The Righteous Player(s)

Chapter 145: Time Stopper Eye’s Gramophone

After confirming how to tackle this level, what remained for Delicious Wind Goose was nothing more than repetitive work.

Delicious Wind Goose also discovered that the black flames activated on the “javelin” after having a time conflict could easily destroy the “demons” and “hellhounds” just by a slight contact.

At first, Delicious Wind Goose threw the weapons like athletes. He would aim and launch the “javelin” vertically.

Later on, he simply threw the floor planks.

It appeared like a bowling scene… As for how many enemies he hit, it depended on his luck.

After just repeating it a few times, Delicious Wind Goose killed the enemies one by one.

The enemies couldn’t even see where Delicious Wind Goose was!

“—Hey, it’s the background music (BGM).”

Facing a bullet text with “???,” Annan explained to the others, “Have you noticed that when time is going forward, the BGM is played in reverse; but when time is going backward, BGM is played normally.”

If this were just BGM, it would still be fine and dandy.

But the cinematic graphics (CG) cutscene mentioned that a particular “gramophone” played the music. Most importantly, it was the curse vessel Time Stopper Eye Michelangelo made. Amos even used the gramophone’s power to resolve his difficulty regardless of the cost.

What was his difficulty?

—The Freezing Water Port’s police station sent someone to investigate his gallery…

Annan recalled a sentence mentioned in the news:

“At 2:15 on March 4, Sergeant Hiram’s investigation team was attacked in Morrison’s gallery. Unfortunately, three police officers died. The two police officers also went crazy on the spot because the scene was too cruel, and they suffered a substantial mental shock. They then died of injuries a few days later.

“The perpetrator was killed on the spot. The police station recovered the dead bodies. The identity was reported to be a mercenary from the swamp. More details, including the number of perpetrators, were still under confidentiality.”

Why hide the identity and number of the attackers?

This was of little importance to this incident. Releasing their information could distract the crowd’s attention.

Unless the officials and reporters didn’t know who the attacker was.

Because the attackers and they weren’t on the same timeline!

There was only one attacker. It was Amos who attacked from the future and went in reverse of time!

Of course, Amos shouldn’t be using pure tactics like hitting enemies with the floor plank. He might have used a gun or something. Moreover, it happened in a hurry as he failed to kill all of them.

But, there were fundamental similarities.

Because the number of “demons” Delicious Wind Goose killed was exactly five!

The police were probably not crazy at all.

It was because the wound was too abnormal to be treated… or it could be a direct kill.

As for the hounds…

It should be a police dog.

Because the newspaper mentioned that “previously, pets were not allowed in the gallery.”

As mentioned above, the police found Elle’s body fragments inside the gallery.

In other words, this operation was accompanied by police dogs.

Although this was a “distortion” level nightmare with the imagery of the things inside distorted by the individual’s will, some original elements were still retained.

The fourth level nightmare was the second furthest point in the timeline.

It was ahead of the Level -1 timeline position.

This story should be about Amos using the gramophone “Time Stopper Eye” made with regret. He had utilized means that couldn’t be detected or avoided to kill the policemen and police dogs sent by the Freezing Water Port Police Station from the future.

“According to the pattern of the previous levels…”

Annan murmured, “At the dungeon instance of this level, the dungeon challenger should be playing as a policeman.”

But what the hell…

There’s no way to avoid attacks launched from the future, right?!

The difficulty outside the gallery didn’t increase too much.

But the difficulty in the gallery grew more difficult one by one.

This, on the contrary, made Annan firmer in the obsession of “I just want to clear the whole dungeon.”

After Delicious Wind Goose killed all the “demons” and “hounds,” he entered the following cinematic graphic (CG).

In all directions around Amos, Elle’s layered voice once again sounded,

“Turn off the gramophone, Amos!”

In her sharp and high pitch, there was fear and disgust, “He is coming soon!”

As Elle’s voice sounded, the surrounding space began to shine with a dark red light like an alarm.

“I will do it, Elle.”

Amos was silent for a while, then turned around.

He passed through the middle of the corridor as if passing through a bubble layer.

This time, he saw the midpoint of the real T-shaped corridor.

There was a gramophone with a strange shape.

It had a copper speaker with a dark gold hue and was in the shape of a tulip, which was similar to a gramophone in the previous world.

But underneath it was not a closed wooden box.

It was a transparent crystal box.

There was no disc in it so much so that it was more accurate to say that there was nothing in it.

Inside the crystal box, only two mirrors were facing against each other.

The crank slowly rotated along with the melodious music. It was connected with three needles: gold, silver, and copper, respectively. The connection seemed to link to the middle of the crystal box.

As the crank slowly rotated counterclockwise, the three needles also rotated counterclockwise at a synchronized speed.

If one were to look at it from the front, it looked like an inverted square clock.

Delicious Wind Goose noticed that a few words were also engraved on it:

“If you regret it, move the crank. I will give you a second chance, a third chance…”

“But you won’t have a fourth chance.”

Delicious Wind Goose reached out and touched the gramophone.

In a trance, the item attributes appeared in front of him:

[Time Stopper Eye’s Gramophone (12-hour type)]

[Type: Musical instrument/tool ??(Gold)]

[Description: Move the crank to shoot the soul projection into the reverse time stream.]

[Effect: Move the crank to rotate the time turntable clockwise. When the crank is released, it will temporarily render the user entering a “time-reversal walk” (temporarily enters the state of the flow of time consistent with the normal time and the time flow in the opposite direction). The effect is the same as Prophet Spell and Idol Spell of the same name. It applies to twelve hours. In this state, any contact with any creature with a weaker soul rank will cause the opponent’s soul to be instantly annihilated. In the opposite situation, it will cause your soul to be annihilated instantly. You can use any remote means to attack the creature. It will not trigger any annihilation reaction when the attack is regarded as Sneak Attack (absolutely unnoticed).]

[Cost: At the first use of the curse, you acquire the “Transferred Misfortune.” At the second use of the curse, the “Transferred Misfortune” receives an add-on effect “Intensify Inscription.” Finally, at the third use, the user will have all remaining lifespans deducted.]

[Note: If this curse vessel is successfully used to avoid the inevitable death, the user will die immediately.]