Batman opened the drawer and reached in to take out the key. This key was bigger than any they'd gotten before, and it looked exactly like it belonged to the big door outside.
"Finally," Superman said. "We should be able to get out now, right? I've been staring at that thing on your collarbone, and the more I look, the more it makes my skin crawl…"
"Don't rush it, Clark." Batman examined the key, then handed the iron rod in his hand over to Superman. "Hold this for me."
Superman stood beside him, obediently holding the iron rod, but he still couldn't stop himself from leaning in to see what Batman was doing. Batman used his now-free hand to grip the lower half of the key, while the other hand rubbed over the upper half.
"There's a mechanism on the key," Batman said. "The light's too dim here, you can't really see it. If you didn't feel it carefully, you'd probably miss it."
"A mechanism on the key? What's it for?"
Batman didn't answer at first. He carefully felt around, then his expression turned knowing as he said, "There's a metal plate here. After you twist the metal part down, it's wood underneath. The keyhole might be live?"
"Electricity? There's electricity here?" Superman looked around, a bit surprised. "But this place looks like some kind of Middle Ages dungeon… Okay, I know what you're going to say, the killer set it up just to lull us."
"You catch on fast, Clark." Batman gave him a slightly approving look. "I think this is the real killing blow. With all the set-up we saw before, they made us assume the traps here wouldn't use modern tech, but in reality, there's high voltage running through the keyhole, just to knock us out the moment we stick the key in."
"That sounds like something you'd do," Superman said. "Is your bedroom doorknob wired to shock when you turn it right, or when you turn it left again?"
"That's not important to you, Clark. Kryptonians are natural insulators; you can't be knocked out by electricity."
"But I can be scared half to death!" Superman raised his voice.
"I do sometimes turn it the wrong way. Does that cheer you up?"
"Oh, thanks, I feel so much better… Come on, could you just not use that trick? It's dangerous as hell."
Batman said nothing, just took the key and walked toward the door.
The key slid into the keyhole. Pamela's hand paused mid-motion. Harley looked at her, puzzled. "What's wrong?"
"Look here." Pamela pointed at the crack of the door. Harley walked over to look, but the light was way too dim. She couldn't see anything and had to stick her head in closer.
Pamela felt a bit helpless, so she grabbed Harley's hand and made her feel for it. Harley ran her fingers along the edge of the doorframe, then showed a puzzled expression too. "These are scratch marks? So the door opens inward?"
Pamela shook her head and guided her hand to the other side of the frame. Harley touched that side, then raised her voice in surprise. "There are marks here too?! This door opens both ways??"
"Oooh—" Harley suddenly got it. "It's a revolving door!"
"I mean, it's a central-axis revolving door. Like the kind that… that… uh, damn it, who the hell uses this kind of door?"
"That's exactly my point," Pamela said. "There are wear marks from opening on both sides of the door, which is clearly abnormal. If, like you said, it's a central-axis revolving door, then that's way too high-tech. Other than modern people with nothing better to do than waste electricity, who would design a door like this?"
Harley rubbed her chin. "It looks like one of those electric contraptions they build in some third-rate tomb-raiding movie purely to show off 'Ancient Egypt's' clever trap designs. Then after filming, they send it to a haunted house to give challengers completely pointless trouble."
"Meaning we're not in an Ancient dungeon," Pamela said. "At least not an ordinary Ancient dungeon. It might be a Magic Dungeon. Without near-Infinity energy, nobody would use a door like this."
Pamela pulled the key back out. She said, "If it's a Magic Dungeon, there should be some kind of Magic Crystal on this, or some weird decorative patterns… Oh, God, what is this?"
Harley leaned in. Pamela kept running her fingers over the key, then handed it to Harley. "There's a part here you can twist. Once you turn it, inside it's… wood?"
Harley's eyes lit up. "The wood's probably for insulation. The keyhole's got electricity. If we hadn't noticed, we'd have been zapped."
"Did Batman design this level?" Pamela couldn't help saying. "This is so vicious. Good thing we didn't open the door earlier."
"No way it's Batman. If it were Batman, the drawer handle would've been electrified too." Harley finished, and the two of them burst out laughing.
Pamela pinched the wooden part of the key and carefully slid it into the keyhole, then gave it a light twist. A faint glimmer of light flickered inside the keyhole, and with a click, the door opened.
Just as Harley had guessed, it was a central-axis revolving door. The panel revolved clockwise around a vertical axis right in the middle of the doorway, and when it stopped, the door leaf lay across the center, leaving a passage on each side just wide enough for someone to squeeze through.
The gap wasn't big; you couldn't walk straight through, you had to turn sideways. That detail almost immediately caught Bruce's attention.
"Hold on, Professor," Bruce said. "There's definitely a reason the door's built like this. With how insidious the level designer is, there's got to be another trap."
He crouched in front of the door and examined the floor, but there was nothing there. Then he checked the door panel. The panel was very thick, about as wide as an adult's palm, which put Bruce on alert.
The thickness of the door panel is off; there might be something inside. He looked left and right, then pushed the door with his hand and found that the door could be pushed, and could even rotate 360 degrees. Bruce suddenly understood.
