“Entrance 4? Why?”
“Let’s talk while we go.”
After hoisting the bag I’d put down back onto my shoulder and taking the lead, I glanced back as I walked down the passage.
Artemis, walking behind while tightly shutting her mouth, was still looking at me with eyes full of unease and distrust.
“Tsk~! You don’t trust me?”
“You need to give me a reason to!”
As I dragged out the moment, she seemed to feel her patience wearing thin and raised her voice slightly.
This wasn’t a particularly difficult problem, and it was a golden opportunity to show her my brilliance, so I promptly revealed the answer.
“Artemis, do you know what pi is?”
“Of course. It’s the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.”
“…”
…How does she know this?
Did I unintentionally underestimate her too much?
I’d been about to explain the definition of pi step by step, but…
If she already knows, it’ll be faster this way.
“Hurry! Faster!”
Artemis, after I spoke the answer, chased after me, her eyes sparkling, ready to absorb all knowledge like a sponge.
She seemed to be urging me to give her the explanation right away.
“How much of the value of pi do you know?”
“3.141592653589… roughly, something like that?”
“…”
She even knew more digits than I did.
Impressive.
Unable to shake the odd feeling, I handed her the parchment on which the problem was written.
“Compare the number arrangement with the value of pi. They’re the same, right?”
“Really? They perfectly match! How did you know?!”
As Artemis muttered the value under her breath, she verified each number written on the parchment. When they all matched, she was astonished and amazed.
“You yourself said it. Since this sequence lacks a pattern, it would be impossible to solve. An irrational number with no pattern — it’s pi.”
“But there’s no decimal point in the problem, right? Look, there’s no dot between the 3 and the 1.”
She quickly came alongside me and showed me the parchment.
With her finger pointed firmly, Artemis was eager to refute me, asking if I was right.
Her form reminded me of the times in the past when I would grab my math teacher after class and pepper them with endless questions — it was a nostalgic experience.
“The doctor Rios wrote this problem 500 years ago on this muddy floor. Naturally, over the long years, the small decimal point must have worn off.”
“Ah! You’re right. The other digits are all close together, but the space between the 3 and the 1 is slightly wider.”
“This space is the definitive evidence that a decimal point was once there.”
What was originally a simple test of mathematical knowledge became an inference needing thought about how the environment changes over long periods of time.
“Wow~ This isn’t about difficulty or easiness. Ark, you’re truly sharp, aren’t you?”
“My goodness.”
Has it been this long since I last heard praise from my girlfriend?
A wave of elation washed over me, and suddenly I wiped my nose with my hand, as it felt tingly.
But in fact, the one who needed to rethink was me.
Artemis…
Frankly speaking, though I was glad for her help in coming here, I had wished she wouldn’t interfere with my trials.
But who would have guessed?
A single offhand remark from her turned out to be the key hint to solving it.
Artemis could rightly be called my bag of wisdom.
Could Apollo possibly accuse this of being cheating?
“Ah! The next chamber.”
While exchanging words with her, we had already reached the end of the passage and entered another chamber.
This time, the opposite side of the joint only had two entrances.
Instead, the two entrances each led to a staircase, one descending on the left, the other ascending on the right.
“This isn’t a tomb; it’s a real ant’s nest?”
What was called Rios’s tomb was, in fact, a maze.
Not a simple 2D maze on a plane, but a 3D complex maze with layers stacked on each other, like a pancake tower.
This is why the exploration team abandoned their efforts.
As it’s an underground maze, it’s not just the sense of direction that can easily dull, but also the sense of position, making it hard to determine which underground level you’re on.
If you lose your way here, it will be impossible to see the sun again.
“Ark. Come here. There’s another problem.”
Artemis, predicting that there would be another problem, walked ahead and pointed to the ground between the entrances.
However, installing the luminescent stick was my top priority, so I rummaged through my bag and asked her to read it to me.
“Let’s see… When bitten by a snake, the wound area should be slightly incised, and the venom should be sucked out with the mouth. This is an OX question.”
Artemis added that if the answer is O, we should take the left entrance, and if the answer is X, the right entrance.
“This is easy.”
I lodged a luminescent stick into the ceiling of the right entrance.
The obvious answer was X.
I had once seen a scene in an old TV historical drama where a friend who was hit by a poisoned arrow had his poison sucked out, and I believed that was a form of first aid.
However, it is a misconception.
If the lips or inside of the mouth have any cuts, you risk poisoning yourself as well.
Instead of doing that, the most sensible course of action would be to quickly wash the wound with clean water and rush to the hospital with an antivenom supply.
But this is a medieval otherworld where medical knowledge isn’t widely known.
There are still quite a few people who automatically suck out the poison when bitten by a snake in the mountains.
We didn’t need to go far to confirm that.
Four months ago, when Artemis and I ascended the mountain, the priestesses following her were also accidentally poisoned.
The world 500 years ago, when Rios was alive, must have been even worse, I thought.
