Iustus slightly touched the spot where he had been punched and a slight, stinging pain assaulted him.
The strange, mettalic bandages were still wrapped around his limbs and he was stuck in a room that bore a similar ambiance to the one he had been forced to play blackjack in.
It felt humid and everything seemed to be decrepit, the wooden furnitures seemed to have started to rot and the markings left on them seemed to indicate that this room had been flooded up to Iustus knees previously.
He looked around, wondering what to do as there was no door or window to get out through.
The room was fairly large, at least for Iustus standards, about twenty square meters large, a sofa he wouldn't want to sit on even if he was threatened to, a closet that was thightly shut with a lock and chains.
A few small pieces of furniture with drawers, some of them seemed to inbuilt locks on them, a small round table was in a corner, it was still standing up despite missing one of its four legs.
A few paintings depicting people whose faces had been slashed, family paintings, portraits of each of the people on the family paintings, recognisable by their exact same clothes and somewhat by the shape of the slashed heads, each of them was holding something different in their portraits for some reason, from an opened box to something as random as some sort of prickly fruit Iustus had no knowledge of.
The floor was strangely soft as it was carpeted, the carpet was as dark as it could get.
The walls were covered in a wallpaper, the color was of bad taste, looking yellow but yellow like pee would be.
It had a very basic design, almost unremarkable and the whole thing seemed ready to fall off at any moments, probably because of the humidity, it was peeling itself off the walls.
Only thing on the ceiling was a fairly bright lantern, it was illuminating on all sides and seemed to have been crudely installed, as it hanging from a rope that could easily catch on fire, which was tied to a large, bended nail that had been driven into the ceiling at an angle, meaning that it wasn't even straight.
Before Iustus could explore anything into more details, a disembodied voice suddenly spoke up, coming from no clear point in the room as if it was everywhere and nowhere all at once.
"Iustus, virtuous hero of no achievements, you're going to solve a little puzzle of some sorts" the voice was completely different from the sack head, it was much more serious and much less wild, it seemed more grounded and less unpredictable.
It was still off however, the voice was deep but in a bizarre way, as if the owner of that voice was in pain while speaking.
"You have been trapped into this room, you simply need to figure out a way of going out, remember, it could be anything" just like that, no one spoke any other words and Iustus was left standing in silence.
"That's all?" he wondered aloud but the speaker didn't respond.
The first thing Iustus did was simply go up to one of the walls, unlike the rest, there was a spot that was lacking any furnitures or paintings, an empty space that seemed just right for a door to go in.
He pressed one hand against it and only felt a wall, he grabbed the peeled off wallpaper and finished it off, the whole thing came naturally and incerdibly easily, it was hard to believe it had been actually sticked to the wall ever.
However, as it had appeared, it was nothing but a wall but Iustus's hunch was still proven to be right, the shape of a door wa drawn on the wall.
He tried to push it just in case but it was really nothing but a drawing and no matter how much he tried, the wall seemed to be impossible to break through, there was no force being applied, no matter how much he kicked or punched, he felt no recoil at all.
'Well then...' seeing that his first idea was a fluke, he walked up to the closet and took a look at the small lock, normally, he would be able to easily force it open but not here, he would have to find the intended way.
The lock wasn't one meant to be opened with a key but one where you needed a certain combination.
There were four series of numbers from one to nine, trying to find the right association of numbers would take a while but surely, the answer was hidden somewhere in the room.
He then moved on to the few drawers and most of them opened without any issue, except for one that would need a small key.
A few of them were completely empty but four of them each had a piece of paper, each sporting two numbers on them, for a total of eight, that was too much for the lock and he wouldn't have known the order anyways.
He put the papers on the table missing a legs as he searched the rest of the room, peeling off the wallpaper everywhere and removing the paintings from the walls.
As it turned out, the walls were covered in some sort of writings but these weren't words, only random strokes of paint it seemed.
It certainly had a meaning but Iustus had no clue at all.
The paintings had nothing in them or written on their backs at all but behind the largest one, which depicted what appeared to be a family of four, with the father and mother and their two little daughters.
There was a trapdoor in the wall, without any handles or key holes, nothing and it was impossible to open.
He then moved on to the sofa, it seemed incredibly filthy and he could swear he could ear the clatter of some sort of insects crawling about inside of it.
As swiftly as possible he removed the seatings, dropping them immediately as he expected the undersides to be covered in cockroaches or perhaps spiders.
Everything was fine however, there was nothing on the undersides or even inside of the sofa, no creepy crawlies to be seen anywhere.
The clattering sound had completely stopped but however, this made Iustus a bit more nervous, he bent down and flipped the sofa over and there was still nothing to be seen.
There didn't appear to be anything going on with the sofa, which was strange, it was in the center of room, one would think that it would play some part in the puzzle.
He also inspected the lantern but it was just a lantern, it could be opened like most other lanterns but there didn't seem to have been anything put inside of the flames inside.
With no other choice, he turned to the pieces of paper again.
He read each of their contents carefully.
19
44
35
42