Seeing about twenty of his own bodies hanging from the ceiling, Annan remained expressionless.
He even felt a bit like laughing.
Annan was somewhat disappointed.
This really wasn’t because he was brave, nor was it because he lacked a sense of fear...
Objectively speaking, Annan knew what was supposed to be scary about this situation—he had entered somebody’s nightmare. In essence, he was playing the role of this man, presumed to be an artist, who had been stabbed in the instance.
But the hanging corpses bore the face of Annan from outside the instance.
This trick might be enough to make the real indigenous NPCs shiver, inducing a bewildering feeling of being stuck in a nightmare. Yet, it was pointless for players.
It was even slightly comedic.
Because whether it was the players or Annan, their bodies outside of the instance were not their true selves.
If the hanging ones were the pre-transcendence Annan or the true bodies of the players, perhaps it could have given the players a heart attack.
But to see the characters they played dangling like smoked meat here, perhaps only the slower-reacting players with poorer comprehension would be startled upon seeing the corpses. They might even fail to grasp what was terrifying about this scene as they passed by, and would have to wait until they exited the instance for someone to explain the horror to them...
A horror game that required someone else to explain why it was supposed to be scary was, in a way, quite amusing.
Before Annan could get a clear look, another bolt of lightning struck outside the window.
In the fleeting light, Annan saw those corpses revert to bound portraits, as if everything before had been an illusion.
Annan waited a bit longer, but no more lightning crossed the sky.
So he asked earnestly and politely, "Is there anything else?
"If not, may I leave?"
Under the gaze of the twenty or so swaying portraits, Annan passed through the gallery with a light step.
The L-shaped corridor returned to its previous dimness.
The only difference was a crack in the wall—right at the spot where a hammer had suddenly emerged to break through the wall.
Though the crack was small, it was large enough to let one person pass through.
Annan went over and took a peek inside.
To his surprise, there lay a narrow and cramped passage. It only allowed for one person to walk through, and it would be very crowded for two people to walk side by side.
At the end of this narrow corridor was a wooden door... identical to the one in the last room he had seen during his previous two Cycles.
——[At every crossroads, go towards the side with the painting]
"Does this count as... a crossroads?"
Annan murmured to himself.
He glanced to the left, where the end was still lit by the same dim, yellow light as before.
The only difference was that this time, the two sides of the L-shaped corridor were not adorned with those eerie portraits.
And at the end of the narrow passage, there was just one painting. On the left side of the door to the next Cycle hung a painting frame that Annan could not quite make out.
——I should probably head this way.
Annan thought as he squeezed himself through the crack with effort.
He heard "himself" let out a painful groan, breathing heavily. It seemed as if the wound on his abdomen was tearing further.
His body seemed out of control.
Or rather... it was as if he had entered a cutscene, and his body started moving on its own.
Was he about to clear the game?
Or was it... just the beginning?
Even though he had been stabbed in the abdomen, Annan hadn’t cried out in pain even once before, and he had never made such an embarrassing noise. The pace of his walking was very consistent, maintaining a posture in which he could move as quickly as possible without worsening the wound.
Like a machine, precise and elegant.
Yet now his stride was slowing down, and because of the pain, he made some pointless movements and even stumbled a bit—undoubtedly, this would only worsen the injury.
"Baccara... please..."
He murmured softly, suddenly feeling a surge in his throat, and he began to cough violently, tearing the wound in his abdomen further. Because of this, he stumbled and fell to the ground.
He felt a strong sense of suffocation.
Finally, with great difficulty, he coughed up a clump of bloody phlegm from his throat.
He made a fearful noise, his throat gurgling.
Because he saw clearly that it was not just phlegm.
A very complete eyeball, with a beautiful green iris—
He whispered again, trying to stand up but struggling due to the narrow and slick passageway, coupled with the intense pain in his abdomen.
After a couple of attempts, he simply began to crawl with difficulty on the ground.
