She is not an investigator.

"Raymond has gone mad."

The man raised an eyebrow, neither confirming nor denying, and simply stroked his chin.

"What constitutes madness? He is perfectly clear about everything he does, he knows exactly what he is doing, he has brilliant plans and decisive decisions, but just because everything he does is not recognized by the public, does that mean he is mad?"

The man glanced at Igris, but Igris didn't respond.

A madman is a madman. Igris doesn't need to consider what he did, what he did for what reason, or the rationality of his actions.

A madman is a madman, regardless of what he does.

"Raymond pinned his hopes on the Tear of the Ocean, but the Tear of the Ocean is just a gem; what can it do?"

"It is indeed just a gem, but only if you are willing to pay a price."

The man snapped his fingers, and the scene before him instantly changed.

Flames, ruins, corpses strewn across the floor, and Raymond indiscriminately slaughtering everyone in the hall.

"This is the first time I've ever seen this scene."

Igris frowned uncomfortably as she watched Raymond indiscriminately shoot at the unarmed people around him, as he allowed the flames to ignite the castle's hall and set fire to other artifacts, as his wife pleaded desperately behind him, but to no avail. Igris, mimicking the man, gently tapped the table.

"That's why I said he's crazy."

"This is the price he chose: an exhibition, and the lives of everyone except himself and his wife."

The man snapped his fingers again, plunging everything into darkness, and he turned to look at Igris.

"He used the lives of nine people in this exhibition (of all six meetings) to pray for the eternal prosperity of the Noval family."

"So he failed?"

"That's it."

The man snapped his fingers again, and everything around him returned to the state it was when the exhibition was about to begin.

"The price wasn't high enough."

"..."

Although she could understand, she still felt uneasy that hundreds of innocent lives had been lost, and that nothing had been accomplished in the end.

But she also understood that for some ancient cult rituals, such as the blood worship she hated most, a few hundred people were just a small number to them.

"But this doesn't mean that the Ocean Tears didn't slip back (to fulfill its wish), it just chose a more ingenious and less strenuous method."

Snapped.

The man snapped his fingers, and everything in the exhibition disappeared again, replaced by the stone tablet at the castle gate.

"Mobius strip?"

"This is a remnant of the castle's history. The ancestors of the Noval family attempted to achieve immortality through this method, but were trapped in a spiral that never ends. By the time they finally realized that they had been stuck in the same era, two thousand years had passed. Fortunately, the Mobius strip is not perpetual motion, and they eventually broke free from that torment. The ring itself was thus buried in Noval's history and completely disappeared."

"But it reappeared, which shows that it did not truly disappear."

If the cycle of reincarnation is all due to the Mobius Strip, then the most likely cause of all this is the Tear of the Ocean. But if all we know is this, how can Igris and the others break free from this cycle and truly live for thousands of years in these three days like their predecessors?

"No, it has indeed perished, so both the cycle and the irreversibility of fate are false."

"fake?"

"Everything about it is built on the cold tears of the two oceans, so this Mobius strip is just a fake, and everything that happens here is just a [false cycle]."

Igris frowned slightly, and immediately thought of Olivia.

If we're talking about the biggest change that occurred during this cycle, it would undoubtedly be Olivia. After all, she was hardly affected by the cycle; she simply lost her memories of the past few days.

"The false loop of the Mobius strip refers to the fact that even in an endless loop, some things will still change, right?"

"Indeed, you've probably already noticed that the results in different cycles are also different. This is what is called a false cycle, which starts from the beginning and eventually returns to the beginning."

Starting from the starting point and ending at the starting point, this is a journey without a final destination... But this doesn't mean that everyone will start from the beginning.

If the starting point represents a static worldline, then everything along the way is outside the cycle, unaffected by the Mobius strip… only to be eventually brought back to the starting point, awaiting its next arrival at a node that is not the starting point.

"Can I break free from this cycle by paying some price?"

