After starting the phonograph, Delicious Goose first ran to the basement and released Angelo.
Then he ran to the fifth floor and moved the phonograph back to the fourth floor—because the police would arrive on the fourth floor in ten seconds. Before the phonograph was turned off, they could hear that it should be on the fourth floor; and sure enough, they saw it there upon their arrival.
In other words, the phonograph on the fourth floor disappeared for less than a minute... which was the time Amos needed to move the phonograph to the fifth floor in the dream on the fourth level.
After Amos had done all this, he returned to the roof. Waiting for time to reverse.
Then, he pulled the trigger from behind himself, killing himself with one shot.
There were ten seconds left before the police would reach the fourth floor and confirm the position of the phonograph;
Two minutes before the police would reach the rooftop and find Amos dead;
Five minutes until the massive "Angelo" burst forth from the earth.
Everything was connected.
The fear that Amos had on the sixth floor represented his deepest fear deep in his heart:
The fear of self-denial.
—Would everything have been better if I had never existed to begin with?
Completely denying his own worth, he erased everything he had sacrificed and stood for in the past...
This was the sinner Amos’s final "redemption."
To make it as if he had never lived in this world.
This was actually a hint toward the true ending.
"Let everything connect."
That is the meaning of the first layer:
In the third layer, Amos had vomited out Elle’s eye.
Annan thought at first that maybe Amos would vomit out something different on each floor, and in the end, vomit out Elle entirely... but he hadn’t seen anything similar on the fourth or second floors.
And if one considers another fact...
Right now, Amos’s left eye is Elle’s left eye.
And by this time, Elle had been dead for a long time—so where could she have left a fresh eye?
Without a second thought, Annan reached out and dug out his own left eye.
He didn’t feel very intense pain... but was hit with strong dizziness, and weird hallucinations began to appear before his eyes.
But upon looking intently, he could see that lying in the palm of his hand was a green eye.
Afterward, Annan placed it on the display case of the first layer.
"—I’ve found the final answer,"
And refused to swallow Elle’s eyeball.
After Annan placed Elle’s eyeball into the display case of the first layer, as the lock on the first layer’s display case clicked shut, the display cases on the other five layers opened simultaneously with a snap.
Annan put on his coat and deftly took the silver coin out of Amos’s pocket.
He pressed the coin to his abdomen and eyeball—following a flash of light, his wounds were easily healed. However, the left eye he had lost remained hollow.
He took out a tomato overflowing with human blood, called "Beggar’s Thirst," and placed it in his coat pocket. Then he loaded the Dirty Blood Bullet into the silver revolver... and swallowed the umbilical cord.
This was the detail the players had overlooked.
If the purpose of the first layer was "connection,"
Then, besides the second layer’s "coughing up an eyeball," the precondition of the negative first layer’s "coughing up an umbilical cord" had to be completed!
"You have to line them up perfectly!"
Afterward, Annan found the empty painting. He turned the frame clockwise by a half-circle, slowly rotating the hidden mechanism inside.
Accompanied by the incessant clanging of chains, a small section of the wall next to it began to bend inwards, revealing a narrow and cramped dark passage.
At the end of the narrow passage was a wooden door.
It looked exactly like the one at the end of the corridor.
Pushing open that door, Annan was confronted with a ghastly white staircase descending straight down like ribs.
The place was also covered with flawless frost.
Because the steps were originally very narrow, and the gaps between them were filled with ice, it was barely possible to find footing. It seemed likely that he would fall after just a couple of steps.
But Annan didn’t go down at all.
His abdominal injury had been healed, so he didn’t have to worry about aggravating the wound anymore. Hence, he could undertake some more difficult tasks...
Such as squatting down and sliding down sideways just like a mischievous kid skating down ice!
In the basement, the greasy corpse oil had also been completely encased in ice. Annan slid down the icy slope to the bottom as effortlessly as if he was skiing.
Even because the lowest layer was also covered in frost... Annan’s body couldn’t brake in time and crashed into a table before finally coming to a stop.
At that moment, someone pulled open the basement door from the outside.
A huge shadow was cast from above, looking like a twisted monster, or like a sharp blade with its tip pointed right at Annan.
But the person above didn’t speak.
He silently stood at the top looking down and did not descend.
In his hand, he held a long-handled iron hammer.
—It was none other than the "Right Arm of the Barrier Breaker."
Annan finally managed to get up from the ground.
Amos’s untrained body had been harshly slammed down, leaving him a bit dazed on impact.
Yet Annan just grinned and turned to smile, "Why aren’t you coming down, Mr. Joseph?"
In the previous run of the domain, Joseph, known as "Big Hammer Bro," should have been descending step-by-step with an oppressive force.
And when he was halfway down, Annan here had to get into character. Though he had nearly gotten himself half-paralyzed from the fall, he still needed to muster the strength to stand up and, with all the dignity of an ancient figure, throw out a "You shouldn’t have come," followed by an Illidan-esque "You are not prepared," combining a declaration that had both ancient and modern gravitas.
Unfortunately, the other party couldn’t catch a single cue.
But this time was different.
Because Annan had injected the "Frostspeaker’s Permafrost Blood," the nightmare had twisted. The direct consequence was that the ground was covered in ice...
...which directly resulted in Joseph being unable to come down.
If he were to fall down this twenty-plus meter high ice slope, even as a silver-rank wizard, it wouldn’t do him any good; he would just fall and get stunned on the spot.
This also caused the cutscene CG to be unable to trigger as scheduled.
Annan, with both hands tucked into his pockets—one hand holding a tomato, the other a gun—spoke leisurely, "I think you can also tell that something’s off, right?
"I couldn’t possibly be Amos, and Amos couldn’t spread frost over the floor of the entire gallery. That’s something only the Grandmother could do.
"In fact, this is just a nightmare, Mr. Joseph. I have no intention of having you die on the spot, but I hope you can keep calm in what’s about to happen, and it would be best if you maintained a considerable fighting capacity..."
As he spoke, Annan took hold of the glass bottle filled with wine.
Looking at the "Angelo" inside the glass bottle, Annan said calmly, "Because I also don’t know what will happen next."
Today’s second update came a bit late... And then I recommend "Elf Mastery," which I am also following!