The reason was very simple. Earlier that long‑haired old man had told everyone to go up and "skirmish," and the expert who just died had been using exactly that skirmishing method, hadn't he?
Hit or miss, after a single strike he would immediately flee far away, from start to finish following the long‑haired old man's instructions to the letter.
Yet just as he was about to run, in that moment when the reserve experts were about to act but hadn't acted yet, that expert died on the way out. Pitifully, it was only right before he died that he finally realized what was happening, so at least he didn't end up dying as a total fool.
Still, that was secondary. What really puzzled everyone was whether the long‑haired old man's tactics could actually work. If it turned out like before, getting counter‑killed before they even managed to escape, then wasn't it no different from going up one by one just to die?
