Rhodes Island does not exist.

"Have."

The atmosphere suddenly turned cold.

This wasn't because the temperature had actually dropped, but because the locked circuit in front of them suddenly abandoned its previous hysterical state and tone, transforming into a cold demeanor that the two doctors had never seen before.

The doctor couldn't help but ask himself, "Who?"

"Of course she did." The voice of the locked circuit was deep, its huge mouth slightly closed, and its aura was as surging as the fire deep in the earth's core. "She killed me once."

After he finished speaking, there was a long silence.

The three people's postures and expressions remained unchanged; they simply didn't speak.

And what salvages this silence is the closed loop itself.

"—So I'm so scared!" The carefree voice returned, releasing the hysteria she had previously discarded. "I'm scared every time she stares at the camera, I'm scared when I feel her aura, and I'm even scared when I don't look at her!"

It seems that his mature demeanor just now was merely a coincidence.

Although this little coincidence caught the Doctor and Skadi completely off guard.

"Hey... Doctor." Skadi leaned closer and gently nudged the Doctor's side with her elbow. "Did you see what happened just now?"

“It’s hard to miss.” The doctor nodded. “So, do you have any clue about what happened just now?”

“No, no,” Skadi shook her head. “Not at all, but…”

"but?"

“Never mind, you ask her for me.” Skadi shrugged. “Just ask her about what she said earlier about being killed. I’m thinking that since she was able to recover her deep and serious voice, it means that something quite important happened at the time she was killed.”

"Why don't you just ask me directly?! Aren't we friends? Aren't we? Why are you being so formal?" However, this was overheard by the Closed Circuit, who couldn't tolerate her friendship being ignored and immediately launched a fierce verbal attack on Skadi. Meanwhile, the Doctor took the opportunity to smooth things over and interjected his question between the two.

"So what exactly happened between you and the Reaper? Why did she want to kill you? And when did she kill you?"

The three questions were thrown directly at the locked circuit.

The professor had no hope that she could answer all three questions.

But a locked circuit is a locked circuit, and trying to predict her thinking is ultimately too naive.

Chapter 211 Two Hundred and Ten, Three Questions

The first question is about what happened between the locked loop and the harvester.

Regarding this point, the interlocking circuit provides the following answer.

"She killed my friend."

"The weirdos who used to live on the sixth floor were all my friends, but now they're all gone."

Her tone was completely different from the usual atmosphere, as if another personality had logged in from another location.

"So what you said before, that the sixth floor used to be full of strange things, is now completely empty—"

“That’s right, what she did was kill my friend.” Closed Circuit nodded. “It was all her doing, the Reaper woman.”

Then comes the second question.

Why do harvesters hunt closed loops?

“She killed all my friends to force me out; I was her target from the very beginning.” The closed circuit’s body trembled. “She was born on the seventh floor, and after destroying everything there, she began to move downwards, intending to destroy everything here.”

“But she can’t do it.” The closed circuit reached out and gently stroked the heaving necklace heart on its flat chest. “Because I control everything on the sixth floor. This is not a no-man’s land like the seventh floor. If she doesn’t kill me, then the sixth floor will never be destroyed by her.”

"So she began hunting all the anomalies on the sixth floor, intending to force me out in this way." The closed circuit's gaze was fixed on the empty teacup on the table, and its voice became extremely low. "But in the end, I did not leave here."

"So she comes down to visit you every now and then, and puts pressure on you as well?" The doctor nodded slightly. "After all, for a destroyer like her, she can't get down without getting through your sixth floor."

“That’s correct.” The interlocking circuit nodded.

Finally, we come to the third question.

This question determines the nature of the previous two questions.

"You said she killed you once. When was that? If she really killed you, why is the sixth floor still so well preserved?"

That's right.

If she said before that the sixth level would never be destroyed if she wasn't killed, then what is the current state of the sixth level?

“That was the second time she broke into the sixth floor.” Locked Circuit looked up, recalling the distant past. “Back then, in front of the surveillance cameras, she deliberately dragged the strange creatures on this floor into the cameras’ field of view and killed them one by one, in order to force me to leave the core area.”

"And guess what?" the locked circuit gave a dark, bitter laugh. "She succeeded."

"Overconfident in my own strength, I thought that since the sixth floor was my territory, I went to fight with the momentum of fighting on my home turf." Closed Circuit shook its head, "But her strength was beyond my imagination. I had only just seen her appear in my field of vision when my body was pierced through the next moment."

"It's pierced through? Then what are you now..."

“I am the manager of the sixth floor, and managers don’t die easily.” The locked loop smiled, its huge corners of its mouth raised. “The same is true for the managers of the other floors.”

“Although she pierced my body, she did not damage my heart, which is made of necklace. So, with the power of the necklace, I was resurrected again, and I have never left this door since then,” the closed circuit said. “After all, I have realized the difference in power between the two of us.”

“Although I can’t beat her, as the administrator, I can still keep her outside the core area.” She pointed to the Reaper that was running around on the screen. “Although this will cause me a lot of trouble, it’s better than dying again.”

From what was said about the locked circuit, the doctor noticed a new term.

managers.

Upon hearing the word, he subconsciously gave Skadi a wink.

Skadi shook her head, indicating that even she didn't know about it.

So, after explaining the locked circuit, the professor asked this question.

"Regarding what you just mentioned... what exactly do you mean by 'manager'?"

The doctor knew that if he didn't seize this opportunity to find out more about the information behind the term, everything he had experienced in the past and future would be shrouded in mystery.

Fortunately, the term "locked loop" was not concealed, and Rhodes Island's language ban did not seem to apply to this term.

This means that the term "manager" is sound for Rhodes Island or Specter, and it is not subject to any vetting standards.

