Not long after the wandering child left, Annan neatly tucked away the book he was just pretending to read.
He never intended to read it...
His goal was to seem "I’m busy, don’t bother me," preventing the players from coming over to chat and trying to wheedle a quest out of him.
What am I doing? I don’t even know what I should be doing.
He brewed himself a cup of tea, grabbed a plate of nut pastries, closed the door, turned on the light, and cozily leaned back on the bed.
Although Kaisa was pulling an all-nighter brewing potions in the basement, while he was watching the live stream and munching on snacks, Annan vaguely felt a little uneasy.
Maybe it was his already thinning sense of shame struggling desperately...
But in the end, Annan cheerfully turned on the live stream.
Only then did he realize that Jiu’er seemed to be in an instance he had never seen before—
Jiu’er panted heavily, leaning against the wall and warily looking back.
This time, she wasn’t using Amos’s body.
Instead, it was the body of a haggard-looking homeless man in his fifties...
Who is this? Where is this?
Annan was somewhat surprised.
He quickly scrolled through the chat history and pulled up Jiu’er’s live stream recording. Using the chat as a reference, he skipped through parts of it and swiftly came to an understanding.
Annan realized what the situation was:
Jiu’er had entered this level from the second layer of the nightmare.
This level, theoretically the simplest in the entire nightmare—
Its name was "Gallery: Feast of the Famished."
The way to enter this level was actually quite simple... It was just that with big brother hammer chasing behind, few people could calm down enough to think it through.
Jiu’er realized that the tomato might be a key item.
But it was completely unattainable... And if she went to the next layer, she might not be able to come back.
In other words—the means to obtain the tomato must be on this very layer.
After she put on the blood-stained windbreaker, she turned back.
Seeing the cracked wall smashed open by the hammer, Jiu’er walked straight in... which was the entrance to the third layer, "Gallery: Elle Morrison."
In the deepest part, she found a blood-stained dagger.
Then Jiu’er turned back again and found that with the dagger in hand, she could take the tomato.
She had planned to use this to enter the third layer... But under the barrage of intense chat trolling, she turned back a second time.
This time, at the end of the passage, there seemed to be nothing.
—But with Jiu’er holding the dagger and tomato, when she reached the fallen chandelier, the previous death flag here was removed.
Yesterday’s players had also tried this.
But without the tomato, turning back to approach the fallen chandelier only resulted in being dragged in by countless shadows beneath it, shredded by the broken chandelier.
However, when Jiu’er came back with the tomato, they did not appear.
Then, moving a bit further forward... she triggered a CG.
It just so happened that Jiu’er was engaged in a chase at the moment, which wasn’t very interesting...
"...I should still watch the event CG though."
Annan didn’t hesitate to call up the CG part of the recording.
It was different from the CG he went through.
Annan was now observing the artist Amos from a third-person over-the-shoulder perspective.
He saw Amos, draped in a blood-stained white robe, holding a tomato in one hand and a knife in the other, slowly approaching the fallen chandelier under the gaze of countless portraits.
His steps were unsteady, but not as frantic as in the third layer.
Annan watched as he gasped heavily, gazing below the chandelier.
It was as if he was looking at something invisible to the average person.
Finally, he sighed softly:
As he spoke, he used his trembling right hand to slowly cut a slit into the tomato he was holding with the small knife.
It was not until then that Annan noticed—
That exceptionally lustrous tomato was filled with fresh red blood plasma.
It gushed out like a fountain, continuously flowing from inside—the blood—Amos held it up high with his slightly shaking left hand.
The blood flowed down his arm, dripping onto the floor. The shadow under the chandelier drank the fresh blood on the ground with low sips as if it were a living creature.
The blood that bloomed within the tomato was dozens of times more voluminous than the fruit itself, as though it were the total blood from several adults...
Eventually, the tomato gradually shriveled.
Inside, there lay a tongue.
The tongue and the two halves of the tomato’s skin seemed to form a mouth, splitting into a wide smile.
Annan heard it again... the girl’s deep laughter.
It was the exact same laughter as the one he heard on the second floor, before he was attacked by Hammer Bro!
Only this time... the laughter was incredibly clear as if it echoed right behind him.
The pool of blood on the floor was finally absorbed completely by the shadow under the chandelier...
No, not completely absorbed.
There were a few meager remnants.
These remnants wriggled on the ground... forming a series of broken words:
"Look... behind... you..."
Amos read out in a hoarse voice, faltering.
Then, he gasped sharply in a jolt of panic.
Shivering, he instinctively turned to look behind him.
All he saw at the end of the corridor he had just exited was an unsettling, blood-red glare.
And the wall that had grown dim due to the fallen chandelier—the wall adorned with portraits, had also been touched by some light. At least enough to make out the portraits hanging there:
The faces of men, women, the old, and the young in those portraits all wore bizarre smiles...
Unbeknownst to him, they had all transformed into Amos himself!
They had all become Amos with a look of panic, his head raised in the gloomy setting, just like now!
Just as if the wall was not adorned with portraits but numerous mirrors instead—
But unlike mirrors, in these countless self-portraits. there stood a tall man behind oneself, silent and looking down with a fierce face.
...Or maybe, this was indeed a mirror.
Amos stood still, blankly watching the man with the hammer in that myriad of mirrors, slowly raising the hammer.
At that moment, all the portraits began to burn.
Scorch marks appeared, singeing away the surface layer exhibiting "Amos and Hammer Bro," revealing another painting beneath.
It was the image of ragged, withered-faced, rough-skinned, exceptionally thin homeless men.
In their eyes, one could see the despair of life.
As well as the hope and gratitude towards the clean and tidy hand reaching out to them from within the picture.
In the instant that Annan and one of the homeless men made eye contact,
he felt someone yank his hand violently.
He stumbled forward a couple of steps.
And at that moment, the scenery around him twisted.
The main viewpoint then became that of a homeless man.
Amos, dressed respectably with a gentle smile, stood in front of "himself," extending a clean, pale right hand with a polite invitation.
Unlike in "The Gallery: Elle Morrison,"
Interspersed in his brown curls were streaks of beautiful blonde hair.
One of his eyes was still that deep, profound blue.
—The other, however, had turned into a lovely, jewel-like, crystal-clear and charming green.
Amos Morrison repeated his earlier words with courtesy, "May I pay you to... become my model?"