7. Trial of the Rose Windmill Cabaret (12)
7. Trial of the Rose Windmill Cabaret (12)
After leaving Pandora Magic Show, Wonderstein and his group stopped at a concession stand on their way to Silver Screen Circus's show.
The stands were split between both troupes as well.
Ella picked up a rough, silvery lump of metal from a stall in front of Pandora's counter.
"If you saw the Escape King's show, you've got to buy one of these."
The metal piece in her hand bore the inscription:
<Escape King's Puzzle Series No. 114: Rose>
The Escape King Luini made a habit of giving spectators a simple metal-cast puzzle after each performance in a region.
Usually, the theme was a local landmark or specialty.
Originally he distributed them to the entire audience, but this time admission was free, so they were being sold at the stands.
His escape puzzles were objects where small, geometric metal castings—about the size of a finger—interlocked in a crosshatch pattern.
Solving the puzzle meant taking that assembly apart.
The puzzles looked simple, but solving them was anything but easy.
Some people could twist and wrench one for a month straight without ever separating it.
The one Luini had unveiled this time was the "Rose": three Y-shaped castings that combined into a six-pointed, star-like flower.
The name and the shape were clearly designed with this competition in mind.
The area in front of the stand was packed with fans, all wrestling with their puzzles and groaning in frustration.
The Escape King's puzzles had such a devoted following and high profile that whenever a new one was released, the solution was guaranteed to be published in the next issue of a circus magazine.
There were even collectors who never watched his shows but owned every puzzle.
"What do you say we each buy one and give it a try?"
The puzzles weren't cheap, but since they were using coins they'd gotten for free, there was no guilt in spending them.
They settled around a table in front of the stand and played with their escape puzzles until the next Silver Screen Circus show began.
"Hrrgh! Why won't this thing budge?"
"Kaah! I wish my bones were interlocked this solidly..."
Ella shook her head, watching Yurakne and Sven strain and struggle over their puzzles.
"Force won't help. Unless you hit the exact angle and position, the pieces won't shift at all. Even solving it quickly would still take a few hours, I'd say..."
"Solved it."
"...What?"
The first to crack the puzzle was Maya.
She had a talent for visualizing three-dimensional schematics in her head that outclassed almost anyone.
The moment the puzzle was in her hands, she studied the shape of the pieces, twisted them a few times, and took the assembly apart in one go.
"How did you do that?"
Ella stared at her with wide eyes.
Maya glanced back at Ella and answered in a flat tone that somehow still felt needling.
"A bit of intuition and some sleight of hand."
Having her own line thrown right back at her, Ella wore a peeved expression.
Maya ignored the Deputy Leader gnashing her teeth beside her and inspected the cross-section of the disassembled puzzle.
What interested her was the detailed joining surfaces of the castings.
She regarded the act of solving the puzzle itself as trivial.
It was the people around them who made a fuss.
"Whoa! What's this girl?!"
"She just solved Luini's puzzle the moment she sat down!"
"What rank is this one again?"
"Rank four! That's the third-highest!"
Luini's fans, who had been working on the puzzle nearby, flocked to the table where the group was seated.
Luini assigned his puzzles an internal ranking from one to six, with six being the highest and one the lowest. Only a single rank-six had ever been produced; rank-fives came out once every two or three years. The rank-four puzzle Maya had solved was ordinarily among the most difficult.
And the fact that she'd solved it within minutes of buying it made the crowd's shock inevitable.
"Someone already solved it?"
A commotion rose in front of the stand, and someone came sprinting out from Hall 3.
Wonderstein recognized him from a distance.
A man whose entire upper body—face included—was wrapped in chains.
He was one of the two troupe members Luini had brought to the drawing ceremony.
With his chains dragging behind him, he was an acrobat nicknamed "Chain Tail."
He saw the three disassembled pieces in Maya's hand and let out a sigh of admiration.
"It's true! A rank-four puzzle solved that fast."
"Maybe there's a defect in the casting!"
A wiry man with a peevish face, one of Luini's die-hard fans, protested in a rough voice.
