Chapter 2

“Cassie, this one’s for you. I picked out the biggest one.”

Chloe stuffed the most vibrantly colored poisonous mushroom into my hand.

I stared at the bright red mushroom in her hand.

I pinched my waist, hard. The sharp pain was real.

It wasn't a dream.

I was really back. The agony of my previous death still made cold sweat trickle down my back.

A few male contestants around me were still muttering crude remarks.

“Look at Chloe, so beautiful and kind-hearted! Unlike some cold beauty, who’s just a pretty face when it really matters!”

“She’s probably waiting for us to starve to death so she can hog the five million dollar prize, right?”

I clutched the deadly poisonous mushroom, my fingertips ice cold.

In my past life, I was too focused on saving these fools, only to be doubted and hated by them.

Ultimately, I died because of Chloe’s venomous scheme.

The prize money? My dad invested a hundred million dollars in this show.

But I couldn’t just stand by and watch people die here.

“These mushrooms are poisonous.”

I held up the toxic fungi in my hand, my voice cold and hard.

“Don’t eat them.”

“Nonsense!”

An influencer, Chad Baker, immediately jumped out. A mini camera was clipped to his chest, and he yelled into his live stream,

“Guys, look at this! Some people get jealous when others are more capable. She’s deliberately saying the mushrooms are poisonous, trying to starve us to death! How disgusting!”

“Cassie,”

Chloe’s eyes welled up instantly, her voice trembling with a sob.

“I know you don’t like me, but you can’t joke about everyone’s lives! These really are edible red mushrooms; I used to eat them back home all the time…”

“Oh, really?”

I scoffed, done with the pointless chatter. I pulled the multi-tool from my belt.

“What are you doing?!”

Brock Jensen, a seasoned outdoorsman and Chloe’s blindly devoted follower, immediately stepped in front of her defensively.

“Are you going to pull a knife just because you got called out?”

I ignored him. My movements were swift, with practiced precision.

A pigeon dropped from above. I sliced off a small piece of mushroom, forced a bit into its beak.

The whole process took only a few seconds.

The pigeon initially flapped, but less than half a minute later, its movements grew stiff, it began to convulse, and then it simply collapsed dead on the ground.

Seeing this, everyone froze. They tossed their mushrooms away as if they were scorching hot.

“Now, does anyone still think these mushrooms are edible?”

“Chloe! You almost killed us!”

Someone snapped out of their shock, accusing her sharply.

Chloe’s body trembled, tears streaming down her face. She feigned a look of immense sorrow.

“I just wanted everyone to eat something… Maybe there are many similar varieties of mushrooms, and I made a mistake…”

Her story was full of holes, but paired with her pathetic appearance, it actually cooled some of the men’s anger.

Suddenly, she looked up, and abruptly changed the subject:

“But Cassie, why do you carry a knife with you? Are you secretly hiding it, planning to use some special trick to win in the finals?”

Predictably, the others, who had just been pointing fingers at Chloe, immediately turned their questions to me.

“Yeah! Why do you have a knife?”

“Bringing a weapon to the competition is against the rules!”

Chad Baker yelled excitedly at his live stream, “Guys! We’ve got a major scoop here! A beauty contestant caught with a weapon!”

Brock Jensen even took a step forward and shoved me hard. “Hand over the knife! And your bag, we need to check it!”

Caught off guard, I stumbled and fell to the ground.

Brock unceremoniously snatched my backpack and dumped all its contents onto the dirt.

“Enough.”

Julian Thorne, the wealthy heir who had been leaning against a distant tree trunk, strolled over slowly.

“I’ve seen this kind of charade played out a million times at galas.”

“But for a bunch of hunger-crazed idiots, I suppose it’s effective enough.”

His words caused the restless atmosphere to quiet slightly.

“If she really wanted to harm you, wouldn’t it have been easier to just watch you eat the poisonous mushrooms?”