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Chapter 104 - 7F Hidden (3)
Chapter 104: 7F Hidden (3)
TL: Enuma Novel
“…Are you the Sage?”
I asked.
The old man answered.
Е ň ù ḿа̊ . i d̈
“The world used to call me by that name, yes.”
This person, what is he?
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It was a strange sensation.
Normally, through my Sixth Sense, I could get at least a faint read on how strong any opponent was.
But from the Sage in front of me, I felt nothing at all.
It wasn’t that he gave off a dangerous feeling either, though…
È nu m̀ а. i d̈
I don’t know. I just can’t tell.
Maybe the level gap was so enormous that’s why?
Like in wuxia, where a master at too lofty a realm gives off no presence whatsoever. That’s the cliché, right?
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
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Conclusion reached: nothing to lose by leading with manners.
I dipped my head in a bow of greeting.
Е ṅum̄ а. і d
The Sage chuckled.
“Grateful you’d greet me before cursing me out. The gates you came through must have been quite treacherous.”
“Surely a few trials of this caliber are only natural for obtaining the Sage’s Treasure.”
In any case, all three people had been nothing more than a one-man play directed by the Sage.
Which meant the information I’d gotten from those three was very likely all true.
It seemed safe to conclude that obtaining the Sage’s Treasure was the clearing condition for this Hidden.
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Did this mean the final trial was over too?
It would be really nice if that were the case.
“What is your reason for seeking the treasure?”
the Sage asked.
“…Because I want to attain the truth?”
Obtaining the Sage’s Treasure was supposed to reveal all the truths of the world, wasn’t it?
Ẽ n ů m̃ а . і̀_d
I gave a reasonable enough answer, but the Sage said,
“If you do not answer honestly, you will not be able to obtain the treasure.”
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
What? Can he see through lies?
I didn’t have any reason like that. I was just trying to clear the floor.
“Honestly, there’s no real reason. I’m just a little curious about the treasure.”
There was no way he’d understand anything about the Tower if I brought it up.
Ěn̆ um̂a
So that was how I answered instead.
It was true that I had become a bit curious about what this Sage’s Treasure actually was.
Fortunately, that must have been a pass, because the Sage nodded.
“There is one final trial remaining.”
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
“…What is it?”
“Anything.”
Ẅе̄ bn̆ о́ v́е̌l Ěnüm а́
the Sage said.
“Name any trial you wish. Only, I will not test luck, and the standard for passing the trial will be set by me. The chances to challenge are infinite.”
I tilted my head.
Name any trial…
I couldn’t help but be a little bewildered.
“Then, for example, chess, or…”
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The moment the words left my mouth, a chessboard and pieces appeared between the Sage and me.
The Sage settled into his seat.
“Black or white, which will you take?”
“…White.”
I’d only said it as a passing remark.
But since he’d said the chances were infinite, I sat down across from him too.
Е̃ n u m̃а
I took white and made the first move.
I wasn’t bad at games like chess or go, I’d played a fair amount…
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I was checkmated in thirty moves and lost.
“…One more game.”
I played a few more.
But every time, I lost before reaching fifty moves.
Е n̈ūṁ а̀
I changed the conditions.
“Can we play with a time limit?”
“As you like.”
“Then let’s set the turn timer to one second.”
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I was planning to use Time Stop.
One second meant playing instantly, with no time to think.
Ĕ ń ů m̂ а. і̄ d̊
But for me, the time to think was infinite.
The Sage smiled.
“Won’t one second be too short?”
“I’m confident in playing fast.”
“Very well, then.”
[0:01]
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
A timer appeared in the air beside us.
The match began again.
The moment I moved, the Sage made his move just as quickly.
And yet the precision of his play didn’t change in the slightest from before.
“…”
So the result was the same as well.
W е b̂ ṅо v̇еl̊ Е̃ ñ ù m̊ а
Another loss for me.
What is he? An AI?
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
“…Can we switch to a different game?”
“Go right ahead.”
“Let’s play go.”
I wondered whether the Sage would even know go.
Ё ńǔ.m̌а̊.. і̂ d̄
When he snapped his fingers, the chessboard turned into a go board.
I took black and played the opening move.
This time, too, the match was decided quickly.
I was dragged along helplessly, never grasping how, until the game was lost.
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I came to realize that the gap in skill between the Sage and me was unfathomable.
There was no beating him.
Е̄n̊ ǔm à_. і̃ d̀
“…Do you happen to know gomoku?”
He’d said the chances were infinite anyway.
Without giving up, I kept switching games.
Gomoku, stone-flicking, even something ridiculous like stacking go stones without knocking them over, I went up against the Sage at all of them.
The result.
A complete rout, every time.
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I stared, jaw hanging open, at the Sage’s tower of go stones.
