New Journey Begins

The rest of my day was spent painting stuff on that canvas.

It was quite difficult since my surroundings were pitch black aside from the lilacs acting as my only light source.

I then went to sleep. Tomorrow I’ll start exploring the other floors of this basement.

When I woke up in the morning, I went down to the bottom floor to eat breakfast. I also have to stock up on food and oil before I could start exploring.

“Can I go into the bedroom?” I asked Dexter.

“Sure, why?” He asked back.

“I just wanna get some sunlight.” I replied.

“Go ahead.” He said.

I entered the bedroom and headed to the balcony, and as I got there, I saw a shadow of something flying in the sky.

I quickly rushed up to the balcony to take a closer look, and I saw that parrot from the top floor flying in the sky.

How did it get here?

Is there a way out from the other floors?

It seemed like there was still a lot that I didn’t know about this place.

I looked at the parrot flying freely for a little while, eventually, it flew closer to me, then it flew higher, and higher.

I looked up to see where it was going, and it just flew along the mansion until it disappeared out of my vision.

That was really cool to see. I wish I could talk to the parrot and befriend it. Maybe it will take me to the outside as well.

I refilled my bottle of oil and headed out of the bedroom.

As I was leaving, Dexter entered the room.

“You’re going now?” He asked.

“Yeah.” I answered.

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t go with you.” He continued.

“Whatever, I guess.” I replied.

I left the bedroom, and he closed the door behind me. I then headed to the toilet to stock up on some food.

There were some loaves of bread there. I don't know what kind of loaves of bread they were, but they were big and looked like they could keep me going for multiple days, so I took a couple of loaves and put them in my backpack.

I also found a glass bottle. It looked to be some kind of juice. The bottle was dark green, with a wooden cork instead of a bottle cap.

The label was in the language that I couldn’t understand, but It would probably keep me hydrated for a while, so I put the bottle in my backpack as well.

If I couldn’t find anything within a few days, I would have to come back here to stock up on more food, which isn’t ideal. I hoped to find at least some clues before I run out of food and water.

I left the toilet and headed up to the floor above. I planned to explore this floor first.

The floor was full of oil monsters. I slowly approached the monsters, trying to make as little noise as possible.

I do wonder; just how many monsters were actually there on each floor. Right now it seemed like there was an infinite number of them.

I’ve been creeping through the oil monsters for quite a while now, but it didn’t seem to get less crowded at all, if anything, it was getting more crowded, making it harder and harder to walk around them.

Slowly crawling and creeping through them like this was far too slow for me. I wouldn’t be able to make any progress with all of this monsters surrounding me.

All of a sudden, the monsters all turned to the same direction and started walking toward the direction that I came from.

They must be heading to the dining room.

This is also the first time I noticed how the oil monsters walked.

When they weren’t tumbling down the stairs, They all moved in almost unison.

This led me to believe that there is actually a source or a core of these monsters somewhere in the Gallery.

But where is it?

Dexter said that it is in the basement.

But Victoria said that it is on the lower floor of the mansion.

Could this be the reason why they’re separated?

Nah… I don’t think so.

It’s way too trivial for them to separate to the point where they would probably never see each other again.

But I should take this as an opportunity to explore ahead without having those pesky monsters slowing me down.

After I realized that, I started running as fast as I can, while trying to not slip on the oily floor. My hypothesis was that the monsters only congregated around the spiral stairs.

So if I took this chance to run as far away as possible, I should eventually enter the area where there would be no oil monsters, right?

As I ran further away from the stairs, I noticed that the black oil on the floor was starting to become dry.

This meant that my hypothesis was right.

I moved up ahead a little bit more, as the oil monsters were slowly returning back to this floor, but at that point, I could only see their vague silhouettes behind me.

Eventually, the oil became completely dry, at that point, I stopped to catch my breath a little bit.

Those oil monsters didn’t even come close to me, so I decided to sit down on the floor and rest for a bit.

I wasn’t that hungry or thirsty just yet, so I just got up after a while, and continued my journey deeper into the basement.

My journey continued until when I believed it to be nighttime. I put my backpack down, took a loaf of bread and that weird bottle out, and started having dinner.

I ended up eating just a small portion of the loaf, then I realized that I couldn’t open the bottle with my bare hands, so I took my rock pick out of my backpack and used the pointy side to destroy the wood.

Eating that bread left me feeling quite thirsty, so I quickly drank the juice as soon as I managed to open the bottle.

