Rhodes Island does not exist.

"Doctor, there is no absolutely safe place anywhere."

-

Five minutes later, the doctor stood in front of the door.

In those five minutes, he finished taking inventory of all the supplies he had left in the room and also investigated all the parts in the room.

Last time, he left himself two packs of compressed biscuits, a cup of jelly, three bottles of mineral water, and a bloodstained pickaxe.

The broken sofa by the wall was only good for resting; it didn't hide anything of value. And the old television, unsurprisingly, couldn't play anything, only displaying its static-filled screen.

Incidentally, this room originally had windows, but they have been sealed off by thick walls, rendering them useless.

Besides that, there's only one Ghost Shark left.

If we consider the Specter as a component of the room.

Are you ready to leave?

Looking at the doctor standing at the door, Ghost Shark asked a question.

"I can't just stay in the room staring at you forever, and besides, the remaining supplies aren't actually enough to survive for long." The doctor said, patting a pack of compressed biscuits in his coat pocket and shaking a water bottle in his other pocket.

Although I don't know the origin of this coat, it is certainly convenient for carrying things.

Otherwise, you wouldn't even have the hands to hold a pickaxe.

"In that case, please take this with you."

Seeing that the Doctor was indeed preparing to leave, Specter slowly reached out to the Doctor and opened her palm.

A delicate little glass bottle lay in her palm, filled with a swaying, semi-clear liquid.

It's clearly not pure water.

"What is this?" the doctor asked naturally.

“It’s seawater.” Ghost Shark’s lips curled into his usual smile, while his right hand showed no sign of retracting. “Rhodes Island is not a friendly place, neither physically nor mentally.”

"I can't prevent you from suffering physical damage, but if it's mental, please rely on it in critical moments."

The suspicious vial swayed in front of the doctor, persisting like a ghost shark's hand that wasn't going to be pulled back.

So the doctor finally reached out and accepted Ghost Shark's gift.

"Thank you very much." Ghost Shark bowed to the doctor, "and I hope you will remember its usefulness in times of crisis."

"How do I use it? Can I just drink it directly? The whole bottle?" The doctor held the small bottle, observing the suspended impurities in it through the dim light of the room.

“Yes.” Ghost Shark nodded. “You may misunderstand or doubt it now, but you will thank it when you really need it.”

Ghost Shark doesn't say meaningless things, nor does it do anything that is detrimental to itself.

The doctor's subconscious told him this.

Although he wasn't sure if it was fragments of his own past memories whispering, he eventually accepted Ghost Shark's explanation.

After all, he has no other options at the moment.

Either unravel the secrets of Rhodes Island and find a way out, or die here.

Admittedly, in such a desperate situation, death might be a permanent relief. And the doctor also believed that before him, countless others, as trapped in this predicament, had chosen this path.

But he won't.

And there is no reason.

What reason do people who have lost their memories need?

If I had to say there was one, there would only be one.

He didn't want to let down the version of himself he had worked so hard for, or the memories he had lost at the cost of his efforts.

The cost must be repaid.

Memories must be reclaimed.

As for how to leave, that will be discussed later.

Because prioritizing the task at hand is a characteristic of the doctor.

"Click."

The doctor placed his hand on the doorknob and gently turned it.

The rusted hinges emitted a mournful wail.

Then, the door opened, and the path became clear.

-

A bloodstained pickaxe

Mining tools made of steel, which can be seen everywhere.

It wasn't a combat item, but for some reason it was stained with blood.

Legend has it that an explorer dressed in a black coat once used this weapon to slay countless monsters, but that explorer has now disappeared without a trace.

Perhaps only the purest killing intent can bring them peace in the face of these fearless monsters.

But someone who can wield a pickaxe in the face of the bizarre must possess extraordinary courage.

-

The customary thank-you segment.

Thank you for the spicy snacks.

Chapter 3, Part 3: Illuminating the Blindly Wandering Soul

Bright lights.

Standing outside the door, the doctor was not greeted by the horrific scene he had imagined, but by an otherwise perfectly normal corridor.

