The situation became more and more confusing. Even if the people in the room might have turned into ghosts repeating the same actions, why would the same ghost be in both rooms? Is one mimicking the other, or is there a special connection between them?
Then even stranger occurrences followed; footsteps in the third room sounded just like the first two, and the sounds occurred only when knocking. Without a knock, there was silence. Then came the fourth and fifth rooms—all the footsteps from any door were identical.
This, on the contrary, simplified the mystery slightly. If only two doors were the same and others different, those two must be special. But if all the doors inside sounded the same, it means that on this floor there's just one ghost—it's his territory, so no matter which door you knock on, the footsteps are his.
"So, does that mean we're the only living ones left?" The agent rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "If that's the case, it's rather manageable; we just need to find a way to perform an exorcism."
"It's not that simple," said Greed, shaking his head. He knew that the system's hint was that he was the detective, which meant there still was a murder case. Even if ghosts did indeed exist here, the murder case wasn't fake.
Moreover, in prior dream analysis, the footsteps made sense too—essentially, the dream host didn't knock on many doors. On the floor, he knocked only on that one door and heard only that one set of footsteps, thus repeating it in the dream.
Greed wasn't just connecting unrelated dots; he had deep insights into dreams, which are both logical and illogical places. The incoherence lies in the chaotic assembly of facts and imagery—a cup of water and a bird might combine into a crocodile, which sounds absurd and follows no real rule.
Yet there's logic due to the fact that everything appearing in dreams is something the dream host has seen or experienced—things he has never encountered will not appear in dreams, especially concrete images. The dream didn't have such clear footsteps unless heard many times in the real world.
The dream host might be closely linked to the owner of the footsteps. The repeated door-knocking implies he came often for discussions, possibly interrogations, but something must have transpired between them.
Greed shared his guess simply; the other two felt it made sense, but without decisive evidence, they couldn't help but curse Batman's cunning. The game had gone this long without giving a key clue—had they not been experienced veteran players, they might have left negative reviews by now.
This is why beginners care for game longevity while veterans worry about their own lifespans. Those adept players who have crossed many instances excel at enduring solitude. Even at the game's beginning, allowing a couple of months to live like ordinary people, they do it without flaw and the game designer struggles to find issues.
They moved up a floor then, where Greed and Little Superman's room was located, and knocked on each door in sequence. Again, the footsteps sounded identical—a high-heeled woman was on this floor.
Yet, listening to these repetitive footsteps, they discerned a pattern. The footsteps' intensity varied—some louder, some softer—with subtly different rhythms and phases: some fast-paced, others slowed, and their timing off. A first step in one sequence might be the third in another; there's some disparity, fundamentally.
If not for this variation, things could be far more straightforward, but with the differences, issues plunged again into ambiguity.
If each floor only has one ghost, its steps should be entirely consistent. Instead, the variety—strong and weak, fast and slow as if the ghost is practicing ballroom dance—is perplexing?
Saying the ghost's mood varies doesn't explain it either, since the interval isn't long. Knocking the same door twice reveals different footsteps faster than flipping pages.
To this point, resorting to the Exhaustion Method is unavoidable. They began repeatedly knocking beside the door, each time with different strength and intervals to determine the footsteps' nuances.
After experimenting for a while, they found one thing: it seemed entirely random. No matter the knocking strength, the interval, or the door choice—the footsteps sounded randomly.
Upon discovering this, the group didn't feel time wasted—after all, you never know if the creator hid a trap here, so it brings some peace of mind to test it out.
Then they began to discuss how, if related to Earth-bound Spirit phenomena, they should perform an exorcism.
In the end, everyone agreed that they should go upstairs and look. The reactions of each door on the same floor are random, not much to go on, but the phenomena between different floors should be regular; otherwise, all clues would be lost, and it wouldn't really be a game.
Greed also had to consider that the so-called system clues might actually be concocted by some malevolent entity. This setting sounds a bit bizarre, but it's not unheard of. When he designed the dungeon, he especially liked to design horror elements around the player's perks.
