The delicious wind goose tentatively continued to walk forward.
As he walked forward... the demon and hound on the opposite side of the corridor began to retreat in sync.
By the time he was about to reach the end, they had all disappeared.
After the demon and hound disappeared.
The door in front of the delicious wind goose also vanished.
It simply faded away, turning into a wall sealed with bricks. Just like in the previous dreams, when he tried to turn around and go back.
The delicious wind goose, with a bold heart, looked back.
In front of him was a long and deep corridor.
At the end of the corridor was not a wall... but a door.
Just like turning an hourglass upside down—
The old goose quickly realized:
Great, he was back at the starting point again.
"This is incredible, I’m really stuck," the delicious wind goose couldn’t help but curse: "No idea how to die even if I wanted to!"
He once again gathered his spirit and forced himself to walk half the distance forward.
Afterward, he simply sat on the ground, using his hands to push, and wriggled forward with his legs crossed for a while.
Upon confirming that this mechanism was not triggered by his legs and feet but by "distance," the old goose finally sighed and simply squatted in place, leaning sideways against the wall. Legs kicked out on the other wall like a boss, he didn’t move and pondered.
Just as he guessed, the demon and hound that were chasing him indeed stopped when he stopped moving.
Annan was thoughtful.
—He had seen this puzzle before.
It was similar to a level in a side-scrolling action game called "Time-Space Illusion"... In that level, the player character’s spatial axis and time axis were one and the same.
That is, when the player character moved left, time would reverse; when moving right, time would advance. And when standing still or moving vertically, time would remain static.
At the moment, that was the exact situation with the delicious wind goose.
How he talked in place or how he moved his upper body, time was static.
But as soon as he moved forward or backward... time would change.
He could only move forward, towards that door.
But after approaching it to a certain extent, the door would turn into a wall.
Annan was also pondering.
How to break through this challenge...
Something that astonished all players happened—
"I warned you, Amos! Don’t use that gramophone anymore!"
Just then, a lovely female voice with many echoes, like an illusion, rang out.
That was Elle’s voice indeed!
But unlike in the nightmare, her tone was neither demure nor polite.
Her voice echoed from all around: "You don’t understand the principle behind it... nor the cost of using it! The Eye of Lag has seen you!"
"But I have no choice, Elle. At least that person is far in Winter..."
"Amos" took a deep breath and said in a low voice, "But the police have already come looking... We’ve been discovered! And they’re right before our eyes!
"I swore I wouldn’t use it again, but... there are always exceptions."
After saying that, he paused for a moment.
A face full of confusion that belonged to the delicious wind goose reappeared on Amos’s face.
"—Holy shit, how did you enter a cutscene?"
"—Elle, where are you! (echoing)"
"—Gramophone? They have gramophones in this era?"
"—Don’t move old goose, I want to hear Miss Elle’s voice! Ah, ah, I’m dead..."
"—Wait a second, wasn’t Elle already in her teens 45 years ago, so now she’s..."
"—What’s the Eye of Lag?"
The overloaded cutscene dialogue left players discussing excitedly.
As for Annan, he was genuinely startled.
Isn’t that... Master Michelangelo’s title?
Why do I hear Michelangelo’s name in this nightmare?
This isn’t... 45 years ago in Frostwater Harbor?
Annan suddenly hesitated.
Yes, time, mirrors...
Indeed, this had to be Michelangelo’s handiwork!
Suddenly, he realized a long-neglected question... or rather, one he had never considered before.
Master Michelangelo, was it intentional to choose Roth Fort as the respawn point?
Was it merely based on spatial symmetry... or was it premeditated?
As Annan’s thoughts drifted beyond the instance, having listened to the conversation between Amos and Elle, Delicious Wind Goose seemed to be lost in thought.
"...I think I’ve got it, brothers."
He said, and without turning his head, he started to back away.
The flow of time around him accelerated as he neared the midpoint, and continued to increase after he moved away from the endpoint.
The bullet screen comments began to mock:
"—Old Goose, are you planning to back out?"
"—Sorry to disturb you (closes door)"
"—Don’t even think about it, the door is sealed, no one’s leaving today!"
"Quiet, just watch my moves and it’s done..."
Delicious Wind Goose clicked his tongue and kept backing up until he reached about one-sixth of the length of the entire corridor.
That is, where the floor beneath his feet just started to show signs of decay.
Delicious Wind Goose moved back and forth near this spot several times, searching for something, and gradually some viewers began to understand:
"—Are you looking for the cracked floorboard?"
Seeing this comment, other players also suddenly realized.
Delicious Wind Goose was searching for an "interactable" item.
In a space riddle about time, there must be something that doesn’t change when time moves. Otherwise, it would definitely be an infinite cycle.
So, the corridor was empty, void of anything.
What then could Delicious Wind Goose investigate?
As it turned out...even if the corridor was empty, there were still at least two things that could be investigated.
—And the second was the floor!
The floor might have been cracked, decayed, and collapsing.
But it didn’t vanish into nothingness with the collapse, it fell to the layer below.
"—Count from the third strut from the right side of the wall!"
A bullet screen comment in the third person perspective confirmed everything, issuing a reminder: "It had cracks from the very beginning, but it only fell later on!"
Delicious Wind Goose could very well try to pull out that floorboard. Take it to the mirrored space and see what happens!
Delicious Wind Goose’s eyes brightened, he bent down, grabbed the floorboard, and lifted it.
Both sides of it were already cracked and falling off.
Initially, Delicious Wind Goose treated it as a trap—it was obviously unstable and had come apart. If he stepped on it, he would definitely fall through.
But here came the problem.
If it was unstable enough to serve as a trap where one could fall through with a single step...
Naturally, it should also be possible to pull it out directly!
At first, its tip was somewhat solid.
And Delicious Wind Goose, with his right hand firmly gripping the floorboard, took a few more steps forward.
Indeed, as "historically" the case, the tip decayed and broke off.
It fell into Delicious Wind Goose’s hand instead!
"...I’ll try to see if I can smash their heads with it."
Delicious Wind Goose muttered softly.
He moved slowly forward, holding the wooden plank in his right hand.
As he crossed the midpoint, the sound of the violin played once more, and time began to reverse. The marks of decay and the demons with dogs all started to move backward...
However, when he reached the symmetrical spot where he originally took "the wooden plank in his hand," the plank suddenly erupted into fierce black flames.
Before Delicious Wind Goose could react, it slipped from his grasp, fell to the ground, and burned a large hole there.
The fire barely touched him, but it reduced his health to only 3%!
Yet, Delicious Wind Goose seemed to have a revelation.
He walked forward to the end, then looked back.
He saw that the only removable floorboard had been regenerated.
"This is a javelin-throwing game."
He declared firmly, "If it’s true that two identical items from the same timeline can’t exist at the same time...
"It means that I have to throw this floorboard out before that happens...
"Is this to tell me to shoot those monsters dead?
"—Or is it to have me throw open that door?"