A Sublime Sacrifice
'I suppose I can't stop humans from repeating their slaughter all over again.'
But then, this was Greco-Roman mythology.
Ever since I had turned my back on the dancers on the 11th floor, my will to free the Components from their suffering had dwindled. Even if I saved them, they would only go back to repeating their tormenting plays.
'Maybe the problem was wanting to save the Components in the first place.'
What right did someone who couldn't even protect his own family have to go around saving anyone else?
"Thanks to you, Jisan-hyung, I survived this time as well."
"You did well too, Yang Myeonghyeon."
'Yang Myeonghyeon... I don't think staying allied with him will cost me anything going forward.'
Every time we finished a quest, Myeonghyeon offered his thanks without fail. Watching him conduct himself so courteously even though the fight hadn't been won by me alone only deepened my faith in this alliance.
[You've worked hard.]
[Visitor Kim Jisan.]
[Visitor Yang Myeonghyeon.]
The bundle of robes that materialized out of thin air unfurled itself, and the Curator's arm and neck rose up from within.
[In place of Hermes, I shall escort you to the 13th floor.]
"Why should we trust you?"
I glared at the Curator with eyes full of distrust. In response, he tilted his head side to side as if in regret — I could tell he was shaking his head from the way his Adam's apple swayed left and right.
[I may have caused you pain, Visitor Kim Jisan, but have I ever once led you down the wrong path?]
"......"
[I am the Curator. The one in charge of this Museum — would I play tricks on you after a successful quest?]
[This way, please.]
Yang Myeonghyeon and I exchanged a wordless look, then set off after the Curator. He weaved nimbly between the weapons lining the forge, following a path that hardly looked like a path at all.
"Jisan-hyung. Are you afraid of fire?"
"......"
At Myeonghyeon's abrupt question, I averted my eyes. I had visibly struggled to breathe back there, so it was only natural he'd noticed.
"We have to grab the fire with our bare hands. Who wouldn't be scared?"
I forced out a glib joke I didn't mean, smiling as I did. My desire to keep my alliance with Yang Myeonghyeon going hadn't wavered, but I still had no wish to lay bare the weakness buried underneath it all.
[Visitors.]
[That's enough chatter. Step inside here.]
The Curator mercifully cut our conversation short. In front of the wall where he had stopped stood a very small wooden door — a door Hephaestus could never fit through, one that even I would have to hunch down and crawl to enter.
"You want us to go in there?"
[Yes.]
I already had precious little trust in the Curator, and now he was telling us to crawl through this bizarre little door. It was strange, no doubt about it — but this tower was drowning in suspicious things of every description, so once again, accepting it was our only option.
The Curator grasped the little wooden door's handle and opened it. Myeonghyeon and I crawled inside across the floor.
'A human house...?'
I brushed off my knees and stood, surveying the interior. It was the kind of house ancient Greeks might have lived in. No owner was in sight.
Yet the Curator, who hadn't bothered crawling in after us, was somehow already standing in the middle of the room.
[This is the home of Prometheus's brother and Pandora.]
"What...? Why did we descend into the mortal world of Greek mythology? We just climbed to the 13th floor, didn't we?"
In answer to my question, the Curator tapped a finger against the house's front door.
So I supposed going out through that door would take us to the 13th floor.
[Visitor Kim Jisan.]
[Visitor Yang Myeonghyeon.]
Was it my imagination, or did the Curator's voice sound unusually cold as it spoke our names?
[One of the two of you must leave this house.]
"What...?"
Only one of us — me or Yang Myeonghyeon — was to leave. And the imperative tone, more command than suggestion, made it all the more ominous.
[Visitors who cleared the 12th-floor quest of another dimension will soon open this house's door and enter.]
[And whichever one of you remains in this house will carry out the 13th-floor quest alongside them.]
"And the one who leaves?"
[They will become a mercenary of a different army.]
"...?!"
A mercenary of an army? This was the Greco-Roman era — the world inside Greek mythology, where battles played out with the gods themselves joining in.
'Still, I've done shooting training, so it's not like— no, wait. They don't even have guns in this era?! Damn it.'
