Chapter 184: The Tin Knight and The World Inside The Library (4)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 184: The Tin Knight and The World Inside The Library (4)
—As you stared blankly at the animals screaming and disappearing, you suddenly realized someone was approaching you with a rustling sound. It was the rabbit you had first discovered.
At the voice’s words, the party looked around.
Just as it said, the rabbit mask from before had appeared.
As the party stared at the rabbit mask, the voice in the air continued.
The rabbit pointed a finger at you and shouted. “Hey, you, the maid! What are you doing just standing there? Go fetch my fan and gloves at once! Quickly!”
The rabbit seems to have mistaken you for its maid.
To follow the rabbit’s instructions, head to its house. To clear up the rabbit’s misunderstanding, persuade it.
“What is this nonsense?”
Dorothea was dumbfounded.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ asks if it’s okay to cut down this person who’s barking orders out of nowhere!]
“Go ahead.”
The permission was given without a moment’s hesitation.
She was a witch who acted recklessly when there were no ordinary people watching.
Slice!
The Tin Knight’s sword swung at the rabbit mask.
But the blade passed right through it without making contact, as if he had sliced through a mirage.
It was the same phenomenon that had occurred in the initial white space.
The rabbit pointed a finger at you and shouted. “What insolence toward your master!? I’ll have to punish you severely later, but for now, I need my fan and gloves, so hurry up and get them!”
To follow the rabbit’s instructions, head to its house. To clear up the rabbit’s misunderstanding, persuade it.
Dorothea frowned.
The voice, repeating its earlier words, felt as if it were taunting them, saying, ‘What are you gonna do about it?’
“This voice… could it be Gale? No, he wouldn’t do something so roundabout. Is there someone else?”
“Well, in a normal game book, the content is all written in the book, and the reader simply changes the order in which they read it. But the Witch of the North’s game book was said to change the content of the pages themselves according to the reader’s choices, so it wouldn’t be strange for there to be some kind of intelligence managing it.”
“Like an artificial soul? So because we keep trying to ignore the plot, you’re going to force our hand by sending something we can’t even cut?”
Dorothea was clearly displeased, but with no way to even touch her opponent, she had no other choice.
Just as she was about to reluctantly follow one of the options…
The Tin Knight glanced back and forth between the sword in his hand and the unharmed rabbit, then seemed to make a sullen face.
If you were to ask how a creature with no facial muscles could have an expression, the only answer would be that the blue will-o’-wisps of its eyes had transformed into two straight lines.
“Uh, Sir Knight?”
Adel, sensing something instinctively ominous, tried to stop him, but it was too late.
Slice!
A trajectory of light was drawn.
The trajectory became a fissure, and soon, the fissure split open.
The rabbit mask, caught in the middle, was split in two along with the fissure.
“…”
The party was at a loss for words.
…
It seemed the voice in the air was also speechless.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ nods, saying that if you cut something, it gets cut!]
Only the Tin Knight puffed out his chest, as if satisfied with his work.
Dorothea asked.
“…What did you just do?”
[The ‘Tin Knight’ says that if you use spiritual sight, you can even cut ghosts!]
Dorothea blinked a few times, then simply said, “Ah, I see,” and moved on.
Since knights who wielded mana could often cut down things like spirits controlled by necromancers, she decided to understand it as something similar.
However, unlike Dorothea, who had no expertise in martial arts, Adelaide, who had earned her keep with a sword, had a faint understanding of just how high-level that attack had been.
To put it in Sophia’s terms, it was akin to a character inside a page cutting out a part of the page itself.
The voice remained silent for a long time.
Instead, the surrounding scenery began to change.
The puddles vanished, the clearing where the animals had played disappeared, and the remains of the rabbit mask faded away.
A cross-shaped stone wall suddenly rose from the empty ground, encircling the party, and then one of the four paths extending from it crumbled with a roar.
At the center of the crossroads was an altar with four plates, and in front of each plate, the following words were inscribed:
「Caterpillar’s Tobacco」 「Hatter’s Hat」 「Turtle’s Soup」
There was also writing on the altar itself, which read:
「He who offers the correct price upon the altar shall be granted a path to a new journey.」
「He who demands a path without offering a price shall pay for the insufficient offering with his life.」
Once the party had finished reading the inscription, the voice spoke from the air.
Having met an unjust death—
[The ‘Tin Knight’ counters that a combo of pointing fingers and barking orders at a stranger is a mortal sin, and there’s nothing unjust about it!]
Due to the rabbit’s curse—
“Who are you trying to fool? There wasn’t the slightest hint of a curse.”
You have been transported before the Altar of Curses.
“We weren’t moved; the environment around us changed. Isn’t the word ‘transported’ incorrect? Ah, but I suppose it can’t be helped if it’s for dramatic effect.”
To cross the altar and move to the next space, you must offer the tribute the altar demands. If you demand a path without gathering the tribute, the price will be paid in blood.
To find the caterpillar, take the left path. To find the Hatter, take the path behind you. To find the turtle, take the right path.
“Everyone, the voice sounds pitiful, how about we just play along…?”
The voice showed no reaction to the party’s words, which showed a complete lack of appreciation for formal beauty.
But this was not because it had nothing to say.
On the contrary, it was an expression of confidence.
The structure wasn’t ‘offer the tribute and the door will open,’ but ‘offer the tribute and a path will be created,’ making it impossible to bypass with the Key of Opium.