The key to creating terror lies in breaking the sense of safety. Everyone has their own safety domain, which, once entered, greatly diminishes the sense of fear. For some, it's friends; as long as they're with certain friends, they won't be as scared. For others, it might be an object; just touching it brings a sense of peace. And for some, it's their abilities; confident in defeating ghosts, they're naturally not afraid.
The real challenge is how to force someone out of their safety domain. One way is to plan terrifying plot twists around things that provide the greatest sense of security.
For instance, a friend trusted for a long time had actually been replaced by a ghost. Each time one leaps into their embrace, the eyes meeting them are not of concern or worry, but of disdain and cruelty; an item thought to provide protection is actually tainted, and each touch brings the ghosts nearer; or replacing certain memories, making someone believe they're solving a crisis with their abilities, when they're actually rushing towards doom.
System clues are something that can easily pull people out of the atmosphere of terror. These words constantly remind the players that they're not in the real world, but merely in a game, and this easily becomes a security domain.
But if a terrifying hidden plot is laid above this, the so-called system clues become a ghost's scheme, fooling the players into thinking it's just a simple suspense detective game, when actually it's delaying their time to lead them faster to death.
Realizing this, Greed had to admit the agent made sense; time might be a critical factor, otherwise there wouldn't be a need to design system clues to begin with. And if the estate wasn't a dream, then the desolation here might very well be Batman's intention.
This is certainly reverse thinking, too. Players have long been accustomed to seeing those exquisite scenes in the Battleworld; every object is meticulously selected by the production team, not only fitting the style of the current scene but also abundant, yet not chaotic. Full of life without appearing forced.
So when a suddenly empty room appears, seemingly full of flaws, it's easy to think that this isn't the real world, but possibly something virtual, which is especially effective for veteran players, as they love to overthink.
Whether using system clues to guide people to play detective, or intentionally making the house this way to explore the boundary between dreams and reality, it's indeed all about delaying time; death is inevitably advancing from somewhere.
What could it be? Greed pondered.
At that moment, Little Superman came down from upstairs, saying, "The door to the Roof Terrace needs a key, we have to find it."
No one criticized him for being less cautious this time; if the Roof Terrace has a door and it can be opened, nobody knows if there's a crucial clue behind it, maybe the deadly items are hidden behind the door, finding the key to the Roof Terrace is a necessary path.
"Let's split up and search. We've checked the middle floors, so what's left is the ground level backyard and the possibly existing basement. Superman and I will look for the basement, you guys head to the backyard," Greed said.
In reality, neither of these places could be accessed. The door leading to the backyard was locked too and required a key. After some searching on the first floor, they eventually found a locked box in the storeroom. Regardless if the box held the yard's key or not, as long as it's locked, it's definitely not simple, so they'd have to find the key.
Fortunately, there's a simple little puzzle in the storeroom, and after solving it, they found the key in a hidden floor compartment. Opening the box, it indeed contained the backyard door key. Holding the key, they went to the backyard, surrounded by towering shrub walls, impossible to get out, only able to wander back and forth. Eventually, they discovered the cellar door on the east side of the house, and unsurprisingly, the cellar door also needed a key.
"Ha, just as expected," Little Superman sneered, seemingly unsurprised. Greed thought he had seen through the game creator's time-delaying trick, and then Little Superman seemed to say something, but it was clearly unrelated to the game and got censored, unnoticed by anyone.
The cellar door key was found in the shrubbery of the backyard. The puzzle wasn't difficult, but time-consuming; it required rotating statues scattered in the backyard until they all pointed in the same direction, which marked where the key was.
The backyard wasn't actually large, and finding those statues wasn't hard, but what's bothersome is that those statues were very heavy and difficult to turn, requiring pairs of people to move them, which doubled the time taken. When they found the key and returned to the cellar door, everyone was panting heavily from exhaustion.