The thing Everly had been worried about did not happen.
Carrying a body bag and gasoline, she moved quickly and successfully made it to the rental car. At the same time, good news came from Mishaâs side.
âEverly, Iâve successfully gotten the camera and the laptop. Iâm heading back to my car now.â
âGot it. Iâll send you a navigation route shortly, just follow it for now.â
Everly opened the map on her phone, marked out a route, and sent it to Misha.
At present, Everly and Misha were located in the northeast and southeast of Dalami City, respectively, about 30 kilometers apart in a straight line. As for Orff, he had set out from the school much earlier, heading southwest. After leaving Dalami City, he passed through another city called Johanna and was now speeding along the road between Johanna and Nakto. By rough estimate, he was over 400 kilometers away from Everly, and even farther from Misha.
The positions of the three currently formed a very irregular obtuse triangle. The destination Everly marked for Misha lay at the âincenterâ of that triangle.
The incenter is the center of a triangleâs inscribed circle, the point with the smallest total distance to all three vertices. Everlyâs plan was for her and Misha to first head to the incenter, then travel along the route connecting Orff to that point, moving toward him. Once Orff reached Nakto City, bought the equipment he needed, and had the means to protect himself, he would turn around and drive toward the incenter to meet up with the other two.
However, this route also had its drawbacks: traveling from Orffâs direction to the incenter required passing through Johanna City, and the sections covered by the city would greatly slow down progress. Still, Everly wasnât exactly a math genius, and the other two were even worse at it than she was. Under time pressure, this was the best plan she could come up with.
âOrff, give us a status updateâhow are things on your end?â
Everly drove as she spoke over the call.
âIâve already reached Nakto City. Iâm looking for a store where I can buy a camera⊠Everything around me is normal for now, the monster hasnât appeared yet.â
âUnderstood. Misha and I are both on the way. Be careful, and report immediately if anything happens.â
âCopy that.â
For the rest of the journey, the three of them reported their status in the group chat every so often as they drove.
Everly and Misha werenât far from the âincenter.â After arriving there one after the other, they began following the new route Everly had marked, heading toward Orffâs direction.
By this time, Orff had already bought three 128GB Air 6 phones from a roadside Air experience store. It wasnât that he didnât want to buy moreâhis credit card was maxed out, and he simply didnât have enough money.
âIâve unlocked all the devices and placed them on the passenger seat. If the monster appears, Iâll be able to start recording immediately. Iâm about to turn the car around and head back along the marked route.â
âGot it.â
âUnderstood.â
At 18:13, Orffâs terrified voice suddenly rang out in the voice chat:
âItâs here! I see itâitâs rushing toward me at high speed!â
âDonât panic. Take out your phoneâyou know what to do!â
âUnderstood. To have more devices available for recording, Iâm going to disconnect from the voice chat.â
âTake care!â
âDonât you dare die!â
Orff quickly left the voice channel. At the same time, driven by a powerful sense of urgency, Everly and Misha also stopped talking. Without a word, they both sped up, racing through streets and alleys, pushing their cars to the limit along the narrow, poorly maintained roads of Johanna City.
Fasterâfasterâjust a little fasterâŠ
Orff only had three phones and one laptop. To keep the recording going and hold the monster in place, he wouldnât have the focus to drive anymore. The rest of the journey had to be completed by Everly and Misha. The sooner they arrived, the greater his chances of survival.
Everly desperately wanted the information about the Fountain of Youth, very desperately.
She believed that in the previous loops, those versions of herself who had died or failed all carried the same feeling: a fierce longing for news of the Fountain of Youth.
After losing Mother Lamia and Buddy one after another, the only important family she had left in this world was Old John. He was already 76 years oldâtruly not young anymore. Everly could hardly bear to imagine what he would look like in the future, weakened by age.
She had to save Orff. She had to obtain the information about the Fountain of Youth!
She spun the steering wheel and drove straight off a set of steps that cars werenât even meant to cross. The rental car leapt into the air in an arc, its front wheels slamming heavily onto the ground. The whole vehicle jolted violently, letting out an ominous creakâbut Everly seemed not to hear it at all. She kept driving recklessly, charging forward, speeding through every path she couldâor couldnâtâtake.
Faster. Faster. Even fasterâŠ
The car shot across a patch of grass, drove along a muddy dirt road for a stretch, and finally reached a state highway leading out of Johanna City. Sparse population had its advantagesâthe roads between cities were often wide and empty.
Everly floored the accelerator, pressing onward with anxious urgencyâŠ
Yes, of courseâshe knew the male protagonist wouldnât die so easily. Even if Orff failed this time, in the next loop, with the groundwork laid by this one, he would most likely succeed.
But by then, the one who obtained the Fountain of Youthâs information would be another version of herself in a parallel worldânot her, the one here and now.
Since it would belong to her sooner or later, why shouldnât she be the one to get it now?
She didnât want to become a stepping stone for another version of herself like she had in the previous three cycles. Because every version of her, in every world, was uniqueâand each one had a beloved grandfather of her own.
So, faster⊠just a little fasterâŠ
Her anxiety made time drag, making every minute feel much longer than usual.
Everly drove mechanically along the empty highway. Every time she saw a vehicle appear at the far end of the road, she held her breath, her heart pounding wildly in her chest. But each time she got closer, all she felt was disappointment.
