The Four-Legged Gatekeeper
"Is my impression really that bad?"
Well, fair enough—the department head did always nag me to take my vitamins.
"You're fine. So your eyes look a little tired. At least you're handsome."
Jang Siwoon tossed off the compliment with visible half-effort and moved the conversation along.
It was a compliment, technically… but apparently I looked worn-out either way.
"Honestly, the more I think about it, the more incredible it is, Jisan. You cut off your own ear. Does that even make sense?"
"It scared me too. But there was no other way to complete the quest."
"Then how did you reattach it?"
Jang Siwoon pointed at my ear in disbelief.
She had a point. My severed ear had reattached itself inside a tower with no hospitals to speak of.
"Yang Myeonghyun healed me. One of the visitors swept up in that darkness."
Given that Yang Myeonghyun's perk was healing, perhaps his core aptitude lay somewhere in medicine.
The ambush had been sudden, so he must not have had much room to act—but if he had managed to activate his Healer perk in time….
With a bit of luck, he might have survived.
"He used his own perk to help a total stranger like me."
"Sounds like a good person."
"He was."
'He was worth journeying with.'
Whatever angle you looked at it from, he had been nothing like that vile man from the Legend of Byun Gang-soe. Not a sleazy bone in his body.
"Humans. You have arrived before the gatekeeper."
At that moment, the wine bottle in my hand broke apart into fragments of data and vanished.
'Rocky mountains again?'
A floating temple, and across from it, a sheer cliff face.
Behind the cliff sprawled a field of enormous boulders.
It felt remarkably similar to the craggy mountain we had crossed during the Prometheus quest.
"Now is the time to cast off your drunkenness. Solve the gatekeeper's riddle well."
When Dionysus struck the temple floor barefoot, grapevines sprouted from the spot.
Countless vines tangled together and became a staircase stretching to the cliff.
"Oh come on, another riddle? Can't you just let us through this once?"
Jang Siwoon grumbled about having to solve yet another puzzle….
Meanwhile, I leaned out slightly and peered down at the dizzying drop beneath the temple.
Clouds obscured everything below. There was no seeing the ground.
'Nothing to grab hold of, nothing to lean on—and they want us to cross THAT?!'
The one mercy was that the vine stairway was wide enough that it wouldn't feel like walking a tightrope.
I wiped the beads of cold sweat from my forehead with my sleeve.
"Right, let's cross. Jisan."
Even someone as strong in body and mind as an athlete wouldn't be entirely immune to acrophobia.
Yet Siwoon stepped onto the vines without a moment's hesitation, despite the stomach-churning height.
When I dawdled, Dionysus waved his hand, urging me to hurry along.
'Don't look down. Move fast, eyes forward, just cross.'
Perhaps the god had no intention of dropping us after all—the wind was eerily still, and I could keep my balance without trouble.
I fixed my gaze dead ahead and marched after Jang Siwoon at a brisk pace.
Walking like that, the lumpy staircase of twisted vines was behind me in no time.
'Whew….'
Thanks to Jang Siwoon, I'd had no time to agonize over it.
"Straight ahead, then."
"Are you going to be okay?"
As soon as we reached the rocky cliff, my legs gave out and started shaking. Jang Siwoon shot me a worried look.
I weakly raised a thumb, feigned composure, and started walking toward the gatekeeper again.
"This floor ended a long war, so it shouldn't be too difficult."
"I hope you're right. By the way, where is this gatekeeper?"
The moment she finished asking, just as we were wandering forward with no clear destination—
the sound of flapping wings came rushing toward us.
"Humans. Do you wish to pass through this gate?"
A creature far too bizarre to simply call a beast flew down and perched atop a tall boulder.
"Jisan. What… what is that thing?"
Jang Siwoon whispered to me, her composure completely shattered.
After all the gods and skeletal monsters of East and West we'd seen, this face was still impossible to get used to.
The body of a lion. The head of a human. And enormous bird's wings to top it all off.
Looking at just the face, she was a beauty adorned with ornate jewelry. …Looking at anything but the face, however, was another matter entirely.