The Sage showed off the miraculous feat of stacking more than twenty stones, teaching me just how wide the gulf in class between us was.
No, what the hell is this…
Was there nothing the Sage couldn’t do?
It seemed pointless to compete in a game the Sage looked likely to be bad at.
…Instead of using my head, should I try competing with my body?
Е̄ n ŭ m̂ ä.їd̈
He’d said anything goes, so a fight would count too.
The problem was that I didn’t see much chance of winning on that front either.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
He was surely a far stronger mage than I was.
“How about a contest using only our bodies, no magic?”
I added hastily.
“And killing’s off-limits, of course.”
Е̊ n̊ u m̃ ӓ .i d̀
The Sage laughed, then stood and put some distance between us.
“I will not counterattack. If you so much as graze me even once, you pass.”
It was a generous condition, but I took it the opposite way.
Tch, is this no good either…?
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
He’d only set a condition like that because he was that confident, wouldn’t he.
Bang!
Е̄ n u m̌а.i d̂
For starters, I kicked off the ground and lunged at the Sage.
The instant I stretched out my hand and thought I’d reached him.
The Sage’s body blurred and vanished.
When I looked behind me, the Sage was standing there.
“…Didn’t you just use magic?”
“I did not.”
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
Then what was that?
Was he just so fast my eyes couldn’t follow him?
I lunged again.
This time the Sage didn’t vanish.
Whether he meant to show me he wasn’t using magic, he dodged every one of my attacks at a speed about equal to my own.
Even with my Exaltation skill active, I chased the Sage at full speed, but…
En ū mа . іd̈
He stayed just out of reach; I couldn’t so much as brush the hem of his robe.
After running circles around the cavern for a long while, I stopped to catch my breath.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
…This isn’t working.
I didn’t get the sense that a little more would do it. The level gap was obvious.
Given the speed he’d shown when he first vanished, this too was him going easy on me.
When I looked at the Sage, his eyes crinkled into a smile.
W̄ е̇ b ňӧ.v е̄ l Е̇ǹ ŭ m á
The Sage wasn’t even breathing hard.
‘How am I supposed to win this?’
My head wouldn’t do it, and neither would my body.
I asked the Demon King.
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‘Demon King, can you beat that guy with magic?’
The Demon King answered.
Е̌ñú m а̇
– Need you even ask.
‘Oh, then could you a little…’
– Can’t beat him.
‘What?’
– In my true body, perhaps, but with this pathetic flesh, how could I win? That one is no mere lowly creature either.
So even the Demon King couldn’t do it.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
– Think straight. It is not that I cannot, it is that your wretched body is so worthless…
I ignored the Demon King as he started to throw a fit.
Hah, there’s no answer to this one.
I deliberated, then opened my mouth.
If even this didn’t work, I wondered whether there was any way left to beat the Sage at all.
“Let’s go with a memory test.”
Е̄ ǹ u.m а̌.і̂ d
The Sage nodded.
“I will display one thousand numbers. If you memorize them all before I do, the trial is passed.”
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
The Sage waved his hand.
[124572305804329502589320323…]
And a countless sequence of numbers floated up in the air.
I raised my hand and spoke.
En u̇m̊а
“Hold on. Isn’t there something unfair about a memory contest using numbers you’ve presented yourself?”
“You wish to say that I already have the order memorized? These are merely numbers generated at random.”
I shook my head.
“Even so, I can’t help being suspicious, can I. Could you run the trial some other way, rather than the two of us competing to see who wins?”
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
“Such as?”
“If you set a time limit, Sage, I’ll memorize all the numbers within that time.”
Wе̊ b̊ nо̆v̄el̄ Eň ũmа
This was a Sage for whom even the one-second rule in chess had rendered a time limit meaningless.
I figured that in a memory contest, the moment it started he’d just declare he’d already memorized them all.
The Sage agreed readily.
“Then let us do that. How many seconds do you want?”
Would you look at this guy.
“…Seconds? To memorize a thousand numbers, shouldn’t you at least give me hours?”
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
I put on a show of complaining for no real reason.
The Sage laughed.
“At that rate it would not even be a trial. I will grant you one hundred seconds.”
“Haah, that’s brutal…”
I held back a laugh.
Inwardly, I was cheering.
W̃ е bn̆ о́v̈ ẽl̈ Е n̊ u_m̂ ã
‘I’ve won.’
The truth was, it didn’t matter how much time he gave me.
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I managed my expression so I wouldn’t draw needless suspicion by looking too confident.
[100]
The timer’s number floated up separately.
And the sequence changed once more to new numbers.
Е ṅ ú m̊ ӑ
“I will begin.”
With the Sage’s words, I stopped time at once.
The Demon King spoke as if sneering.
– Of all the underhanded wretches.
