The man, who hadn't foreseen my answer in the slightest, flared his nostrils.
"What...?"
"Outwardly and inwardly alike, I see no value in keeping company with a human this ugly."
"Haha.... Big bro, that's harsh...."
"Ah, it's a joke... is what I'd like to say, but no. I mean it."
Struck by the combo of attacks, the man's face turned pale blue.
Unlike his unnatural bluster from before, he now looked utterly shrunken.
"But in the first place — isn't the reason they don't let you in something other than your looks or your clothes?"
"What do you mean-"
"Who would want to team up with a human who only probes at others, never shows a single card of his own, and does nothing but lie?"
I'd harbored doubts from the very first meal we shared.
'Try some. It's fine, whatever it looks like.'
'...?'
Whatever it looks like — was it?
Hardly an expression suited to a lavish feast.
As if he already knew what the true face beneath the skin was.
'Whew.... I'm the only one making a spectacle of myself....'
'Come on~ it happens. I've got a strong stomach, so I can bear it, that's all.'
Thinking of it that way, his composure after eating rotten fish made perfect sense.
"How long, exactly, have you been in this place?"
"...I've got no quick reflexes, so I keep misspeaking. I practiced so much, too... and still I slip, and slip again...."
"What am I supposed to do with that? I asked how long you've been here."
"......."
The man rambled on about shortcomings of his that interested me none at all — then abruptly shut his mouth.
Looking at those firmly sealed lips, he clearly had no intention of answering.
Seeing him act like this, suspicious as he was, it seemed I'd have to dig up more on him after all.
"New Byeoljubu. We welcome thine arrival at the Dragon Palace...."
Just then, a voice sounded, hurrying the two of us where we'd stopped.
A voice vast as a loudspeaker's rang through the palace.
Scurry-
"Hey!!"
Ha, that bastard.
The man bolted headlong into the darkness, fleeing.
For now, there was nothing for it but to track down the source of the voice.
"Byeoljubu. Come hither, quickly now."
I pushed on through the darkness, forward and forward.
The place where I'd first woken had vanished, and in its place a great dome had risen.
The man stood frozen at the dome's entrance, unable to step inside.
What could be in there?
'Hiik-'
Seeing what sat at the dome's center, I screamed inwardly.
A Dragon King vast as a mountain sat upon a throne.
Too withered to be called living, too fleshed to be called a skeleton.
"So you are the loyal vassals who shall cure this sovereign's illness."
"Come. Hither, now."
I approached the Dragon King's throne with the utmost care.
Looking up at the Dragon King made the back of my neck ache.
"Long..., very long, have I awaited a true Byeoljubu."
'Past long — he's simply become a mummy.'
His form was far too grotesque to feel the pity the Curator's interpretation called for.
"Now. Let us see."
The Dragon King's gaze crept slowly between the man and me, back and forth.
Every time the Dragon King moved his body, there came a sound like grinding rock.
"Which of you is the true vassal who shall cure this sovereign's illness?"
Fwish-
=================
-Procure the Dragon King's miracle cure.
-One is the egg of the land.
-One is a lump that has lost its life.
-At the end of three trials:
The treacherous vassal who spoke falsehood
Shall have his head split upon the boulder.
=================
A leaflet rose before the Dragon King.
The third floor's quest had finally begun. As expected, it was tied to the Tale of the Rabbit.
"Then — let the first match begin."
Gong-
A gong note tolled heavily, and a single dish materialized on the floor.
Identical to the dishes that had been set on the banquet table.
Except this dish had no food upon it.
'That's...?'
Just then, the surroundings transformed into the fields and plots of the land above.
Amid an unfolding green landscape of mountains and streams, black lumps suddenly appeared, spinning in place.
"Yaaah...!"
The man drew a sickle from his own leaflet. Likely something he'd earned on the second floor.
He squeezed his eyes shut and swung the sickle, splitting a black lump apart.
Forcibly disassembled, the lump shattered to pieces and vanished.
"Is it all right to attack them?"
"No idea. I was just scared they might attack me first, so...."
The man trailed off without confidence. Whether that was truth or lie, I couldn't know.
The sickle's blade flashed in his hand.
Take a hit from that sickle, and I'd end up a torso like the Curator.
'I still haven't properly interpreted the quest — what do I do? Am I supposed to just copy what he's doing?'
While I watched him, deliberating.
The lumps drifting near me slowly began to take on the shape of rabbits.
