The Puzzle of the Lost Dragon Temple
⟪Set is dead? Is that confirmed information?!⟫
Arti Gracia pressed him as if demanding proof.
“If Orochi isn't lying, then yes. According to him, someone in the S.E.N murdered him.”
⟪Another S.E.N did this?⟫
“Does the Great Sage Equal to Heaven know anything about it?”
⟪Ah, one moment, please!⟫
Ryu Hwi built a campfire in the forest and waited, taking his time. This fire had the effect of warding off approaching monsters — he had no intention of fighting them while resting.
Across the flames, Orochi sat in silence. He had yet to open his mouth, so there was no telling what thoughts were turning behind that stoic face.
⟪The Director was shocked too — it's completely unprecedented. The trail vanished without a trace, but to think he was actually murdered... You have no idea who did it, right?⟫
“Apparently not.”
⟪Hmmmm, what was the name of the 'human' who married Set again?⟫
According to Orochi, Set had married a certain human, and that was why he died.
“Riera. A Bronze-rank woman, by the sound of it.”
⟪...Don't tell me she wasn't a victim of that bizarre mass murder case twenty years ago?⟫
“She was.”
He had already searched the name 'Riera'. The very first result that came up was the freak murder case from two decades ago.
An entire family slaughtered. A murder-disappearance case.
The Bronze-rank woman Riera had been found as a horrifying corpse.
Her body looked as though it had been crushed by a massive hammer, and Louise, the eldest daughter, had been discovered with her lower half pulverized as well. The husband, Seth, and the second daughter — barely two years old at the time — a girl named Linze, had both vanished without a trace. The police initially pursued the husband Seth as their prime suspect, but the investigation turned up nothing... (omitted)... It is believed that a Yggdrasil Item was used in the crime.
It must have been quite the notorious case back then, yet in the end, it fizzled out without a single answer coming to light.
⟪By your account, that would mean an S.E.N had a child with a human?⟫
“Is there some reason that would be impossible?”
⟪W-well... I suppose not, now that I think of it. There was Lilith, after all. Understood. Thank you for the information. We'll look into it on the Midgard side as well.⟫
Ending the call with Arti, Ryu Hwi let out a light sigh.
“So what's this event where you need my cooperation?”
“Loki, said. First, obtain the Dragon King's Orb.”
“The Dragon King's Orb?”
“Said, to defeat another S.E.N, it must be secured. But also said, S.E.N, cannot obtain it.”
Ryu Hwi didn't swallow Orochi's words whole. Even if everything Orochi said were true, there was still every chance he was being played by Loki himself. Sifting truth from noise was what mattered here.
“So you'll give me information if I help you get the Dragon King's Orb? It's just an item from a game labyrinth, unless... is it a Yggdrasil Item?”
“Not, an item. DQ is, special. The power, held within it, is what I want.”
“In what sense is DQ special?”
Orochi groaned softly, as if struggling to find the words.
“DQ's, special skills, remain.”
“What does that mean?”
“Usable, in the Human Realm. In other mazes. Like, you. Anyone, who obtains one, can use it.”
“...!!”
The reason UR was special was precisely because skills obtained in game labyrinths could be wielded anywhere else. If Orochi was telling the truth, those special skills shattered the established common sense of the entire world.
It would mean any gamer could use 'skills' earned in one labyrinth inside another.
[Skills on top of plugins now? DQ is a game labyrinth that dares to challenge the very stronghold of UR.]
[These are unquestionably technologies several generations ahead. Humanity's technological progress has been absurdly sluggish, true — but this feels like bypassing every procedure and tapping directly into the technology of the future.]
YggON himself sounded genuinely impressed. Just as he said — how on earth had an S.E.N designed a labyrinth like this?
“Loki, said. If you obtain the Dragon King's Orb, you can gain the power I desire.”
“Hmm. Do you happen to know how to acquire a skill related to 'Mental Tolerance'?”
“Do... not, know.”
Orochi shook his head.
“What I heard, was the event, the monsters, the conditions. What skill it is, unknown.”
[Is he deliberately withholding that information, perhaps?]
