When Steve and Peter came back, they were thoroughly exhausted. Shiller gave them a basic check-up and found that they weren't injured, so they took a seat on the edge of the sofa.
Matt brought them a few cups of water. Although the atmosphere ideally called for drinking wine, neither of the hosts had a drinking habit, so the wine cabinet was empty—quite a shame.
After catching their breath a little, Steve and Peter started to recount their experiences in the first game.
True to their styles, they should have chosen a game of courage, but there was a game that suited them even better: the unity-type game.
According to game theory, most people who choose unity games are superheroes who, like them, dislike hurting their teammates and prefer to cooperate to clear the game.
And sure enough, their four other teammates turned out to be the Black Panther from another cosmos, Groot and The Destroyer who paired up from the Guardians of the Galaxy, and Hawkeye from another universe's Avengers.
These teammates all stood for justice and their conduct was beyond reproach—they had no skeletons in the closet.
What's more, everyone knew each other. While Groot and The Destroyer from that cosmos didn't seem to have met Captain America before, they quickly grew accustomed to each other since everyone realised they were all good people.
The rules of this unity game were unusually simple: find puzzle pieces in a three-dimensional house and put them together within the time limit. If they did that, the game would end, and everyone would survive.
But then they were very nearly eliminated.
The biggest problem was that the game put their spatial sense and dimensions-based thinking abilities to the test, and it also included a rule resembling a brain teaser.
Simplifying it, the house was a cubic 3D maze without any of the normal structures a building should have—just a series of tortuous hallways and rooms.
Groot and The Destroyer, two characters who can hardly surprise anyone with their intelligence, got lost as soon as they entered the hallway. Once they left, they never returned.
The Black Panther had shown up in his battle armor, which had a sonar detection feature. This allowed him to understand the structure of a small area, but the building was too big; by the end, he could only make do with memorisation.
As an agent, Hawkeye had a pretty good sense of direction—but it was just about average for an agent—so it was not enough to deal with a huge 3D maze.
As a soldier who had been on the battlefield, Captain America obviously wasn't clueless either. However, his skills were on par with Hawkeye's, just about sufficient.
The only one with a good sense of direction, strong memory, and exceptional stamina was Spider Man. He was the one who resolved the dangerous situation.
There was an even scarier rule about this cubic maze—it rotated.
In the end, Spider Man summarised that the entire building kept flipping in a right-forward-right-forward pattern. Using his remarkable memory to draw a map that was almost 90% accurate, he handed it to Hawkeye, Black Panther, and Captain America. Finally, with just 30 seconds left, they managed to place the last piece of the puzzle.
Peter sat on the sofa holding his forehead and said, "Now I understand why Ned always looks like he's about to die when he's rushing to write his papers. I only drew the map with just 9 minutes left, and there were still 5 unswept rooms."
"Had we not run fast enough and had good luck—that there were no puzzle pieces in the unswept room—we would have never completed the game."
Hearing this, everyone fell silent: if you said this game didn't test unity, after Groot and The Destroyer got utterly lost, the difficulty of the game suddenly shot up for the remaining four people. If it weren't for Spider Man's divine intervention, Groot and The Destroyer surely would have lost.
But you can't really say it completely measures unity—the game didn't provide any room for disunity as if it wasn't completed everyone would face elimination, so unity was the only option.
In contrast, this was a colossal test of people's spatial awareness and memory. It can be argued that it was even more challenging to one's intelligence than Shiller's wisdom-testing game.
Thinking about this, Stark turned to Shiller and asked, "If you'd played this game, would you have been able to draw the map?"
Shiller knitted his eyebrows, and after thinking for a bit, he said, "If the rules didn't specify that the maze rotates, I wouldn't have known beforehand and would have had to guess after it started rotating."
"But I would at least be able to stop the two who got lost from straying. In this case, it's best to first understand who has the stronger sense of direction, then go two by two, rather than insisting on the original pairs."
"We realised that too late." Steve sighed, "Sending the clueless ones alone is a waste of manpower. If we had paired up, at least one could help remember the way, and it would be easier to confirm the route after returning."