There was no gatekeeper to defeat, so that solution was also out.
Nor was it possible to obtain the tribute carelessly. If they didn’t bring back the correct tribute, their comrades would have to pay the price with their lives.
This time, they had no choice but to diligently follow the options—
“We request a path.”
CRUNCH!
The moment Sophia uttered those words, one of the plates suddenly transformed into the mouth of a terrifying monster and crunched down, swallowing her head.
The headless body swayed for a moment before collapsing onto the ground with a thud.
The plate made a motion as if swallowing something with satisfaction, then returned to its original form.
The only difference was that the plate that had devoured Sophia now emitted a faint glow.
The voice was silent for a moment before speaking.
As payment for demanding a path without a proper offering, you have lost your life.
The three of you who remain must choose.
To find the caterpillar, take the left path. To find the Hatter, take the path behind you. To find the turtle, take the right path.
“Ah, we request a path one more time.”
CRUNCH!
As a result of foolishly ignoring the options again, another precious life was extinguished.
Now, only three remained.
……?
What? Why are there three?
The voice paused, as if it had witnessed something that should not have happened.
“Heave-ho.”
Sophia, who had clearly just had her head bitten off and died, was nonchalantly pushing herself back up.
Despite this, the plate-monster seemed to feel no sense of incongruity, diligently chewing what was in its mouth before transforming into a glowing plate, seemingly satisfied.
A proper offering—
“We request a path.”
CRUNCH!
The process repeated itself once more, and another plate began to glow.
Four party members had offered three lives, and as a result, four party members remained.
While the voice was petrified by this miraculous arithmetic, the heavy sound of stone moving rumbled from below as several large rocks rose from the depths, forming a stepping-stone bridge.
The party began to walk across the bridge.
How far did they go?
They arrived at a place that looked like a courtroom.
A clamorous crowd filled the gallery. People dressed in attire that made it hard to tell if they were clowns or soldiers sat alongside various animals. On a throne set higher than the gallery sat a solemnly dressed king and queen. In the center stood a white-haired girl wearing a top hat.
The black-haired girl, Dorothea, asked.
“What are you doing there?”
The white-haired girl, Gale, answered.
“You all made a mess of the story, so the book forced me into a role. I was supposed to face you as a guardian somewhere else, not here.”
Just as Dorothea was about to ask what kind of nonsense that was, the king on the throne spoke.
“Hatter! You are there in place of the rabbit who was late for the trial! Refrain from unnecessary chatter!”
“So demanding.”
Gale shrugged, then replied to the king with an exaggerated gesture.
“My apologies, Your Majesty the great King. I was only just assigned this role, so I’m not yet familiar with my duties. What should I do?”
“Read the complaint that is there!”
“Hmm, ah, this?”
Gale casually picked up a nearby parchment and began to read its contents.
“Ahem, the defendant, Dorothea Aschengard, and three others, did… but why are the King and Queen here together? Isn’t it usually a King and Queen consort, or a Queen and Prince consort?”
“Hatter!”
“Ah, yes. Dorothea et al. stole and ate the tarts the Queen baked with her own hands. Were they good?”
“How about I shove something fresh out of the oven into your mouth? What nonsense is this?”
The gallery began to murmur.
“She says she didn’t eat them.”
“Then who did?”
“It, it wasn’t me! I’m innocent!”
“Me neither! The only crime I committed was shaving the eagle’s head while it was sleeping!”
“They’re starting to turn on each other.”
“I’d rather not participate in a trial with these people as the jury.”
[The ‘Tin Knight’ asks if he can just start by slicing off the king’s head!]
As if to bring order to the chaos, the king shouted.
“Silence, all of you! Hatter! If the complaint is read, begin the verdict!”
“Uh, no. I haven’t finished reading it yet.”
“What?”
Gale unrolled the rest of the long, scroll-like parchment and continued.
“Doro-omitted—”
“I’m really going to kill you.”
“Dorothea and her merry companions murdered a mouse, then resurrected its corpse to fake its death.”
A sudden, chilly silence fell over the courtroom.
“Dorothea and her merry companions also murdered a rabbit, then abandoned its corpse in a field.”
Not only the animals and people in the gallery, but even the two on the throne stared at Dorothea as if seeing something unbelievable. Dorothea, however, remained defiant.
“Dorothea and her merry companions, in order to advance on their path, sacrificed the life of a comrade without a shred of hesitation. And they did it three times.”
“Execution! It’s execution! Off with their heads at once!” the queen shrieked, as if she had heard more than enough.
From the entrance among the gallery seats, soldiers began to swarm out.
Or rather, they were about to.
BOOOOM!
Just as they were about to charge, Dorothea casually tossed a curse bomb at their feet.
The dozens of soldiers were annihilated in a group before they even had a chance to scatter.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ expresses admiration, calling it a textbook example of spawn killing!]
Adelaide was sincerely grateful that Dorothea cared about her reputation in the outside world.
If she acted like this out there, she would have become a catastrophe that made most magic beasts look trivial.
While everyone was frozen, the king shouted.
“Hatter! Strike down those insolent and lawless fiends!”
As if in response to the king, a voice echoed from the heavens.
To collect the price for the sins you have committed, the labyrinth’s guardian has blocked your path.
Defeat the guardian for the Normal Ending. Be defeated by the guardian for the Bad Ending.
“Ha!”
Dorothea’s eyes narrowed, her expression twisting as if to say, ‘How pathetic.’