If Orochi had been determined to deceive him from the start, he would have feigned knowledge and tried to exploit him. Nothing about the man suggested he was capable of that kind of psychological game. Then again, that itself could be the trap.
“And how do I get this Dragon King's Orb?”
“We go, to the hidden, temple.”
Orochi rose to his feet.
“Time, almost, now.”
Orochi stood on the bridge he had been blocking, and pointed beneath the cliff. The moonlight from the night sky was streaming down onto the river below the cliff. That light spread in a soft haze, forming a shape like the head of a dragon.
“You can't be serious...”
“There, entrance. Only, this time, can enter.”
It seemed like a condition you could only ever find by pure luck — passing over the bridge at exactly this hour and happening to glance down at just the right moment.
[Presumably there would normally be hints you could gather to obtain this information.]
Yeah, no doubt about that. But how was anyone supposed to find that place with no information at all?
“Going.”
Orochi treated the height as nothing and leapt down without a moment's hesitation. Ryu Hwi deployed the bike's Aird and descended beneath the bridge as well.
By the time he arrived, the dragon crest was already beginning to blur. Orochi, who had landed first, dove onto the water's surface without hesitation — and even as they watched, the crest grew fainter and fainter.
[It appears the entrance only stays open for about five minutes.]
“God, these conditions are brutal.”
Ryu Hwi made no effort to hide his irritation and dropped straight down onto the crest on the river. In an instant, the scenery around him changed. He had clearly leapt onto the water, yet when he came to his senses, he was standing inside an ancient temple.
A colossal stone statue of a dragon towered at the far end, surrounded by statues of monsters great and small.
Just then, a notification rang out.
“'Lost Dragon Temple'? More like a temple they were blatantly determined to keep hidden.”
[It feels as though the genre has shifted from RPG to exploration adventure.]
Ryu Hwi swept his gaze around the room. A vast cavern, lined with row upon row of statues. No path leading anywhere else was visible.
Orochi pointed a finger at the massive dragon statue.
“That, statue, is the Colossus of the Dragon King. Loki, said the Dragon King's Orb, is there.”
“Where exactly?”
He examined every inch of the statue, but no orb was anywhere to be seen.
“I, don't know either. Only heard, it is, there.”
Unfortunately, Orochi was a half-finished strategy guide. Ryu Hwi thought back to Loki's face. It would have been far more convenient if there'd simply been a monster to defeat. But knowing Loki's antics, the odds were high that he'd rigged up some pointless little prank here too.
[Aren't puzzles the unwritten law of exploration adventures, Master?]
“This is an RPG.”
[RPGs naturally have puzzle elements as well.]
“Even so, calling it a puzzle...”
He circled the chamber, but aside from the Colossus of the Dragon King and the monster statues, there was nothing.
“Did Loki leave any other instructions?”
“N-nothing... that I, heard.”
Orochi answered without conviction. Ryu Hwi scanned the surroundings once more.
The Colossus of the Dragon King at the very top, and the monster statues standing as if in attendance upon it... They were arranged haphazardly, with no discernible pattern to the layout. This time, he examined each statue individually in fine detail.
Before long, he discovered a strange commonality shared by every statue.
“Looks like this requires a special item.”
[Did you find something?]
“Each monster statue has a slot carved into it — something made to be inserted. Judging by the shape, I'd say they're built to hold Magic Stones.”
“H-hm?”
Orochi wore a baffled expression.
“Insert the matching Magic Stone into each statue, and presumably some hidden mechanism in the Colossus activates. What a tedious design. And some of these monsters don't show up until the late game, you realize?”
In other words, unlocking whatever lay here would require progressing at least to the game's later stages.
“Not, possible, right now?”
Orochi's face fell in alarm.
“Not right now, at least. We'd need Magic Stones from late-game monsters, after all.”
“Loki, said. First, obtain, this. As quickly, as possible.”
“As quickly as possible?”
A mechanism that could only be solved after reaching the late game, yet Loki wanted it solved fast — something didn't add up.
Ryu Hwi considered giving up for the day and connecting to the Divine Comedy's Asgard to meet Loki first.
[Connection impossible. The Divine Comedy's Asgard is currently locked.]
