Nymphs and Effort Never Betray You #1

"My father used to say that this old lighthouse could become a lamp illuminating both this world and another. He said that those who had lost their way would follow the light of this lamp and come seeking us from other worlds."

There was a lighthouse at Achilles' residence.

It was an enormous, weather-beaten structure, so antiquated that to project its light you had to crank a bicycle-pedal-style generator around by hand. A proper relic of a bygone era.

"He met my mother thanks to this lighthouse, too. Father always compared her to a goddess from another world, or an angel who had lost her wings."

Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack—

As Achilles turned the crank, the lamp blazed to life with a brilliant glow.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Of course, it was one in the afternoon, bright as full daylight, so the beam itself was invisible—but the notion of a lamp that shone upon another world stirred something in my romantic soul.

A lonely lighthouse keeper. A woman from another world. The stuff of novels and films, wasn't it?

"Your father must have been quite the romantic."

"Everyone thought so. But looking back now, my father was never merely telling romantic tales, nor spinning castles in the air."

Grrrk—

Achilles swung the lamp's beam about, adjusting its angle the way one might tilt an old lighthouse lens.

And then something extraordinary happened.

Along a horizon that had held nothing at all, a hazy structure began to shimmer into view, like a mirage.

What should I even call it? An island? A house on stilts over the water?

I couldn't quite make it out. It wavered and rippled, literally like heat haze or a phantom.

"There's something over there, isn't there? It looks like a house. A house floating on the sea."

"Sharp instincts as always, Mr. Ildo. As it happens, I first saw that structure clearly in the shape of a house right around the time I was about to cross over into S-Rank. Now, let's head down."

We descended the lighthouse.

As we wound our way down the spiraling staircase, Achilles continued his explanation.

"This lighthouse's lamp seems to illuminate a mirror world existing in the same space as our own. The house on the water only appears at the precise moment the lamp shines upon it."

We made our way to the dock, boarded Achilles' yacht, and set out across the sea toward the floating house.

It was, quite literally, a house atop the sea—a structure resembling a wooden cabin built on pilings.

Creeeak—. Groan, groan—.

When we climbed up onto the mirage house, the old timbers shrieked beneath our feet.

It was no illusion or will-o'-the-wisp; the house seemed to genuinely exist, sustained by the light of the lighthouse's lamp.

Standing inside a phantasmal house was a decidedly strange sensation, and Ari, apparently equally fascinated, looked this way and that.

"Is the woman in that painting your mother? She's beautiful. She has the same blue eyes as you, Mr. Achilles. The features look similar, too."

Ari asked, pointing. Where her finger aimed hung a certain picture frame, but to my eyes its contents looked like nothing more than a blank white canvas.

Achilles gave an admiring hoh and nodded.

"So the painting in that frame appears fully to you, Miss Ari. A beauty, you say... To me, the features are so blurred that it looks like nothing but a faceless ghost."

It seemed that how clearly one perceived this house—its structure, its objects—varied from person to person. Even Achilles could only see the painting in that frame dimly, yet Ari was gazing at it so sharply she could make out its expression and even the color of its eyes.

Was it thanks to Ari's innate talent for Super-Sense?

"Oh, wait—looking again, I think it's gone..."

Ari took off her glasses ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and rubbed her eyes like someone whose focus had gone completely out of whack.

Just then, Achilles picked up something from a corner of the phantom cabin.

I couldn't make out what the object was, but from the way he dangled it, swinging it back and forth—ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling—it was unmistakably a bell mounted on a rod.

Now what was going to happen?

I was still wondering when I heard a sound like something parting the water—shaaaa—

Soon, when I poked my head out one of the ghostly windows, a pale fog had somehow gathered around the house where we were staying, and in no time at all it had swallowed everything—the shoreline, the lighthouse's glow—until nothing remained visible.

━Grrrrr...!

At that moment, Keongkeongi, who had been dozing in my pocket, puffed up his fur like a dog pushed past the end of his patience.

