Chapter 219 - “Correct” Answer
While waiting, Theo began to think about the solution to the problem.
"What do you think about the hint earlier?" Theo asked in a low voice, not wanting other groups to hear him.
Alea couldn't think anything due to the earlier misunderstanding, but Phyrill had an idea. "How about we gather the information about all the hurdles from before?"
"Indeed." Laust nodded in agreement and decided to talk, not wanting to let the world know that Theo was the only one shining in this group. "In the first hurdle, we needed to run fifty laps inside the room and leave someone behind to open the door. In the second hurdle, we needed to leave behind three people to open the right path, but we were able to finish it with all of us going through the short path.
"In the third hurdle, we killed monsters to grab a key which was a black card. Last but not least, the last hurdle, we needed to find a clue inside this facility."
Theo looked down as his body swayed left and right, not able to get a single clue from the information he had.
Time continued to pass as no one was able to get the answer they wished for. Luckily, the other two teams seemed to have no answer as well.
"We still have the same condition…" Theo muttered while thinking, 'What if… What if the hint is actually fake? We need to finish the elimination round within four hours and I can see that we only used two hours for the first two. Hence, this last hurdle gives us two hours to finish.
'There's no way the host will put the flag so far away because we have no map or whatsoever. They only want us to go in one direction. In that case, can the hint be fake? With that kind of time limit, we can search for the flag. Someone with a flying ability will surely get a huge advantage over this race. No, is this the reason why they call it a race?'
Theo realized that everything was just an illusion. They wanted them to overcomplicate the hint. That way, they would surely take down all other teams first so their team could search for the flag later without any pressure. This would also give a huge excitement to those people in the stadium.
'This may be the answer…' Theo finished his thought, opened his eyes, and raised his head before finding Ellen standing in the middle of the room. "Ellen?"
He called her name, but that also gathered everyone's attention as all of them turned to her with a curious face.
Ellen acted as if she didn't hear him and kept doing something weird. Her body turned left and right like a robot while her hands pointed to the front.
Suddenly, she stopped in one direction before walking to a certain door, staring at it in complete silence.
"…" Theo didn't understand her, so he decided to approach her, trying to figure her out. When he was behind her, he extended his hand and tapped her shoulder a few times until her body shook.
"Ah! What?" Ellen turned around and blinked a few times in a split second.
"What are you doing? Did you enter an illusion?" Theo frowned and glanced at the other teams, wondering if they used something on Ellen without him noticing.
However, Ellen surprised him when she grabbed him and her head moved closer to his face as if she wanted to give a peck on his cheek. Unfortunately, something like that wouldn't happen because her mouth stopped in front of Theo's ears.
She covered her mouth and Theo's ears with both hands, whispering. "Theo. I think I've got it. Listen to me first, okay?"
She took a deep breath and began her explanation. "As you may already know, I have two personalities. People say I have a mental illness, but for me, it's kind of a blessing because I can understand both of me at the same time.
"After a while, I have gained the control for both personalities, allowing me to turn one of them off or turn both on at the same time. And I'm the latter this whole time.
"Because of that, you will feel that one personality wants me to go to the left while the other one wants me to go to the right. That's why I am overly sensitive to direction. This sensitivity makes me realize something big in the entire facility.
"I don't know if you notice it too, but whenever we went to another area, we would face the same direction. I mean, when your clone opened the door in the first hurdle, we went through the door in that particular direction. Then on the second one, I realized that the path we took gave us a 360-degree turn, making us face the same direction again. The same applied to the third hurdle. The second gate that needed the Black Card… It's facing the same direction as the other two. That's why we needed to take a turn in that corner."
"!!!" Theo widened his eyes as he quickly recalled what happened from the start. Although he wanted to start doing the same thing as Ellen to prove that theory, he had a gist of direction and realized Ellen had been staring at the door facing the same direction as the other three previous doors.
But he soon noticed that they were in the center of attention, so he took advantage of his surprised face and turned to another door in the opposite direction, watching it with a shocked face for a few seconds before realizing he shouldn't do it.
He quickly retracted his gaze to that door and shook his head in disappointment as if he just gave away the answer that their team got.
And he got what he wanted. Both teams noticed that he stared at the "correct" door. Only Theo's group could actually find something in that hint, making it more believable.
However, the real answer was the door next to them.
Theo successfully redirected them to the wrong answer while inside his heart, he had been smiling like a devil.
