"If they step on the King tile... If..." Mario stood on the stage, smiling as he looked at the eight humans below. He said, "Oh, my children, let the game begin!"
But seven of them started arguing over the order.
"No arguing!" Mario's deep and resonant voice suddenly boomed, drowning out everyone else. "Good children never argue. Are you all disobedient children, hmm?"
Alex, who had been inconspicuous, suddenly spoke up, "It's time to start the game. Lovely Uncle Mario, there are eight of us playing, but there's only one dice, so there must be an order. When we entered the game, I heard the Black Tower announce our names in order. Why not start the game in that order?"
Alex reacted too quickly, speaking at length before anyone else could react.
After ten seconds, someone regained their composure and angrily glared at Alex, "What do you mean..."
"Oh, my clever child, you have a point. Uncle Mario didn't consider that. Let's start in the order the Black Tower announced the names. Let me see... The first is Li Wen? Li Wen, child, where are you? Come and roll the dice!"
The middle-aged woman's face turned ashen, her shoulders trembling, and she didn't move forward.
Mario asked again, "Li Wen, my child, where are you?"
The middle-aged woman took a shaky step forward.
Suddenly, Mario's voice turned cold, "My child, don't you want to play this fun game?"
Under Mario's friendly inquiry, all seven players rolled the dice.
Li Wen, like the young woman and the bald man, rolled a six and obtained a magic mushroom.
The man with a beer belly and the first woman both landed on the fifth tile.
The young man and another middle-aged man who had never spoken rolled a four. It was a blank tile.
Finally, it was Alex's turn.
Alex had always felt that his luck was terrible. After Earth Online started, he had participated in three games, and each time, he was forcibly pulled into the game by others.
In summary, Alex's luck didn't seem very good.
He looked at the dice in his hand with complex eyes and quickly rolled it.
Thunk!
The dice landed on '3'.
No one had been to the third tile yet. When Alex rolled this number, the other seven looked at him curiously. The two people standing on the fourth tile looked relieved: Mario had said he would leave the last-place player here, and now with Alex, they were temporarily not the last.
Alex, expressionless, walked to the third tile. When he stood on it, suddenly, the white tile changed to red.
"Ding-dong! Activated a level-one punishment tile. Punishment: Within three minutes, say one bad thing you have done."
Alex: "..."
Feeling extremely speechless inside, Alex showed no reaction on the surface, his mind racing. A level-one punishment tile, maybe there would be level-two, level-three punishment tiles later. This punishment was minor; would the others be so simple?
While thinking about these things, Alex opened his mouth and calmly stated one bad thing he had done.
On the other side, in Mario's Monopoly game, the first round of dice rolling ended, and the eight players rolled three more rounds.
After four rounds of dice rolling, everyone had moved forward more than ten steps.
From the second round onward, Alex's luck seemed to improve, and he stood safely in second place among the eight.
Alex wanted to let the first seven people explore the path for him and determine the content of each tile, so he wanted to roll the dice last. Unfortunately, when he tried it himself, he found that the dice was too strange. It seemed that the game itself eliminated the possibility of players controlling the dice roll.
Currently, the player in first place stood on the 22nd tile, followed by Alex on the 20th, and the last-place player on the 14th.
Just as Alex imagined, punishment tiles also had levels, and the higher the level, the greater the difficulty of the punishment.
So... what was the highest level of punishment tile, and what kind of danger would it entail?
The duration of a reward was five minutes, and it took ten minutes to move to the next tile.
Alex wasted these five minutes in place, making no progress and encountering no danger.
So... what was the purpose of this reward?
What was the significance of this reward?
Alex's mind raced, but he couldn't come up with an answer.
At this moment, the middle-aged woman was about to roll the dice, but Mario suddenly spoke, "Oh, children, I forgot to say something earlier. Getting old means having a bad memory. Uncle Mario is already thirty-six years old in the game world, considered an old man. Such an important thing, and I forgot to mention it."
The middle-aged woman looked up at Mario in a daze, holding the dice she hadn't thrown.
Alex sensed something was off and felt a strange unease.
This is wrong, definitely wrong...
Something is not right!
Mario's mouth curved into a wide smile, and his dark eyes looked at each player standing on the tiles without emotion. He was smiling, but there was a hint of unmasked glee in his voice: "Starting from the fifth round of dice rolling, players standing on the same tile will trigger the 'Suffer Together' effect, meaning only one person can be on the tile. The smile on Mario's mouth grew wider, and the excitement and gleeful anticipation became more evident.
"If triggered, regardless of the tile's original content, it will immediately become a level-seven punishment tile. No matter the method, as long as there is only one player left on the tile, or no players, it will revert to its original state. However, the 'Suffer Together' effect only applies to players after the fifth round."
Alex's eyes slowly widened, and his whole body tensed up.
The other seven didn't understand Mario's meaning initially, but after a few minutes, they realized.
The middle-aged woman was scared and sat down on the ground, trembling, "No, no... You want us to fight each other, you want us to kill!"
At this moment, Alex finally understood the use of the Invincible Police Flower.
If someone stepped on the Invincible Police Flower, they would become invincible for the next five minutes. The person who stepped on it after them would no longer have the Invincible Police Flower because, at the moment they stepped on it, the tile would change from a reward tile to a level-seven punishment tile.
The level-three punishment tile was that dangerous black mushroom.
What would a level-seven punishment tile be?
