"I always feel like we missed some very important information." Bruce said as he climbed up the ladder on the tunnel wall, "We shouldn't have left in such a hurry. If we had waited, we might have seen something interesting."
"What do you want to see?" Shiller asked.
"I want to know if, when the mechanism breaks, they will come to fix it." Bruce said thoughtfully, "Maybe that could reveal some background story."
"Then it's right to leave quickly," Shiller said, "If I'm not mistaken, the next room should mention the background."
Bruce was a bit puzzled, "How do you know?"
"This scenario isn't focused on a narrative story; it's mainly about escape rooms and mechanisms. But if there's no background story at all, it would feel very abrupt, so the designers might write a simple story. You shouldn't have high expectations."
"Even a simple story is still a story, let's take a look." Bruce propped himself up and climbed through the passage entrance. Shiller also climbed up, and Bruce pulled him up.
They walked a short corridor and entered a new room. This was another empty room, except there was a cage hanging from the ceiling. Bruce was about to step forward to take a look when he suddenly tripped over something, and the ground in front of him collapsed, causing him to fall in.
"Oh, damn it, what is this!" Bruce's voice came from below. Shiller leaned over to look and found he had fallen into a slanted hole. The walls of the hole weren't bricks but merely dirt. There were some damaged bricks below.
The small space below seemed just enough for one person. There was light in the room, allowing them to vaguely see the situation below. When Bruce came out, he was holding a piece of bone.
"There's a skeleton down there," Bruce sighed, "It looks like it belongs to a middle-aged man in his forties or fifties. From the rib marks, chest injuries are evident. The ankle also seems twisted. More importantly..."
Bruce held up the bone in his hand. It was a thin bone, clearly neither an arm nor leg bone. The most prominent feature was the metal ring attached at its center, along with a chain and at the chain's end, an iron spike.
"He was holding this." Bruce took out a notebook, "It's this skeleton's diary. Since people usually don't write their names in their diaries, Bruce gave him the code name 'Andrew.'
Bruce opened the notebook, checking the content in the light, and learned that Andrew was an Afghanistan veteran suffering from PTSD.
"This character setting is a bit cliché," Bruce said, "I bet hundreds of movie plots are driven by Afghanistan veterans."
"Precisely because Hollywood blockbusters have widespread plots, the level designers adopt this classic identity. This way, regardless of which country the player comes from, it's easy to relate." Shiller explained.
Bruce continued reading. The earlier diary entries were written with a pen, generally expressing how he always thought of his comrades, felt very sad, and was living a poor life.
As they flipped forward, they finally reached the main drama. The later diary entries were written in blood. Shiller glanced at it and said, "The blood used should be from the collarbone wound, not from the fingertips."
"You can tell this?" Bruce was surprised. He indeed had never used blood to write, but in his impression, most people who write with blood bite their fingertips.
Shiller nodded and said, "If you bite your fingertip, the fingers won't have enough strength due to the pain during writing, and the curves of the strokes will differ from other situations. But if it's forged bloodstains or written by dipping blood from elsewhere, it would be much smoother."
Bruce thought for a moment, feeling it made sense. Biting the fingertip and using the blood from it to write still seemed too idealistic. First, the human body has red blood cells, a bitten wound won't bleed much for long, and even if you try hard to rub it on paper, it won't produce much.
Moreover, biting the fingertip would be excruciating. One side hurts, while the other has to write on paper, the strokes will definitely be different than usual. Writing a little is fine, but writing a lot not only runs out of ink but also causes the writing style to change.
"This can be used to distinguish if the blood writings left by a victim are genuine," Shiller said, "What he wrote by biting his own finger is different from what a murderer wrote by dipping his blood."
"I've never encountered such a case," Bruce said, "Sounds like you have? Professor?"
"I'm the one who dipped others' blood to write."
"I shouldn't have asked." Bruce slapped his forehead. Why would he think Shiller had a detective's view rather than a perpetrator's perspective?
They turned their attention back to the diary and were soon captivated by the content. Actually, Andrew rambled on and on, but he only talked about two things. One was that he noticed the dungeon was man-made; he even heard someone walking in the employee passage, but his partner, his girlfriend Susan, didn't believe him, thinking he was having hallucinations due to his stress disorder.
The other thing was that Andrew had a plan to hide in a certain room, wait for a cleaning staff member to appear, then launch a fatal sneak attack to escape this terrifying escape room.
Obviously, his plan failed. He did hide in a room but probably couldn't wait for the staff to come and ended up waiting himself to death here.
"However, if as you said, he has a chest injury, then he might have been wounded by a steel needle at the door before and probably wouldn't have lived much longer," Shiller said.
"Then how could he dig such a big hole?" Bruce glanced back at the hole.
