Chương 576: Chapter 567: Return

After falling into the screen of light, just like every other time we had entered a screen of light, we teleported to a new room. This time, I did my best to pay attention to what happened when we teleported, because I really wanted to understand how this mansion worked. After seeing Morton die, I was more determined than ever to understand how this adventure worked, and how, if I wanted to, I could tear the whole thing down later. That started with understanding how the portals worked.

What I saw through my spatial sight and conceptual sight looked very similar to a giant web of connected rooms. I realized that this adventure was a bit less restrictive than I had thought it was - but not by much. Based on my loose understanding of this 'adventure,' every single room in this adventure was sort of like a specific path in a choose-your-own-adventure novel.

It started out very constrained, and then, whenever certain conditions were met, the door to the next 'room' would be opened, just like in a proper choose your own adventure novel. I suspected that each room actually had multiple 'exits' to it. I wasn't quite sure what conditions there were to open each exit, but I was fairly certain that each room did have multiple 'endings'.

Upon achieving any of the 'endings' for a room, we could then exit the room and proceed to the next one, which would continue the story and pick up where left off… or at least, that was my best guess for how the whole thing worked. Most importantly, I was now certain that we had actually met multiple completely different Uncle Mortons. Every single room was a completely different space, and it didn't seem like there were any ways for the inhabitants of each room to move from one room to another.

Only outsiders to the whole system, like our group, could do so. In other words, every single room where an 'Uncle Morton' in it was sort of like a group of actors. Every single one actually had a completely different 'actor' playing as uncle Morton. I had no idea how these 'actors' were acquired, but I was certain that each room had different souls playing the same role. This, if anything, made this entire enterprise seem even more strange and artificial to me.

There was likely still some degree of reality that needed to be maintained for us to acquire skills - after all, scenarios with no real stakes couldn't grant people Abilities or rewards. However, I suspected that this type of adventure stretched those requirements to the very limit - all for the sake of making it easier for Market members to survive and thrive in this adventure. As I ruminated on what I had seen and what I had learned, the light screen finished teleporting us.

To my surprise, we returned to the original room we had entered. Just like the first time we had entered this room, in the corner of the room lay the mutilated corpse of Vanessa - or, more accurately, a prop designed to look exactly like her corpse, despite the fact that it had probably never been alive. While the corpse was the same, and the locks and doors were also the same, other parts of the room had changed.

First of all, the doorway we had used to enter the first set of rooms now had the image of Vanessa's corpse painted over it. The light screen we had used to enter the first set of rooms was also gone. It seemed that we could only enter each set of rooms once, and we had finished the first segment of the adventure. I frowned. A great deal of the adventure had been spent watching Vanessa die after getting information I didn't know how to make sense of.

I was pretty sure we had missed a lot during our time in the first set of rooms - and unfortunately, it didn't seem like we had a way to correct that. We also didn't have a way to save the Morton that had died during our time in the previous room - he was dead and had probably returned to the Ocean of Souls by now, though I had been in such a rush during our escape that I hadn't observed exactly where his soul went after he died. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"I guess we know why the outside of the mansion is decorated the way it's decorated now," said Sallia, breaking me out of my thoughts.

"According to what we've seen so far, I think this is meant to be some kind of creepy horror adventure. The decorations we saw before we entered this mansion were probably meant to clue us in to what kind of 'adventure' is waiting inside."

"I guess the next room will probably continue the 'story' of Vanessa and how she was sacrificed?" said Valeksi.

"I don't know if that's entirely true, though. After all, the second we entered just seemed like a random trap room. I could see what Ability it was meant to grant us - but I have no idea how it connected to the 'story' we saw in the next two rooms. I'm not even sure if there is a connection."

"We might just be missing something?" Anise said.

"I doubt that we were supposed to get literally zero skills out of the previous two rooms, so it's obvious that we missed something. We either had objectives we were supposed to complete but failed to find, or we missed some other component of the scenario that we were supposed to interact with. It's even harder to guess what we're missing because we don't have any of the introductory materials or information about this adventure that we were probably supposed to have.

I imagine that people who properly paid for their time in this adventure would get introductory information about what kinds of events and choices they would find inside, while we're just going in blind."

"I'm more disturbed by the idea that there might be real people trapped in here," I said, after a few moments. Now that I had confirmed some of the nature behind how this adventure worked, I was starting to get an idea of how I might be able to 'rescue' all the copied Vanessas, Mortons, Jamirs, and other people that existed within this network of rooms.

I had no idea what I would do with them afterwards, or how to prevent this adventure from creating more copies - but at the very least, I could try to save some people.

"Did you notice something?" asked Felix.

"I did," I said, before I briefly described what I had noticed about the structure of the adventured as a whole. My friends looked thoughtful, while Valeksi and Kexley looked like they had more mixed feelings about my findings. I couldn't quite figure out what they were thinking from their expressions, unfortunately.

"How did the Market even pull this off?" asked Felix.

"Did it just take real souls from the ocean, cram them into manufactured bodies, and then use some kind of magic to implant false memories into their head or something? I'm… a little disturbed by that thought, honestly."

"They might have been artificially created souls too," said Anise.

"After all, you already mentioned that when you worked as a healer in some previous worlds that newborn babies 'create' new souls if they pull in enough water from the Ocean of Souls. Since the Market seems like a society that was heavily built around soul manipulation, I imagine they knew how to make souls from scratch."

"Does it matter? I feel bad for them too, but right now, we need to get moving," said Valeksi, cutting off my train of thought.

"We only have two years to grow as strong as possible - we should prioritize our own survival first. We can figure out the mechanics behind how all of this works later." I frowned. I wasn't quite sure if I agreed with Valeksi, especially after seeing a 'Morton' die. That had been an innocent man that had died just to make part of our 'adventure' more realistic, and I was disgusted with that outcome - but for now, I decided not to push the issue.

I had no idea how to 'end' this adventure anyway, and without some concrete idea of how to change the entire situation, anything I did was bound to be ineffective. While I thought about what I had seen, Felix moved back towards the fake Vanessa corpse, and began fiddling with the hair bow.

"I can unlock the second door," he said, after he took a look at it.

"I'm not quite sure what changed, but I can definitely unlock the second area now." I sighed, and then nodded.

"All right, let's keep going. Let me know if you see anything else useful, Felix - I still want to learn more about how this place works, and how we might dismantle it."

"Of course," he said as he started to fiddle with the hair bow. Felix spent another hour tinkering with the hair bow of the 'dead' Vanessa in the corner, before finally, the doorway to the next segment of the adventure clicked open, and a new screen of light appeared at the end of the hallway.