The man thought for a moment, then without explaining, simply snapped his fingers, switching the scene in front of him.

They returned to the exhibition, where Raymond was excitedly opening the display case containing the Tear of the Ocean to all the expectant crowd.

"A quiz with prizes is here."

Just then, the man's voice brought everything to a standstill and said...

"Now that you know what's inside, why didn't everything turn out the way it should have—the deaths of everyone at the banquet—but instead resulted in the death of his wife?"

Igris paused, her brows furrowing slightly.

Indeed, if Raymond's reward for the Ocean's Tear was triggered by killing everyone, then the Mobius Strip was also awakened at this time. The loop that should have occurred was the situation when he killed everyone, not the death of his wife, and after that, the loop seemed to have ended.

Recalling everything the man had said before, a bold guess appeared in Igris's mind.

The Gods' Fool - The Castle's Invitation: Chapter Thirty-One, A New Day

"In other words, his wife was likely the [node] in this false cycle, and when she should have entered the next cycle, she successfully used the [node] to stop the cycle from continuing. However, because of the [node], her death became a fait accompli. Therefore, the cycle in Raymond's eyes is different from the cycle in her eyes. So Raymond thought he saved his wife, but in his wife's eyes, Raymond caused everything to fall into a cycle, and she had to pay the price with her own life to stop the cycle."

At this point, Igris sensed that something was amiss.

“Your guess is indeed reasonable, but the real situation is actually a bit more complicated than that.”

The man clapped his hands. He was satisfied with Igris' divergent thinking and way of thinking. Although she hadn't completely gotten the answer, it wasn't far off.

"It wasn't his wife who stopped this cycle, it was Raymond himself, because only in this way would the Tear of the Ocean accept this sufficient price and give him enough reward—to kill the person he loved most with his own hands."

"So when this cycle ended, the fact that his wife had died became a fixed fact because the false cycle no longer existed, and it could no longer be changed. It was because he learned all this that he finally suffered a mental breakdown and became the way he is now."

Igris continued to recount what happened next, but at the same time raised another question once again.

"But if that's the case, the Mobius strip should have disappeared completely by now. However, it is still affecting this castle, and it started to affect it before we arrived. So we are the midpoint in this cycle. And the person who truly caused all of this to start again is undoubtedly the current head of the Noval family, Nanko."

If we compare this with the information obtained from Rag, we can see that in the initial cycle, neither Olivia nor Igris were invited to this banquet. Therefore, Nanko's request would not appear. Instead, another request would be made, which is what Rag had been doing all along.

set fire.

They succeeded, they really succeeded, but this success also had its share of unexpected events, such as the Tears of the Ocean.

Nanko had no idea of ​​the power of the Tear of the Ocean's destruction (the fire killed everyone except him, Buze, and the arsonist, Rag). Those who perished naturally became the price of the Tear of the Ocean, and in a way that was insufficient, they fulfilled the dreams of either Nanko or Buze.

It's highly likely that this is Buze's dream. After facing the complete destruction of his family, Buze's biggest dream is probably to go back to the past before all of this happened, or to successfully let Nanko inherit everything from the family and become the best family head in his mind.

Therefore, time will keep looping within this period, constantly looping in the cycle of the fire starting or stopping. However, because the cost of the Tears of the Ocean is insufficient, this cycle is still an undeniably false cycle. Olivia and Igris are the abnormal nodes in this cycle, not bound by the starting point.

"But you also gave the pocket watch to Rag, making Rag another special being in this node who should have been gathered by the starting point, but who retained his memories. What was the reason for that?"

If he gave Igris the pocket watch hoping to help her find clues and opportunities to escape by restoring her memories through her uniqueness, then why did he go to the trouble of giving Rag the same pocket watch?

And why Lag?

If his true purpose was simply to destroy this cycle of destruction, then he should have given the watch to Buzer or Nanxco, rather than to this mechanical engineer and arsonist who knew little about the Noval family.