“What?!”
The Conversion simply wouldn't engage. The Divine Comedy's Asgard wasn't responding at all.
“Loki, said. Around the time, DQ was made, he would become, impossible to find.”
DQ seemed to harbor a great many special secrets. Even XENIX, who had implemented the blueprint, had admitted that a substantial portion of it lay in territory they couldn't explain. The reason Loki had hidden himself was highly likely tied to that same unexplainable territory.
“So he told me to obtain something first that can't be acquired until the endgame.”
[We are dealing with S.E.N Loki, Master. He's the kind of trickster who pulls off the impossible, so perhaps there's a method after all.]
“Damn it... Fine. Nothing for it. Should we take a look with 'Intuition'?”
He gathered his focus and activated Intuition Lv. 4.
The moment Intuition came alive and he surveyed the room, an inexplicable sense of wrongness washed over him.
'Insert a Magic Stone there, and a hidden mechanism activates... is that really all there is to it?'
The statues were arranged at random, monsters of various level ranges jumbled together. The theory — insert each monster's matching Magic Stone into its statue and the hidden mechanism activates — couldn't have been wrong.
But Intuition told him: not wrong, yet not the answer either.
Suddenly, one statue among the rows caught his eye.
All of the statues bore traces of weathering to some degree, but this one was by far the most damaged. A fragmentary statue of the slime-type monster 'Flubber' — a monster you'd encounter in the very earliest days of DQ.
Intuition flagged it as strange.
Setting aside the heavy damage, it was no different from the others. There was, after all, a clearly defined slot for inserting a Magic Stone. It was on the verge of falling apart — in an absolutely precarious state, but...
'Hm? Damaged?'
On a sudden impulse, wanting to test the hypothesis that had just surfaced, Ryu Hwi applied light force to a crack in the Flubber fragment.
The statue couldn't withstand even that, and shattered to pieces.
For a supposedly critical installation to break this easily meant it carried no indestructible protection whatsoever.
“Ah.”
── The first thing to obtain.
── A statue that is both a critical installation and breakable.
── Loki is a trickster by nature.
The pieces of information snapped together in his head at lightning speed. As if to confirm the answer rising in his mind, he swept his gaze over the monster statues once more.
The arrangement itself was patternless and disorderly — but that very chaos was a device designed to deceive the eyes of gamers.
⟨The lower the monster's level, the more damaged its statue.⟩
Intuition delivered the answer in an instant.
Ryu Hwi could only laugh at the sheer vindictiveness of Loki's twisted little game.
“You absolute menace. Orochi, I'm going to point at every statue in this room one by one — smash them all in that order.”
“Sm-smash? B-but...”
[Master, isn't that a rather hasty judgment?]
“This is one of Loki's pranks. There's a hidden chamber lined with statues like these, and each statue has a slot for something. Naturally, anyone would assume they need an item to insert, right?”
[Well... yes, that would be the natural assumption.]
“That assumption is the trap. None of that is needed. For an installation this important, the standard design would be to mark it 'indestructible' — but every statue in here, Dragon King included, is a destructible structure.”
YggON scanned the surrounding architecture as if he couldn't quite believe it.
[...They are indeed structures capable of being destroyed.]
“See? If you hunt the monsters down and insert the matching stones into each slot, it'll probably give you an item. A reasonably good one, even. And the person who receives that item will believe they've solved this place's mechanism and never give it a second thought.”
[Well... yes...]
“But it's actually a deception — a decoy concealing the truly important thing.”
He told the still-hesitating Orochi bluntly.
“You don't have to trust me. But if you don't, your revenge slips through your fingers for good.”
“...”
At those words, Orochi clenched his fists tight.
Ryu Hwi pointed out the monster statues in order, lowest level first, and Orochi shattered them one after another to match his sequence.
“Is that, all of them?”
In answer, Ryu Hwi silently pointed at the Colossus of the Dragon King.
Light flickered to life in the Colossus's two great eyes. What they had taken for mere stone began to twitch — to move, joint by joint.
“Let me tell you the conclusion Intuition arrived at.”
“That thing's my drop item.”
