Rhodes Island does not exist.

Incidentally, the voice sounds like a woman's.

"Didn't you say that you couldn't interfere with the labyrinth's structure or clean up the redundancy I created before I removed the Originium?" The Doctor stared at the strange creature, looking at all its eyes from head to toe.

“Because the Originium is blocking my path, I can’t move forward.” The vines on the strange creature swayed as it spoke. “But retreating is still possible.”

That makes perfect sense, the doctor nodded.

“Alright, now that we’ve reunited, let’s get down to business, shall we?” The doctor pointed to the stairwell behind the oddball. He had left behind countless painful memories there.

“That’s how it should be.” The strange man stepped aside for Dr. Lu Wei. “It’s just that you’ve been late, which has slowed things down.”

"Sorry, we were delayed a bit due to unforeseen circumstances." The Doctor walked past the strange figure and joined the front of the line. "It's a historical issue that we didn't consider at the time, haha..."

As he stepped onto the familiar stairs once more and saw the familiar walls on both sides, the doctor couldn't help but feel a little heavy-hearted and sighed.

“I don’t care.” The strange creature followed behind the Doctor, climbing silently. “I only care about how to get out of Rhodes Island.”

“Yes, to be honest, I’m a little curious about this.” The doctor didn’t turn around, but asked as he climbed the stairs, “You’re clearly an anomaly, so why do you want to escape from here? I heard you say before that anomalies don’t choose to leave not because they can’t, but because they don’t want to. So what about you?”

"Me? Because I have no memory." The strange answer was crisp and efficient. "I only have some common sense and some vague subconsciousness, so I don't even know why I am here."

"It's precisely because they have no memory that they want to escape... Just like me." The Doctor thought about his own situation.

"I don't know, let's not talk about complicated things." The strange voice was devoid of emotion, sounding almost like it had been synthesized by a machine, cold and lacking inflection.

"There's something else." The doctor suddenly remembered something, turned around, and met the strange gazes of many people for a moment.

"Speak directly, without pausing."

“Alright, since we’re going to be working together from now on, I think we need to figure out how to address each other first.” The Doctor said, staring into two of her eyes. “We can’t keep using personal pronouns or just calling you ‘Weird’ all the time, can we?”

“Personal pronouns are very efficient and not unusable,” Weird replied. “Because a name is just a label, as long as the person being called understands that it is themselves, I think it’s fine.”

“There’s plenty of time ahead. We’re in a cooperative relationship, and I think it’s important to have this basic understanding.” The doctor shook his head.

“I’ve said it before, we’re not cooperating, we’re exchanging benefits,” the strange man corrected.

"It's all the same, all the same." The doctor smiled and turned his head to continue walking. "Anyway, you can call me Doctor from now on, that's my code name."

"...Then you can call me Lavender." The strange voice disappeared for a moment, then slowly spoke.

Why lavender?

"I don't know, it's just a word that came to mind subconsciously."

-

Thank you segment.

Thanks for the spicy snacks, thank you.

Chapter 151, Chapter 150: The World of the Return

"Will this be alright?"

Picking up the bottle of Originium he had placed on the ground and putting it in his pocket, the Doctor turned to look at the strange creature that resembled a grapevine.

Oh, I'm sorry, she has a name now, her name is Lavender.

"That's good. Now... I'm going to start resetting and recovering the redundant parts of the spiral staircase. Don't stand too far forward; if you get caught in it, it will reduce the efficiency of our operation."

After giving the advice, the lavender vines began to sway, causing the eyeballs to rotate and open and close.

Suddenly, the surrounding walls began to shake.

That wasn't just a simple vibration.

It was a wild, chaotic dance, much like the malfunctions that occur on conveyor belts on a factory assembly line due to excessively high wheel speeds.

Everything etched onto the conveyor belt, everything carried by the conveyor belt, everything that carries the conveyor belt, all swayed with the swaying of the lavender.

The conveyor belt is the wall.

The world is a conveyor belt.

The world is going backwards.

It's like a measuring tape that's been stretched endlessly by a mischievous toddler.

The doctor was that young child.

He once recklessly charged forward, pulling on the end of the measuring tape, running with reckless abandon towards his imagined finish line.

But the measuring tape has no end, and neither does the road.

He had once marked the ruler he had torn out with marks, as if trying to find a lost sword by marking a boat, but now those places where he had scribbled were rapidly receding as the child let go.

The roads are shrinking.

The world is shrinking.

The scenery is shrinking.

The doctor saw all the numbers and meaningless characters he had ever seen before, the stone bricks where he had shed his sweat, and all the scenes that he had stretched and extended.

then.

"Snapped!"

The ruler, as long as the years, returned to its outer shell.

The world is at peace.

The spiral staircase in front of me is still the same staircase.

"ended."

The lavender vines stopped swaying, and she uttered a concluding remark to the doctor before her.

"All the corridors I extended before...?"

“Hmm,” Lavender replied, “If you walk up another ten or so steps, you’ll reach the exit leading to the fifth floor.”

"……Great."

The doctor breathed a sigh of relief.

"I never imagined that after chasing the finish line for so long, I would find that I was only a dozen steps away from the starting point," he remarked.