"Hawkeye and I both made a mistake once, that's why in the end there were 5 rooms left unexplored. Thankfully Peter was strong enough, and we were lucky, otherwise you guys wouldn't see us again."
"In light of this, it seems that the game is not simply classified by name, which could be a little troublesome," Stark said, stroking his chin.
"But it's not entirely without pattern. It's just that wisdom doesn't purely depend on the brain as we previously speculated, and unity doesn't entirely depend on a heart of justice. It's more like there is emphasis, but there are also other elements," Matt suggested.
He continued, "In the game that Shiller experienced, although he had to decisively strike others out in the end, either by deducing from the game rules or finding problems with the game props through observation, that's also a form of wisdom, isn't it?"
"And the game that Peter and Steve experienced was more about positioning the right team member in the right place, testing team cooperation. You can't say this isn't unity."
Everyone felt that Matt made sense and they all nodded, while Natasha said with somewhat of a headache, "We do have some points now, but I think everyone should get some first. What do you guys think?"
No one objected to this, but Matt immediately proposed, "I'll go play the game alone, you don't have to follow."
Just as Steve was about to voice opposition, Matt held up a finger and said, "Having familiar people around is a distraction for me. Don't forget, my mind's eye is no worse than that of ordinary people."
Even Stark, who had originally wanted to object, hesitated at this point. In fact, Matt had previously undergone an examination at Stark Group, and it was possible for his eyes to recover, but Matt had refused.
This blind lawyer was already well-disciplined, his mind's eye was even equivalent to the radar provided by Jarvis, although it did not have the range of Stark's battle armor, its scan accuracy was off the charts, being able to catch even the quiver of a leaf in real time.
It could even be said that compared to a human's three-dimensional vision, this was more like a high-dimensional perspective, and Matt's brain had also evolved the ability to process this vast amount of information.
One could say, if this lawyer were to show his true potential, there would be few who could oppose him.
"Then what game are you going to choose?" Steve asked, still a little worried.
"Courage, of course."
"Then I'll choose courage too," Natasha glanced at Steve, apparently understanding his worries, so she said, "If we happen to end up together, I'll pretend not to know you, and you can treat me like a Natasha from another universe. Is that okay?"
"I'm going to line up for another game," Shiller said, leaning his elbow on his knee and supporting his face with his hand, "I didn't really enjoy the last game, I was too busy figuring out who the two disguisers were. I think courage might be more exciting, so I'll also choose courage. If you end up with me, just pretend you don't know me."
Stark rolled his eyes, "Then I'll choose wisdom, it's time to show everyone what real wisdom is."
Peter stretched, yawned and said, "No wonder they say that tension is the most exhausting. I won't feel sleepy even after hanging out all day in New York, unlike now. I'm going to take a nap, won't join any new games before you guys come back."
"I'll go tidy up the warehouse," Steve also stood up, "I heard there's an old ship, I learned how to repair ships when I was on a mission in Europe, I'll see if I can fix it."
Peter picked up Pikachu and headed upstairs to sleep, Steve also turned around to leave, the remaining people lined up for their games.
Shiller arrived at the center where the safe zone had been set up earlier, the table was left untouched next to the warehouse, he saw the others coming over and was the first to place his hand on the table, saying, "Courage."
The symbol on the back of his hand flashed, Shiller knew he had successfully joined, all he had to do was leave the camp and follow the direction indicated by the symbol.
The others also completed their registration, then they all left the camp together. Stark was the first to turn the corner, followed by Matt.
As a result, Shiller and Natasha walked half a kilometer together and finally ended up speechless in front of a bus stop.
Obviously, they had ended up together. Natasha sighed, not feeling happy, because it's hard to say whether the game or Shiller was more dangerous.
The female agent prayed with all the reverence she had in this life that the game should be dangerous enough; otherwise, if the game wasn't dangerous, Shiller would be the biggest danger as he was clearly here for the thrill.
They waited for less than a minute, and a somewhat old motorhome commonly seen in America slowly drove over and stopped in front of the sign.
Shiller and Natasha's backhand symbols began to heat up, obviously prompting the two to board the vehicle.
As soon as the two got on the bus, Shiller saw two familiar faces.
Both were Batman.