"That we'd become Jisan-hyung's enemies...."
Yang Myeonghyeon, flustered too, muttered under his breath. We'd been racking our brains and throwing our bodies into these quests together this whole time, and now we were suddenly supposed to split up?
Creeeak—
Just then, the front door swung open on its own, untouched by the Curator's hand. Someone outside was about to enter the house.
[This is a visitor who opened the door and emerged from Pandora's house in another dimension.]
"Wh-who are you...?!"
The visitor shrieked in alarm, even though he had opened the door and walked in himself. A male teenager in a school uniform. He pushed up his glasses, glancing back and forth between Yang Myeonghyeon and me.
'A kid... He doesn't even look like he's out of high school yet.'
How had someone that young ended up in this tower?
"......"
"Please, treat me kindly..."
The student rolled his eyes around for a moment before finally bowing his head, squeezing out a cowed voice as he greeted us with forced politeness.
[What's the matter.]
[Visitor Kim Jisan?]
[Visitor Yang Myeonghyeon?]
[The young man is greeting you, isn't he?]
It was only at the Curator's pointed remark that I snapped back to my senses. I forced a smile so the student, who had stepped into a room full of adults, wouldn't feel too awkward.
"Ah— right. Good to have you. Uh, Student."
"......"
Even while I greeted him, Yang Myeonghyeon was scrutinizing the boy from head to toe. What he was thinking was obvious — he was wrestling with the same worries I was.
'Mercenaries. The 13th floor is war. I don't know whether it'll be a battle of wits or of bodies, but... we're at a disadvantage.'
Of course, being a student didn't automatically make him foolish. But judging by his slight frame, he'd struggle to hold his own in a contest of strength, and in a battle of wits, the odds favored the adults who'd seen far more of life than he had.
Still, if he'd made it this far, maybe he was the type like me — poor stamina, but a fast-working brain. I ran that hopeful theory through my head.
Creeeak—
'Please, this time, let it be someone sturdy....'
I silently prayed for a visitor fit for physical combat to walk through that door. It opened, and the visitor who stepped inside was—
"...Jang Siwoon?!"
"Kim Jisan!"
Jang Siwoon stared at me, her eyes going wide. She was alive. She looked more haggard than before, but she seemed unharmed.
Then again, it wasn't as if Jang Siwoon would get hurt so easily.
"Kim Jisan, you made it! Thank god!"
"That's my line. I'm so glad you climbed all the way here safely too, Siwoon. But what about Teacher Go...?"
"I honestly don't know. The visitors competing against me kept changing on me."
At the mention of Go Gyumin, Jang Siwoon shook her head wearily. All I could do was hope that, like her, he had survived and climbed to the 13th floor. With so many visitors climbing, there was a chance Go Gyumin was fighting a war in another dimension right now. I prayed with all my heart that it was so.
[Ohh. What a touching reunion.]
The Curator swept his finger through the air in an exaggerated gesture of wiping away tears.
Yang Myeonghyeon said nothing, only watching me and Jang Siwoon. ...His eyes were much the same as when he'd studied the student earlier.
'...What do I do?'
I couldn't make an enemy of Jang Siwoon. I didn't want the student failing his quest either. But I didn't want to part ways with Yang Myeonghyeon, either.
As I chewed on my lip, Yang Myeonghyeon slowly raised his hand.
"I'll go."
"What? Yang Myeonghyeon, wait a second—"
"That person is clearly your acquaintance, Jisan-hyung. I couldn't very well push you out, could I?"
'Push me out, he says....'
Even as I turned his words over in my mind, I moved to stop him.
"Still, Myeonghyeon, let's think of a way to stay together. I can't just send you away like this — it weighs on me."
"And I, too, find it a great shame, thinking of all the time I've spent with you, Jisan-hyung."
Myeonghyeon shook his head with a wistful smile. His hand gave my shoulder a soft, reassuring pat — as if to tell me not to carry the guilt.
Before I could stop him, he reopened the closed front door. Stepping through it, he looked as composed and immaculate as ever.
"Yang Myeonghyeon!"