Although sometimes "soundness" means being boring and pedantic, for the Doctor, as long as he can figure out the information within Rhodes Island that he doesn't know, it doesn't matter what that information represents.

After all, this is Rhodes Island, and no intelligence is unnecessary.

Every additional piece of information helps shorten the journey to departure.

“The administrator is the person who has the authority over each floor… or rather, the anomaly.” The closed loop remained in its normal posture, answering the doctor’s question in a way that was different from usual. “But it’s not just that, because the administrator also represents the symbol of this floor, so once the administrator dies, then this floor will also change.”

After saying that, she couldn't help but laugh awkwardly and add, "I almost forgot that I'm also some kind of weirdo."

"Change... what do you mean?" But the doctor didn't care about her identity and just continued to ask questions.

"It means collapse, destruction, turning into nothingness, or simply being abandoned and leaving nothing behind." The closed circuit, which had recovered from its awkward laugh, continued to explain the doctor's question seriously, "I don't know the current situation of the other floors, but at least from the beginning, each floor has had a manager, just like the floor director of a mental hospital."

"Why do you have to use mental hospitals as an example..." The doctor frowned.

"Because don't you think Rhodes Island is just a mental hospital?" Closed Circuit raised its head, looking at the Doctor with non-existent eyes. "Look at the anomalies and distortions here."

“But patients in mental hospitals don’t grow hundreds of hands or dozens of eyes.” The doctor shook his head. “That’s an SCP movie set, not an escape movie set.”

"Don't expect me to pick up on your jokes like that woman over there who exudes the scent of the deep sea." The closed-loop big mouth curled up in an arc. "What I'm talking about isn't in a physical sense, but in a spiritual sense."

"Weren't you overwhelmed by fear when you first explored Rhodes Island?"

She turned to the professor and asked him in return.

Chapter 212, Section Two Hundred and One ...

managers.

It represents the symbol of each floor of Rhodes Island and has the authority over that floor.

To be honest, this is the first time the doctor has heard of this intelligence.

But thinking about it, it makes sense, since before that he didn't have anyone he could talk to about these kinds of topics.

If I had to say something, only lavender has ever said something similar.

Unfortunately, the Doctor hadn't realized the hidden meaning behind those words at the time, and Lavender, with her eccentric personality, wouldn't proactively tell the Doctor any information. So, this information that the Doctor should have obtained much earlier just slipped through his fingers.

Fortunately, it's not too late.

The Doctor had some idea about the other administrators within Rhodes Island.

First of all, it is certain that the manager on the sixth floor is a closed loop, after all, that's what she herself described herself as, and it is indeed the case considering the power she possesses and the current situation faced by everyone.

Could the Reaper appearing in the scene be the manager of the seventh floor?

While the locked loop mentions that Layer 7 is a no-man's land, it also mentions the fact that the Reapers destroyed everything on Layer 7.

If the seventh floor is not unclaimed land, but belongs to the Reapers, then all of this makes sense.

However, it is too early to make a judgment on such matters, so the Doctor can only put the Reaper on the bench and start thinking about the anomalies on the other floors.

For example, the second layer.

Since the entrance to the spiral corridor is located on the second floor, Lavender can be understood as the manager of the second floor. Although the spiral corridor connects the second floor to the fifth floor, the spiral corridor itself still belongs to the second floor. Moreover, Lavender herself has already proven the credibility of her identity to the Doctor. Therefore, the Doctor connects her name with the manager of the second floor here.

So, what about the third layer?

To be honest, the third floor was a completely confusing place for PhD students.

First, there were various vow-like phrases constantly appearing on the corridor floor, then there were the locked rooms inside, and finally the conference room at the very end of the third floor.

For him, the only use that room at the end could provide was the Originium.

Apart from the Originium, he had no interest in anything else in the room.

Meanwhile, the strange creatures locked in the other four rooms were constantly wearing down his nerves.

So in the end, he lit the mosquito coils in the piled-up darkness and defeated all the villains with his extensive hand-to-hand combat skills.

—Of course, that's impossible.

In fact, when he saw those people rushing towards him as the door opened, he was already prepared to drive himself into madness.

In other words, he felt that only by temporarily abandoning his human identity could he win this war.

But he won.

But what does that have to do with his current thinking?

What he's thinking about now, and what he needs to think about, is the matter of the administrators within Rhodes Island, and that place on the third floor—obviously—has no administrators.

No wonder it looks so desolate.

Although the remaining Originium was indeed of great use, that was probably its only purpose.

Then we went up to the fourth floor.

The fourth floor and the third floor are right next to each other, but geographically they are quite far apart.

Incidentally, the so-called geographical factors here do not refer to distance or numbers on a map ruler, but rather to the fact that although they are only separated by one floor, they are as close as if they were playing a game of Huarong Road.

So, who is the manager of the fourth floor?

The doctor had a name in his heart.

It was the woman in the black nun's habit with red eyes.

But can she really be considered weird?

Perhaps it really does qualify.

The doctor recalled the time she demonstrated the seawater to him, and also the expression on her face and the eerie atmosphere around him when he was in arrears.

Considering her authority and what she said to me, it's possible that Ghost Shark really is the manager of the fourth floor.

However, wouldn't a single fourth-floor manager be a bit too small for Specter?

Her vision should not be limited to this.

The language restriction that enveloped the entire Rhodes Island and the curse-like thing that killed Lavender were definitely not something that belonged to the authority of a single level of administrators.

So Ghost Shark should be doing both?

Or perhaps there was a manager on the fourth floor, but they were dealt with by the former doctor or Ghost Shark?

Both are possible.

After all, when he first went out to explore, the Doctor noticed that all the rooms around him had been marked by his past self.

So, maybe he really did kill himself.

So, what about the fifth floor?