I stared blankly at the rabbits hopping about around me.
"They've turned into proper rabbits by now, right?"
"?!"
"Looks like you're about the same as me, big bro. Forget stabbing them — you can't even lay a hand on them, can you?"
Say what you like — I did drive a dagger into the Jangsan Tiger's foot.
"To find the real liver among the lumps, you'd have to feel the sensation of piercing flesh about a million times over, you know."
The man, who had been swinging his sickle so fiercely, now bent low and raked his hands through the empty air.
The motion of digging something up.
'He can't tell whether what's near me is a rabbit or a still-formless lump. And I can't check his side's information either.'
So it's veiled, using each of our zones as the boundary.
According to the man, these rabbit-shaped lumps of data were what we had to attack.
I called the terms of the task back to mind.
=================
-Procure the Dragon King's miracle cure.
-One is the egg of the land.
-One is a lump that has lost its life.
-At the end of three trials:
The treacherous vassal who spoke falsehood
Shall have his head split upon the boulder.
=================
Splitting one's head upon the boulder — that's the terrapin.
So of the two of us, whoever speaks falsehood regarding the cure is eliminated. That seemed to be the meaning.
'The egg of the land, and a lump that has lost its life...?'
I activated my Docent ability.
The Tale of the Rabbit — I remembered reading it in elementary school, or perhaps middle school.
Fwish-
=================
[The Tale of the Rabbit]
-A classic Korean pansori-lineage novel
-Author & Year of Creation
┗Unknown
-Plot
┗.......
-Variant Endings
┗.......
.......
.......
=================
This wasn't what I was looking for.
I needed to find the mentions of the cure that would heal the Dragon King's illness.
'I'll have to sift out only the liver-related lines from the tale's many versions.'
Fwish-
=================
-Excerpted mentions of the 'liver'
┗Thy liver, they say, shall serve as medicine, and so the Byeoljubu was specially dispatched....
Go up onto the land and take out the liver....
.......
.......
.......
=================
'Right — it's explicitly stated as the liver. If one of the two is a metaphor, then the lump that lost its life fits the liver better.'
Then why phrase it so indirectly?
And what was the egg of the land?
I looked again at the rabbits spinning in place.
'Those rabbits would have been made from components, wouldn't they? How am I supposed to cut open their bellies?'
On top of which, by the man's account, you feel the sensation as you stab.
I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head.
Fwish-
[Tool]
Name: Lusterless Dagger.
Description: This blade now cuts naught but meat.
'Damn it — I never took the knife out!!'
The tool window had unfurled on its own — a leaflet glitch, or something worse — and it chilled me to the bone.
As if the museum were laying out the board, urging me: attack, quickly.
I pointedly ignored the knife's intended use and knelt down in the field.
Then I clawed at the earth with my bare hands, digging like mad.
'The egg of the land.'
It was only a hunch — but almost at once, my hand touched something heavy.
'A sweet potato...!'
As the sweet potato buried in the soil revealed itself, I let out a sigh of relief.
At least one of the two options had come through. A mercy.
'...?'
Belatedly, I realized the man's gaze was fixed on me.
Pretending otherwise, he kept sneaking glances this way, his eyeballs flicking over.
'...He's checking on me. Since when has he been watching like that? It feels like some kind of performance....'
An artificial gaze.
Was he stealing looks while trying not to be seen?
Or rolling his eyes deliberately, hoping I would notice?
Which it was, I couldn't tell.
Gong-
"Come hither."
The first harvest had ended.
The end condition seemed to be both participants having gathered something.
"Place the miracle cure upon the dish."
I set one sweet potato on the dish.
The man tossed on a bundle of data. As if wrapped in packaging, its identity was impossible to make out.
Confirming the dish was full, the Dragon King turned his head toward me.
"The Byeoljubu standing on the left, first."
"Declare what thine opponent's cure is."
'Hah....'
I swallowed down the sigh threatening to burst out of my tangled chest.
So it was a task akin to a coin-toss game.
'Now I see why the Curator called it simple.'
It wasn't my own cure I couldn't lie about — it was my opponent's.
In other words: a quest where you deduce your opponent's cure, and lose if you guess wrong.
Even if the man couldn't see my cure, what I'd brought would be obvious to anyone.
'I have to match what he put in, and force a draw. No matter what.'
"H-hurry it up...! We'll run out of time at this rate."
The man rolled his eyes and rushed me.
His voice trembled even worse than mine, and I was the one racking my brain in dread.