Rios, realizing the danger of secondary infection, appeared to be a courageous doctor who dared to challenge everyone’s accepted常识.
But…
Why did such a person create a labyrinth around his tomb, using their knowledge to quiz us?
What exactly is the doctor Rios trying to hide?
“The truth will be at the end. Let’s go, Artemis.”
“Alright.”
Through the right entrance and down the stairs, we descended into another tier.
As we descended the stairs, there was another chamber right away.
This time, there was one entrance on the left and right side of the chamber rather than the opposite side.
[Sulfur is good for the skin and health. Is the gas produced from burning sulfur harmful to the human body? O for the left, X for the right.]
“This time it’s chemistry.”
“What? Do you know the answer?”
“Artemis, what do you think?”
“Hmm… It’s good, right? I went to a sulfur hot spring once before. The goddesses often go there because it’s good for the skin.”
Based on the problem and a brief thought process, Artemis made a somewhat reasonable prediction grounded in personal experience.
But it’s the wrong answer.
A very dangerous wrong answer.
“Burning sulfur produces an extremely harmful gas. We must be careful. Let’s go through the left entrance.”
“That’s true. But why do you know so much about chemistry? Remember the white phosphorus in the barrel Ares threw last time?”
“Why don’t you memorize the periodic table sometime? It’s basic knowledge for science students.”
“Eh? I don’t know what that is, but I’ll pass.”
We exchanged playful banter like this while following the winding corridor and walked into a small room.
On the opposite side of the room was the same iron gate we had seen outside the monastery.
This room, resembling a waiting room, had rotted logs placed around.
Next to the iron gate, there was a stone slab with engravings.
Bringing the flame closer to the stone slab, I slowly read the engraved text.
“You must be much wiser than someone like me to have reached here. This next room will be the final question.”
“Final? That means we’ve found the right way so far, all the answers.”
“Well, technically, I did most of the work.”
Pfft!
Pissed off by my smug answer, Artemis retaliated with an irritated kick and hit my shin accurately in the dark.
“Ouch, it hurts! Can’t you take a joke??”
“Tsk! Sounds like you’re serious. Finish the last problem before you praise yourself.”
“Got it, got it. Anyway, should we rest here for a little bit?”
Since entering Rios’s tomb, we had been exploring non-stop without taking a single break.
Continuing in a state of high tension made the fatigue accumulate twice as fast as usual.
No one knows what awaits us at the deepest center.
The wise move is to rest now and face approaching dangers with full energy.
“That’s right. I’m getting hungry.”
Artemis immediately agreed with the proposal for rest.
She took a handful of nuts from her small shoulder bag, then sat in a corner and began munching like a squirrel.
Taking a sidelong glance at her form, I immediately took out my notepad.
The notepad contained information about Rios that I had gathered from the monastery followers before entering the tomb.
Let’s list out just the two important pieces of information:
1. Born into a family in a village that burned down, leaving him an orphan, Rios moved to the city of Apollo and spent his life there.
2. Rios confessed to a friend that he was a murderer, but Apollo conducted a full investigation of the village where Rios lived and found no missing persons or bodies.
“Hmm…”
Rather than being important information, it might be more accurate to say this is content that I can’t understand at all.
Why did a citizen of Apollo spend his final days next to the Hestia monastery?
His confession of being a murderer, despite no missing person or body found during the investigation.
What does all this…
“What are you looking at?”
Artemis, munching on peanuts, approached and peeked her head in to skim the notebook.
I handed the notebook to her and told her everything that I couldn’t understand.
“Hmm… That’s true. Why did Rios tell his friend he was a murderer? Was it just humility? People often say ‘No, I’m unworthy’ when praised, right?”
“Just because they’re being humble doesn’t mean they invent facts and lower themselves by calling themselves a criminal.”
“Sigh~ Ark, that’s your problem. You’re bound to find out at the end anyway, so why are you wasting time worrying about this now?”
“Because it’s important to me.”
“Why?”
“Because with the final question, I can get Nike’s healing, Apollo’s support, Metis’s reinstatement, and Artemis’s dignity all at once. It’s natural to be cautious.”
“Ah~”
Artemis was slightly surprised, having not realized this was what I was thinking.
She handed me a peanut with her right hand and pointed to herself with her left.
“I’ll grant the other three, but what about my dignity?”
“Just… I’ll tell you later.”
Artemis’s dignity.
It’s obviously necessary.
Aphrodite, Eros, Ares, and Hera.
These are the gods who basically all have a grudge against me and harbor enmity.
So, I thought that enduring the wrath of these gods would be solely my responsibility.
However, the reality?
Not only me but Artemis, my goddess, is also being disrespected.
This is evidence that Artemis’s status among the gods is significantly lower.
If she were as dignified and divine as Athena, no one would dare easily harbor any grudges against me.
From now on, it’s necessary to gradually elevate her dignity and godhood.
“We’ve rested well, so shall we go in now?”
“Sure. Let’s go.”
We pushed the iron door to the chamber where the last question was and moved forward.
