The Labyrinth's Celestial Riddle
The second tutorial message pops up: [Second Tutorial Begins]. The tutorial waiting room transforms in an instant.
[Second Tutorial]
Players must escape the Novice Labyrinth. Each player starts at a different point, and the game ends the moment one player passes through the exit.
◇ Condition 1: Game ends when any player arrives
◇ Condition 2: If time runs out, points are awarded based on progress
Dead players revive at their starting point.
Time Remaining: 47 hours 59 minutes 50 seconds
Every direction is blocked. It is a maze straight out of myth. Gazing at the cave carved from massive boulders leaves my mouth hanging open. At least some kind of lighting device has been installed, so it is not dark.
"Whoa."
"Whoa!"
"Baek Seol thinks it's amazing too?"
"Eung!"
Baek Seol, perched on my shoulder, rubs her soft cheeks against me vigorously.
—Chik, chik.
"Huu—"
The first chamber has multiple entrances carved into the walls. Like an anthill, there are at least twenty tunnels clustered together.
"Over there!"
While I am looking around, unsure which way to go, Baek Seol waves her front paws.
"That way?"
"Eung!"
I pat Baek Seol on the head and start walking. A suspicious message appears.
"What? So you were watching this time? This is not it?"
"Huu— No need to apologize."
It is literally the Novice Labyrinth, and we have been given forty-eight hours. Judging by that alone, it must be fairly deep. I gather what little information I have and pass through the entrance Baek Seol indicated. Ten more entrances appear.
"Over there!"
"Aww, you're so cute."
"Good!"
Ariel had gone on about the Great Tower or whatever. Even that tower probably never realized Baek Seol has an ultra-high-performance radar built inside her.
"Over there!"
Thanks to Baek Seol, there is no time to rest.
"Over there!"
Following Baek Seol's directions, I keep moving until I stop for the first time. It is a dead-end chamber. I am looking around, thinking there must be a hidden gimmick, when I hear the sound of rocks grinding and something emerges. It casts a massive shadow over the bright lighting device.
"Who the hell are you?"
A booming voice echoes from above. I look up to see a giant golem made of stone staring down at me.
"You must answer three out of five questions correctly to pass through here."
"Does the Sphinx have kids now?"
"First question."
The golem ignores my nonsense and continues as if it is a programmed robot.
"Everyone possesses this. It can achieve anything. Yet it cannot achieve what you desire. What is it?"
"What kind of nonsense is that?"
"Incorrect. The answer is a dream. I will now present the second question."
"No thanks, you do not have to."
Thud. I stomp the ground and launch myself upward, arriving right in front of the golem's face in an instant.
"I will send you to dreamland forever. Go wash your feet and sleep."
Crunch.
Super Strike!
BOOM—!!
"T-t-two…"
The golem's body, its head blown off, collapses and releases a cloud of dust.
"Eugh, damn."
—Chik, chik.
"Huu—"
By the time the lit cigarette has burned down to half, the dust settles and reveals the entrance behind the golem.
"Baek Seol, is that the right way?"
"Eung!"
[Time Remaining: 44 hours 07 minutes 41 seconds]
Since it is called the Novice Labyrinth, nothing is particularly difficult. The real issue is probably the clause about scoring based on progress at the end. Just like the first tutorial, that condition seems designed to create trouble between players. Thanks to Baek Seol, however, there is not even time for trouble to arise. Almost four hours have passed since entering the maze, yet I have not seen a single other player.
—Chik, chik.
"Huu—"
"Over there!"
Click. Rumble!
When Baek Seol presses the protruding stone she pointed at, the stone wall slides open.
The puzzles are so simple even a child could solve them, but the real problem is that there are so many doors the number of possible paths is overwhelming. That is why they gave us forty-eight hours. The malice is obvious: if you want to rank higher, you have to trample others.
"Huu—"
Even with Baek Seol's help, more than four hours have passed. The way the maze funnels everyone into large chambers with multiple branching paths makes it clear they expect fights to break out there.
Rumble! The door opens again, revealing a strange device. It is the largest mechanism I have seen so far. Inside a translucent sphere resembling a globe, three glowing points trace complex trajectories. The trails left by the light form geometric patterns.
From the Divine Thrones' reactions, the difficulty has suddenly skyrocketed. They probably left one unsolvable problem here as a final trap to force a fight.
"Ball!"
"That is not a ball."
Baek Seol waves her front paws toward the moving orb of light.
"Look."
I touch the translucent sphere to show Baek Seol. My hand is sucked in and a glowing orb comes along with it.
"Huh?"
"Ball!"
When I place the basketball-sized orb back inside the sphere, it returns to its original path, leaving a trail of light. It looks like gazing at the universe. The light orbs trace such complicated orbits that I step back to see the whole picture, and only then does it become clear. The orbs move inside the sphere while matching colored marks cover the chamber walls.