Room 403

He turned around and looked up at the nameplate hanging above his room.

So this is the fourth floor?

The doctor silently marked a geographical location in his mind.

Under normal circumstances, he would only need to go down three floors to reach the exit on the first floor.

Yes, under normal circumstances.

Because in this completely unusual building, there may be no downward passage, no first floor, and perhaps no exit.

"But at least, this floor should be safe."

The doctor picked up the pickaxe in his hand and stretched his gaze to both ends of the corridor until he touched the wall.

The corridor walls were a simple gray-white, with eight or nine doors, identical to those in the room behind him, arranged in order, and bright lights hanging overhead.

Ordinary and peaceful.

"First, we should investigate what's in the surrounding rooms," the doctor decided, making a decision that aligns with the mindset of a normal person.

So he walked to his neighbor's room, 401.

This is where the entire floor begins.

Room 401 has an empty wall on one side, while Room 402 is opposite it.

The doctor took a deep breath, placed his left hand on the doorknob of the room's door, and gently pressed it.

"Click."

The door is unlocked.

The inward-opening security door opened a crack inwards under the doctor's force.

A layer of sticky sweat immediately welled up in his right hand, which was gripping the wooden handle tightly.

In a sense, the doctor is about to face the results of his first exploration, and whether the results are good or bad, he must accept them.

Since that's the case, let's make the result come faster.

"boom!"

The doctor raised the pickaxe in his right hand and kicked open the security door of room 401.

The powerful force stirs up wind and vibrations, revealing the entire interior of the room.

But the room was completely empty.

No, saying it was completely empty might not be accurate, because in the very center of the room's floor, there was a patch of liquid that appeared to have dried into a dark brown color, and next to it, a line of small writing in the same liquid.

The marks might be bloodstains, while the small print is a single word.

safe.

Safety.

There is nothing else.

"What happened here?" The question arose in the doctor's mind.

His intuition told him that if he wanted to understand what had happened here, he had to explore the entire floor.

So the doctor immediately left the room, turned around and walked towards room 402, and did the same thing as before.

Sure enough, room 402 was also unlocked.

Then he stepped into the room and saw something that was similar in nature to 401 but different in style.

Bloodstains were splattered on both walls and in the crevices between them, and next to the bloodstains were words that were exactly the same as before.

safe.

The doctor seemed to understand something.

So he left the room again.

The answer is obvious, and it's not an isolated case.

Rooms 404, 405, 406... up to the last room, 410, all had almost the same scene inside.

Dried bloodstains of various shapes and sizes, as well as remnants of writing with consistent handwriting.

This probably only proves one thing.

The rooms surrounding Room 403 may have once contained "something," but one day someone suddenly appeared and, after slaughtering all the living things in the surrounding rooms, left a message that it was safe.

Moreover, this person is very likely to be the doctor himself.

However, besides myself, it's also possible that someone else came here, or even that it was Ghost Shark who did it.

After all, these remaining bloodstains had long since dried, and even someone who knows nothing about forensic medicine could tell that they had been there for a long time.

In any case, these remaining marks confirmed the safety of the floor where the doctor lived, which was a good thing. In addition, the doctor also found a staircase next to room 410.

"Gah-"

The stairwell was separated by a heavy fire door, which the doctor slowly pushed open.

It seems that the person who designed this building understands the importance of everyday fire prevention.

Although the doctor doesn't think so.

In his view, this was merely a means of isolating space.

If two spaces are connected by a door, then when the door is open, the two spaces are mutually visible.

However, when the door is closed, the two spaces become essentially independent entities. For either side of the door, the space opposite is in a superposition of existence and non-existence, which is Schrödinger's cat.

Because the doctor always believed that everything that could not be observed in this heterogeneous building was quite dangerous.

—Perhaps this is an intuition brought about by past memories.

"call."

The air seemed to freeze in the stairwell. The professor stood at the doorway on the fourth floor and took a deep breath.

The unusual turbidity almost blocked his trachea, causing him to suffocate on the spot.

It seems that this stairwell hasn't been ventilated for a long time.