A few minutes ago, Bruce had very boldly put his plan into practice: after following the elevator up, he forced the disc above back into place and jammed the cage. And the plan worked perfectly—the cage was completely stuck.
Sure enough, Shiller, who stayed below, heard an unusual sound from the upper half of the right-hand wall. Something went "clang," followed by some weird grinding and meshing. They immediately judged that the pulley set was inside the wall of this room, and not far away.
Considering that the mechanism needed adjustment and maintenance, there had to be a room in there, which meant there would definitely be an employee passage. Unfortunately, although they could hear the sound, the wall tiles really couldn't be pried open; otherwise, they might have been able to catch whoever came to do the repairs right on the spot.
But even if they couldn't catch anyone, they'd probably still be able to determine whether there really was someone inside. Because now the mechanism was broken, the stage was stuck, and the organizers would definitely have to come rescue them.
Granted, this technically counted as them courting death themselves and getting stuck by their own doing, but part of the responsibility also lay in the mechanism's bad design—no reverse safety measures. If they just ruled it a failure like this, they were guaranteed to earn at least two bad reviews after the game ended.
At this moment, everyone in the monitoring room had already put on their masks and were ready to head out. Greed had just opened his mouth to tell the agent to go fix it, when he realized that including the agent, they had exactly six people. If the agent went for repairs, once the first group entered, there would be one less actor sitting above, which would obviously wreck the story comprehension.
The agent, however, was quite calm. He said, "Call Deathstroke in. Worst case, we just give him some Points."
Greed thought about it and agreed. With this bunch's capability for causing trouble, one repairman clearly wasn't going to be enough; sooner or later they'd have to call in a few more anyway, so might as well shout for someone now.
So Deathstroke from the Prime Universe was called in, and while the six of them were performing, he took on the duties of repairman and janitor. But he obviously hadn't fully transitioned out of his big, flashy combat style, had no habit of stealth at all, and didn't bother muffling his steps in the employee passage. He just went "thunk thunk thunk" down the corridor. Shiller and Bruce could hear it crystal clear from outside.
Not only that, his movements while fixing the pulley set and the disc control mechanism were ridiculously loud. He ran into some trouble midway and started banging and tossing things around, making enough noise for three or four people all by himself, leaving Bruce a bit at a loss.
"Is their human-resources surplus really this insane?" Bruce said, puzzled. "Does it seriously take this many people to fix a pulley set and a mechanism?"
"I'm guessing they've taken precautions," Shiller said. "Don't forget, from the plot we learned before, an employee got taken out and reverse-killed. I'd bet from then on they stopped sending single people in for repairs, to avoid being caught by players."
"What a bunch of cowards," Bruce said. "Looks like the idea of taking hostages to escape isn't very realistic. Taking on three or four armed security guards is way too dangerous. We can only think from the energy side now."
"You're planning to cut the power?" Shiller didn't do many experiments himself, but he often hung around the lab with Victor. He said, "The power supply for the mechanisms and for the lighting must be separate, because when we repaired the scale earlier, the drive power was cut, but the lighting wasn't affected."
"We just need to cut the drive power. But we have to first draw out the structure of this building and figure out where the power source is located. That's not hard, because you have to cut the drive power before repairing any structure, which means the energy room is definitely placed in the most central position, otherwise it would be too time-consuming. All employee passages will be connected to the energy room. As long as we can determine the direction of the employee passage behind each room, their point of intersection is the energy room."
Bruce looked toward the wall and said, "His footsteps are that loud, which means the employee passage is very close to the wall and runs upward, which proves the energy room should be right beneath our feet. If you treat this like a building, we might already be above the central axis."
Shiller sketched the blueprint in his mind. He understood what Bruce meant. Basically, the employee passages were countless lines, and each stage room was the endpoint of one of those lines. What they needed to do now was to deduce the starting point from the positions of the endpoints.
"We have two possibilities right now," Bruce said. "One is that the designers are very rigorous, and even in places we can't see, the employee passages are built according to the laws of physics and architectural rules. They'd link up rooms that are close together, and they'd use spiral staircases to raise the height. There might be some sloped stairs, but the angles wouldn't be too bizarre.
"The other possibility is that in the places we don't see, the Battleworld stage designers simply went full random with their wiring—pulling countless lines straight from the center, each leading directly to a room. From a design perspective that's the simplest, and it's more user-friendly for the staff who have to run around inside, because every route is a single straight passage, so they won't get lost…"
"It's probably the latter," Shiller said. "I know Greed. He's all about efficiency and prefers to spend the budget where it matters most, making sure money is spent where it counts. Anywhere the players can see will definitely have well-funded modeling and art. But wherever players can't see, they'll just slap something together to save resources."
"Isn't the dev team's budget Infinity?" Bruce asked, a little confused.
"Of course not." Shiller shook his head and said, "They don't need to spend money on material things, but their energy is limited. They're not full-time developers; most of them just tinker in their spare time. And they still have to roll out enough new stages within a given timeframe, so the time they can spend on each stage has a hard cap. They can't polish everything endlessly; if they go too long without new content, they'll be flamed."
