"Right, they said there'd be an execution, but they never said you'd definitely die," Shiller said. "That's the narrative trick."
"Don't forget, in the previous stages there were never any must‑die puzzles, and they didn't do last‑place eliminations either. So why, when it came to the lantern stage, did they suddenly have to eliminate the last group?"
"Oh, I get it." Bruce reacted quickly again. "The so‑called 'eliminate the last group' is just a blind eye technique. In reality it's just to lock the last group outside so they can run the Cultist storyline."
The plot faced by the last group was probably that something went wrong with the execution device, or an inside man tampered with it, letting the last pair go. At the same time, those two would accidentally wander into the Cultists' nest and go off to do a single‑line quest.
This isn't without punishment either. First, if the game is really being played as intended, the group that got hunted the most has probably already sacrificed a bunch of body parts and taken heavy injuries. Second, those Cultists might not be easy to handle—you either brute‑force your way through or solve puzzles, and that last group likely can't clear the game anyway; they're just getting some extra side content.
If that group does clear it, they can return here through some passageway and give hints to the existing players, telling them not to do the fake‑stage quests but to go back and fix the mechanism and find the real route to clear the game.
Of course, if they wipe, then Bruce and Shiller's group might have to make some sacrifices to take the Cultist route to clear.
"That's actually kind of interesting," Shiller commented. "Normally, by the time you get here, the lagging group has basically lost the ability to act. A single‑line quest like this can at least give the people who can't clear the game some gameplay. The game designer really is desperate for good reviews."
In Shiller's opinion, this design isn't entirely about enriching the level content; it's mainly about reducing the sense of frustration the lagging groups feel.
In a high‑difficulty dungeon like this, a lot of people are definitely going to suffer and still fail to clear. In that situation, those groups will feel the game is too hard and not fun.
The way to dissolve that frustration is to give those lagging groups some sense of presence. Either let them go find an extra route to clear the game, or let them sacrifice themselves to help others clear. That way, at least their Death isn't meaningless; it gives them some psychological comfort, and the odds they go out and leave a negative review are lower.
However, this batch of players is clearly the poster child for "everything about the process is wrong, the final result is right."
Three draws in the lantern room meant no one got eliminated, so the side quest probably couldn't even be triggered because no one stayed behind to run the Cultist storyline.
But Anatoli slapped the lantern device broken in one hit, sending the organizers scrambling for their lives. Stark rammed himself into the skylight stage and got Batman and the others stuck outside, so they had no choice but to go look for the Cultists' lair.
Normally you can't get in there without going through the cutscene, but the lantern just had to get knocked flying, exposing the staff passage. Everyone took a lap inside; Batman also went through the staff passage into the Cultists' lair, found clues, and came back to warn them.
If you have to name someone, the biggest contributor to the whole process going wildly off the rails and somehow continuing to run is the agent. He sabotaged the game and gave Anatoli the chance to break the lantern, thereby opening the staff passage; he was also the one holding up the staff passage, which made the organizers scatter, letting them rush into the stage and trap the outside group. Don't worry about whether the program is running correctly—just ask whether it's running at all.
Of course, the fact that this bunch is full of weirdos is also a key factor. Anatoli made a move, everyone else insta‑joined the team fight. They also showed amazing tacit understanding in other spots—for example, when Bruce and Shiller cleared the stage and didn't return, not a single person got anxious, and no one had the slightest intention of exploring the mechanism.
Anyway, things snapped back onto the right track in a bizarre way. Shiller and Bruce still saw through the Cultists' conspiracy and obtained the proper way to clear the game. The main question now was: how do you crack it?
They now knew the second‑to‑last stage and the last stage were actually the same stage, the true final level—the one where you dismantle the Cultists' fake stage and find the real path.
The difficulty of this stage was definitely not low, and the way you cleared it might even determine the story's ending. So how exactly do you break the fake stage and find the true way out?
"We need to first find out what parts the Cultists altered," Bruce said. "Right now the chains run downward. If the exit is above, then this is the most important change. Originally, the chains probably went upward, and the blades probably didn't exist, because that's just way too gory and violent."
"I think we should try to figure out what the company's original clear method was. It should be in line with their usual style—probably needs someone to sacrifice themselves, but it's not mandatory, and scheming and cooperation coexist among players."
"Does the panel above the skylight exist?" Bruce asked himself and answered himself. "I think it should, since it's part of the large‑scale construction; they can't just fiddle with that. Which means by design you could only stick your arm out. But what's the point of sticking your arm out to grab the chains?"
"Could it be that the people on the lowest level are supposed to step on others' hands to climb up?" Shiller floated a possibility, but quickly shot it down himself. "That's a bit too simple. If it were Anatoli, he wouldn't need anyone to grab the chains—he could climb up on his own. If you run into a rope‑climbing expert, that kind of cooperation becomes pointless."
"If you want cooperation to matter, then grabbing the chain has to be a necessary step. So what thing needs this many people grabbing the chain together?" Bruce frowned in thought, then suddenly froze and spit out a word: "Electricity."
"The human body has high resistance and can be used to share current. And the reason it's an iron chain and not a hemp rope is probably for conduction."
