"I accuse No. 51!"

The AR system accepted the accusation immediately, and Tyler’s badge number flashed before everyone in bright red light. Before anyone else could react, Tyler calmly lifted his own hand and pointed back.

"I accuse you too."

At once, No. 2’s badge lit up beside his. Another round of voting opened instantly, and the floating display expanded before every participant’s AR glasses.

[No. 51 vs No. 2]

This part became far more interesting than the earlier votes. Across the Capital, people who had been casually watching suddenly leaned closer to their screens. In private houses, restaurants, and public halls, conversations stopped. Even in the sectors, people crowded around cracked televisions and public projections. The game had reached the kind of moment viewers loved most—less work, less guessing, more direct confrontation.

Tyler stood in the center without even a trace of panic. He looked at the crowd and raised one hand slightly.

"Before you vote, let me say a few words."

The clearing quieted. Even the AR timer continued ticking in silence.

Then Tyler added only one sentence.

"Just vote him out."

That was all.

No long defense. No explanation. No visible urgency.

Several participants frowned immediately. Some looked openly confused.

Dale burst into laughter.

"Is that your defense? Is that the best you can do? You’re not even trying to defend yourself anymore."

Tyler turned toward him calmly.

"Why should I panic?"

That answer only sharpened the atmosphere around the campfire clearing. Dale folded his arms and sneered.

"It’s obvious you’re cornered."

But Tyler spoke again, this time pointing toward Craig.

"Actually, I think one of your group is Jobless. Craig pointed at three of you, which means someone in your group still hasn’t converted the others."

Craig, still tense from his earlier confession, nodded uncertainly.

"Yeah... I don’t know exactly who touched me. I was working, then someone touched my back suddenly and I became Jobless. I only know it happened when I was near them."

Dale immediately seized that weakness.

"That makes no sense. If we were Jobless, why didn’t we turn each other?"

This time several people nodded because the argument sounded reasonable. Even some who had been suspicious hesitated.

Tyler nodded as well, as though agreeing.

"That’s true," he said, then added, "Which is exactly why it works as your excuse. If you planned ahead, of course you wouldn’t waste conversions inside your own group. You would keep your own numbers clean so later you could deny everything."

The crowd became quiet again.

Whether Tyler’s logic was true or not, it sounded possible enough to disturb people once more.

He glanced toward the timer and said, "Time is running. If he isn’t Jobless, then I’m ready to vote myself next."

That sentence changed the pressure immediately. Several people checked their glasses.

Only 100 seconds remained.

The final minute forced everyone into action. No one wanted another last-second scramble, and no one wanted to appear hesitant now that neutrality had already become dangerous.

Voting began quickly.

The numbers appeared soon after.

[Voting ended.]

[No. 51 received 10 votes.]

Tyler remained still.

Then the next result appeared.

[No. 2 received 28 votes.]

A clear majority.

The system moved immediately.

[No. 2 is selected.]

No. 2 glared at Tyler with fury, but before he could even curse, his body suddenly lost strength and dropped straight to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

The next line appeared.

[No. 2 is not Jobless.]

Silence spread instantly.

A third innocent death.

The ground beneath the corpse opened and swallowed him without ceremony, sealing again as if nothing had happened.

This time suspicion returned harder than before, and all eyes turned directly toward Tyler.

Dale stepped forward at once, anger finally visible.

"I knew it. That job application is fake, right? Or maybe you told Craig to point at us from the beginning."

Tyler did not answer that accusation directly. Instead, he simply raised one hand and pointed at Dale.

"I suspect you."

The system responded instantly.

[No. 1 is suspected]

Dale almost smiled.

"I suspect you too."

Tyler’s number flashed again.

[No. 51 is suspected]

The timer restarted.

[300 seconds... 299 seconds... 298 seconds...]

This time Dale took control of the discussion immediately. He spoke loudly and clearly, explaining every suspicious thing Tyler had done—his calmness, his manipulations, the fake paper, the innocent deaths that followed his logic, and the fact that Tyler never seemed afraid even when his own number appeared.

The crowd listened carefully because Dale now had evidence built from multiple events.

Tyler remained silent through most of it.

That silence began helping Dale.

Several faces hardened.

"What happened?" Dale laughed coldly when Tyler still said nothing. "Out of words now?"

Tyler finally looked at him.

His face held neither anger nor frustration—only something closer to pity.

Then he said quietly:

"Vote him."

That answer confused people even more than a long defense would have.

The timer continued.

Votes locked in.

Then the results appeared.

[Voting ended.]

[No. 51 received 28 votes.]