But then he realized something and said, "Does he have the same issue as you, Professor?"
"Post-traumatic stress disorder is indeed a serious mental problem," Shiller replied, "When it triggers, it's possible to unlock muscle constraints. The diary says his condition is severe, and it flares up every time he faces death."
"Did his girlfriend Susan die?" Bruce pondered aloud, "Could she have been killed by a steel needle?"
"Quite likely. His girlfriend Susan died in the previous room. He narrowly escaped, but witnessing death triggered his condition. Fueled by brute force, he dug up the tiles and carved out a hole to hide himself."
"But why didn't he wait for the staff? Could it be that the so-called staff passage and footsteps were mere illusions?"
"There are two possible reasons the staff didn't show up," Shiller analyzed, "It could be Andrew didn't break any rules; he merely dug a hole to hide himself but was still in the room—just another failed attempt that the Behind-the-scenes Manipulator didn't need to intervene."
"That's true." Bruce glanced at the hole again, "At the time you were digging up tiles, no one stopped you. It proves the escape room doesn't prohibit destruction."
"Destruction isn't a good choice," Shiller shook his head, "It's potentially a fast track to death because it depletes too much physical strength and might not even be effective. Exhaust your strength without achieving anything, and it's certain death."
"You could even say that allowing destruction is itself a trap." Shiller sighed, "I don't have much strength left either. If I hadn't skipped a level, moving would be difficult now."
"If you weren't strong, we wouldn't have skipped that level," Bruce appeared optimistic, saying, "The normal way to clear it may not consume less strength. Perhaps they chose a more efficient method."
Bruce looked at the journal and said, "What about another possibility?"
"The staff actually came, but Andrew couldn't successfully restrain them. He was killed and then thrown back into the pit. The staff covered the tiles and ignored him."
"That's interesting." Bruce said, "It's not surprising the staff could manage to subdue Andrew and kill him. After all, he was already very weak, and the excitement from his mental disorder only lasts briefly. Moreover, the staff might have guns; having huge strength might not be useful. The key point is why leave the body here? It's not merely to give us clues, right?"
"First, exclude the possibility of a conscience. If the Behind-the-scenes Manipulator is an organization, they wouldn't let a rookie handle body retrieval. Those capable wouldn't have much compassion. Even if they did, taking him for burial would be better than leaving him here."
"Intentionally left here as a demonstration?" Bruce speculated, but quickly dismissed it, "If it was truly for demonstration, they wouldn't need to throw him in the pit; they could hang him from the ceiling to shock people."
"Since it's neither a conscience act nor intentional, only one possibility remains," Shiller said, "it's not that they didn't want to remove him, but they couldn't."
Bruce looked down at the pry bar in his hand: "This one belonged to Andrew. It's already rusted." He gently peeled off the rust layer, discovering something that looked like dried blood.
"It seems they both ended up wounded," Bruce said, "The staff killed Andrew, but Andrew also wounded the staff. When compared to body retrieval, saving one's life was more urgent. He probably exited quickly for healing, leaving the body retrieval unfinished. But who put Andrew into the pit and covered it with tiles?"
Bruce continued flipping the journal. Initially, there was nothing left, but as he continued, he found a word written in blood on the second-to-last page— "blood."
The word was written wildly, the final stroke smeared off. Bruce had a sudden realization: they attacked each other, the staff was hurt, Andrew was also hurt, but neither died. The staff ran away, Andrew crawled back into the pit himself and covered the tiles, intending to hide.
"He's hiding not just his body," Shiller said, "but the diary, his guesses, and clues. He wanted those who came later to continue investigating."
"What a warrior." Bruce sighed, "But if the staff couldn't successfully collect the body, aren't there any more people? He hurt the staff; wouldn't someone come confront him?"
"It's likely because he wouldn't live much longer, hence no need to send someone in to kill him. When he truly died, and it came time to clean it up again, they just forgot."
"This feels like amateur hour." Bruce shook his head and sighed, "Leaving a corpse here forgotten, just ignoring it?"
"You only now realize they're amateurs?" Shiller scoffed, "Anyone with a bit of sense wouldn't use stone tiles when designing a room escape. Would using solid steel panels cause this much trouble?"
Bruce had no words. The monitoring room fell silent. Mephisto rubbed his forehead: "Why did we use bricks again?"
Everyone turned to Greed, as he was responsible for defining the art style. Greed snorted dismissively and said, "Arrogant knows nothing. High-difficulty levels require Points to buy tickets. Without using multi-faced models, rendering it beautifully to express style and enhance atmosphere, if everywhere looked the same with steel panels, who'd buy tickets next time?"
Everyone suddenly realized. It's about misunderstanding the escape room, he misunderstood how to make money.