Chapter 41

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Translator: penny

Chapter: 41

Chapter Title: Liar (3)

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"..."

I closed the community and silently stared at the suit-wearing monster.

'It doesn't just lie, huh...'

The thing had answered 20 + 10 + 6 with 36.

That response was clearly the truth.

Which meant there was no penalty for telling the truth.

In other words...

'How much of its answers to my questions were actually true...'

The monster calling itself our guide had been toying with us.

'What a headache...'

I had no idea what its plan was.

But the first number question got 38.

The next room was 37, this one 36...

Before whatever happens after Room 36, I needed to clear this place somehow.

That was when...

"..."

The woman from Room 1001, who had been silently staring at the suit-wearing monster...

"...Hey, Big Whale."

"Yes? Go ahead."

"Doesn't something feel... off?"

"What's off?"

"Um... the guide's fingers."

She said the guide's fingers looked strange.

But...

'...What's strange about them?'

No matter how I looked, the monster's fingers didn't seem off.

I was about to chalk it up to her imagination when...

"..?"

She slowly stood up and walked toward the door with no trap.

Then...

"Can you... trust me just once?"

She asked me to trust her.

'Well, sure... We've still got a ways to go to Room 36.'

The situation didn't seem that dangerous yet.

And just hunkering down here until food ran out didn't feel like a good plan.

"Let's go. I'll take the lead."

I stepped forward again—

"No. This time... I'll lead."

"...Pardon?"

"This is my choice. I said... I want to go."

Creeeak—

The moment I stood, she turned the doorknob and opened the closed door.

'Is that really the same woman who was bawling her eyes out...?'

Was this the kind of disconnect others felt seeing me?

A strange feeling washed over me at her sudden bravery after crying to survive.

But soon, I realized it was a positive one.

"Next room."

"Let's go."

I followed the woman, who seemed resolved, into the next room.

'The rooms haven't changed at all.'

Like spinning in circles, everything looked the same beyond the door...

Thud...

"..!"

I saw the monster's finger between the two doors drop straight to the floor.

Along with it.

"...It's gone."

"...So the fingers really did change."

"Yeah, it felt... precarious somehow."

Leaving the monster's finger vanishing like smoke behind us.

The suit-wearing monster...

"It's down to four now."

Was holding up only four fingers.

"It seems like telling the truth makes a finger fall off."

'Yeah, that's the community for you.'

An incredibly helpful community for everyone else.

A community utterly useless to me.

Yes! That's the community! Right!

"Hoo..."

I felt like I'd sighed too much since entering this place.

Anyway.

"For now, we need to knock off all those fingers."

It seemed like we were onto something for clearing this.

So we agreed our goal was to sever all the monster's fingers.

And started bombarding the suit-wearing monster with questions again.

A decent comment caught my eye in the community, so for the last question in Room 8, I asked:

"Answering our questions is something you do so~ well, right?"

I threw the question with that classic Korean intonation.

Then.

"..."

The thing stared at me, seemingly pondering my question...

"...I don't know."

Yes, not a simple yes or no.

It used a cheat key to escape the situation.

"...Hah."

It was a clever question on my part, but the damn thing used its brain too...

"No choice. On to the next room."

Unable to find the answer in Room 8, we moved to the next.

The moment I was about to ask a new question.

"Hmm... What question would be good... No, wait."

I recalled that just before...

The thing had been deep in thought over my question.

I realized the self-proclaimed guide monster thinks about our questions to some degree.

"I'll ask a question."

Using that, I approached the monster holding up four fingers and decided to hit it with a question that would cause pain.

"You know you're not the guide, not not knowing you're not the guide, right?"

"..."

Come on, what're you gonna do now, you liar!

What answer will you give me?!

'Well, it could still lie its way out of this one.'

Of course, it was a question it could lie to.

I asked it to make it suffer some mental anguish...

"......"

The thing kept agonizing...

Crack— Thud

"??"

It snapped its own finger and dropped it to the floor.

The monster looked at me after breaking the finger, its face seeming to say:

'This game fucking sucks.'

Was that my imagination?

Thinking we'd found a method, I threw the next question.

"Oh... You don't know for sure if there's a trap beyond the door I'm pointing at, but you don't not know, and since you have to answer truthfully, you're agonizing over what to say, but no, you have to lie so you'll say there is a trap, right?"

"I... cannot answer."

"Huh? The finger changed again."

"So 'I cannot answer' was the truth?"

"..."

"Well, saying you can answer would be true too, but since you can't give an exact answer, 'cannot' has to be true."

The woman from 1001 said she saw another issue with the monster's finger.

To check if only two fingers were left, I planned to head to a safe room I'd already confirmed, using mental attacks.

"You still have two questions left."

But the thing told me two more questions remained.

Then, a hypothesis flashed in my mind.

"If I skip asking a question and move on, does your finger get cut?"

I tossed out the question on a hunch.

"...I don't know."

From its evasive response, I was convinced.

"So if we don't ask and move on, your finger gets cut?"

"That too... I don't... know."

That if we skipped questions and moved on, its finger would be severed.

"If I sincerely swing this knuckle-dusted fist at you, will you die in one hit without resisting?"

"...No."

"See ya in the next room~."

"..."