At Loop Number???
Fifty psychological test papers were laid out in a five by ten grid across the tabletop.
Ron did not look into the granular details of each House Tree Person (HTP) drawing or the sentence completion tests. What he calculated was statistical probability. Under natural conditions, the variance in psychological amplitude across fifty independent individuals invariably obeys a normal distribution with exceptionally dispersed personal variables. Yet here, the centripetal index of all fifty test samples converged onto a single, identical coordinate.
Without needing a psychologist, a simple probability calculation confirmed: The cognitive framework of all fifty individuals was being forcibly gathered into a shared perceptual template.
From this result, Ron established the next link in his chain of deduction:
This place (Pegasus) continuously generates widespread mental contamination.
Those who seemed "sane" were in fact psychologically dead. Their nervous systems maintained rationality by drifting along with assimilation to prevent total ego collapse.
The lack of data generalization on the train indicated that Quân was no different from a dead man, yet in reality there was no confirmation of his death.
From there, Ron classified the entities capable of surviving at Pegasus into two forms:
Half mad (Possessing a Gift): Must actively suppress their sanity. Janeus required magic applied periodically by the hour; Lunas possessed a non mental type Gift that was entirely compartmentalized, rendering him completely useless in this environment.
Corpses: Ron himself. A necrotic brain devoid of biological function, serving merely as a shell housing memories and a soul. A corpse could not be contaminated or die a second time.
Quân alone stood as an exceptional variable: Possessing no magic core, unassimilated, and uncollected by data. Quân was a "bug"—a cognitive blind spot in the matrix.
Drawing upon the Benjamin Theory that the false Lunas had once mentioned, Ron dismissed hypotheses regarding ordinary hallucinations or laboratory test sites, focusing instead on Hypothesis 1: The entity orchestrating Pegasus was a colossal information induction hive acting as an AI, continuously devouring biological data, eavesdropping, and controlling minds to construct an independent ego.
To determine the limit of this entity's interference, Ron established two phases of temporal testing.
Test 1: Pendulum Clock Station
Setup: Enlisted Euni to construct a magical pendulum clock. Enlisted an individual with an object cloning Gift to create two copies of the clock and positioned them in two entirely isolated rooms.
Objective: Placing them in separate sealed spaces was mandatory to negate the phenomenon of Oscillation Synchronization—the physical mechanism that forces mechanical systems to self adjust their frequency when situated in close proximity.
Execution: Six individuals divided into two groups, making a tally mark in a ledger after every ten oscillation cycles (ten swings of the pendulum).
Result: A discrepancy of one to two tallies emerged between the two groups.
Test 2: Subconscious Time Perception Check
Setup: Confined three individuals to three separate solitary rooms, completely isolated from all sensory input, requiring them to track time subconsciously.
Result: The margin of error surged to between ten and fifteen minutes. However, when Ron offered a modest incentive, emotional oppression decreased, and their accuracy in time perception immediately rebounded.
Ron weighed both tests against each other and proposed the Devil's Observation Model:
The observing entity (the Devil) might command the entire map, yet its processing capacity fell into one of three scenarios:
Scenario 3: The Devil is omniscient, scanning every soul in real time. The chessboard is at a complete stalemate; the Devil will intercept every escape route at the very first thought.
Scenario 2: The Devil perceives Ron's actions and intentionally plays along by generating falsified results.
Scenario 1: The Devil cannot perceive real time. It operates like a data collection engine, its moves always lagging behind the present moment by exactly one beat. If it sees Ron moving through A, B, C, D, it will block A to B only when Ron has already reached C and D.
Ron immediately discarded Scenario 3. If the Devil were truly omniscient and interfered deeply enough to manipulate Ron's initial reasoning, it would have extinguished this plan before it ever began. The discrepancy in the time tests proved that the Devil was forced to continuously synthesize data to formulate the most advantageous reaction, requiring time to perform brain scans.
To verify Scenarios 1 and 2, Ron established a covert transmission line. He utilized neither speech nor imagery. He strung thin fishing lines and transmitted sound through vibrations based on Morse code—a logical code system of the old world known exclusively to him and Quân.
Quân received the vibrational signals, recording them on paper while disguising them through visual deception techniques and multi layered data arrangement. The fact that information was transmitted successfully without matrix interference along the way confirmed: The Devil could manipulate worldviews, yet could not instantaneously meddle with fundamental physical laws.
With the nature of the Devil unveiled, the strategy took shape: The Devil was striving to move from Chaos to Equilibrium to integrate its ego. To destroy it, Ron had to invert this progression much like the Entropy Theorem: Force the matrix from Equilibrium into Maximum Chaos.
Ron prepared three classes of narcotics: A hallucinogen, a psychostimulant, and a focus enhancer. He requested Janeus to use magic upon his brain. Though a necrotic brain plunged Ron into a paradox of multiple personalities, he maintained an anchor of self hood owing to his "already dead" status.
A mass neurological intervention process was activated:
Chemicals & Magic: Narcotics combined with Janeus's magic completely dismantled the Default Mode Network (DMN) of the participants.
Cognitive Rupture: Simultaneously triggered Source Monitoring Errors caused by Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) trauma, Retroactive Interference, and Phase Locking Illusions.
Chain Reaction: The entire research group descended into a state of simultaneous deviation across reason, logic, and temporal perception.
As the subconscious sank into a sea of chaos, Ron tapped his finger lightly against the tabletop, transmitting Morse signals via vibration frequencies to a Hound Guard belonging to the branch security forces who was observing from the outside. The true coordinates were established.
Immediately thereafter, everyone entered the phase of mass suicide.
The deaths of fifty human beings in a state of extreme cognitive distortion was no ordinary demise, but a massive dump of garbage data. The frantic, illogical, and temporally fractured data stream flooded backward into the collective consciousness, directly contaminating the developmental process of the Devil's ego.
Amid a room filled with corpses, Quân was the sole person left standing.
Quân possessed no magic core, remained unassimilated, and served as a completely clean data filter. He held the responsibility of restarting the train, the mystical event overlaid upon this physical reality.
The splicing of the linear timeline created a track of memory in absolute chaos. Confronted with the threat of systemic collapse caused by ingesting an excessive volume of junk data, an emotionless AI like the Devil was forced to select the single optimal resolution: Reset the entire matrix back to its initial checkpoint.
Quân raised his firearm, finishing Ron off, then turned and walked away, and...
BANG.
Quân collapsed, and died.
"So..."
From somewhere, another Quân stepped out.
He dusted off his hands, then advanced toward the train in the distance.
Beneath his feet, the ground gradually shattered into fragments, before turning into droplets of water that merged together like an illusion.
As for Quân, he paid little mind to anything.
The three most crucial individuals, Promet, Ron, and Janeus, had committed suicide; that other Quân was dead as well.
In a sense, psychologically, if they believed in their own death, then they were dead.
Quân arrived at a heavily ruined station platform, then gently lit a cigarette.
He was the person who had spoken to the earth regarding the Benjamin Effect, about information, and about the methods required to bring everything back to a state of final rest.
Forcing the reboot of a world, of reality itself, was exceedingly complex.
Another loop... had come to an end.