Hunter's Game 2: Terror Valley - Chapter 1

“Players, welcome to a Black Goat game. This stage is called Eagle Eye, and it will test your powers of observation. Difficulty: three stars.”

“Once the game begins, a short video will play on the screen. Afterward, the dealer will ask you one question about its contents.”

“There will be five videos in total, giving you five chances. Answer correctly just once to clear the stage. The reward is a three-star badge and two hundred Katre coins.”

“If you answer all five questions incorrectly, you will be eliminated and fined one million US dollars.”

A cold, mechanical voice recited the rules from the giant screen.

Wearing a simultaneous-translation headset, I quietly surveyed the hall. Besides me, there were four other players: a silver-haired Russian, a bald and muscular American, a Japanese girl in a school uniform, and a Southeast Asian man with a full-sleeve tattoo.

The five of us sat in a semicircle before a high-definition screen. An iPad had been mounted in front of each chair.

While I was sizing up the others, the game countdown began.

“The first video is two minutes long. Countdown: sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven…”

“Ding. Countdown complete. The game now begins. Players, watch carefully.”

I snapped my attention to the screen and stared so hard my eyes ached, terrified of missing a single detail.

Even so, the video left me stunned.

It was a sumptuous parade of food. Plate after plate of delicacies glided across the screen at an even pace, cuisines from around the world flowing past in an endless stream.

At first I could just about remember the dishes. Half a minute later, my memory was a complete jumble.

Guangdong Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, Japanese sashimi, Korean barbecue, Indonesian pork ribs, Mexican chicken wraps, West Lake vinegar fish from Hangzhou, Sichuan hotpot, German sausages, French steak, Italian pizza—the list went on and on.

My eyes had long since glazed over, especially because many dishes appeared more than once.

Was I supposed to remember their order?

Or how many there were?

Either one by itself might have been manageable. But more than twenty dishes appeared repeatedly in a scrambled sequence. Not even a god could remember all that.

The two minutes were soon over.

The original Black Goat logo returned to the screen, and the dealer’s mechanical voice sounded again.

“Listen to the question. How many times did Korean kimchi appear among the dishes you just saw?”

“Enter your answer on the iPad in front of you. You have one minute. Countdown: sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight…”

The hall filled with groans. Curses in half a dozen languages reached me in Chinese through my headset.

I swore inwardly too.

Kimchi was reddish and normally easy to distinguish by color. But the video had also featured Sichuan hotpot, borscht, tomato-braised beef, and other red dishes. Trying to remember by color only made them blur together.

I clutched my head and ransacked my memory for any impression of the kimchi. Nothing came.

The video had been only 120 seconds long. With over twenty dishes passing at roughly one per second, each dish should have appeared five or six times on average.

“Ten, nine, eight…”

The system began the final countdown. The other players entered their choices.

With three seconds remaining, I stabbed the number four.

All I could do now was gamble and pray.

“The answer will now be revealed.”

I held my breath and stared straight ahead.

One second later, a close-up of kimchi appeared on the screen.