The Secret of the Sixth Rule
“If you’re a king, you should already have everything you desire. Is there any wish I could possibly grant you?”
Become the two-hundred-and-eighty-first skeleton. Become my loyal bone mage. I half-expected some grotesque demand like that.
“Strike me down.”
Hm?
I stared at the king in silence before finally speaking. “You want me to kill you?”
“Yes. Kill me. I’ll pay handsomely for the execution.”
It was absurd. In all my life, I had never met a ruler who begged for his own death. Then again, I had never met a ruler at all.
“You just want me to cut you down?”
“That is all.”
The king was powerful. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t even be able to touch the hem of his robe. But if he was offering his own neck…
“Still, I don’t understand. You could live in endless wealth and glory. Why ask for death? Have you grown tired of being king?”
“I’ve grown tired of living.”
He rested his chin on one hand, his expression listless. It was the face of someone who had no emotions left but boredom, someone who found no joy in anything the world had to offer. He looked like a man who had forgotten how to smile.
After a brief silence, his dry voice continued.
“I was once a hero.”
“A hero?”
“Yes. The Hero of Light. That was my title long ago. I entered this Erosion with my companions, driven by the single desire to destroy it and save people from the monsters.”
The Hero of Light. Light… light…
I glanced down at the crystal orb still resting in my hand. The sudden turn of events had made me forget about it for a moment. Now that I thought about it, hadn’t I been trying to absorb the orb’s light when I was transported into this palace?
Did touching the orb’s light act as the trigger?
The light force inside me. The light of the orb. The Hero of Light. The three phrases clicked together in my mind. They all shared one common thread: light. I felt an instinctive certainty that these three separate existences were connected by that single strand.
While I was lost in thought, the king went on.
“While exploring the rooms with my companions, we happened upon this palace. The throne was empty. I stood there for a long time, staring at the vacant seat. It felt like a blessing sent down from the heavens just for me. As if the sky itself was telling me to become king.”
“……”
“My blood boiled. I whispered to myself that if I let this chance slip away, I would regret it for the rest of my life. The base, primal desire within me demanded that I take it. And my ego agreed. Yes, I thought. This is it.”
I couldn’t tell whether he was reminiscing or confessing. I simply listened in silence.
“That was when I realized the truth. What I had truly wanted was not some grand cause like saving the people or upholding justice. It was power—the power to stand above all others and look down on them from on high.”
“……”
“I had lived pretending to be an honorable hero walking the path of righteousness, but in truth, that raw desire was my real self. So I sat upon the empty throne. And as you can see, I obtained the authority to become the master of this world.”
As I listened, a question suddenly occurred to me. If I were placed in the same situation, would I have made the same choice, swayed by the same temptation?
“Monsters knelt at my feet in submission. With a single word, every living thing cowered in fear… It was a thrill I had never tasted before, a sickening ecstasy.”
“What about your companions? Did they agree to stay in the palace with you?”
The king shook his head.
“If they had, this palace wouldn’t have felt so vast.”
I nodded, playing along. “They opposed you.”
“I suggested we use the monsters to conquer the continent, but they all refused. The bonds we shared, the promises we made, their desperate cries for me to come to my senses, their furious resistance… If it were the me of today, I would have listened. But back then, blinded by greed, I could neither see nor hear anything.”
“So you killed them?”
The king answered with silence. The pause was short, yet heavy with emotion.
How could anyone stab their own friends in the back?
The swordsman had done the same, murdering his party members for the sake of an item. The king and the swordsman were no different. As someone who considered himself just and moral, I couldn’t understand it—sacrificing precious people for the sake of desire. If I ever had to choose between what I wanted and my companions’ lives, I would give up the former without hesitation.
“Do you know what’s truly absurd? I committed that vile act of betraying my friends to obtain this power, yet once I had it, it was unbearably dull. One day, I suddenly found life meaningless and joyless. I grew sick of this pathetic kingship and tried to quit, but my body was immortal. I couldn’t die even if I wanted to.”
“Immortal?”
“It’s laughable, isn’t it? The power I once craved so desperately… Now my only dream is to escape from it. Human desire is such a petty, fickle thing.”
He called it fickle, but the emotion radiating from him looked more like regret. A sudden thought struck me. The regression rule running through this Erosion—perhaps the king had created it out of a desperate wish to turn back time and undo his past mistakes, his guilt and remorse projected into the system.
