He was very glad that the potion was on ***-173. If he had killed this small Boss and not obtained the potion, it would have meant that he would have to search the room in the middle of the second corridor again. Fortunately, that wasn't the case. He not only successfully obtained the quest item, but his death also saved him the time of passing through the corridor. The consumption of those two Contra Medals seemed worthwhile.

After obtaining the potion, Feng Bujue didn't rush to leave. He quickly crouched down and rummaged through the corpse fragments, wanting to see if there were any other rewards. Anyway, his hands and body were already covered in blood, so he didn't mind getting a little more. Besides, he was never one to be bothered by dirt.

This, it must be said, was also one of his strengths. All along, Feng Bujue had been able to calmly view and even handle some disgusting things that ordinary people couldn't stand, such as corpses left for three days that had already been laid with fly eggs, or skunk dens in years of accumulated garbage. In fact, every time he saw a new disgusting substance, the boundary of what he could endure would expand. To put it mildly, he was discovering new limits of endurance; to put it bluntly, he was refreshing his bottom line...

Searching the corpse didn't take him too long. One minute was enough to confirm that the Boss had nothing on him other than the quest item.

Feng Bujue was already getting up and stepping through the door into the fan-shaped area while checking the item's description.

[Name: Chemical Potion of Unknown Composition (B)]
[Type: Plot-Related]
[Quality: Ordinary]
[Function: One of the raw materials for synthesizing a certain antidote]
[Can be brought out of this scenario: No]
[Note: Cannot be stacked with similar items.]

"Strange..." Feng Bujue thought of a problem when he saw the note... Currently, his inventory was occupying seven slots, containing: Mario's Pipe Wrench, Flashlight, Eighteen Bronze Men's Folding Stool (No. 5), ***-500 (1920), Anti-Gravity Catapult, Contra Medal * 2, and One-Hit Kill Pistol.

Now, adding this bottle of Chemical Potion of Unknown Composition (B) made eight. According to the note, Potions A, C, and D would also each occupy an inventory slot.

Leaving aside the factor of clothing pockets assisting with carrying items, when Feng Bujue obtained the last potion, his inventory should be completely full. However, he wouldn't need to put the last bottle into his inventory, because after obtaining all four potions, he could synthesize them into one bottle, avoiding the awkward situation of not having enough inventory slots.

Although this might be a coincidence, combined with the fact that Billy the Puppet mentioned ***-500 on the broadcast at the beginning of the scenario... Feng Bujue was more inclined to believe that the designer of this game knew his situation very well. Perhaps it wasn't just the items in his inventory, but even his skills, stamina, equipment, and so on were taken into consideration.

If the system generated the scenario based on the player's characteristics, then... this "game" was designed by the system. And Billy the Puppet was just conveying a message for the system. Did that mean... Billy himself was merely being instilled with the idea that "I designed this game" by the system?

That's why [Decisive Victory Thousands of Miles Away] couldn't see anything, because this scenario didn't have a real Boss, only a set of rules, a player, and a few specific chess pieces...

After Feng Bujue returned to the fan-shaped area, he looked back at the second corridor and was surprised to find that the corpse fragments and blood stains on the ground had all disappeared. It had become an empty corridor again, but the blood on his body was still there.

"I see..." Feng Bujue seemed to understand something. He didn't linger there. At this moment, his internally calculated personal time was about forty-six minutes. If everything went smoothly, he would appear in the cell at the forty-first minute of the map's time at sixty-five minutes, and he would already have three potions in hand.

In terms of average time, this progress was just right.

While Feng Bujue was thinking, he had already entered the fourth corridor and was running forward wildly. Although the Contra Medal had revived him, his stamina after revival hadn't returned to full, and it was still consuming at the original rate. Even with the help of [Jazz Dance], Feng Bujue's stamina was still starting to become strained. It was currently 894/1800, which seemed like just over half, but anyone who had run a long-distance race understood that it got harder the further you went... especially since Feng Bujue was in a continuous sprint.

This scenario was simply a double marathon of body and mind. This marathon wasn't about spreading the sporting spirit of participation, but a life-or-death game with a set death line.

…………

Five minutes passed in the blink of an eye after entering the corridor. The door to the room appeared ahead at about this time.

Feng Bujue suddenly realized that he had never completely run an entire corridor. He only ran the first half of the third corridor, and only the second half of the second corridor. And whether the room where the small Boss was located was at the front or the back was also unknown, so it couldn't be counted as half the distance... Therefore, even if he could estimate the length of the fourth corridor from beginning to end later, he wouldn't be able to know which corridor was the shortest compared to the others.

"No wonder that rabbit doesn't know which path is shorter," Feng Bujue muttered to himself. "One is because it's only been to the first corridor, and two is because... the me who appeared at the forty-first minute, although I've run through three corridors, I also don't know the length. If I knew, I would have told that rabbit."

He performed a Sakamoto-style glide, gracefully arrived in front of the door, reached out and grabbed the doorknob, and pushed the door open.

This was a rusty iron door, quite in the style of Saw, with the feeling of a dark secret room. After opening the door, the sound of some gears and cogs moving indicated that some mechanisms had been triggered.

Feng Bujue didn't even think about leaving a way out. He also knew that trying to jam the door with something was probably useless. There weren't any suitable objects in his inventory to jam the door. The flashlight and folding stool might be crushed, and the pipe wrench... if it broke, the loss...

*Ka-clunk*

The lights came on, illuminating the entire room. Above the secret room, a chain hung a cage, and Billy the Puppet was in the cage. His red and black eyes were looking down at Feng Bujue from behind the bars.

The puppet's hoarse, low voice came out at the right time: "Hello, Feng Bujue. I want to play a game with you."