“That’s not how it is,” Lavender denied. “If I hadn’t made a deal with you, you wouldn’t have reached the destination even if you ran for dozens more hours. What you need to do is thank me, instead of spouting some meaningless nonsense that sounds like life wisdom.”

"Of course, I also want to thank you, really." The doctor turned around and said sincerely to Lavender, "Thank you for being willing to negotiate with me. If we hadn't chosen to talk and had instead stuck to our guns in the first place, things probably wouldn't have turned out this way."

“That’s true, but in the end it’s just a matter of each getting what they need.” Lavender shook her vines. “Let’s move forward and not waste any time.”

-

The entrance, located on the second floor, is connected to the fifth floor by a staircase.

Although its actual length is only about twenty steps, it is not surprising that such a scene would occur in Rhodes Island, where the space seems to be compressed.

"Have you ever been to the fifth floor before?" the professor asked the lavender behind him, standing in front of the tightly closed door.

"No," Lavender replied.

"Why? Didn't you say you had the freedom to come and go as you pleased?" the doctor asked, puzzled.

“Because I don’t know why I’m leaving here, and I can’t find a reason to open this door,” Lavender said. “As I mentioned before, I have no memory, so naturally I have no goal.”

"But when you talked to me before, you clearly said that the reason you wanted to escape was because you had no memory. Isn't that a contradiction?" the doctor asked again.

“I told you, don’t talk about complicated things.” Lavender’s eyes rolled, seemingly expressing her dissatisfaction. “If you have to give a reason, then it’s this: maybe I didn’t even have this idea before talking to you.”

“…I understand.”

After thinking for a while, the professor nodded.

Because in his view, he was actually the same.

When I first revived in 403, I was essentially in a state of having lost everything and knowing nothing. A person in that state would naturally be aimless.

After all, what goals can someone who lacks even cognition and memory have?

But 403 has a guide and a ghost shark.

Specter told me about Rhodes Island and that if I wanted to leave, I had to find an exit, and that I had been working towards that goal all along.

That's why I have my current goals.

In other words, what he said to Lavender during the negotiations was probably similar to what Ghost Shark had said to him.

However, once you figure this out, everything that happened seems to become subtle.

"So, my current goal isn't actually my own goal, but rather a goal given to me by Specter?"

The doctor pondered this in his mind.

"Don't just stand there at the door. What you need to do now is not to think, but to move forward. Your efficiency is too low."

But the urging voice from behind interrupted the process running in his mind.

So the professor decided to put this matter off for later.

"What's behind the door?" The doctor asked, placing his hands on the doorframe just to be on the safe side.

"It's the fifth floor." Lavender gave a precise but utterly unhelpful answer.

"...I wasn't asking that."

“I don’t know,” Lavender replied instantly. “I’ve never opened this door before, nor has anyone ever opened it from the outside. There’s no sound coming from outside, so I don’t know. All I know is that it’s the fifth floor outside.”

"Since you've never opened it, how do you know it's the fifth floor outside?" the doctor asked.

"Because there's a number 5 written on the door." Approximately twelve eyes on the lavender plant were simultaneously focused on the door.

There was a number 5 written there in a paint-like material, which was extremely abrupt and out of place with the decoration of the stairwell.

It's like having a bowl of snail rice noodles served on a Michelin three-star table.

You can't say that snail rice noodles are not delicious, but they are definitely not suitable for consumption.

"And by the way, if you encounter a hostile monster, what do you...?"

"Don't worry about me, just worry about yourself."

Lavender interrupted the Doctor, her intense gaze fixed on him, making him feel slightly uncomfortable.

He had felt a little scared when he first met her, but after that negotiation, that feeling seemed to have disappeared.

Chapter 152, Chapter 151: The Other Side of the Door

The door is made of steel.

Although there were some signs of rust on the door frame and edges, the gaps in the door were surprisingly clean, with no residue blocking them.

"Kakaka-"

Even so, the hinge still let out a wail.

This is probably inevitable for such long-established metal products.

"call."

The doctor pushed the door open forcefully, dusted off the reddish-gray rust from his hands, and then picked up the pickaxe that was placed to the side.

Before me lay a desolate landscape.

"So this is how the corridor connects... This is the fifth floor." The doctor said, slightly out of breath. "Thinking about it, the place I'm standing now is actually only one floor away from my respawn point, but the journey in between is so long."

“Instead of asking such a question, shouldn’t you be more concerned about the entrance to this spiral staircase?” Lavender retorted. “That’s the second floor, just one number away from the first floor, which might be the exit.”

“...That makes sense.” The doctor took a step forward and stood on the ground of the fifth floor.

The purpose of this floor is immediately apparent from the scene.

prison.

Unlike Rhode Island, which is a metaphorical prison, the fifth floor is a prison in the real sense.

The worn-out cage, the cold and indifferent cubicles, the stacked layers, the despairing and somber atmosphere.

It's as if this place really used to hold prisoners.

But what kind of prisoners could be here?

There wasn't even a person here.

"No wonder the door at the end of your corridor is like this; it seems it's to match the overall theme of the prison," the doctor said, looking around at the empty cells.