His posture screamed on guard, but Achilles, entirely unbothered, said, "As long as it doesn't attack us first, there's no danger."

If it doesn't attack us, there's no danger? Danger from what, exactly?

While I was pondering that, a strange presence made itself felt beyond the window.

When I opened the door, I saw a long canoe-like vessel gliding toward our stilt house.

In the canoe sat a figure draped in a black robe.

No—could that even be called a man? What showed beyond the robe was a pale, bleached-white skeleton, the real thing, bones and all!

"A monster...?! Senpai! Get back! It's a monster!"

Ari tensed, her hand darting to her waist.

She looked ready to draw her scalpel and counterattack at any moment.

Sshk—

Then Achilles spread his palm to stop her.

"It's quite all right. Charon the ferryman harms no one. He is simply a boatman, drawn here by the lamp and the sound of the bell. Now, everyone aboard."

Achilles climbed into the eerie-looking craft.

Feeling oddly entranced by this surreal turn of events, I nonetheless stretched my foot out onto the gunwale. Ari followed me aboard.

Last of all came Moralis, who had looked supremely bored by everything, wailing, "Hiiiek...! You're not planning to leave this Moralis behind in this creepy ghost house, are you?!"

So—what was going to happen now?

Sshk—

Achilles rummaged in his pocket and produced a coin that chimed softly.

Then he placed it in the skeletal ferryman's outstretched hand.

"Mr. Achilles, that coin...?"

"A Whispering Coin. I confess I'm curious where Charon the ferryman will take us today."

Skreeech—. Chaaaa—.

The battered old boat began to push through the milky fog.

The fog was so thick I couldn't see a hand in front of my face.

By the clock on my phone, we had traveled across the water for roughly thirty minutes—

At last the boat stopped, and we found ourselves arriving at an island that felt like some strange jungle.

"A jungle, huh..."

As Achilles stepped off the boat, we followed him onto the shore.

━Kaaah—! ━Shaaah—!

Straightaway, four-legged lizards came scuttling out of the jungle's dense undergrowth.

They were lizards covered in plump, pineapple-textured scales, and each one was roughly the size of a crocodile—deeply intimidating.

I knew what these lizards were called.

"Fruit Lizards?"

A species rumored to have blood as sweet as fruit juice. Collectors apparently paid a hefty price for them.

Something about drinking lizard blood put me off, so I'd never tried one myself, but I had heard that these lizards were A-Rank monsters—more than a handful to deal with.

"Please stand back."

Achilles rested his hand on the sheath at his hip.

Shing, flash—! KRAKOOM—!

In the next instant came a sound like lightning, and in the blink of an eye, all five or so of the Fruit Lizards lay toppled over, twitching.

One second. No—less than one second. What on earth had just happened?

I'd heard that Achilles could move at near the speed of sound, that he possessed his own frozen world of stopped time—The World—and apparently the rumors were true.

"A shame. It seems to be a dud."

Sshk—

Achilles boarded the boat again and handed a coin to the ferryman he called Charon.

After that, we toured a desert island, a lava island, and more—and each time, hordes of monsters went down in droves before Achilles' thunderbolt-fast draw strokes.

"So what you're saying, Mr. Achilles, is that whenever you feel like exploring a rift, you can just go do it. You use that lighthouse to reveal the stilt house, and from the stilt house you can sail out anywhere."

When the lighthouse's light finally died, we returned to Achilles' luxurious mansion.

I felt like I finally understood why Achilles was so strong.

Achilles was basically the protagonist of a story called Infinity Rift Exploration, All By Myself!

Exploring rifts freely whenever he pleased? That was practically cheating.

"It's not quite unlimited. Charon won't take anyone aboard without a Whispering Coin. And he doesn't take you wherever you want to go, either."

So that's how it works.

In any case, it had been an illuminating day—one that showed me exactly how Achilles' formidable strength had been forged.

"The truth is, what I seek is an island of snowy mountains. I had hoped that if I asked Charon the ferryman, he might carry me there."

