Who Could It Be? (4)
We caught our breath for a moment before deciding to pursue the trio of intruders. On the way, the protagonist asked about the monster byproducts I had used to hide inside the jar. When he heard what they were and how much they were worth, his eyes widened in shock and he swept every last one of them into his backpack without leaving a single piece behind.
After taking a proper rest, we pressed forward. In the meantime, the intruders must have been grinding auto-hunting hard, because they had already cleared several rooms. The room of thorns, the closing walls, the lava floor… After passing through all sorts of traps and varied puzzle chambers, we finally sensed their presence and stopped.
“This should be the last puzzle, right?”
“Is there a way to tell?”
“The door is huge, isn’t it?”
Just by looking, the door ahead was enormously larger than any we had seen before. The massive stone door, decorated with gleaming metal, was so heavy that it had only opened wide enough for one person to squeeze through at a time.
“True. A huge door usually means something huge is waiting behind it.”
“A big door must mean there’s something important inside!”
“I’d be happy if it was just packed with gold and jewels.”
“Come on, gold is so boring. Use a little imagination.”
“Then how about silver and other precious metals?”
“That’s even more boring, Mr. Siwoo.”
As we peeked into the next room, a vast hemispherical chamber came into view. In the center stood a stone pedestal, and on it rested an ornament that clearly looked valuable.
“That must be the reward.”
Circular bands surrounding the pedestal blazed with rising flames. Fearless puppets burned as they slowly rotated the stone slabs one by one. In front of where the puppets worked, burning fragments flew everywhere. Two of the intruders stood in front of the small one, batting the debris away.
This was the perfect opportunity.
I pulled the item from my backpack and handed it to the protagonist.
“This is… a mask?”
“Yes. You’ll need it. And from now on, don’t call each other by name. Also, don’t use any abilities except physical enhancement.”
Surprisingly, the protagonist put on the mask without complaint. When he spoke, his voice came out so heavily modulated that it was impossible to tell his gender. Even his body turned pitch black like the culprit in some detective manga, and his height shrank. His build and the shape of his clothes became completely unrecognizable.
“Wait, it even does all that?”
“I don’t use it often, but there are times when it comes in handy.”
“I don’t even want to know what you use it for…”
When I put on my own mask, my voice became equally unrecognizable. My body darkened, but unlike the protagonist, I grew much taller.
“Hey, I’ve never done anything illegal with it.”
Well, to be exact, I had never succeeded at doing anything illegal with it. I could never tell anyone about that Friday night when I was dying for some fried chicken and beer, put on the mask to buy canned beer at the convenience store, and got chased out for looking suspicious. Or the time I wore it because buying pads for my first period felt strangely embarrassing and got kicked out of the mart. For some reason, every time I wore this mask, only dark history seemed to follow. Whatever! That was some masked person’s dark history, not mine!
I shook my head vigorously to clear away the swarm of dark memories, then looked into the room and waited for the right moment.
It didn’t take long. Once the floor slabs were all aligned, the bands spun wildly, completing a pattern, and the surging flames died down.
“We’ll prioritize subduing the intruders. The small one looks easiest to restrain and seems to play an important role in their party, so I’ll take her hostage.”
“Please let it end with just subduing them.”
“Taking a hostage should be more peaceful than fighting them directly with our abilities. Let’s pray it goes well.”
The masked protagonist and I put the plan into action. I gripped the dagger I had prepared earlier and ran silently and swiftly. The small one had stepped back to avoid a dangerous trap ahead. I pressed the dagger to her throat and shouted.
“That’s far enough. Move even one step and I’ll slit this kid’s throat, got it?”
“That’s right! If you value her life, you’d better stay still!”
The intruders had been so moved by solving the puzzle that they had let their guard down. The sudden shock seemed to have short-circuited their brains. Since their heads weren’t working, I decided to say something to raise their stress levels.
“Thanks for guiding us all the way here. You grave robbers. We had a much easier time thanks to you.”
“What the… you cowardly bastards!”
Only then did the intruders react. Good. That kind of stress should help activate their brains. Fortunately, they seemed to understand Korean.