He'd rushed to the stand the moment he entered the theater, bought his puzzle without watching any of the show, and had been fiddling with it ever since.
Luini's puzzles offered a prize to the first solver.
Desperate to claim it once, he'd camped in front of the stand, clinging to the puzzle without setting foot inside the show.
Then a girl who'd sat through three full parts of the performance solved it in mere moments the instant she got her hands on it—and his temper flared.
Chain Tail shot him a displeased glare.
His grey eyes glinted through the gaps in the chains.
"A defect? Our trick puzzles have never once had a product fault."
At his chilly tone, the fan who'd spoken up shrank back with his shoulders hunched.
Chain Tail realized he'd gotten worked up for no reason and added, his voice now gentler,
"I've just examined it myself, and it's flawless. I'd ask you to refrain from baseless slander. Miss, to claim the prize, you'll also need to demonstrate the reassembly. Would you like to try?"
Maya had been absorbed in analyzing the joinery structure and was annoyed at the interruption.
Normally, she would have said "No thanks" and gone back to her own business.
But she felt Wonderstein's gaze on her.
Out of respect for his reputation, she couldn't just be prickly.
She took the three pieces, fitted them together at exactly the right order and angles, and turned them.
There was no hesitation, no attempt to force them.
The geometric grooves meshed with a metallic click, and the pieces returned to their original interlocked form.
A cheer went up around them.
Taking a puzzle apart sometimes happened through brute force, but reassembly was impossible without a precise understanding of the casting.
She had truly grasped the puzzle's structure and solved it.
The handful of fans who had been insisting it was a lucky shot slunk away with sheepish expressions.
Chain Tail nodded at the rose she'd reconstructed.
"I acknowledge it. I hereby recognize you as the first solver of No. 114 Rose. Now, I'll present the prize."
The chain trailing behind his back swayed like a tail, just as the nickname described.
Dangling from the end was a lump of metal that gleamed gold.
It was the same shape as the puzzles people had bought.
He moved the chain and placed it before Maya.
"The original of No. 114. I crafted it myself following our troupe leader's blueprint. The other puzzles are stamped from a mold of this one and poured with molten metal. You may keep it, or put it up for auction. It sells for quite a bit. Ah—but it's not gold. It's made of brass."
With that, Chain Tail turned and left, dragging his chain behind him.
Once he was gone, Luini's fans crowded around Maya.
Questions and requests flew at her—could they just touch it, would she sell it to them. Some even grabbed her arm and shook it.
Maya's expression twisted in irritation.
To an ordinary person, of course, her face still looked blank.
Only Wonderstein and Ella could read her true feelings.
"That's enough. Please step back."
Wonderstein moved in front of Maya and pushed the surging crowd away.
From the person who'd grabbed her arm, he took hold of the hand and peeled it off.
Muscle Strength 4.0.
With the power of a man whose three core stats topped a thousand, the onlookers were easily shoved aside.
"Whoa! Wh-what the?!"
"Ugh, is he a strongman?"
"He doesn't even look that strong..."
Startled by Wonderstein's strength, the crowd backed away.
"Are you all right?"
Maya looked up at Wonderstein's smiling face with her own expressionless one.
Even he, who prided himself on reading her, was thrown off—he couldn't detect a single emotion on that face.
She stared quietly at the prize in her hand, then abruptly held it out to him.
"Here."
Wonderstein regarded it with a flustered smile.
"Why are you giving this to me?"
"I don't need it."
She set the prize on the table and turned her attention back to studying the puzzle's joinery.
It was a cool, indifferent attitude that bordered on bewildering.
Wonderstein offered an awkward smile and picked up the gift.
"Thank you. I'll accept it gratefully."
The moment he tucked it into his coat, the corners of Maya's mouth lifted ever so slightly.
She had her head lowered, so only Ella, sitting beside her, caught that smile.
Maya tilted her head at Ella, who was staring openly at her.
"Want me to teach you how to solve it?"
"No way. I can do it myself."
Ella whipped her head away and spent the next several dozen minutes wrestling with the rose and groaning.
She had solved plenty of Luini's trick puzzle series before.