Everyone was so panicked that they didn't know what to do. Alex took a deep breath, suppressed the unease rising within him, lifted his head, and his gaze suddenly swept across the huge LED sign above Mario's head. An idea flashed in his mind, and he asked, "That number on the sign, does it have any special meaning?"
In the white world, Mario stood on the stage and looked up at the "6456" digits on the sign above his head.
Mario chuckled eerily and replied, "Ah, you're asking about that. Cute child, you're so curious. That's the total number of children who have played 'Uncle Mario's Monopoly Game' with me. It's a pity; they were all unlucky and disobedient bad children who couldn't make it here to receive my prize. Child number 6464, will you be a lucky, good child?"
This was "Uncle Mario's Monopoly Game."
The game had truly begun now.
Mario asked her with concern, "My dear child, what's wrong with you? Why aren't you rolling the dice?"
The middle-aged woman looked at Mario in terror.
Mario's voice suddenly turned cold, "Don't you want to play with Uncle Mario anymore? Hmm?!"
The middle-aged woman was scared and cried out, subconsciously throwing the dice. The large dice spun three times on the ground and finally landed on three. The middle-aged woman, frightened, cried and crawled, almost like she was crawling, to the 20th tile where Alex stood. Mario burst into laughter, watching her crawling on the ground.
Then it was the bald man's turn.
When he picked up the dice, not only was he scared, but the middle-aged woman was too.
This bald man was currently standing on the 19th tile, and he was about to start his fifth round of dice rolling. Just now, the middle-aged woman had run into the 20th tile, and Alex was already there, so there were now two people standing on the 20th tile. However, since Alex was only on his fourth round, the "Suffer Together" effect wouldn't be triggered.
If the bald man rolled a 1 this time, he would move forward 20 squares. Alex would be unaffected, but he would face the seventh-level punishment square together with the middle-aged woman.
The bald man's forehead began to sweat. Nervously, he lifted his sleeve to wipe the sweat off his face, his legs shaking like a leaf. He stared intently at the large dice in his hand, while the middle-aged woman sat on the ground, her eyes filled with hope, looking at the dice in the bald man's hand as if in prayer.
"Not a 1... please, not a 1!" the bald man shouted, closed his eyes, and threw the dice.
Thunk!
The dice landed, and he opened his eyes.
It was a 3.
The bald man relaxed completely and walked weakly to the 22nd square.
These two were scared, but the third person to roll the dice, a man with a beer belly, seemed much more confident. Holding the dice, he shouted fearlessly, "I don't believe it! My luck can't be so bad. How could I roll a 1 or a 3? Definitely not!" He was not afraid, but the middle-aged woman and the bald man standing before him watched him nervously.
Alex looked at the beer belly man standing on the 19th square. He glanced down at the man's hand holding the dice and saw that his hands were so stiff that he could barely hold the dice, clearly trying to appear calm.
The beer belly man took a deep breath and suddenly threw the dice. The dice spun in the air, and his eyes widened, staring at the dice without blinking. When the dice landed and revealed the number on the top, he was sweating profusely and panting, then ran to the 21st square.
The fourth and fifth people to roll the dice would be slightly more relaxed. One of them stood on the 15th square, and the other stood on the 14th square, at the end of the group, farther away from the others.
The fourth person, a middle-aged man, rarely spoke and had the lowest presence among the eight. Alex recalled that his name was Zhao Guo. His name sounded ordinary too. He held the dice and threw them with a pale face. When he saw the number 1 on the dice, he heaved a sigh of relief and moved to the 16th square.
The fifth person to roll the dice was a young man. He seemed to be in a relationship with the sixth person, a young woman. One of them stood at the end of the line, on the 14th square, while the other stood at the front, on the 22nd square.
This young man was not under too much pressure. He would be safe as long as he didn't roll a 2. Finally, he stood on the 18th square, and it was the young woman's turn.
Among everyone, this woman was the most relaxed. She stood two squares away from Alex. Holding the giant dice, she kept murmuring, "6, 6, it must be 6."
Alex raised his eyebrows slightly.
Thunk!
The dice landed, showing a 5.
Even though it wasn't a 6, the young woman's eyes lit up excitedly when she saw the number. She ran to the 27th square without hesitation, further distancing herself from the group. However, as she stabilized herself, suddenly, the white light around the square turned red.
"Dingdong! Fourth-level punishment square activated."
Boom!
A giant black turtle descended from the sky. It stared at the young woman standing in the 27th square with its small green bean-like eyes and suddenly attacked. The incident happened too quickly, and the young woman didn't have time to react. The black turtle had already bitten her thigh, tearing off a piece of bloody flesh.
The woman screamed in pain and pulled out a fruit knife she carried with her. She tried to stab the huge and fierce turtle with the fruit knife, but the turtle's shell was extremely hard, and the fruit knife collided with it, sparking metal collisions.
"Meimei!" the young man shouted anxiously.
The turtle kept bumping the woman's waist with its head. Inside this one-meter-long square, an invisible wall rose around it. No matter how the turtle bumped, the young woman couldn't leave the square. She was bumped until she spat out blood and lost another piece of flesh from her thigh.
"No, no..... don't kill me..." The young woman frantically swung her knife around, but it didn't affect the turtle at all.
Among the remaining seven people, the young man's eyes were red with anxiety as he stared at his girlfriend, powerless to help. The other five watched in alarm, and the middle-aged woman muttered, "The 27th square is a fourth-level punishment square. You can't go there..."
Alex shouted, "Don't cut its shell, cut its head!"