Find the Golden Dartboard (3)

A Level 60, one-star monster. Whether our current strength could even scratch a Sphinx like this was impossible to gauge. No — the odds were overwhelmingly that we couldn't.

"Hey! Why the hell did you pick that thing up?!"

Geum Bit-na-ra's irritation at the situation had clearly boiled over; she started laying into Yu Mi-ri like she was owed an explanation.

Yu Mi-ri, for her part, looked genuinely stunned.

"I really didn't! I've never even touched something like this!"

"Then what the hell is that in your hand?!"

"I don't know either! It just appeared in my hand all of a sudden!"

Yu Mi-ri spilled the words out like a woman who'd been deeply, personally wronged, but the look in Geum Bit-na-ra's eyes said she didn't believe a syllable of it.

"Haa. What's with you? Still haven't kicked that sticky-finger habit from high school?"

"What? What did you just say?"

"I said you still haven't kicked that sticky-finger habit from high school."

The two of them were going at each other right in front of a Sphinx that was glaring down at us like it wanted us dead. High school was coming up, which meant they'd clearly known each other for a long time. At Geum Bit-na-ra's remark, Yu Mi-ri's face went scarlet, her blood pressure visibly spiking.

"Oh, and you! Still wagging your tail at every guy like you did back then, huh? That's why you got those kinds of abilities, isn't it?"

"Hey. You done talking?"

"Yeah, I'm done! What of it?!"

The atmosphere was getting uglier by the second. Never mind their fight — the Sphinx looking down on us from above had started to move.

Thud.

A heavy footstep. The sound that came off that enormous body was more than enough to silence everything around us—

"You're dead meat!"

"You first! Let's see who wins today!"

—apparently it wasn't.

No matter what the Sphinx did, there was no sign their fight was ending.

Is this actually okay?

I stayed back and watched, because if I tried to get between those two, I'd be the one who died first. But there was no telling when the Sphinx would make its move. I had to break up their fight somehow and find a way to get us out of this.

"Um… maybe stop fighting and pay attention to that over there?"

I pointed timidly at the Sphinx as I said it. It didn't land even a little.

The one silver lining was that the Sphinx seemed to find their bickering entertaining. Aside from that first step, it hadn't made any further move.

Ah, to hell with it. I'll wait too.

If anything, their fight was buying me time to figure out how we were supposed to deal with that Sphinx.

About thirty minutes passed like that.

"When I think about getting caught stealing booze from the convenience store with you in high school, I swear…"

"You said you'd set me up with a guy, and then you introduced me to some squid in foundation wandering around like a human being…"

A fight that showed no signs of ending. It ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠looked like it'd take another hour at least before we saw the finish line, so I went back to observing the Sphinx, searching for a way out of here, when—

Thud.

The Sphinx took another step. Had its patience finally run out? It no longer seemed interested in watching the two of them go at it.

"Ugh, shut up! We're talking here! You stay out of it."

"Yeah. Who do you think you are, cutting in?!"

They cut the Sphinx off mid-sentence — that solemn, grave voice — and went right back to fighting. The Sphinx had clearly endured as much as it was going to. It spread its enormous wings wide and beat them once, hard.

KRAAAAAANG!

Just a single beat of its wings. But the shockwave was tremendous. Geum Bit-na-ra and Yu Mi-ri could barely stay on their feet before they were flung backward and slammed into the stone.

Crash.

"Ghk—"

"Khack—"

They'd taken a fairly serious blow. They went down and didn't get back up right away.

The Sphinx's terms. Fortunately, it didn't seem intent on killing us on the spot.

It's not like we have another option, is it?

We couldn't afford to pass up a chance to walk out of here in one piece. Solving a single quiz had to be better than fighting a starred Level 60 monster.

Geum Bit-na-ra and Yu Mi-ri seemed to have come to their senses after the Sphinx's attack. They stopped fighting and slowly made their way over to me.

"What should we do?"

"We can always fight after the quiz, can't we? It seems like a one-time offer anyway."

If we could walk out of here just by solving a riddle, that was the best-case scenario. So we accepted the Sphinx's proposal.

The moment we did, the Sphinx's eyes flashed.

The messages appeared the moment the Sphinx posed its question. I stared at them and felt like I'd been hit with a hammer.

"Wait. Instant death if we can't solve it — and the Sphinx is invincible?"

Which meant that if we failed the quiz, we died without even getting a chance to try anything else. I'd been planning, if things went south, to summon the White Dragon and escape on its trait. This was a bolt from the blue.

And the riddle's way too vague.

The most beautiful thing in the world. What was that even supposed to be?