A ripple passed through the clearing.

Then the second result arrived.

[No. 1 received 9 votes.]

Several people froze.

One participant near the back suddenly shouted, "What are you all doing? He’s clearly suspicious!"

But Dale no longer looked relieved.

Instead, his expression slowly changed.

He sat down on the ground.

Then laughed.

Not with victory.

Not with confidence.

A hollow laugh.

"No... no..."

He looked up at Tyler, his face finally stripped of arrogance.

"I understand now," he said. "We lost."

The people around him looked confused.

Dale asked one final question.

"Since when were you Jobless?"

Tyler answered without hesitation.

"Since the beginning."

That single sentence changed everything.

---

Now everyone finally understood why Tyler had remained calm from the beginning.

He had never been trying to survive as a Worker.

He had been controlling the game as Jobless from the very first moment.

The truth spread through the clearing like cold water.

Tyler had received the Jobless role at the start of the game. Before anyone even understood the rules properly, before the first work tasks had truly begun, he had already made his first move.

Craig had been the first.

During the mining task on the first day, when they worked side by side inside the tunnel, Tyler had used the simplest opportunity possible. That was when Craig became Jobless.

After Craig, Tyler moved faster.

Victor.

Tansy.

Rose.

He had converted all three carefully. Then the four of them had continued the chain.

Each of them touched others during tasks, group movement, or night gathering, spreading the role silently.

The panic over voting had hidden the real game.

Every false accusation helped Tyler more.

Every innocent death reduced the number of Workers while Jobless numbers quietly increased.

And after a certain point, something else had happened.

The conversions stopped.

The moment Jobless outnumbered Workers enough, further conversions became unnecessary.

Tyler looked around the clearing and said calmly:

"There are twenty-eight Jobless now."

With Dale still alive a moment earlier, only nine Workers had remained.

Now Dale himself stood on the edge of elimination.

Which meant only eight Workers were left.

The balance had already collapsed long before anyone realized it.

The remaining Workers looked around in open panic. Faces that looked familiar now became frightening.

Dale stared at Tyler as he asked:

"Why did you target my sector first?"

Tyler thought for a second before answering.

"Because you targeted us first."

The answer came without emotion.

Dale understood immediately.

Kennedy.

The first accusation.

Sector 1 had started the pressure first, and Tyler had simply decided to bury them under it.

Dale exhaled once and then asked another question, looking toward Craig.

"Then what about him? If he became Worker again, why was he still Jobless? Is the job application fake?"

Tyler shook his head.

"No. The item was real."

Then he explained what Dale had missed.

"Remember when I patted his shoulder right after he used it?"

Dale’s eyes widened slightly because only now did he understand too.

Tyler continued:

"That was enough. He became Jobless again immediately."

Then he added calmly:

"Though honestly, by then it was already planned anyway."

Dale stared at Tyler for several seconds.

Then unexpectedly laughed.

A dry laugh.

"Well played."

The words had barely left his mouth when his body lost strength.

He dropped where he stood.

Dead before impact.

A second later, the ground beneath him opened and swallowed him exactly like the others.

The earth closed again without leaving even a mark.

The same way Kennedy had disappeared.

The same way Dale himself had once watched others vanish through schemes he believed controlled.

Now the system had closed around him too.

[No.1 is eliminated.]

[No.1 is not a Jobless.]

The remaining eight Workers finally lost composure.

Several stepped backward.

One shouted at another.

Another looked ready to accuse someone purely out of panic before stopping, realizing voting no longer mattered.

Because even if they accused someone now, numbers had already betrayed them.

Then one of them— a man who had been shouting during the earlier votes— suddenly stepped forward and raised both hands.

His voice trembled.

"Then... change us too."

He looked directly at Tyler.

"If you already won, then change us into Jobless too."

The others looked at him immediately, because desperation had reached the point where becoming the losing side’s enemy now sounded safer than remaining Worker.

Tyler was about to answer.

He had already begun nodding slightly—

When the sky changed.

Large letters appeared across every AR display.

Bright enough that no one could ignore them.

[Game Over]

The clearing froze.

A second line followed.

[Due to all Jobless being revealed, Our First Citizen finds the game boring.]

Then:

[The game will be stopped here.]

No one had time to fully understand before the final line appeared.

[Participants with the lowest numbers are eliminated.]

The remaining eight Workers barely had time to panic.

Their bodies dropped instantly.

One after another.

No struggle.

No warning.

Just immediate death across the clearing.

Tyler watched the bodies fall.

Then the final system message appeared before him.

[Congratulations on winning the Second Game.]