“You regret your past choice.”
“Perhaps.”
The king straightened his posture. What came out of his mouth next was unexpected.
“The only one who can kill this immortal body of mine is the one who discovers Room 0. That is the final rule of this Erosion.”
I recalled what I had read in the guide. The sixth rule, hidden beneath symbols.
—Rule 6. ■■□■□■□□■
It meant: Only the one who discovers Room 0 can eliminate the king.
So… Room 0 had been hidden within this Erosion all along, and Room 0 was this very place—the throne room, the king’s chamber.
“All the other rooms could only be entered through green doors. How was I able to enter Room 0?”
The king gestured toward the crystal orb in my hand with his eyes.
“The orb contains a fragment of my old power—White Radiance. Only those who possess a light-based power of the same origin as White Radiance are qualified to enter the palace.”
“……”
“You touched the light within the orb, didn’t you? At that moment, White Radiance resonated with the light inside you and guided you here.”
He knew I had tried to extract the orb’s light earlier. It seemed he had been watching everything that happened inside the Erosion from his throne. In any case…
My guess was right. That’s why I was suddenly transported here.
I wanted to pat myself on the back for developing Light Force. Without the light attribute power inside me, I never would have found this room.
I tore my gaze from the orb and looked back at the king. A faint, almost imperceptible smile crossed his lips.
“Thank you for listening to my story.”
The king quietly closed his eyes. Understanding his intent, I carried out the execution without a word.
「Spatial Rift」
A rift opened across his neck. His head fell to the floor with a dull thud. At the same time, a pure white crystal orb radiating brilliant light appeared before my eyes, as if it had been waiting for this moment—the old power the king had promised.
“This is……”
There wasn’t just one?
The orb already in my hand, and the new one now floating before me. I stared between them in shock. Both were identical in appearance, and the light force they emitted was exactly the same.
Twin items?!
I had read about them once. Interconnected twin items were incomplete on their own; they only achieved true completeness when they coexisted or fused together.
As if confirming my theory, the orb in my hand rose into the air and merged with the second one. Like two suns overlapping, the two items became one. I grasped the newly unified orb in my hand. Its radiance was incomparably brighter and more dazzling than before, bursting forth with overwhelming brilliance. The intensity and density of the light felt nearly three times stronger.
The old power. The power the king had possessed during his days as a hero.
「White Radiance」
It seemed to recognize its new master. The orb’s White Radiance flickered like a puppy wagging its tail in greeting. I had a feeling this White Radiance would become a major turning point in my path as a mage.
I carefully tucked the orb into my robes.
That was when it happened.
Sssss—
Suddenly, the ceiling and walls began to evaporate like steam. The king’s corpse, the grand hall of the palace, the entire court scenery surrounding me—all of it melted away like snow. Before I knew it, I was standing in a moonlit forest.
……?
I sharpened my vision and looked around. It was the same forest where the entrance to the Erosion had been. The very spot where Cynthia and I had stood together. Yet the first green door we had seen before departing was nowhere to be found.
What just happened?
It was definitely the same forest we had been in with Cynthia.
“You……”
At the sound of a voice, I turned to my right. My eyes met Cynthia’s, who stood before a large tree with wide, startled eyes.
“Oh. Senior.”
She looked like she had been waiting for me all night.
Oh no. She must have been waiting over ten hours. This is bad.
The moment I saw her, I couldn’t help but squeeze my eyes shut. My mission had been to determine the total number of rooms, but now that I had been returned to the original location, I had missed my chance to enter the final room.
Failing my first assignment…
Finding Room 0 was a good thing, but this was… no, this was very troublesome.
“You……”
Cynthia’s expression was not good. It was the face of a senior staring in horror at a troublesome rookie who had caused trouble on their very first day.
I’m screwed.
What senior would be pleased with a rookie who had botched their first job? They would naturally unleash the “newbie hazing skill”—a combination of scolding and territorial display—things like “Couldn’t you even do that one thing right? How are you going to survive in society? Are you an idiot? Can’t you understand simple instructions?”
Resigned to my fate, I scratched my head and walked toward her, wondering how to explain.
“Uh, Senior. You see—”
Just as I was bracing myself for the scolding about to rain down on my head, an unexpected remark rolled off Cynthia’s tongue.
“You… destroyed the Erosion……?”