"Answer! Diamonds!"

While I was still turning it over, Yu Mi-ri threw her hand up and answered the Sphinx. Diamonds. You could make the case they were the most beautiful thing in the world of gemstones.

"That is incorrect."

Of course. It was never going to be that easy. Still, there didn't seem to be a limit on how many answers we could throw out. So I tossed one of my own.

"Answer! Snow White."

It was right there in the fairy tale, wasn't it? The fairest in the land, as certified by a magic mirror.

"That is incorrect."

Not that one either, apparently. After Yu Mi-ri and I both struck out, Geum Bit-na-ra stepped forward like she'd been waiting for her cue.

"Pfft. You can't even get this? I'll get it for you."

She walked up to the Sphinx without a shred of hesitation, looked it dead in the eyes, and spoke.

"The most beautiful thing in the world is me. Right?"

I was speechless. The sheer, unblinking confidence it took to say something like that out loud. But what she did next made it perfectly clear why she'd said it.

Geum Bit-na-ra's skill, Deadly Wink. The penalty waiting if the Sphinx failed to give her statement a positive answer.

"That is incorrect."

The Sphinx's health dropped with the words. It might have been invincible against ordinary attacks, but it didn't seem to have any resistance to a skill like this.

We might actually walk out of here easy.

A normal person hit with that skill could just refuse to answer and be ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠done with it. But this Sphinx, apparently, was bound to answer its own questions. Which meant that every time it called something incorrect, its HP drained on its own.

"Pfft. Let's see how long you keep saying that."

What followed was Geum Bit-na-ra's parade of wrong answers.

"The most beautiful thing is Bit-na-ra, isn't it?"

"That is incorrect."

"The cutest, freshest, most precious, lovable, beautiful thing in the world is me."

"……That is incorrect."

She kept declaring herself the answer, over and over. The Sphinx's HP was already down to barely ten percent. One more time — one more "incorrect" out of its mouth — and it would die on the spot.

"The answer is me. Right?"

She framed her face with her hands like a flower blossom, beaming at the Sphinx as she delivered the line. And the Sphinx answered her.

"That is incorrect."

Its HP plunged with the words. I was sure that was it — HP to zero, the thing dead, and us walking out of here.

But—

"What? Why is it fine?"

"Its HP definitely hit zero."

The Sphinx didn't die. The health bar hanging in front of our eyes was sitting at zero, and yet the thing was still standing there, perfectly intact, calmly announcing the time as it ticked by.

"Twenty minutes remain."

The reason it was unharmed, of course, was the invincibility. Until this quiz ended, killing it was apparently impossible.

"Tch."

"Still, once the time runs out, it'll die, right?"

"Maybe. Or we die first."

The Sphinx's HP was already at zero. Whether we could stall until the quiz ended and watch it drop, or whether it would kill us first — we had no way of knowing. So we threw ourselves into finding the actual answer after that, but we couldn't land on it. Geum Bit-na-ra even used her Temptation Kiss skill to try to raise the Sphinx's affection toward her, but it didn't make a dent on a creature whose entire creed was keeping its word.

"What do we do? We're almost out of time."

Five minutes left. We'd tried attacking it. We'd thrown everything we had at it. None of it touched the Sphinx at all.

Even if it died, the Sphinx was going to take us with it for failing the quiz.

"You've got to be kidding me."

"This cave goes pretty deep. If it comes down, we're actually done…"

Whatever thin hope I'd been holding — that even if we missed the answer, the thing had no health left, and if we just held on we might walk out — vanished on the spot. Geum Bit-na-ra and Yu Mi-ri started spamming answers at random. I, for my part, turned the riddle over as hard as I could.

The most beautiful thing. The most beautiful… wait. Hold on. If it's that—

A way to land the answer clicked into place. I walked up to the Sphinx and declared it with total confidence.

"The most beautiful thing in the world is me."

"That is incor—"

The instant it started to answer, I pulled a potion from my inventory and sprayed it straight into its mouth.

Gulp.

The Sphinx swallowed every drop I'd thrown at it. After that, I drank the potion myself, and I answered.

"That is the correct answer."

The Sphinx's voice, coming out of my mouth. And with my answer, the messages appeared.

How did that work, you ask?

The Voice Storage Potion we'd gotten from taking down Ursula. The quiz only counted if the Sphinx itself declared the answer correct — so I'd figured I'd give it a shot. I hadn't expected it to actually work.

And then—

The Sphinx, its HP already sitting at zero, died the moment invincibility dropped — and a massive string of level-ups came with it, free of charge.