Not Orff. Not him⊠notâŠ
After countless disappointments, finally, at 18:48, she spotted it: a Grand Cherokee parked by the roadside, hazard lights flashing.
She had finally arrived!
Everly pulled over, and just as she opened her car door, she heard Orffâs panicked shout from the other side of the road:
âEverly! Finally! My phoneâs about to dieâhurry, hurry, give me your phone!â
âIâm here!â
On her way over, Everly had kept her own phone charging; its battery was now very healthy.
She jumped out of the car, ignoring everything else, and ran straight to Orff. She switched her phone to recording mode and shoved it into his flustered hands.
The Grand Cherokee had USB charging portsâbut only two, each rated at 0.5Aâso charging was slower than a normal port. Orff had four phones, meaning two would always be left unpowered. On top of that, the newly acquired phones werenât fully charged. For the short term, it would suffice, but over time, some phones would inevitably run out of battery.
As for Everlyâs laptop, clearing its memory was painfully slow, and it wasnât convenient to useâOrff had long since set it aside.
âFinally⊠weâve got the connection backâŠâ
Orff took the phone, fiddling with it for a moment. His anxious expression eased slightly, but his tightly furrowed brows betrayed that he was far from relaxed.
âHowâs it going? Can you handle it?â
âItâs fine. The equipment is enough for now, though the battery drains a bit fast⊠Everly, you should go do your part. I hope the body you brought will be useful.â Orff forced a smile toward her, trying to appear strong.
Everly nodded.
She wasnât on the monsterâs hunting list; she couldnât see it, so she couldnât help much with filming. Her best contribution was to focus on eliminating the monster as quickly as possible to support Orff.
Everly crossed the road back to the rental car, and while no one was around, she carried the body bag and gasoline over to the Jeep.
According to Bokor, the next step was to âlet the snake enter the holeââthat is, to get the monster into the corpse.
It was an abstract idea. Everly had initially assumed that simply bringing the corpse close would automatically attract the monster, like in movies, where it would return to its own body on its own. But Orff had told her that the flesh-and-blood monster remained fixed in place by the video, unmoving.
Did she have to manually âpressâ the corpse into the monster?
Everly froze as she scanned Orffâs thin, stick-like arms and legs. Her movements stopped abruptly.
No⊠that wasnât right. The thing that could destroy the monster wasnât just assembling a corpse!
There was something she had been overlooking all along: Orff was the protagonist of a time-loop movie. In the final loop of the film, he had relied on his own strength to successfully escape his death.
If the so-called âentering the holeâ meant forcing the monster into the corpse, Everly couldnât even begin to imagine how many loops Orff would have to go throughâfinding Markâs secret lab, discovering Markâs journal, accurately interpreting Bokorâs verse and grasping its deeper meaning, then, entirely on his own, moving the corpse to the monster, pressing it onto the creature, and finally burning it aliveâŠ
A hellishly difficult task like that was far beyond what Orffâa lanky, slightly goofy otakuâcould manage alone.
By contrast, the camera in Mishaâs hands had a much higher chance of success.
Without spending too much time, Everly could imagine a conclusion that fit the logic of a horror film while also satisfying the requirements of the poemâ
For example, in one loop, unlucky Orff could be captured by the âButcherâ or someone else and tied to a chair in the basement of the forest rangerâs cabin. Perhaps, to get more material, the âButcherâ didnât immediately kill him, but instead turned on the camera, intending to film Orffâs torment.
Then 17:09 arrived, and the monster appeared.
The âButcherâ might have been outside the cameraâs view, or perhaps frightened by the monster and running out of frame. In any case, because he didnât understand the monsterâs attack mechanism, he was killed.
When the monster tried to attack Orff, the camera captured itâthe very camera that had recorded countless girls being tortured, the original âsourceâ of all the evil and hatred. It was the one thing the monster feared most.
Captured by its âbirthplace,â the monster entered the âhole,â while Orff seized the opportunity to break free, sprinted out of the basement, and set the place ablaze. By sheer accident, this completed the final step, sending the monster âback into the burning bowels of the earthââŠ
In short, Everly was ninety percent certain that the key to ending everything was the camera in Mishaâs hands!
ââââââââââââââââââââââââââââ
Authorâs Note:
Additional plot summary:
In the subsequent loops, Orff finally realized that several people and a monster all wanted him dead. By repeatedly replaying events, he gradually discovered that the monster feared being filmed and prioritized attacking the closest target. Moreover, the people who wanted to kill him were themselves on the monsterâs kill list.
After countless deaths, Orff managed to âkill by proxyâ: he tricked a few of the operators into being in the monsterâs immediate vicinity, where they were killed. Eventually, he was accidentally caught by Abel, who, furious at seeing all his companions dead, tied Orff up in the basement of the forest rangerâs cabin, intending to brutally t*rture him on camera.
But at that exact moment, the monster arrived. Abel escaped out of the cameraâs frame and was killed by the monster. As the monster moved to attack Orff, it was inadvertently captured by the original camera. Orff then dragged the battered corpse and set the forest rangerâs cabin on fireâŠ
Yes, this guy never discovered Markâs secret underground lab from start to finish. Killing the monster was entirely accidental. But even so, the movieâs ending still felt tragically heroic and fit the standard of a proper horror movie conclusion.