Grotesque as she was, she was a figure everyone would recognize.
"A Sphinx."
"Sphinxes looked like that? It even has wings!"
"This is the Sphinx of Greek mythology."
It was quite different from the Egyptian Sphinx we were all used to seeing.
The Egyptian Sphinx also has a lion's body and a human face, but its adornments are Egyptian, and it has no wings.
"I didn't even know the Sphinx appeared in Greek mythology."
Jang Siwoon still couldn't take her eyes off the creature.
The Sphinx, settled on the rock, folded her wings and gazed down at us.
Her expression carried an aloof, lofty dignity. Very much the half-human, half-beast of legend.
"I shall pose a question related to the 21st-floor exhibition. Only the one who answers correctly may pass through this gate."
"And if we don't?"
"I will devour you."
The Sphinx's mouth curled suddenly into a sinister smile, baring her lion's fangs.
Why did the teeth have to be a lion's when the face was human?
Just imagining those sharp fangs sinking into me made my skin crawl.
"Ha. We get here and we're immediately sentenced to death. Unbelievable…."
"Now, here is your question."
Ignoring Jang Siwoon's grumbling, the Sphinx cut to the chase.
'Fine. Let's hear what kind of question you've got.'
I gathered myself with a dry wash of the face and pricked up my ears at the Sphinx's words.
"It has four legs in the morning."
What?
"Two legs at noon. Three legs at evening."
Jang Siwoon evidently knew the answer to this one too, because she gave me a vacant, deadpan look.
"What is it?"
"…A human? There's no way the tower would pose something this famous."
"Correct. A human."
The word 'human' that had tumbled out of Jang Siwoon's mouth on reflex was immediately ruled the right answer.
Crawling on four legs as an infant, walking on two as an adult, and in old age leaning on a cane—three legs.
A riddle that metaphorized the human condition.
"Now, name this human."
"Ha. Right. Of course. As if you'd let us off that easy."
When the Sphinx finally moved to the real question, Jang Siwoon pressed her hand to her forehead, as if she'd seen it coming.
I'd sensed it too. The Sphinx would never pose something so tame.
"This is the riddle monster of the East. Like me, it wagers human lives on its game—unlike me, it offers a reward."
Jang Siwoon and I held our breath and listened.
"I devour humans, but that monster cuts off their heads."
"Ugh."
"The colder it burns, the monster. What is it?"
At the mention of cutting off heads, a strangled groan escaped Jang Siwoon.
The question was tied to the 21st-floor exhibition—which meant we'd be meeting that monster soon enough.
"You said 'monster,' Jisan—so fantasy? Something mythological again? No wait, it said 'human' earlier."
"Right. It clearly said human, so 'monster' has to be figurative."
The riddle monster of the East.
Whatever work or myth it came from, the range was narrowed to an Eastern figure.
'But there's no shortage of riddle-posing stories out there, and it'd be way too hard to guess blind.'
"Siwoon. 'The colder it burns'… what do you think that means?"
"Beats me. I've got zero talent for words. I've lived my whole life on the one-way road of boxing."
Jang Siwoon thrust her solid fist toward me.
She really didn't need to—I'd seen plenty of it by now.
"Well, since it's a human like a monster, it's obviously a cold-blooded creature that knows nothing of love."
At Jang Siwoon's offhand remark, my head snapped up.
Cold-blooded. Knowing nothing of love.
"…Love?"
"If you love someone passionately, there's no way you can be cold. A bit of a psychopath? Sociopath? Doesn't it give you that vibe?"
The words Jang Siwoon threw out without any filter turned out to be an unexpected hint.
Some people burn hot with love, but this monster only grew colder the more it burned.
'I feel like I've heard a lyric like that somewhere….'
"Ah, sorry, that was way too corny. Embarrassing."
"No, Siwoon—you're not bad with words at all, actually."
"I don't mind a good romance drama now and then, that's all."
Flustered, Jang Siwoon stiffened and scratched her head roughly.
