Super Righteous Player
Chapter 337 - 335: The Final Gallery_1

Chapter 337: Chapter 335: The Final Gallery_1

[Falling into a nightmare, instance generation in progress...]

[Detected special property of the current instance: Replay]

[Regenerating instance...]

[Instance difficulty set to Twisted, with unlimited entry]

[Current purification rate is 348/350]

[Team’s total erosion rate is at 2%, instance difficulty increased by 2%, nightmare anomaly likelihood increased by 2%]

[Warning: Relevant elements detected, the nightmare has mutated―]

[This instance does not provide an introductory story, but decryption rewards are available]

[Instance decryption reward: Unknown]

[Loading complete]

Perhaps it was because he had injected the "Frostspeaker’s Permafrost Blood" that when Annan awoke this time, he did not hear that familiar aged and feeble voice.

An odd, low hum vaguely echoed in Annan’s ears.

It was the elegant whisper he had heard before when entering the Elven Ruins.

But he still couldn’t understand it. He could only make out it was a short sentence, seemingly expressing some kind of lament.

...Looks like I really need to learn a foreign language.

The first thought that sprung to Annan’s mind was this.

His second thought was, "Hasn’t Priest Louis really cleared it even once"?

Just to be safe, Annan had left two more attempts.

But three to four days had passed, and Priest Louis had not cleared it once.

This muscular priest with a towering body, probably wasn’t here to mess around... Or he was simply relying on luck to clear the nightmares.

If it weren’t for the Silver Baron’s ability to recall him in an emergency and provide abilities usable within the nightmare, based on Priest Louis’ puzzle-solving skills that seemed to hail from a doctrine of chance and wall-banging exhaustion, he would have probably died in the nightmare long ago...

As Annan shook off the dizziness and fatigue from entering the nightmare and gradually opened his eyes, he discovered an odd change in the scenery of the nightmare―

In front of Annan was the brilliantly lit, elongated gallery.

However, the wide corridor that could easily fit ten people walking side by side was completely encased in ice.

Only in the ring beneath Annan’s feet was there no sign of frost.

Splashes of frost flowers were scattered all over the corridor, and walls were covered with ice scars of varying heights and thicknesses.

It was as if gigantic water bags filled to the brim with water had fallen from the sky―or rather, it was as though a merciless massacre had taken place here, after which all the blood turned into transparent ice.

Meanwhile, the crystal chandelier on the ceiling still shone brightly, illuminating the entire corridor.

The ice on the floors and walls reflected the chandelier’s radiance, making the environment in the nightmare even more dazzling.

Only the end of the corridor, the open doorway, was shrouded in darkness.

Annan approached the unlit corner without any fear, calmly.

With the crisp creaking sound of his shoes on the thin ice, Annan walked into the L-shaped corridor and looked towards the nearly filled display cabinet.

It was a display shelf with three columns and two layers.

Following the order of the numeric keypad from 1 to 6, the items displayed inside were empty, "The Tramp’s Thirst", Elle’s diary, Skeleton Lord’s Heart-Piercing Line, a broken umbilical cord (Angelo), and a Curse Binding Dirty Blood Bullet whose specifics were unclear.

―In these two weeks, players dedicated to completing the game had almost fully decoded this nightmare.

Apart from that "true ending" in the negative first floor, which the players couldn’t reach due to missing information... Annan had already cleared all six floors above ground once following the guide by Delicious Goose.

The difficulty of the five nightmares from the second to the sixth layer increased gradually.

Every time one was cleared, an exhibit would be added to the display case. Until it was removed, it could be seen in the display case no matter which layer was entered.

For example, after clearing the third layer, Elle’s diary appeared in the display case; just like after clearing the second layer, that human blood tomato appeared as well.

The problem for the players was that, even after collecting all the collectibles, they still couldn’t clear the game.

—But Annan knew, they were actually missing one piece.

Because when Annan was playing through this nightmare himself, he had already figured out the real "first layer’s collectible."

Yes, there was actually a collectible in the first layer.

"Passing safely" and "not seeing any enemies" were hints in themselves.

Because it was a "mezzanine."

It’s the transitional layer that links "aboveground" and "underground."

Going up, it tells the story of Amos’s soul seeking redemption.

The higher up, the deeper Amos’s fear became, the more he resisted.

On the second layer, his fear was "what if the vagrant escapes";

On the third layer, his fear was "what if I really lose Elle";

On the fourth layer, his fear was being chased and cornered by the police and hunting dogs, and the despair of "Elle becoming the Bone Duchess."

The fifth layer’s nightmare, Angelo’s punitive battle which was the latest on the timeline, represented the intense fear of "what if Elle’s child is a monster" and "what if Elle’s child is killed."

As for the sixth layer’s nightmare...

Since the puzzle of the fourth layer had already been unraveled by the players. Just in terms of difficulty, it might actually be the simplest layer.

Of course, for the natives who had no forums and couldn’t communicate, this was undoubtedly the toughest layer.

When entering the sixth-layer nightmare, "Amos" would appear on the rooftop, looking up at the stars. In his hand, he held the "Bone Duchess’s Heart-Piercing Line," with only one bullet left in the gun.

In the timeline, this is after Amos stopped the Stilled Time’s Gramophone and walked straight up to the rooftop.

Within a mere minute and a half, the police would reach the fifth floor of the gallery—and half a minute later, they would reach the rooftop.

After that, the nightmare would fail and exit.

It was only a matter of two minutes.

If it were an ordinary person, they’d probably still be in a daze...

In the end, it was Delicacy Goose who realized that clearing the sixth-layer nightmare had something to do with "time."

He needed to use the Stilled Time’s Gramophone.

But the problem was, by this time the police had already reached the third layer.

No matter how fast he ran, he couldn’t make it back to the fourth layer before the police reached it.

It was Annan who came to the realization, giving Delicacy Goose an anonymous tip in the barrage:

"—Perhaps the worlds of different instances are the same world, interconnected."

Seeing this barrage, Delicacy Goose immediately caught on.

He cleared the fourth-layer nightmare again— the nightmare where moving forward and backward affected the positive or negative passage of time. And after stopping the Stilled Time’s Gramophone, he moved the gramophone to the fifth floor.

Then, when he entered the sixth layer nightmare next time, he immediately turned around upon entering the nightmare, retreating back to the fifth floor... and indeed saw the gramophone he had moved up from the fourth-layer nightmare.

He immediately started the gramophone.

—And entered a world of the past.