Annan didn’t walk too fast.
He was keenly alert, watching his surroundings at all times, prepared for some monster to suddenly spring out of a corner...
He certainly hadn’t forgotten that "the dead" was the keyword for this instance.
And the influence that had brought him to this instance was the remnants of a death god...
But to Annan’s slight relief—and a bit of disappointment—by the time he reached the end, he hadn’t seen any corpse jumping out shouting "Super Surprise," making Annan seem somewhat timid.
However, Annan didn’t have any particular reaction to it.
He just stepped onto the staircase at the end... and climbed up, one level after another.
About seven or eight flights up, he finally saw light.
But the moment Annan lifted his head— he saw something pitch-black, blocking a patch of light at the only bright exit!
It seemed like someone was standing in the doorway, silently watching Annan as he advanced upward!
...Wouldn’t this normally give someone quite the scare?
Annan’s somewhat slow reaction kicked in, and he turned around, lifting the chain to look back.
He felt there should have been a surprise attack from behind...
At that moment, footsteps suddenly came from outside.
A few people were talking as they passed by nearby. They didn’t go through the door, and even at their closest, they should have been more than ten meters from the main gate... perhaps it was an outer corridor.
If Annan had screamed out in fear or tried to negotiate with that person just now, maybe they would have heard him...
This thought flickered through Annan’s mind.
But that person still stood at the doorway. They neither walked down the stairs nor said anything to him, not even changing their posture.
Annan squinted, confused, and continued to climb upward. Meanwhile, he deliberately reduced the sound of his steps. Thankfully, Evelyn was a dancer by heritage, so her steps were light enough.
As he got closer, under the increasingly bright light, he finally saw...
That it indeed wasn’t a living person.
It was a soldier statue,
a marble soldier statue, standing with its back to him, blocking the entrance!
Above the exit hung a huge painting. The back of the painting was fixed with pulleys, resembling a vertical sliding door that had been pulled up about a meter high... but whether out of carelessness or to let in light, the person who had opened the painting hadn’t closed it back.
So, was this the door to a secret underground chamber?
Annan tried to push, but found that he was completely unable to move the stone statue at the entrance without making noise. He couldn’t squeeze through the doorway either.
But there should be people not too far away...
Annan gave a slight smile.
He just struck a pose.
A somewhat odd pose, with his body sidelong, facing forward.
In the next moment, Evelyn Miller’s somewhat frail body instantly transformed.
Annan’s body inflated like a balloon, turning into a kindly middle-aged man with black hair and black eyes, and profound features in the blink of an eye!
It was indeed "Giralda David Buonarroti"!
Just like Annan’s other Curse Bindings.
The Curse Binding "The Last Work ’David’" could also be brought into the nightmare!
If it was just about physical strength, there was nothing simpler than letting David take the stage.
David, being made of marble just like the statue, might not be good for much... but he certainly had strength to spare.
Transformed into David, Annan easily embraced the soldier statue at the entrance and moved it to the side.
Afterward, Annan immediately reverted back and went to retrieve the chains.
This was to allow "The Final Work ’David’" to cool down as much as possible, ensuring it was always ready for use when needed.
Another advantage was... Annan realized that Evelyn’s footsteps were much lighter than David’s. With a bit of care, her movement could become cat-like and hard to notice.
Annan quietly left the basement door.
But as he looked back, he paused slightly in surprise—
The painting that served as the mechanism was one he recognized.
Indeed, it was the very same painting from the second floor of the gallery, "Feast of the Famished," the last one Amos had painted!
It depicted a disheveled, ragged beggar with a thin and withered body, one hand resting on a window sill looking inside, and the other hand slightly curled and timidly placed under his ribs. His eyes and eyebrows were a mix of confusion and ruthlessness, and his eyes glinted with a dim green light, mixed with hunger and greed.
Just standing there hunched over... he conjured the image of a wolf standing erect, hungry.
—The hungry wolf was watching Evelyn.
Should someone enter this replica without having experienced "Feast of the Famished"... they might indeed get a fright here. It was even possible for them to have an immediate increase in their erosion rate...
But to Annan, this was no longer of any use.
However, I think I know the timeframe of this instance now...
Annan slowly slid the painting down until it returned to its original place, blocking the light from inside—no matter who the person below was, at least this way, she could be trapped and wouldn’t be able to get out easily, but it wouldn’t cost her life.
But it was enough to buy some time.
After dealing with the mechanism here, Annan looked around.
He realized he seemed to be in a building resembling a church, with many people talking around him.
Whose church was this?
But he was still unclear where those water stains had come from.
Annan could even faintly hear singing... but couldn’t make out where it was coming from.
After pondering for a moment, he threw the chain upwards, hanging it on the ceiling.
Using Evelyn’s exceptionally light body, he climbed up the chain onto the ceiling and moved sideways along the rafters, bypassing the door into an unoccupied room.
Annan quickly scoured the area and found two silver coins.
With silver coins in hand, Annan wasn’t very anxious anymore...
He opened the window to look out and, like a thief, swooshed out through the window while also not forgetting to close it behind him.
However, to his surprise, once he left the church, the sound of singing became even louder.
Annan quickly left the church, following the direction the sound was coming from.
He didn’t walk for more than three minutes... before his pace gradually slowed.
As Annan drew closer to the source, he began to hear it more clearly.
At first, he thought it was another language, or simply a dialect.
But having heard the singing clearly and recalling the conversations heard before... Annan suddenly remembered the voices he had heard in the gallery, on the floor with the symmetrical hallway—
—The reason that language seemed unfamiliar was that it was reversed.
And those hymns were not coming from the windows of the unfamiliar church by Annan’s side.
Instead, they wafted out from the reflection of the white church in the lake before Annan’s eyes.
Annan looked down at Evelyn.
The face devoid of hair, full of scars, and the right side of her body... were all scarred from burns.
Annan noticed that in the lake, "Evelyn’s" mouth corners were slightly raised, as if she was smiling with satisfaction at something.
He was about to raise his hand to touch his own mouth to check...
—But he found that "Evelyn" in the lake had not raised her hand.