Five years earlier, Achilles had fought at the T-Rank rift Snowy Mountain that opened on Chios Island, rescuing people who had fallen into the rift and battling every manner of powerful monster.

"It was a place crawling with everything from A-Rank to Semi-S-Rank monsters."

Deep inside that rift, Achilles told us, he had encountered a certain man. Mistaking him for the rift's master—a beast tamer—he had charged in boldly, only to be thoroughly defeated.

"He was a man who commanded dog-squirrels and honey ants. Mr. Ildo, have you ever heard of a man who commands dog-squirrels and honey ants? As I recall, he had a burn scar on the back of his left hand."

A burn scar on the back of his hand, commanding honey ants and dog-squirrels. A man who had broken Achilles at the very height of his S-Rank ascendancy.

To me, this was entirely news.

At that point Ari, who had been listening to the story, stepped forward.

"So you're saying you can't meet that man even now. You summoned my senpai all ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the way to Greece, promising he'd get to meet a man whose story might be made up or fake—and now...!"

At Ari's indignant protest, Achilles sheepishly scratched his forehead.

Scritch, scritch—.

"Well, you see, I thought that perhaps if you were with us, Mr. Ildo, Charon might carry me to that Snowy Mountain. But it seems my hopes were misplaced."

So it seems.

In the end, I never got to meet the man who had supposedly broken Achilles.

Was the only concrete thing Achilles had given me a lesson in how to use the Whispering Coin?

"Mr. Ildo, it appears I've sent you on a long journey for nothing."

Achilles apologized to me. But if you asked whether my trip to Greece had truly been wasted—well, not exactly.

The nymphs had loved it. Keongkeongi had gained the skill Squirrel Storage. And Ing-ing-i, our typhoon cloud, had safely grown into a rare species called the Rainbow Ring.

It had been a good experience for me, too.

"As a reward, and as a keepsake, I should like to give you this, Mr. Ildo."

Sshk—

Achilles held out an old book.

Something was written on it, and it was Moralis who recognized it first.

"Aaah—! That's The Hero's Way, it is! The first volume, it is! Given the hand-signed signature of Chiron the hero-educator himself, it's surely a genuine article, it is! An incredible thing it is!"

Watching Moralis make such a fuss, I found myself thinking: so every single nymph just loves making a fuss, huh.

Soon Ari, too, gasped in shock and covered her mouth with her palm.

"...That's something you could donate to a museum! Even if you can't call it a national treasure, it's worth at least an A-Rank artifact...! Wait, this is a Magic Grimoire, isn't it?"

An A-Rank artifact. I'd heard that if you sold one to collectors, you could live comfortably for three generations off the proceeds.

And he was giving it to me?

"Mr. Achilles, are you sure? A Magic Grimoire is an incredibly rare book, isn't it? In all my years as an awakener, I've only ever seen one with my own eyes."

"I suspect you need it more than ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I do now, Mr. Ildo. I guarantee you, it will help. Let a single drop of your blood fall on the book, and its contents will rearrange themselves to suit you."

The training manual that had carried Achilles all the way to his title as the strongest of the S-Ranks.

A magical book that changed its contents for each reader!

I kept my face composed on the outside, but inside, my mood had skyrocketed!

I want to open it right now, don't I! What's written inside!

Zzzrip—

I pricked my finger with my utility dagger and let one drop of blood fall onto the old book's cover.

Vmmm—

The old tome began to glow.

By now, it had surely transformed into a training manual custom-built for me, Ha Ildo.

That was just the kind of magical book this was!

A hundred squats, a hundred push-ups, a hundred sit-ups, and a 10K run every single day without fail—wouldn't that be the sort of thing written inside?

Flip—

"Oooh."

When I unfolded the pages, the text was written in Korean—fitting, I supposed, for a magic grimoire that rewrote itself for each reader.

Imagine if it had been in ancient Greek characters!

But as for the actual contents... I couldn't make heads or tails of them at all.