There was no way out of here.
The situation did not look promising. For a while, everyone sat in silence, thinking. Mes was the first to speak.
"Actually, only one method comes to mind to get out of here…" Mes said. Before he could finish his sentence, Arsh and Bera completed the rest.
"To kill Apeirolimos," they said at the same time.
Reaching this conclusion was quite easy. If they could not get out of the illusion, what they had to do was eliminate the source that created the illusion. But the real problem wasn't this.
"Then how are we going to kill that thing? Do you have any weapon with you?" Walter asked.
Bera and Mr. Herman nodded. Both of them pulled their revolvers. After hesitating for a moment, Mes also reached to his waist and pulled out a pocket pistol.
"What are you doing with that?" Bera said.
"Professor Reiener gave it to me as a gift. I thought it would be a good idea to carry it with me today," Mes said timidly in response to Bera's harsh look.
"Do you think a revolver will even work?" Arsh asked. For some reason, he was worried that such weapons might not be effective against a creature like that. He thought that if killing it were really this simple, it would have been killed long ago instead of being sealed in a box.
"We have no choice. We should try and see," Mr. Herman replied.
"The weakest and slowest among us are Arsh and Mes. Let's leave them somewhere safe first. If we make enough noise, we can draw the creature toward us. After a while, Arsh will find us," Bera said.
"There is no safe place here, Bera. All of this place is Apeirolimos's creation." Mes said.
"In any case, staying away from us while we deal with the creature is the most reasonable option." Bera insisted on keeping them at a distance.
Meanwhile, Arsh was constantly tracking the monster's movements. Even though it kept moving, it had not approached them yet. While the others were planning how to approach the creature, Arsh instead focused on the missing people, which had been their original reason for coming here. If they were still alive, perhaps they had found a safe place even within this illusion.
Arsh focused again. First, he tried to find the night guard. This time, nothing similar happened, and there was no golden thread. Then he tried to find the cleaner. Again, there was nothing. A voice inside him told Arsh that this meant those people were dead. But then why, when he had searched for Bill Heather before thousands of threads had appeared, while now there were none? He did not know the answer to that.
Finally, he thought of the student. Since he could not clearly remember her face, he took the photos out of his pocket again. This movement caught the others' attention as well. Arsh glanced at the photograph and the document attached to it.
"Mary Lowe. Where is she?"
When he opened his eyes, he found a golden thread waving in the air. She was alive and relatively safe.
Arsh looked at the others.
"The student, Mary Lowe. She's the only one still alive. Should we find her before trying to kill Limos? For now, she's a few floors above us."
They started to walk again. They had climbed exactly two floors when this time the golden threads turned downward. They walked for a long time on the floor they had reached to, then turned in the exact opposite direction of where they had been going. They continued like this for a long while, moving through corridors between bookshelves that felt endless, climbing staircases and pressing on. At times, Apeirolimos's terrifying shrieks echoed nearby, and at other times far away, but they managed to keep their distance from it.
Arsh was walking at the front. A while later, Mes came up beside him, holding a pocket watch in his hand.
"Since we started walking, according to what you've been saying, the position of the student has changed every 8 minutes and 44 seconds. Most likely, the entire illusion, this labyrinth reshapes itself at the same interval each time."
Arsh hadn't noticed this before.
"How much time has passed since we last changed direction?"
"About two minutes."
Arsh looked at the golden threads waving in front of him. The girl was still quite far from them. Apeirolimos was even farther away. To reach her within the remaining six minutes, they needed to move faster.
"Apeirolimos is quite far from us. What do you think would happen if we ran a little?"
"I'm not sure… but we're probably safe for seven minutes. If it could detect sounds from that far away, it should have noticed sound of five people walking together already. But it still hasn't come closer, right?"
"So you're saying it only detects sound within a certain distance?"
"Probably."
If that was true, things became much easier.
"Can you run, Mes?"
"Ah… I can't run very fast, but yes… I'm sorry. It would be better if I weren't here."
"Mes, don't be like that. If it weren't for you, no one would have understood what this creature is, and we would have already become its prey."
"But… you know I'm being an obstacle."
"Please. If you're an obstacle, didn't you hear them? I'm an obstacle too. I'm weak as well."
"But your ability is useful, and you're also pretty clever."
"See? Just like you. We all have our weak and strong sides. Let's talk about it later… We should run now."
This was not a speech Arsh made just to lift Mes's spirits. He was fully aware that, physically, he was the weakest link after Mes. But Mes's knowledge was also a fact. Physical strength was not always the solution; here, knowledge and practical intelligence mattered as well.
He turned to the others following a few steps behind and told them they had to run. They quickly headed toward the student.
…
"I feel like we are walking for hours" said Walter.
"We are walking for fifty minutes." Mes said, glancing at the watch in his hand again. After running for a while, they had finally gotten closer to their target. If Mes's estimate was correct, they still had more than a minute left. Arsh stopped in front of a large door.
"Why can't we find her?"
"She is here" said Arsh pointing at a door.
This was the main hall of the library.
They found themselves in the corridor connecting the exhibition hall and the library. Mr. Herman slowly opened the door in front of them.
When they opened it all the way, the first thing they saw was trees and grass completely covering the area. It was as if a piece of the forest had been taken and placed inside the main hall. It even felt as though a ceiling had been built over the forest afterward.
"Apeirolimos isn't here, right?" Mr. Herman asked to make sure.
"No, it isn't. The student is somewhere here," Arsh said.
When they passed the first trees in front of them, they came face to face with a pile of skeletons. Bones belonging to dozens of people, old pieces of clothing, and personal items were piled together in the middle.
"What the hell?" Walter said, moving behind Bera.
Arsh stepped closer and began to examine the skeletons. Some of the clothes were white embroidered fabrics, others were pieces of armor. There were swords, satchels, and various items scattered on the ground. The skeletons looked as if they had been picked clean of flesh and blood. There were no signs of decay. Clothes and other things also showed no signs of age either.
Arsh realized these belonged to the people who had fallen victim to the Apeirolimos throughout history.
As he shifted his gaze toward the remains at the very top of the pile, he saw clothing from the present era. One was a standard security guard uniform, which likely belonged to Jerry Archer. Beside it lay a white apron and a casual long black dress. Arsh thought that this set probably belonged to the cleaner, Anna Davies.
The last clothes, what caught his attention was the brown uniform Peter had been wearing today. On the collar, there was a gold-colored name badge bearing the symbol of the library. Arsh narrowed his eyes and read the name written on it.
The name belonged to the man whose thread he had found the previous night while he was alone in his room. He had been sure that the man had been alive last night, but now, there was only a skeleton lying before him. He must have been alive until recently.
But in truth, Arsh wasn't surprised. The moment he had stepped into this place and faced Apeirolimos, he had realized this was a likely outcome.
Bera was examining the skeletons with him. When he saw Arsh freeze, he looked in the same direction Arsh was staring.
"Is this the man you told us about this morning? We thought he was alive. It seems we were too late," he said with his usual cold expression.
"Yes… Bill Heather. We were too late." Arsh replied, his voice just as cold.