Gamers Are Fierce-Chapter 571 - 569: The Painting

The envelope was made of yellow paper, stiff to the touch, with a faint hint of lemon fragrance.

The mouth of the envelope was sealed with red wax. After carefully peeling off the wax, a folded letter slipped out.

The letter was softer than the envelope, its material indiscernible; the handwriting on it was sloppy and chaotic, marred by old, dried stains and blemishes.

The contents of the letter are as follows:

"Hello, Morgan.

By the time you read this letter, you must have installed the battery, searched the house, and felt very confused about your current predicament.

You are frightened, desperate, and helpless, unable to remember who you are, nor where you are, with nothing but a prison-like rubber garment.

As cruel as this may be for someone who has lost their memory, this situation is what you deserve—you are greedy, cowardly, numb, despicable, insidious, selfish, utterly irresponsible, and a scoundrel who only thinks of solving problems by running away.

Perhaps this way might awaken some shred of conscience in you.

Your ultimate goal is to leave this place.

That glass battery can provide you with 3 hours of Energy for activities; if you exercise strenuously, it will deplete even faster—you must always pay attention to the remaining solution in the battery, for when it runs out, your life will end.

Unless you find some kind of ’material’ to restart this machine...

Unfortunately, I can’t give you more hints. Just the thought of you reading this letter right now, pondering my words with that clumsy brain, makes me feel uncomfortable.

In any case, I wish you good luck."

Li Ang, holding the letter, furrowed his brows and glanced at the glass battery on his left shoulder.

The level of the clear liquid inside the cylindrical battery had dropped slightly, by roughly one-eighteenth.

Counting from when I installed the battery, I’ve been in this room for about ten minutes, which means there are two hours and fifty minutes left.

Li Ang said, "Assuming the content of the letter is true, then I, or ’Morgan’, have been trapped here by someone—there could be many reasons: like sleeping with someone’s wife, sleeping with someone’s husband, or just being morally corrupt enough to draw the attention of vigilantes, who then knocked me out, performed a Memory Clearance, and locked me in here. Just like in ’Saw’."

He scanned the room again. "If the person setting up this private punishment harbors deep hatred for Morgan, and he (possibly an Alchemist) has sufficient technical skills to brainwash and to create a vast space—the description of the phase-one task to leave Room A proves that the cage is more than just this little house. So, might Morgan have gone through this deadly game multiple times? No matter how many times he completes it, at the very last moment, just as he’s about to escape, could he be knocked out by an invigorated punisher? Then, would his memory be cleared and he’d be brought back here, only to wait until he wakes up and do it all over again? An endless, ceaseless cycle, all for the punisher’s vengeful pleasure?"

Trapping an enemy in a cyclical cage, preventing them from ever reaching the reality of death, is indeed a good idea. But when the victim happens to be oneself, it’s not so amusing.

"The ceramic floor shows no signs of dragging, the bed is neatly made, and there is no blood or other bodily fluids—it doesn’t seem like a scene recycled for reuse. Of course, there’s also the possibility that an Alchemist reconstructed the room, or it could be a new, unused room. There are just too many possibilities."

Li Ang scratched his head, his leather gloves grating against his metal helmet with a SCRAPE.

"The handwriting on this letter is sloppy and blurred, slanting to the right, all in English. I don’t know if it’s the System’s translation feature secretly going online, changing the Otherworldly tadpole script into English, or if this world actually uses English, and that travel diary was specially encrypted."

Li Ang pondered for a moment, took the envelope to the sink, dipped his leather gloves in water, and carefully smeared it on both the envelope and the paper, trying to reveal any hidden content. Naturally, the attempt was a failure.

Li Ang then took the letter to the front door, aligned the letter with the door’s keyhole, and moved it back and forth to check whether the keyhole was a sham, perhaps requiring the letter paper for activation. The result of the attempt was, naturally, another failure.

"Well, I just knew these two unrelated items wouldn’t work together."

Li Ang put away the letter, turned, and walked toward the metal cabinet. He fiddled around for a while, but still to no avail.

"I can’t find it... a key that could open the door or unlock this garment..."

Li Ang sat at the edge of the bed, staring blankly at the faucet.

"Wait a minute..."

His drifting gaze focused on the wall above the sink, where a mirror should have been hung. But after the mirror had been removed, only a partially exposed broken screw, once used to secure the mirror, remained.

Li Ang got up and approached, trying to pull, twist, unscrew, and pry the screw, but still couldn’t remove it. Thankfully, his leather gloves were robust enough, or his hands would have been cut by the screw’s sharp point.

"If this is a meticulously designed puzzle room, everything in the room should be useful..."

Li Ang mused for a moment, turned toward the bed, picked up the sheet, pierced it with the screw, and tore the sheet into strips.

"No hidden layers in the sheet. What about the mattress?"

Li Ang lifted the mattress off the box spring, placed it over the sink, aligned it with the protruding screw, and pressed down, piercing the mattress surface.

The gloves were too clumsy and thick for delicate work, and he couldn’t rip apart the mattress with them. But now, with the help of the screw, Li Ang managed, after some effort, to tear the mattress apart, spilling out a pile of white foam, as well as a drawing.

"I knew it!"

Li Ang perked up and examined the drawing closely.

It was a crayon drawing, immature in style, vibrant in color, likely the work of a child. It depicted a glass window, and a little girl lying on the sill, looking out the window with large, yearning eyes.

"What does this mean?"

Li Ang flipped the paper over. "Why would the person who set up this dungeon hide the drawing in the mattress? Are they hinting that I wronged their daughter, and that’s why I deserve this punishment? Could this be a trap set by Officer Wang?"