the monster’s face.

Next came Li Zhu’s turn. In this round, Li Zhu’s attack failed, and the monster’s counterattack failed as well. The man and the monster performed a synchronized dance of swinging at empty air, neither landing a hit on the other.

Then it was Wang Kai’s turn. He took a deep breath, muttering “Dice Goddess protect me” under his breath as he rolled the hundred-sided die before him.

Wang Kai: [Brawl] Check/Result: 20/88 — Failure

Faceless Monster: [Entangle] Check/Result: 75/74 — Regular Success

Before Wang Kai could realize what was happening, he was enveloped in a mass of black hair. The strands coiled around his waist, his legs, and his neck, slowly tightening their grip.

Wang Kai’s voice thinned as the lack of oxygen took hold: “Brother Li! Save me!”

Li Zhu stopped in his tracks, his scrutinizing gaze lingering for a moment on the Faceless Monster and its prey.

The turn order for the next round remained: Faceless Monster, Him, Wang Kai.

In the next round, would the monster’s first move be to strangle Wang Kai to death, or would it target him again?

Watching the monster bind Wang Kai with more and more hair, Li Zhu smiled and spoke to it: “Next round, I’m definitely going to split your face again.”

The Faceless Monster lifted its head, and the coiling movement of its hair paused.

The crack on its face was extremely deep, yet not a single drop of blood emerged. Since the blow had landed near the corner of where a mouth would be, it now looked like a grotesque, half-sided smirk.

Li Zhu’s smile was warm as he added, “I’ll add another cut to the other side to make it symmetrical for you. How about that?”

The Keeper’s voice rang out lazily: “Round Two.”

The moment the Keeper spoke, the monster’s countless strands of hair retracted sharply, receding from Wang Kai’s body like a ebbing tide. With a heavy thud, Wang Kai collapsed to the floor.

Within a few short seconds, the Faceless Monster moved rapidly toward the door and vanished into the corridor.

Li Zhu looked back with a hint of regret. “It moved so slowly with that patter-patter sound when it arrived, but it sure runs fast when it’s time to bail.”

Wang Kai struggled to get up, rubbing his aching waist and legs. He looked puzzled. “Why did it just… leave?”

Li Zhu raised an eyebrow, a faint smile still playing on his lips. “Why? Did you want it to stay?”

Wang Kai waved his hands dismissively. “No, no!” Only after seeing that Li Zhu had no intention of going out to call the monster back did he breathe a sigh of relief. He scratched his head in confusion. “I just felt like it was on the verge of winning. Why did it leave halfway through the combat round?”

Li Zhu said calmly, “It is very afraid of its face being harmed. All the monsters here…” He looked down at the mannequin head that had rolled to the side; it had been stepped on and flattened, but the thick, gaudy makeup it once wore was still visible.

He continued, “They all have a certain obsession with faces.”

Wang Kai couldn’t help but shiver. He felt that those words sounded exceptionally eerie in the middle of the night, as if someone had just lightly breathed on the skin of his own face.

Turning around, he saw Li Zhu place the pink hair dryer and the steel ruler—the “heroes” of the battle on the bedside table before lying down fully clothed. A thought crossed Wang Kai’s mind:

We both have ordinary character cards, so why is the gap between us so huge?

Then, a flicker of doubt followed:

Is this Mr. Li really just an ordinary person?

“Everyone, did you sleep well last night?”

At seven in the morning, on the first floor of the Pretty Middle School canteen, the Keeper—holding a fork in his thick, hairy hand—stabbed directly into a piece of perfectly balanced bacon. His beautiful phoenix-shaped eyes, however, were fixed intently on the seven people gathered around the table.

Looking at him, one would think that what hung from his sharp fork wasn’t a greasy piece of meat, but someone’s eyeball.

Wang Kai whispered, “Slept alright.”

Seeing that mocking gaze fall on him, the “Punk” (Shamate) also spoke up reluctantly, “Good enough. I slept straight through until dawn.”

The Keeper smiled with satisfaction. “That’s good.”