"Why? It's just because it's interesting. I can give this to anyone—a maid, a servant? Or a butler? Even a hunter and a rabbit. Does it have to have some meaning?"

The man tapped the table, seemingly enjoying the gesture, and looked at Igris with interest.

"I gave you the pocket watch only because you seemed like someone who could bring me some surprises. Although your first attempt didn't go smoothly, you still have the chance to start over with all your memories. And now, you know all of this, whether it's how to escape from here, the source and reason for all of this, or some secrets that ordinary people can't even perceive, or special information that shouldn't be known to anyone. But you will still have your own thoughts and actions. That's how humans are. I just want to see what you can do, what you will do, how you choose to escape this nightmare, and what consequences you are willing to leave for it."

The man crossed his legs, snapped his fingers casually again, and continued speaking.

"Moreover, you've also discovered that the impact of the Mobius strip might not necessarily turn out for the best. For Raymond, it's not just his wife who matters. He could have chosen to sacrifice his family and everything to end this farce and then enjoy his later years with his wife. But in the end, he couldn't let go of his family's past glory, so he killed his beloved, attempting to delay the decline and demise of the Noval family in this way. He did succeed to some extent. Raymond didn't become a death row inmate for his massacre at the exhibition, the Noval family wasn't completely destroyed, and Nanko and Buze can continue to enjoy this aristocratic game. That's the choice he made. So what about you? What would you choose?"

Igris shook her head silently, unable to offer any answer.

She could use the price to achieve her wish and escape this place, but the final result might just be a new cycle.

She didn't possess any precious treasures or existence that could eliminate all of this, let alone change it, but Igris didn't need to dwell on those things, since gems had often demonstrated alternative paths.

She can get others to fulfill her wishes, to do things that are more beneficial to her through the sacrifices of others—to stop the cycle, to give up everything.

Therefore, there will be two pocket watches.

That was his real purpose.

Everyone for me? I for everyone.

“What would you do, Mr. Aaron, the hero of Maulkenson, or rather… the legendary investigator?”

The man's voice faded away, and everything in front of Igris also faded away at that moment, slowly sinking into nothingness.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw the familiar ceiling and the familiar room.

Igris sat up in bed and looked out the window as the sunlight streamed into her room, which slightly dispelled the confusion and drowsiness she felt after just waking up.

But the sun was already high in the sky.

Olivia... hasn't she come to call her for dinner yet?

The Gods' Fool - The Castle's Invitation: Chapter Thirty-Two, Unequal Information?

"strangeness…"

According to the normal cycle, Olivia would knock on her door the next morning and invite her to breakfast in the dining room, but obviously, it was already past breakfast time, and Olivia still hadn't come.

Perhaps the false cycle had undergone some special change, because Igris got out of bed, went to the table, and looked at the white rabbit in the cage.

The rabbit has been awake for a long time, and it has already eaten up the half carrot I put in it last night. I guess it was hungry after waking up and gnawed on it.

Igris decided to take this opportunity to find it some new food, so she simply took it out of the cage and out of the room.

The corridor was quiet and deserted. Igris went to Olivia's room and knocked on the door, but received no response. She tried pushing the door and found that it was unlocked, and Olivia was not in the room.

Olivia wouldn't have forgotten her, would she?

If she had gone to breakfast alone without calling Igris, Igris would probably have had a chance to give Olivia a good scolding.

When Iglis reached the lobby on the first floor, she still didn't see anyone, which made her start to have a vague feeling that something was wrong.

There shouldn't be a complete lack of people in the castle, especially since it's past mealtime. It's impossible for everyone to gather in the restaurant to eat, right?

Most importantly, Igris didn't even see a servant, which is quite unusual.

But as she was about to push open the door and enter the restaurant, a strange premonition made her stop in her tracks.

She slowly lowered her hand from the door and turned to look at the castle gate.

A familiar scent filled Igris's nostrils.