"Thank you for everything, Jisan-hyung. But the situation—"
CRUNCH—
Out beneath the pouring sunlight, a dark mass suddenly came cascading down like molten lava. And that wave of darkness swallowed Yang Myeonghyeon whole in an instant.
It happened before I could even reach out my hand.
A sound came from where Myeonghyeon met the black mass. Something had broken. ...The crack of splintering bone, the spatter of blood.
"UWAAAAH—!!"
The student shrieked, his face drained white. Jang Siwoon, stricken with horror, couldn't manage a single word either; she only trembled.
[Oh dear.]
[Visitor Yang Myeonghyeon has made a Sublime Sacrifice.]
[For your sake, Visitor Kim Jisan, he threw himself directly into the swift-flowing war of the Greco-Roman myths.]
A sublime sacrifice...?!
I whipped around toward the Curator. Part of me wanted to seize him by the collar and shake him.
But I was too stunned myself — my legs wouldn't properly move.
"What kind of nonsense is this! Yang Myeonghyeon cleared the 12th-floor quest. He only did what you ordered for the sake of the 13th floor, so why—"
[Visitor Kim Jisan. Calm yourself.]
Gliding along the floor with his robes trailing behind him like a snail, the Curator drifted smoothly toward me. Then, ever so slowly, he patted my shoulder — just as Yang Myeonghyeon had done moments before.
[Do you truly believe that Visitor Yang Myeonghyeon was merely following my orders?]
"...What the hell is it this time."
[Visitor Kim Jisan.]
[You've been suspicious of Yang Myeonghyeon from the very moment you first laid eyes on him, haven't you.]
"...Shut up, you bastard."
I ground my teeth and hurled the curse at him — because he had burrowed into my heart and struck the bruise dead-on.
[The truth is, you believe Yang Myeonghyeon didn't sacrifice himself at all. He left that house for his own gain. Isn't that right?]
"......"
A scrawny teenage boy. And, as expected, a college-aged woman, Jang Siwoon. On paper, a combination that looked doomed in a war.
And Myeonghyeon didn't know that Jang Siwoon carried the freakish strength of a PE major.
'That look Myeonghyeon gave us as he studied us. I did wonder if he was calculating our odds of winning in his head.'
But I never wanted him dead.
It was just suspicion, nothing more!
[From the moment you were urged to turn your back on the dancers of the 11th floor, you began to see Yang Myeonghyeon differently.]
"I told you to shut up...!"
[You suspected a man you'd climbed beside for quite a long time, and kept him at a distance in your heart.]
[Ahh. I wonder — did Yang Myeonghyeon become one of the dancers on the 11th floor?]
The Curator's words were a honed dagger driving straight through my chest. Even though I hadn't killed him, the words planted guilt inside me. No doubt because I had been quietly wary of Yang Myeonghyeon all along — because something about him had always felt subtly different from Jang Siwoon or Go Gyumin.
[An alliance is nothing but a hollow shell with no kernel inside. Yang Myeonghyeon must have known that too.]
"Kim Jisan."
Just as the Curator was gouging out my heart with a pick, Jang Siwoon suddenly thrust her face in front of mine. She shoved the Curator aside and grabbed my body, shaking it hard.
"Snap out of it. That thing's just baiting you."
[Baiting?]
Even as the Curator tilted his head and echoed the word, Jang Siwoon blatantly ignored him. Her words finally let me claw back a fragment of my reason.
Right. I couldn't afford to drown in confusion here. The Curator wanted my suffering — all the more reason to climb out of this swamp.
I clenched my trembling hands to hide them and glared at the Curator with murder in my eyes.
"Then at least explain what the war is."
[What is the most famous war in Greco-Roman mythology?]
"...The Trojan War?"
[Correct. You are the Sacrifices entered into that Trojan War. In other words — mercenaries.]
Doom— doom— doom—
A grand drumbeat rolled in from outside the house. A sound so heavy it set my heart surging, thundering in my ears.
[Choose which god's side you will fight for.]
Just then, another instrument threaded itself into the drums. A shrill, reedy melody, piercing the air.
'Wait — that's a Taepyeongso...?'