But Annan was keenly aware of footsteps.
Very light footsteps.
He was crawling on the ground, moving forward on all fours like a dog—so where were these footsteps coming from?
They were behind him.
Annan quickly realized.
Someone was following him quietly, tiptoeing behind him...
And "he" was still crawling laboriously forward, breathing heavily, occasionally letting out painful moans.
The short journey of a dozen steps took him what felt like an eternity.
By the time he touched the door, he was almost delirious with joy.
"Ah... haha... heh..."
With a mix of tears and laughter, he lifted his upper body, trying to push open the door and return to that spacious gallery where one could at least stand and walk.
But his smile quickly froze.
Because the door was locked.
He frantically twisted the doorknob with all his might, only to find it immovable.
The door had been locked from the other side.
At that moment, his focus sharpened, his pupils dilated.
Because he suddenly realized—the shadow cast on the door was significantly larger than his own upper body.
There was someone behind him!
And the shadow above slowly protruded.
Like a person slowly raising a massive hammer above their head—
The instant he realized this, Annan suddenly regained control over his body.
It was as if... something wanted him to turn around out of reflex.
But Annan remembered.
Both the warning from Priest Louis and the voice of the old man when he first entered the nightmare.
"...Don’t look back, right."
Annan ignored the hammer that seemed about to crash down any moment, and instead decisively lifted his head to gaze at the painting to his left.
It was a girl of about ten years old, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She sat on the bed wearing a white dress with lace-trimmed lantern sleeves, the dress reaching midway down her thighs, exposing smooth knees.
Her smile was charming, looking beyond the painting.
There was just one eerie detail.
The girl’s portrait had a fresh char around her left eye, disrupting the warm beauty of the whole. It began as small as a cigarette burn, then gradually spread...
After their eyes met for more than a second, Annan suddenly felt a wave of dizziness.
"...Don’t move, Elle."
He suddenly heard a somewhat familiar voice.
It seemed to be... the voice of that painter.
And from his own mouth came a crisp and cute response: "Okay, Daddy."
Only then did the world before him gradually become clear.
He found that his viewpoint was somewhat lower, sitting on a bed—much softer than the one in Salvatore’s room.
Feeling a lace-like texture at his sleeve, he guessed he might have entered the body of the girl in the painting.
Opposite him should be the painter with a knife in his abdomen.
He appeared to be about thirty years old, with brown hair and blue eyes, some stubble, looking like an unshaven beard. But he still looked quite handsome and dignified, in very good spirits.
...Wait, brown hair and blue eyes?
Annan fell silent for a moment, looking at the painter with a gaze full of pity.
The male painter raised his voice somewhat dissatisfiedly.
Annan finally saw the system’s prompt appear in his eyes.
Only then did he finally receive the belated main quest:
[You have entered the gallery: Elle Morrison (Third Layer)]
[Main Quest: Impersonate Elle Morrison until tomorrow morning]
Immediately after, a flurry of small text surfaced below the line:
[Complete the portrait]
[Uncover the secret of Amos Morrison]
Seeing the main quest prompts, Annan suddenly understood everything:
Priest Louis doesn’t have the system, no wonder his walkthrough is unreliable...
—That gallery, it’s the damn level selection! Each door passed represents the next layer... and looking at the portrait is the key to unlocking the deeper nightmare!
He finally understood how his former selves had died in the past two cycles.
He likely survived the gallery to the last, entering the final layers, theoretically the highest difficulty instance that required [Below Gold Rank] to challenge.
Priest Louis is probably that type of player who, even after clearing the game, still has no clue what the story was about...
Under the increasingly dissatisfied gaze of Amos Morrison, Annan, urged by him for the third time, flashed a sweet, professional smile.
He mimicked the tone of Elle Morrison from before, speaking words so eerily similar it was almost chilling.
It’s just too bad Mr. Amos opposite of Annan didn’t realize anything, only feeling a chill down his spine.