[Falling into a nightmare. The dungeon instance is being generated.]
[Detected that the current dungeon instance has a special property: Reenactment]
[The dungeon instance is being generated.]
[Dungeon instance difficulty is set as [Distorted], and there is no entrance limit.]
[The current purification progress is 348/350.]
[The current total erosion rate of the team is 2%. The dungeon instance difficulty increases by 2%, and the nightmare’s mutation probability increases by 2%.]
[Warning: Relevant elements detected. The nightmare has undergone mutation.]
[This dungeon instance does not provide any plot but offers decryption rewards.]
[Dungeon instance decryption reward: Unknown]
[Loading completed.]
Perhaps because of the injection of “Frostwhisper’s Eternal Frozen Blood”, Annan woke up this time without the familiarly old and frail voice.
A strange low groan sounded faintly in Annan’s ear.
It was the graceful whisper that Annan had heard before entering the Elven Ruins.
But he still didn’t understand what it meant. He could only make out a short sentence and tried to comprehend something from it.
It’s time to learn a foreign language. This thought popped into Annan’s mind at the first moment.
His second thought was: Priest Louis really didn’t clear the dungeon even once.
Just in case, Annan had kept two more entries into the dungeon available.
However, the priest didn’t clear the nightmare even though four days had passed.
Either this tall muscled priest always slacks in his work, or he just relies on luck to clear the nightmare.
If it weren’t for the fact that Silver Sire could urgently recall and provide abilities that could be used in nightmares, Priest Louis would have died in the nightmares long ago, given that he solved puzzles out of sheer luck.
When Annan recovered from the dizziness and drowsiness when he entered the nightmare and slowly opened his eyes, he found that the scene had changed.
In front of Annan was the long gallery with bright lights.
But the wide corridor, large enough to accommodate ten people walking side by side, was completely sealed off in ice.
Only the circular area with Annan’s feet as its center had no traces of ice.
Then, frost splashed out of the corridor, and ice marks of different heights and thicknesses clung to the surrounding walls.
It was as if a bag full of water had fallen from the sky, or someone had carried out a brutal massacre and turned the blood here into ice.
The crystal chandelier on the ceiling still shone brightly, illuminating the entire corridor.
The ice on the floor and the walls reflected the brilliance of the chandeliers, making the dungeon stage brighter.
Only the opened door at the end of the corridor was dark.
Annan walked calmly toward the dark corner without any fear.
Under the cracking sound of his shoe stepping on the thin ice, Annan walked to the L-shaped corridor and looked at the almost full display cabinet.
The cabinet had three columns and two rows.
In accordance with the standard numeric keypad [1] on the keyboard from [Num Key 1] to [Num Key 6], the displayed items were:
1. Empty
2. Homeless Man’s Hunger
3. Elle’s Diary
4. Venerated Skeleton’s Piercing Rifling
5. Severed Umbilical Cord (Angelo)
6. Turbid blood bullet imbued with a curse.
In the past two weeks, the players had dedicated all their efforts to clearing the nightmare in which they had dug out detailed information about this nightmare.
Except for the “true ending” at Level -1, which the players could not reach due to the lack of crucial information, Annan had followed Delicious Wind Goose’s strategy and cleared all six levels above ground once each.
One side note was that the difficulty would gradually increase from the second level to the sixth level.
Every time one of the nightmare’s levels was cleared, a new item would spawn in the display cabinet. Until the item was taken out, the item could be seen in the display cabinet no matter which level the dungeon challenger had entered.
For example, Elle’s diary would appear in the display cabinet after clearing Level 3, and the bloody tomato would spawn after clearing Level 2.
The problem for players was that they had collected all the collectibles, but they still couldn’t overcome the level.
Only Annan knew that they were still missing one piece.
He had already found out about the “Level 1 Collectible Item” during the first time he cleared the nightmare.
Indeed, Level 1 actually had a collectible item.
The hint came with the message “going through it safely” and “not seeing any enemies”.
Level 1 was the middle layer between the level “above” and “underground”.
Going up was to explore the story of Amos’s self-redemption deep in his soul.
The further up he went, the deeper his fear, and the more he resisted.
In Level 2, his fear was, “what if the homeless man escapes”;
In Level 3, his fear was, “what if I lose Elle”;
In Level 4, his fears were being hunted down by police and hounds, persecuted, and the desperation of “Elle becoming the Venerated Skeleton”.
At Level 5, the nightmare was Angelo’s crusade at the back of the timeline, representing the immense fear of “Elle gave birth to a monster” and “What if Elle’s child is killed”.
As for the nightmare of the final level (Level 6), it had become the easiest level because of the clues which the players had decrypted at Level 4.
Of course, this was undoubtedly the most challenging level for the indigenous people who had no form of communication in a nightmare like a forum feature.
After entering Level 6, “Amos” would appear on the rooftop, looking up at the stars. He held the “Venerated Skeleton’s Piercing Rifling” in his hand, with only the last bullet left in the gun.
In terms of the timeline, this was after Amos stopped Time Stopper Eye’s gramophone and walked straight up to the rooftop.
In just a minute and a half, the police would be on the gallery’s fifth floor and arrive at the rooftop in half a minute.
After that, the dungeon challenger would fail the nightmare and exit it.
There were only 2 minutes to react.
Any ordinary person would be in a state of confusion.
However, Delicious Wind Goose noticed that the way to clear the Level 6 nightmare was related to “time”.
He needed to use Time Stopper Eye’s gramophone.
But the problem was that the police had reached Level 3 at this time.
No matter how fast he ran, it was impossible to get back to Level 4 before the police reached it.
In the end, Annan reacted in time to the situation and gave Delicious Wind Goose an anonymous tip in the bullet text.
“—Maybe the worlds of different dungeon instances are in the same world and may be connected.”
Seeing the hint in bullet text, Delicious Wind Goose immediately reacted.
Then, he once again cleared the Level 4 nightmare, which was the nightmare that altered the time flow depending on if the dungeon challenger moved forward or backward. Then, he moved the gramophone to Level 5 floor after stopping it.
Then, the next time he entered the nightmare on Level 6, he would immediately turn around and return to Level 5 after entering the nightmare. Sure enough, he saw the gramophone he brought up there.
So he immediately started the gramophone and entered the world of the past.