"Makes sense." Bruce nodded and said, "If it's random wiring, that makes things easier."
With that, he took out Andrew's notebook; there were still plenty of blank pages in the back. Since he didn't have a pen, he used the tip of the iron spike, dipped it in some water on the floor, and started drawing on the blank pages.
First was the room in the first stage, two rooms connected together, then that long corridor and the room at its end, then going up to the second floor, then continuing upward to the scale room, then further up to the steel-needle room, and then further up…
Bruce was drawing a three-dimensional structural diagram of all the mechanism rooms and estimating the maintenance rooms' locations. Using the known information gained in this room, he tapped the steel-needle room. "I suspect the energy room is at the center of this polygon.
"There's enough space here, and it's right below the room we're currently in, consistent with the direction where we just heard the footsteps coming from. Most importantly, the scale system and the steel-needle system should be the most important mechanisms. Putting the energy room here makes it easier to cut power and debug back and forth."
"It's a pity we left too early," Shiller said. "If Anatoli really broke the scales, we could've used the time it took to fix them to verify your theory."
"We'll get our chance," Bruce said. "I'm guessing there'll definitely be more co-op stages later. When the time comes, we just find a way to talk to them and ask."
"Didn't expect the co-op stage you wanted to arrive this fast." Shiller stood in the lantern room, looked up at the six silhouettes above, and sighed.
"What's wrong, Professor?" Bruce asked.
Then he froze for a second, and suddenly his eyes lit up. "Wait, Professor, you can use the Mind Reading Technique, right?! I mean, your Mind Reading Technique isn't a Superpower, so it's not restricted! Doesn't that mean you could just…"
"I think sometimes we really should play by the rules," Shiller said, returning Bruce's earlier words to him verbatim, then walked toward the door without another word.
"Ah, don't be like that, Professor, it's not like I'd tell anyone." Bruce chased after him. "Just tell me, or at least give me a hint. Maybe I can guess based on how they act and what they say next…"
Sitting up above, Stark almost choked to death on the sentence he'd just swallowed back. He clutched his neck and coughed hard, but didn't dare cough too loudly. How could he forget that Shiller could use the Mind Reading Technique!
He'd probably cracked them wide open in three seconds the moment he came in. And the worst part was, this didn't even count as a Superpower, so there was no way to limit it. What could they even say? All they could do was offer a moment of silence to honor the legendary loot-box weapon holder.
Mephisto still seemed to be clinging to a bit of hope. He said, "As long as we don't talk and don't move, he can't just magically…"
"Beware of Devils," Shiller said to Bruce. "They're best at honeyed words and leading people astray."
Mephisto clutched his neck and started coughing along with Stark.
Bruce was a little confused. Wasn't this topic switch a bit too abrupt? What did this have to do with Devils? He thought for a moment, then said, "Professor, you mean this might be some kind of religious ritual?"
"Oh, I get it. On the surface it looks like one of those entertainment-style battle royale games where rich people place bets, but in reality it's very likely a religious sacrifice ritual…"
Cough, cough, cough… Greed started coughing too.
"Rich people getting together to play this kind of game doesn't surprise me at all. This setup is way too classic. If that's all there is to it, it'd be a bit thin. If I were the one designing the plot, I'd definitely add more seasoning." Bruce speculated, "Design it so that one of the rich guys is a Cultist who wants to sacrifice everyone, both the rich and the players. That'd be a pretty good entry point, and counts as a twist. A bit simple, sure, but given this isn't a story-heavy stage, that level of setup is already more than enough.
"In the earlier stages, clearing rooms drains energy and Physical Strength, and in this stage, the rich and their chess pieces show up and stir up Hatred. Then you design a 'stage malfunction' so the players mistakenly think the rich screwed up and start hunting them down. But right at that moment, the Believer shows up, and players and rich guys are forced to team up against the enemy. A whole bunch of people die or get hurt. At the end of the story, you throw in a moral choice for the survivors—whether to let the rich walk or not—and that's about it."
Everyone inside the lanterns started coughing together.
"See? This is what you get for structuring the plot too simply." Scarecrow clearly had had complaints for a while. "I told you, a single twist isn't enough and it's way too easy to guess, but you wouldn't listen. Happy now?"
"It's fine, only their group figured it out anyway," Stark took a sip of water, caught his breath, and said. "The others shouldn't have noticed anything yet."
"Why do I feel like the ones sitting above our heads are the rich guys themselves?" Harley crossed her arms and leaned against the partition wall.
"No way, right?" Pamela frowned skeptically. "Are these rich guys insane? Getting this close to a bunch of Madmen like us? They're really not afraid of getting killed?"
"How would they know we're this hardcore?" Harley said. "The people they dragged in before probably couldn't even get through the first few stages. By the time they got here they were likely half dead already. Of course they're not scared."
"Plus…" Harley deliberately drew out her words and lowered her voice. "I'm guessing there's a traitor among those six, and they're probably going to screw us over in this stage."
"How do you know?" Pamela asked in surprise.
"Instinct." Harley tapped her temple. "You know me—under pressure, my gut feeling tends to be dead-on."