Argh!! Argh!! What is this?

Is this alcohol?

This wasn’t a fruit juice at all.

I swallowed some of them, but I managed to spit most of them out.

That tasted awful. I can’t drink this… I should have gotten the tea. What would I do for water now?

Do I actually have to endure the taste of this? It seemed like this would be my only choice for now.

I took a small sip from the bottle every once in a while. My body felt hot and my head felt a little woozy.

Am I drunk now?

I should really just go to sleep.

Falling asleep tonight was a lot easier than any night since I’ve been here. Is this the effect of the alcohol?

Maybe I should do this more?

I woke up the next morning to a mild headache. It was kinda hard to get up for some reason. I just wanted to keep lying there and do nothing all day.

But I must move forward, well… after a bit, I suppose. I lied on the floor for around twenty minutes before I slowly got up.

The alcohol didn’t solve my thirst problem at all; I was even more thirsty than last night when I wake up.

What should I do?

I decided not to have my breakfast this morning, because I don’t know when I will find actual water.

I press onward right away, with the hope of finding some form of water source in my path.

I destroyed the cork of the bottle last night, so I couldn’t keep the bottle in my backpack anymore. I held it in my hand moving forward.

With no oil monsters or no companion with me, my journey almost felt meaningless.

All I’m doing was walking in this pitch black corridor endlessly while feeling extremely thirsty and hungry.

While I was exploring, I considered drinking the linseed oil to stay hydrated, but I ended up not doing so; it seemed a lot worse than drinking alcohol.

A few hours later, I felt too fatigued to continue onward and collapsed to the floor.

I quickly took a loaf of bread out of my backpack and eat it, then I drank the alcohol afterward.

I sat on the floor and leaned my back against the wall for a bit. Before I packed up my stuff and moved ahead.

At this point, I was pretty sure that I was drunk. I couldn’t walk straight, and I couldn't think straight too.

I kept going for a bit, then eventually, I lost consciousness.

When I got conscious again, I was still in the pitch black corridor.

I couldn’t tell how far I walked forward, if I walked forward at all, but to my excitement, I saw a door up ahead of me.

I quickly rushed up to the door, and saw that it was labeled: “Dining Room”.

I couldn’t contain my excitement, so I opened the door to see what was inside.

But unfortunately, this dining room was completely abandoned. There was nothing on the dining table aside from old, dirty plates and glasses, with some of them broken on the floor.

Honestly, I kinda expected it to be like this, but I wanted to stay optimistic, so that I didn’t go insane.

I still have one last hope, though, which is the toilet.

Maybe there's some food there, but now that I thought about it; if there were food there at all, it's probably all rotten by now, but I should still check the toilet anyway just in case.

I opened the toilet door, and saw that the floor was completely empty; it was full of empty plates and glasses as well.

But at that moment, I thought of something: do the faucets work?

I ran to a sink and turned one of the faucets.

And to my surprise, the faucet actually worked! It started to dispense fresh water for me.

I ended up drinking so much water. It was so refreshing. It was one of the best feelings ever since I got here, especially since I was about to die back then.

I think I am ready to continue forward now. I have a seemingly infinite amount of fresh water now, and I still have a moderate amount of food left.

This could probably last me a few more days before I have to make my way back.

I picked up one of the wine glasses that wasn’t broken from the floor, and I proceeded to clean the glass, then I dumped the alcohol from my bottle into the glass.

When the glass was full, I noticed that there was still a lot of alcohol left in the bottle, so I put the full glass on the floor, picked up another one, cleaned it, and filled it up as well.

It took three glasses to empty out the bottle. I planned to save the alcohol for later, in case I couldn’t fall asleep, I could drink some of it to help me with that.

I filled the bottle up to the neck with fresh water, then I left the toilet to continue my journey.

Hopefully, I could find something before my food and water run out.

Before I move forward, I went back into the dining room to find something that would help me with my journey.

I walked along the dining room table for a bit, and find something surprising.

This room wasn’t stretched endlessly or ridiculously long, in fact, this dining room was just a regular room just like the living room from the top floor of the mansion, and at a corner of the room, there were some drawers and shelves.

Normal rooms like this could only mean one thing: this is the room that Dexter, Victoria, and Hanako used to live in, like in the living room, the bedroom, or the office.

I walked up to them to see what’s in there; hopefully, they left something here that would tell me more about this place.