'To find the real liver among the lumps, you'd have to feel the sensation of piercing flesh about a million times over, you know.'
I recalled the words the man had thrown out to frighten me.
If that was true, it meant each attempt wasn't guaranteed a result.
In which case, he might have only pretended to hunt for a liver he never obtained — while secretly digging up an egg of the land.
'Deception game or not — with nothing found yet, would he really have the spare attention to be checking on me?'
Right. For now, there was nothing to rely on but instinct.
"The egg of the land."
"......."
"The Byeoljubu standing on the right."
"Declare what thine opponent's cure is."
My choice made, the Dragon King now pointed to my opponent.
"The egg of the land."
The man's answer was a given.
Having watched him swing that sickle and flinched, the odds I'd attacked a rabbit were vanishingly low.
'Please, please....'
Gong-
"The true and loyal vassal is the Byeoljubu on the right."
The strength drained out of me.
Unlucky my whole life, and still I'd leaned on intuition — a fool's choice indeed.
It was the first round, so I'd gambled once on my gut. The problem was a misfortune stronger than any gut feeling.
"Phew — I wondered if I'd heard something land with a heavy thump. Guess it was just nerves."
"Heavy...?"
The man tipped his chin toward the dish.
Only then could I see, with my own eyes, what he had placed in it.
...The black lump of data appeared in its true form. A rabbit's liver.
"-!!"
As I recoiled in horror, stumbling back a step, the rabbit's liver disassembled into fragments and vanished cleanly.
"Hah."
I tried to hold it in, but the sighs would no longer be controlled. However I turned it over, I couldn't see the answer.
'What do I do? Now that he's seen through everything, I can't bring the egg of the land again.'
The truth is, there was a contradiction in me: I had already stabbed the Jangsan Tiger with a knife.
In my heart I hadn't wanted to attack physically — but I'd done it to survive.
How was this any different? ...It was different, though.
'Unlike the Jangsan Tiger, these are components that have done me no harm. And cutting them open with a knife-'
Perhaps I could at least pretend to swing the knife.
"Going to act it out?"
"What?"
"Don't wear yourself out performing. Feel free to just dig, slowly."
Damn it. Is he reading my mind, or what?
The acting gambit was useless now too. Then what move was left to-
"Speak honestly."
The man lowered the sickle he'd been swinging and pressed me again, just as before.
"...What are you talking about?"
"You want to propose it, don't you? That we stop trying to kill each other and go up to the third floor together."
It wasn't as if the thought hadn't crossed my mind.
It was the most peaceful way to complete this quest.
"If we coordinate our answers, we can both get to the third floor."
But.
"There's no way you would do that."
I'd already guessed why he had been probing me.
His plan was to align answers with me — then stab me in the back.
At that, the man waved both hands violently, protesting his innocence with his entire body.
"No! Please believe me."
"Then tell me why you lied earlier. How long have you been in this place?"
"Before you arrived, big bro, the Curator had already shown me the food's true form! And of course, I threw everything up right then, same as you."
'The Curator did...?'
The man's explanation was hard to trust — but it was entirely possible the Curator had done it deliberately, to throw us into confusion.
Still, I let none of it show on my face, and calmly pressed on.
"Then the quest. Earlier — stabbing for the liver, all of it. You clearly knew everything already."
"That was also explained to me in advance. It even gave me a simple trial run."
"...A trial run?"
"Stabbing with a tool, I mean. You wouldn't know, big bro, but attacking a rabbit doesn't guarantee a liver. It's random."
I'd roughly suspected as much already, but....
The man laid out what he knew, piece by piece, for me.
Watching him strain to earn even a scrap of my trust, my head grew tangled.
"I don't know why the Curator explained the quest only to me."
"......."
"Maybe it thought I was too much of a loser to even play the game with you, and the match would end too easily."
Come to think of it — the man had looked genuinely pained swinging his sickle at the rabbits.
And he had talked about my character, and his own.
"But I was sure you'd think I was in league with the Curator, so I couldn't tell you the truth."
"......."
"It's true...! That's all it was!"
'Did the Curator withhold the explanation on purpose? To make me suspect this man?'
At the man's tearful appeal, I could give no answer at all.
Inside this museum that tests its visitors' hearts, it was a situation that could easily be by design.
And yet. If I trusted him like this and was swindled for it.
"The second match. Begin."
Gong-
With no time left even to think, the second match unfolded at once.