In a corner of the circus school, dozens of puzzles sat slick with the wear of youthful hands.
They were a favorite pastime among the circus hopefuls.
The kids would bet each other on who could be the first to fully solve one.
Some puzzles were so old that finding a published solution was far from easy.
That particular bet had ended with Ella winning—she must have been thirteen or fourteen at the time.
"Got it!"
Right before they were due to go inside for Silver Screen Circus's show, Ella finally cracked the puzzle.
Beside her, Sven chuckled and congratulated her on her success.
Though he couldn't resist a short jibe.
"That makes you third, Deputy Leader. Heh-heh."
He had been the second in the group to finish.
Thanks to Maya explaining the method, he'd barely managed to solve his puzzle a few minutes before Ella did.
"With all the bone reassembly I do every day, something like this is actually fun!"
He had bought a whole stack of puzzle series at the stand and came back with his arms full.
They were leftover stock from previous regions, he said.
When Wonderstein heard him say he planned to distribute them to the members who'd missed the show, he nodded.
True, passing these around would make the hours vanish.
"I hadn't even thought of the members we left behind. Let me cover the cost."
"Oh-ho! Troupe Leader! You adorable cheapskate! Well then, I'm grateful! Keh-heh!"
[Sven's Affection level has increased by 1.]
With that, the only member who hadn't solved the puzzle was Yurakne.
Even after hearing Maya's explanation, she still hadn't found the answer and was applying brute force to the metal castings.
"Hrrrngh."
"Yura, that isn't something you solve with strength."
Wonderstein took hold of her shoulders to calm her.
Unbeknownst to her, the arms across her back and waist had started to twitch.
She was twisting the casting with enough force to bend the puzzle outright.
When her eyes met the troupe leader's, her face flushed.
A puzzle that needed brains to solve—and she'd resorted to brute force because she couldn't figure it out.
She'd shown herself to be a blockhead in front of him.
Yurakne wanted nothing more than a hole to crawl into.
But something else turned her face even redder.
Perhaps feeling sorry as he watched her strain and struggle, Wonderstein took her hands in his to guide her through the solution himself.
"Ah... um..."
His hands closed firmly over hers. Yurakne didn't even think of resisting; she let herself be led. His face drew close, nearly pressed against her own.
Maya's expression went rigid at the sight, and Ella's eyebrows shot upward.
Wonderstein was too focused on solving the puzzle to notice the change around him.
"So if you twist at this angle..."
He had memorized the moment Maya solved hers and stored every detail in his head. He'd been ready at any moment to help Yurakne.
The only reason he'd held off until the last second was uncertainty about whether helping her like this would still count as solving it on her own.
Oblivious to the fact that Yurakne's face had ripened to the color of a persimmon, he solved the puzzle while keeping a single-minded watch on the notification window.
Click.
The three Y-shaped castings separated with a crisp sound.
At the same moment, a notification appeared.
[Member Quest - Time Attack! I'm the Puzzle King! completed.]
[Reward: 20 Devolut.]
Wonderstein let out a sigh of relief.
Thankfully, even with his help, it seemed the system still counted it as her solving the puzzle.
The Devolut he'd stockpiled lately had run dry from experimenting with Skillbook and the Costume Room.
He needed a lot of Devolut to carry out the program he and Ella had been devising together.
Two weeks remained.
He couldn't afford to miss even side quests like this one.
"I didn't realize how much time had gone by while we were on those puzzles. Now then, shall we go watch Silver Screen Circus's show?"
Wonderstein smiled brightly and took the lead.
His step was light.
For a full hour he'd been fretting inwardly over whether the members would all solve their puzzles in time, and they'd cleared the quest by the skin of their teeth.
Ella and Maya watched him walk ahead, then glanced at each other and met eyes.
Both of them could tell they'd had the same thought.
That hopeless flirt, honestly.
Does he think he can act like that with the Viscountess sitting at home?
Still cackling, Skeleton Clown looked at Yurakne, whose face was still burning.
"Oh, timid lady. Just a touch of the hand and—"
"Shut up, Sven!"
Thwack.
Yurakne's punch sent his head lurching as if it were about to roll right off.