Even her embarrassment was a little rough around the edges. Very like her.
I gathered up the key phrases from the Sphinx's riddle one last time.
The riddle monster of the East.
A cold-blooded figure who rewarded correct answers—but beheaded those who failed.
The colder it burned.
'Ah.'
It came to me. I remembered which work contained that lyric about a woman who grew colder the more she burned.
"Thanks to you, Siwoon, I remembered the answer."
"Really?"
I know nothing of love myself.
But I've watched from a distance long enough to roughly understand how irrational a person becomes when they fall in love.
"China's riddle monster. A human cold as a monster."
But this monster had never known that blazing kind of love.
"The men who loved her challenged her riddles, and those who failed to answer all three were beheaded."
"Beheaded…."
"They loved her—but her heart was ice."
She posed three riddles, and the Sphinx had quoted the final one.
"The answer is Turandot."
Giacomo Puccini's opera, Turandot.
The arias themselves were famous, but the story and premise were arguably even more widely known.
A Chinese princess who declared she would marry whoever solved her three riddles.
Countless men had thrown themselves at the challenge for her beauty—and not one had answered correctly. Every one of them had been beheaded.
Until the male lead arrived.
"Correct."
The Sphinx's mouth twisted into a sneer of wounded pride.
"The princess with a heart frozen solid. Go to Turandot's imperial palace, humans."
Flap-
The Sphinx spread her wings and launched into the sky.
She flew as far as the cliff's edge—then abruptly folded her wings again and plummeted.
"Wh-what are you doing?!"
"Ahh, the shame. To lose to mere humans. This humiliation—I can no longer exist."
Jang Siwoon screamed after the Sphinx in shock, but nothing could stop her.
Crunch-
The Sphinx dropped through the gap in the clouds.
The sound of her body shattering against the ground carried all the way to my ears.
Perhaps dizzy from the spectacle unfolding in the blink of an eye, Jang Siwoon pressed a hand to her forehead.
"What the… what even…."
"That's exactly how the story ends in Greek mythology. It was a fixed sequence all along, probably."
In the Greek myth, the Sphinx poses her riddle to the hero Oedipus—and when he answers correctly, she hurls herself from her perch and falls to her death.
The riddle she'd used there was the very question about 'human' the Sphinx had posed to us moments ago.
Shhhhh-
- This is the riddle monster of the East. Like me, it wagers human lives on its game—unlike me, it offers a reward.
- I devour humans, but that monster cuts off their heads.
- The colder it burns, the monster. What is it?
⊳ Visitor: Kim Jisan
⊳ Visitor: Jang Siwoon
⊳ Floor 20 Quest
— SUCCESSFUL —
"Let's go."
"Right…."
I turned away without a backward glance and started up the rocks.
The passage the Sphinx's body had been concealing was now revealed.
Watching me turn away so coldly, Jang Siwoon's face went blank and dazed.
I simply had no strength left to resist the tower's forced, step-by-step process anymore.
'In the end, I don't want to leave any lingering attachment to the people I've chosen to turn away from.'
Because the moment I chose not to help them, that attachment would only become an excuse.
Jang Siwoon and I clambered up the jagged rocks and slipped into the pitch-dark passage.
As we walked a long while through the cave-like tunnel, the sound of a majestic orchestra came echoing toward us.
"Abbiate pietà!"
Along with the orchestra, the voices of opera singers swelled in chorus.
The sheer power of their voices made even Jang Siwoon flinch and stumble a step.
"That must be a lyric from Puccini's opera, Turandot."
"What does it mean?"
"Hmm. I'm not sure myself. I've got no talent for languages."
When I parroted her own words back at her, she let out a snorting little laugh.
I couldn't tell which language it was, but Puccini was an Italian composer, as far as I knew… so Italian, presumably.
"Have mercy upon us!"
"So that's what it was."
The singers, as if on our behalf, had kindly sung the line again—this time in Korean.
"Please, take pity on us!"
"Grant us your mercy!"
And at last, Turandot's imperial palace spread out before our eyes.