“Waaaah! I wasn’t hearing things earlier!”
The small one with the dagger at her throat burst into tears.
The protagonist spoke to the intruders.
“You intruders sneaked into the academy and tried to steal an artifact from the gate.”
“It’s an uncleared gate! Finder’s keepers!”
“No. The organization that officially obtained the gate conquest rights can claim ownership. You’re just thieves.”
“Even if we’re legally thieves, you guys who are trying to spoon in someone else’s finished meal have the mindset of thieves!”
The person who appeared to be female argued back at the protagonist. I didn’t feel any pangs of conscience. After all, I had done far more embarrassing things while wearing this mask!
“Ugh, government dogs! Rose! Alice has been taken hostage!”
“I have eyes, you know! And don’t use our names, idiot!”
Among the tall intruders, the woman was apparently Rose, and the hostage girl was Alice.
“Hey! You thieves! By the way, that guy’s name is Bear!”
“No! Why would you reveal his name, Rose!”
They were already falling apart internally. So the man’s name was Bear.
“Yes. Bear, Rose, Alice. Everyone please stay quiet. You have the right to remain silent… and, uh… anyway, just stay quiet.”
“Do cops these days walk around wearing such cheap rags and can’t even properly read someone their rights?”
Too bad. Since I wasn’t actually a cop, it didn’t hurt at all.
I took chains out of my backpack and bound them one by one. After dragging the trio into the previous room, we took off our masks and approached the most important reward.
“Oh, and just so you know, since we recovered the artifact that was almost stolen by the intruders, the ownership basically belongs to us. The academy, as the original owner, could file a complaint… but they won’t.”
“Is that because of some weird law too?”
“Pretty much.”
“Anyway, for something that required getting through such incredible traps and puzzles, it looks pretty ordinary?”
The ornament reflected a dull silver light, as if made of cast iron. It had no patterns, and the gem that should have decorated the ring was missing, making it rather plain.
“It would be best to wear it and check, but… it’s safer to finish this first and test it later.”
“But there’s only one artifact. Who gets the reward?”
“Uh…”
I hadn’t thought about that part at all. Since I usually cleared gates alone, the natural assumption that it was mine had been deeply ingrained in my mind. The ideal thing would be to check the artifact’s effect first and then give it to whoever it suited best, but… I couldn’t just do the protagonist a good turn for free!
“Let’s decide with rock-paper-scissors?”
******
It was a crushing defeat. After losing instantly, I insisted on best of three, then best of five, but I only lost even more. I was sure neither of us had used physical enhancement!
“Hehe. I’ve only lost at rock-paper-scissors a handful of times since I was a kid.”
“Ugh… Let’s just take that damn thing and hand the intruders over to the police already.”
When the protagonist picked up the iron ring, it gradually became transparent and then vanished.
“Huh…? It disappeared?”
“What? After all the trouble we went through… well, not that much trouble, but still, how does that make sense?”
“Maybe the real treasure was the journey to get here… or something like that?”
“I’m sorry, but if we had to do that journey again, would you want to?”
The protagonist shook his head vigorously.
“Or maybe there’s another gimmick or puzzle on the pedestal…”
When we looked at the stone pedestal where the ring had been, it was sinking down into the floor.
“I hate puzzle-type gates the most.”
Rumble…
The floor of the chamber began to open wider, and the owner of the tomb rose to its feet.
“Ah, so it wasn’t a puzzle. It was a tomb.”
The shriveled black thing had three legs and four arms… If the owner of the statue we saw earlier had died and been sun-dried for a thousand years, maybe it would have ended up looking like this. The only difference was that it was a giant over five meters tall.
It seemed to want to say something, moving what appeared to be a mouth, but only sand—or perhaps mummy powder—fell from its dried-up form.
“I guess it’s basically saying it’s angry because we tried to steal its treasure?”
“Who knows? Maybe it has a completely different value system from us. It could be that it came to visit its own grave because it was lonely and wants to give us a present.”
Boom!
The dried-up creature slammed all four hands onto the floor, and the ceiling of the chamber shook unsteadily.
“I think even without knowing mummy language, we can understand what that means.”