He pushed the door hard, turned the door panel over, then stepped back a few paces and began to size it up. The light outside was still very dim; too close and he couldn't see the whole thing, too far and he couldn't make out the pattern.
"You think there's something wrong with the pattern on the door?" Shiller stood next to him observing. "The patterns on the front and back aren't the same?"
"Can't be sure." Bruce stroked the pattern on the door panel with his hand, as if trying to use touch to figure out what was different between the two sides of the door.
"What kind of trap do you think this is?" Shiller asked.
"The door panel divides the doorway into two parts, but only one side is passable," Bruce said, "and the panel on the other side is very likely to be rigged to fire a deadly weapon."
Shiller understood. He walked over, and Bruce stepped aside for him. Shiller reached out and felt around the upper middle area of the door panel, then said, "Here, there's a hole here."
He pointed it out to Bruce. Bruce reached out to feel it and found there really was a notch there. He said in some surprise, "How did you know it was here, Professor?"
"The door panel splits the doorway into two spaces for the purpose of making people turn sideways to pass. And if you turn sideways, you'll be facing the panel. If there really is a deadly weapon that's going to be fired, there aren't many spots on the human body that can be killed with a single frontal hit."
"First we can rule out the head. Because even if you're facing the panel directly, your head might tilt, maybe dodging the hole. And with different heights, the position of the head won't match. If the hole is set too high, it probably can't kill in one blow."
"The femoral artery in the lower limbs is technically a fatal point, but if a projectile pierces it, as long as it's not pulled out right away and the rescue is timely, it won't necessarily be fatal. Besides, the leg has a big range of movement and everyone's stride is different, so the odds of hitting are low."
"Only the torso has a large area and is inescapable. Whether it's the chest cavity or the abdominal cavity, there are too many vital organs—once they're penetrated, death is certain. So if I were designing it, the firing hole for a lethal weapon would definitely be placed within the torso's range. Considering height and freedom of movement, this small area has the highest hit rate."
Shiller pointed to where the hole was.
"Brilliant, Professor. But by the way, you sure you didn't design this?"
"No. If I had designed it, I'd have put the hole in the handle of that drawer just now. The moment you pressed your ear to it to listen, the weapon would go straight through from your left ear canal to your right ear canal." Shiller sneered.
"Oof…" Bruce bared his teeth. But then he muttered, "Good thing the level designer isn't as…"
Shiller waved the iron rod in his hand, and Bruce changed tack: "But anyway, thinking like the Behind-the-scenes Manipulator is really useful. I feel like our progress is the fastest."
"You think this is a time-attack race?"
"This is a duo-queue multiplayer instance; it's impossible that it's just the two of us. But we haven't seen anyone for this long, so I guess they're all doing escape rooms like we are." Bruce shrugged. "I just don't know whether we'll merge paths at the end, or we'll all escape independently from start to finish and then compare who's faster."
"Which do you think it is?" Shiller asked.
"The former, I guess," Bruce thought aloud. "If we all just escape independently from start to finish, there's no need to put it in a multiplayer instance. I feel like we'll definitely interact with them later. Hopefully we don't run into those few bastard Ghosts…"
"There are two people we're definitely going to run into," Shiller said. "Anatoli and Lucifer. For the former, I suggest you don't get into a dispute with him; for the latter, I also suggest you don't get into a dispute with him."
"Huh?"
"You're not likely to out-argue Anatoli."
"That I can understand," Bruce said. "He doesn't look like someone who can be persuaded at all. But what about Lucifer? My relationship with him is pretty good…"
"If you get into a dispute with Lucifer, you'll end up in a dispute with Anatoli anyway. Anatoli is exactly the kind of person who becomes more useful the more useless you are."
"What do you mean?" Bruce asked.
"This is probably Lucifer's first time playing this kind of game. You can't expect a hothouse Angel raised in Eden to adapt to this kind of escape-from-death full of pain and danger everywhere. So he probably won't be able to do much. And the weaker Lucifer is, the stronger Anatoli becomes."
"That sounds kinda like…" Bruce turned his hand over, searching for the right words. "Kinda like the complete opposite of you. The weaker you are, the stronger you get."
"You can think of it that way. My point of reference is myself, and Anatoli's point of reference is his teammates. If his teammates are in good shape and very capable, you might not notice anything. But once his teammates fall into weakness, what we'll be facing might just…"
Shiller seemed to drift into memories. Bruce also went to dig through the previous compressed packages. But before he could find that part, Shiller said, "Back when I was receiving Healing, quite a few people objected, and some thought they should give up. They were all professionals, each with their own reasoning. But unfortunately, it was right when I had an episode that Anatoli showed up. And then it just…"
"I can picture it," Bruce said. In fact, it wasn't that he could picture it—he had seen it directly in the compressed packages. That scene, if not exactly a war of words against a hundred scholars, was at least on the level of iron chains across the river, the burning of Red Cliffs, six campaigns against Qishan, and seven captures of Meng Huo…
At this moment, Shiller froze. He stared straight at Bruce and said, "Who gave you those memories?!"
"That's not important." Bruce turned to study the patterns on the door. "We need to hurry; the main thing is to keep our lead on progress…"