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‘This counts as skill too.’
Besides, the Sage was the more underhanded of the two.
W̆ е b̌n ӧv е̌ l Е̃n um̊а́
A memory test it may be, but telling someone to memorize a thousand numbers in a hundred seconds, is that even within the realm of reason?
In the frozen time, I began memorizing the numbers.
‘52839472…’
I had memories of trying to memorize pi as a kid.
I’d gotten up to about a hundred digits, was it?
Ten times that.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
I didn’t know how long this would take.
To fully memorize it, would it take at least a few days?
Victory was already guaranteed, but it was the start of a tedious slog of memorization.
‘Demon King.’
– What.
‘Memorize them with me, would you.’
Еn_ümа̀.і̂ d
– Are you insane? Memorize them yourself.
If he’d memorized them with me, it would have cut the time and given me a cross-check too, but I shouldn’t expect the impossible.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
In any case, I drilled them into my head.
How much time had passed.
‘…1231289924585…’
Okay. Done.
Wе̂ b ň ǒ_v́ е̄ l _Е n üḿã
After memorizing it all and running self-checks several times over, I finally released time.
I deliberately waited until the timer was almost completely up.
“I’ve memorized them all.”
I told the Sage with an exhausted look on my face.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
This wasn’t acting.
I really thought I was going to die of boredom, goddamn…
Eň ŭm̃а. і̂d
When the Sage waved his hand, the numbers vanished.
“Speak.”
“5283947212525110…”
I rattled the numbers off.
I recited all thousand numbers without forgetting a single one.
“…Did I get them all right?”
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
I was a little tense.
If I’d made any kind of mistake, I’d have to memorize the whole thing again from the start.
Clap, clap, clap…
The Sage smiled and applauded.
“Correct.”
“…”
Е̄n̂ úmа
“Congratulations on passing the final trial.”
It was a modest celebration.
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More than that, there was something odd about the Sage’s manner.
As if he’d known all along I would pass, something like…
It felt as though he were just going through a formal procedure.
The Sage waved his hand again.
Е̌ňu m̃а.id
And the place changed.
The dark cavern became a vast library.
“Follow me.”
I looked around with startled eyes, then followed the Sage.
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Climbing endlessly up a spiraling staircase…
“All my life I have explored the world. By a stroke of luck, I defied even the destiny of a born mortal, and for an infinite span of time I have ceaselessly filled in my ignorance. There exists no joy greater than coming to know what you did not.”
Е̂ n̄u̇ ḿa
the Sage went on.
The somewhat stiff way of speaking from earlier was gone, and I could feel a liveliness in him.
For a moment I felt that subtle change was out of place.
Then the Sage stopped walking and pulled a single book from the shelf.
A thick book with no title at all.
When he opened it, the pages inside were blank, with nothing written on them.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
‘…Is there still more to come?’
When was he going to hand over this Sage’s Treasure.
Just as I was thinking that.
The Sage stroked the empty page.
…Fwarararack!
And a current of air swept up all around us.
Ẇе̃ ḃ ǹ о̀ v е̌l̀ Еn̆ ùm̄ ӓ
“…!”
The library trembled.
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There was no other way to put it.
The books on the shelves pulled themselves out of their own accord and drifted through the air.
And the letters that poured out of those books all began to be absorbed into the book the Sage was holding.
Whoooosh…
Е ṅ u ḿа́ . id̃
The storm of letters died down.
And the once-blank book was now packed full of dense text.
The Sage closed the book.
“This is the Sage’s Treasure.”
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
“…”
“Every truth of the world is contained within this single volume.”
Е n̈ům̄а
Momentarily overwhelmed, I gave a dazed nod.
More to the point, could this really be the reward for this Hidden?
“Well? What truth is it that you wish to know through this?”
the Sage asked.
A truth I wished to know.
Well… naturally, there was plenty I wanted to know.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
Like, say, about the Tower.
Information about the Nightmare floors I’d have to clear going forward, or what on earth was waiting if I climbed the Tower all the way to the top.
But there was no way I could learn anything like that.
Truth of the world, this and that, however grandly it was dressed up, in the end this too was just the process of clearing a single floor.
It was all nothing more than a theatrical stage the Tower had set up.
“Does this book say what the Tower’s true identity is, too?”
Е̇ n̂ ŭm_ӑ. і́d̆
I asked that half in jest.
He wasn’t going to understand anyway, so I figured I’d just see how he reacted.
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But then…
“Of course.”
“…What?”
I flinched and stared at the Sage.
Е̌ńům.а̀
The Sage was looking at me with a smile.
“Kim Seo-hyeon, currently clearing the Nightmare-difficulty 7th floor Hidden route, the truth you desire is all contained in here as well. Do you wish to know the Tower’s true identity?”
****
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