His gaze lingered on the Punk’s face for a second, as if he had seen something extremely amusing, and his smile deepened.

Among the seven, with the exception of the perpetually pale Lale and the Punk, the other five had faint dark circles under their eyes, looking somewhat exhausted.

It seemed the Punk was telling the truth.

But…

Lale frowned slightly and said, “Is your face whiter than it was yesterday?”

Her eyes were fixed on the Punk’s face.

The Punk was about to lose his temper, words like “My face is just like this,” “Who says I’m white,” or “You weak little girl were lucky nothing happened to you yesterday, how dare you criticize me” nearly bursting from his mouth. But then he noticed everyone’s eyes were suddenly focused on him.

Under such scrutiny, he felt like a monkey in a zoo for a moment, and the insults stuck in his throat.

After a long silence, Li Zhu stroked his chin and blinked. “It does seem a bit whiter than yesterday.”

Though he was speaking to the Punk, he glanced at Lale again.

However, when she noticed his gaze, she leaned back slightly, as if trying to distance herself from him.

The look of inquiry in Li Zhu’s eyes deepened.

The female streamer tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear and critiqued, “It looks like you’ve applied a foundation that doesn’t match your skin tone.”

“You’re the one wearing foundation! Your whole family wears foundation!”

The Punk stood up in a rage, banging his chopsticks against the table.

But in the next second, he saw the expressions in everyone’s eyes turn to shock.

Lale said, “You’re shedding powder.”

Her tone was completely flat, as if she were simply saying, “You’ve eaten.”

But to those listening, the words were terrifying.

The Punk’s fingers holding the chopsticks began to tremble. He reach up tentatively to touch his face, an action that caused even more milky-white powder to fall.

Soon, a thin layer of the white powder accumulated on the table.

No one dared to go near the mysterious pile, but Lale showed no such reservations. She touched a bit with her finger and asked Meng Luo, “Do you know what this is?”

Meng Luo gathered her courage, leaned in to sniff it, and said hesitantly, “It seems to have a bit of a fragrance…”

The female streamer blurted out, “I’ve seen thousands of cosmetics! If it’s scented, then there’s almost no mistake”

“This is clearly setting powder!”

The moment she finished speaking, everyone except Wang Kai’s girlfriend looked confused.

Meng Luo: No wonder I didn’t know. A “good girl/small-town student/high schooler” like me isn’t worthy of using makeup.

Lale: Setting powder? Is it used to “set” sea piles?

By the time the streamer finished explaining the relationship between liquid foundation and setting powder, the Punk had nearly clawed his own face raw.

The once-even white foundation on his face had become blotchy, and red welts from his frantic scratching were appearing, making him look ghastly.

The streamer couldn’t watch anymore. “Stop scratching. That’s not how you remove makeup; you need makeup remover.”

“Where is there makeup remover?”

Perhaps because the powder had fallen into his eyes while he was scratching, the Punk’s eyes had turned bloodshot. He looked feral, like a wild beast entering a state of mania.

Intimidated by his stare, the streamer stammered, “There… there seemed to be some on the dressing table in our room…”

“Go find it for me, now!”

The Punk reached out and grabbed the woman’s collar, behaving like an enraged animal.

“Hey! You! How can you act like this?”

Seeing his girlfriend gasp in fear, Wang Kai was about to stand up to argue, when—

Clap, clap, clap!

It was the Keeper, applauding.

He had finally lost patience with the farce. He said coldly, “Are you finished eating? Today’s schedule is tight; we have to tour the campus in a moment.”

The Punk looked defiant, but after a few seconds, he sat down sullenly.

“Before the tour, respected Mr. Keeper, could we have five minutes to discuss what happened last night?”

“I think I’ve caught a glimpse of a pattern.”

“I promise this will only take a tiny bit of your time.”

Li Zhu smiled, folding his hands on the table as he addressed the Keeper.

The Keeper scrutinized Li Zhu’s face for a long moment before finally nodding slightly.

Li Zhu got straight to the point. “I believe the three umbrellas of different colors correspond to different crises that occurred last night.”