Shiller caught up too: "So originally this stage was that the iron chain carried current. The person on the lowest level can climb the chain, but can't withstand the Electric Shock; the others can't climb the chain, but they can share the current. In that case, you need enough people holding the chain for the person at the bottom to climb up, open the escape route, and let everyone else climb up."
"Exactly. It's that classic good‑and‑evil game theory again—will the people above deliberately let go so the person on the chain gets electrocuted, and will the ones who climb up later come back to save the others? But no matter what you choose, there's no forced sacrifice. Worst case, you just don't clear the stage."
"If that's the case, there's no need to mess with the iron chain," Shiller said. "Then the winch is actually just like the blade, it doesn't really need to exist. If that thing was added later, we can probably find a way to break it."
"But the two of us can't go back now," Bruce said. "Why is that? Does choosing the Cultist route mean we can never clear the game using the normal route again?"
"That's possible. After all, we didn't get the Cultist clues in the normal way. Under normal circumstances, they might move a lot faster. The last group might even make it down to the bottom level, who knows. Instead of like now, where the two of us are already in the trap and only then do the clues for clearing the level show up."
"So do we have to finish this stage?" Bruce looked again at the guillotine. "It seems like completing the flesh-and-blood sacrifice is the only way now."
"No need," Shiller said. "Have the previous lessons still not made you give up being Batman?"
Bruce froze for a moment, but Shiller had already sat back down on the chair and said, "We just need to sit here and wait for people to come save us."
As soon as he finished speaking, Anatoli in the lightwell level had already stood up. He said, "From what I know about A Zhi, 36 minutes is his limit before he snaps. Add in time for solving puzzles, it won't exceed 50 minutes. And it's already been an hour. He must be stuck."
Lucifer was full of confusion. He said, "Thirty‑six minutes? How is it that precise?"
"Don't ask, I don't want to talk about it," Anatoli said. "It's not exactly a pleasant memory."
"Then I absolutely have to hear it," Lucifer immediately laughed.
"Business first, I'll tell you when we get back." Anatoli glanced up at the lightwell and said loudly to the others, "When the key fell, I was already observing the pattern of the Rebound. Under normal conditions, as long as I throw an object of a certain mass at a certain time, in a certain direction, the blade and the lightwell walls will help me bounce it right into the openings on the other levels. We can use this to pass items around."
The rest of them were basically listening with a bunch of question marks over their heads. Like, is this for real? Wasn't this supposed to be about psychological games? How did it turn into math and physics?
"So how exactly are we supposed to throw it?" Thor asked.
"No idea, I suck at math," Anatoli said. "But I think you guys should be able to calculate it. The blade's motion follows a pattern, so it shouldn't be that hard."
Some people were still voicing their doubts, while others had already started thinking about whether it was feasible. The former were basically those whose math and physics weren't great, and the latter were the ones with at least some mechanics background.
It sounded a bit out there, but in fact it wasn't completely impossible. They had seen how the key bounced all over the place just now. If it could happen to bounce in, then maybe they really could send items down.
But the problem was: what were they sending items for? The liberal arts crowd started discussing this. Anatoli quickly revealed the answer: "We find a way to jam the winch below. The people on the second floor should be able to do it."
The second floor happened to be Harley and Pamela. Right under the gap where they stuck their arms out was the winch below. As mentioned earlier, the winch wasn't fixed to the bottom floor, but to the side of the bottom ceiling—which was also the side of the second‑floor floor—and it was conveniently close to the opening.
"I'll throw this thing down," Anatoli shook the iron rod with the iron chain attached in front of the opening. "Then combined with the one on your body, we should be able to lower it down to the winch and jam the mechanism."
Loki on the third floor helped them estimate the distance, then nodded and said, "Yeah, two chains plus the rod should definitely be enough. But…"
He looked at Harley, clearly a bit reluctant. Because if it needed both to work, never mind whether the other one could be thrown down successfully, Harley's one would definitely have to come off.
But Harley had already started working on her clavicle. Pamela tried to stop her, but once Harley got excited, even Pamela couldn't hold her down. She was afraid they'd worsen the wound if they struggled, so she could only shout while not daring to look.
Harley didn't care about that at all. The process of yanking out the clavicle ring was pretty much the same as Shiller's: she was all about "short pain over long pain," just one crack and it was snapped clean. The overdose of adrenaline and dopamine didn't even let her feel much pain. She quickly yelled excitedly, "Okay, okay, done, let's start!"
The science kids, of course, didn't drop the ball either. Erik, Loki, and Pamela calculated a possible trajectory for the move, but because there were too many variables, they still felt it was unreliable.
Sure enough, Anatoli's throw failed. But the first two Rebounds matched their calculations pretty closely, which proved that predicting the trajectory through calculation was doable—it just needed more precise execution and more rigor.
Next it was Erik's turn beneath Anatoli to remove his clavicle ring. Erik was the real tough one—he snapped his clavicle without a word. Charles just kept a cold expression, but didn't say anything.
This time they'd improved; it even bounced close to Harley's opening. Harley originally wanted to reach out and grab it, but Pamela yanked her back in the nick of time, or Harley would've lost that arm.
And now, the only ones left with an iron rod were Loki's group. They were the last hope.