"Three-dimensional geometric topology?"
It is similar to the famous three-body problem. My improved body has also boosted my memory. Thanks to that, reading has become enjoyable and I have been spending more time with books. Still, orbital mechanics is not my major, and it has been too long since I studied it. The movements alone prove this is not a problem students are meant to solve.
"Hmm…"
"Ada probably cannot solve it?"
"Geometry can be seen as the beginning of mathematics, but if you ask students to solve a problem of this level, Galileo would get angry, snatch Pythagoras's triangle ruler, and smack them on the back of the head."
It is clearly a three-dimensional manifold problem. Without combined mathematical and celestial mechanics knowledge, it is impossible to solve.
"Ugh, my head."
In times like this, the only way is to approach it step by step. I return to the translucent sphere and touch one of the orbs. This time a different-colored orb is drawn out. It feels different from the red one I touched first. I pull out all three orbs to confirm. The red orb I first removed is much heavier than the combined mass of the blue and green orbs. The blue and green ones are roughly equal. When I put them back, they return to their positions as if pulled by gravity. The red orb sits at the center like the sun while the blue and green orbs orbit it in elliptical paths. The important point is that the red orb barely moves. The blue and green orbs circle it, sometimes passing close enough to nearly collide.
From this I can tell that when the red orb is inside the translucent sphere, its own gravitational force exists. The red orb is a fixed mass point, while the blue and green orbs have smaller mass. I assume the visible planar trajectories are created by the red orb's central force field and the mutual gravity of the other two.
"Hmm."
I take out a notebook and pen from my inventory and jot down what I have figured out. One equation forms.
If I set the red orb's position as rA and the blue and green orbs as rB and rC, I can establish the equation of motion between the two smaller orbs. Removing and replacing the orbs always makes them start from the same position. Treating that as the initial condition and integrating numerically with the Runge-Kutta method gives an approximate answer.
"What a mess."
The answer shows that the blue and green orbs follow highly irregular paths. This is basically going in circles. Still, something is visible. Click-click. I pull a spray can from my inventory and shake it. The beads inside rattle loudly.
"Baek Seol, let's draw and play."
"Fun!"
Shhh—! Using the red, blue, and green marks on the wall as reference points, I trace the motion.
"Solving the problem."
Shhh—! Following my hand, the spray paints irregular lines. To anyone watching, it looks like childish scribbles.
Shhh, shhh. The time it takes for the blue and green orbs to rotate around the red orb and return to the reference point is roughly ten minutes and thirty-two seconds. I divide that by ten, mark it as 63.2 seconds, and plot the values from the equation. Three points where the irregular lines meet appear. The pattern within the chaos finally becomes visible.
"Baek Seol, do you see the part marked in blue here?"
"Eung!"
"When I give the signal, press it hard, okay?"
"Good!"
I send Baek Seol to the marked spot and take out the pocket watch again.
"Ready?"
"Eung!"
With Baek Seol's confident reply, I insert the orb and begin counting. Tick, tick, tick. The second hand of the pocket watch Grandfather Kalmar gave me makes a pleasant sound as it moves. The first calculated value is 13.7 seconds.
"Now!"
Click! Thud! Baek Seol presses the wall and a square section sinks in.
"Baek Seol, this time it is the green one."
"Fun!"
This one is fairly high up. I wonder if she can manage. It is about my eye level, which for a rabbit the size of two fists must feel like a skyscraper. Still, since she knows how to pick coconuts, she should be fine. Tick, tick. The second hand moves pleasantly again.
"Now!"
Tap. Click! Thud! Baek Seol hops up and lightly presses the wall. It sinks in with a grinding sound once more. The next one is exactly two seconds later.
"Baek Seol, come here."
Baek Seol, who landed after pressing the wall, runs over with quick steps. Click! Thud! When I finally press the red marking, the entrance opens.
Ding! At the same time, a notification appears.
The Second Tutorial has ended.
Great Achievement! You solved a maze problem no one else could.
You solved the Tutorial Labyrinth's difficult problem!
Player Han Ga-eul obtains 20,000P.
Reward…
Messages pour in endlessly.
"How about something better than this?"
I pull a book from my inventory and wave it. The Star Maiden reacts immediately.
"It is a book that lets you approach the knowledge of the stars. Learning this can be considered taking the first step."
When I take out another book from my inventory that pairs with the first one, I feel a gaze filled with curiosity.
"What I scribbled is just an application. When learning magic, if you give someone who does not even know runes a high-circle spellbook, they will not be able to master it, right?"
"The basics are the most important. Star Maiden, if you are as smart as the Divine Thrones, you will recognize the true value of the book."
"A book containing the power to read the path of the stars. It is truly a book that lets you approach the truth."
"Then show me what you have."
