Chapter 18
PASSING THROUGH the now-unguarded gate, the party entered the final level of the dungeon and the target of Mira’s adventure. There were faint trickles of light here and there, like will-o’-wisps floating around. The dim lighting made it hard to gauge distance, but the room was clearly quite large.
Then Cleos’s ability rippled through the room, banishing the darkness. It spread throughout the area, bringing everything into focus until all was lit. Mira took in the scene before her, while Hinata could only stare, dumbfounded. It was so vast that it could probably contain an entire village.
“Well, this alone made the journey worthwhile,” Mira remarked. “This room certainly puts the ‘wunder’ in Wunderkammer.”
“Up to this point, it was just run-of-the-mill storerooms.” Cleos looked around in awe as well. “But this… No wonder they were called fools.”
The shelves, although evenly arrayed throughout the cavernous space, were stacked haphazardly and crammed with a seemingly random assortment of books, specimens, and all sorts of other things. Some were well past capacity, and a number of items had spilled onto the floor, left to decompose through the passing years. Despite the gloom, the deeper reaches of the room seemed completely overgrown with vegetation. Yet the shelves and the items stored upon them were miraculously undamaged.
In the center of the room, shelves were stacked into a colossal tower, and the tower itself was further ringed by more shelves. It was part library, part museum, part eccentric construction project.
“It would take forever to search through all this.” Mira sighed, her purpose for coming at odds with her desire to freely explore.
“That’s right, we’re here in search of specific titles. What were they again?” Cleos asked, shaking off his wonder.
“These.” Mira pulled the memo with the necessary titles from her pouch and passed it over.
“I’ll take care of it.” He took a moment to absorb the contents. “These all seem to be related to flora of the southern regions. Let’s see, those are in section six, which should be…”
Walking over to the side of the entrance, he looked up from the paper at a large board posted on the wall.
Following his gaze, Mira looked on, slack-jawed. “What the heck is that? Is that seriously a directory in a dungeon?!”
“It’s classified as a dungeon now…but it used to just be a museum. Well, warehouse, really. Either way, it was a place for the knowledge-obsessed to enjoy themselves.”
“And this is just what’s left of it.” Mira felt the call of adventure stir within her, only for it to be tempered by the humanity of the setting. This had once been a place for people, not monsters and mazes.
“They should be around there,” Cleos said, indicating an area on the map. It was labeled Section 6, Terrestrial Plants. Based on the map, the area in question would be located all the way opposite the entrance.
“That’s a fair way off. It’d be faster to fly there,” Mira muttered. Despite the clutter, the entrance had a raised vantage point, offering a good view of their surroundings. In the distance, she could just make out one area that was thickly covered in vegetation.
“As much as I can understand the desire, Mistress Mira, we mustn’t. You should read this.” Cleos pointed to a corner of the map where a sentence was written in incredibly small print:
Deviation from approved routes will activate security systems.
Looking somewhat embarrassed, he went on, “The first time I came down to this level, everything got out of hand. First, swarms of golems came raining down on us, and then security walls started popping up all over the place. It was a mess. So, no flying.”
On closer inspection, there were little arrows drawn to mark out the route.
“Well, if we must.” Shifting her gaze from the distant Section 6 to the descending stairs marking the beginning of the route, Mira thought this might be a proper dungeon experience after all.
Guide maps were stationed at regular intervals along the path, significantly cutting down on the sense of adventure. But Mira refused to let that diminish her experience as she made her way along the passages cutting through the towering aisles of shelves. Side passageways led to sets of stairs here and there, and bridges overhead stretched between the tops of the shelves.
If she were to take those stairs or cross those bridges, where might they lead? The mystery tickled her inner explorer, but unfortunately, the answers to those questions were always clearly marked on the maps. Feeling a bit miffed, Mira took out her frustrations on the occasional monster that crossed their path.
“Hrmm? Why is this closed?” The route had led them to a double door that was firmly bolted shut. It would be impossible to pry open.
“The innermost areas are sealed off by section. To progress further, we’ll have to solve the puzzle,” Cleos said, pointing to a pedestal placed by the door.
Atop the pedestal sat a metallic cube. Looking closely, Mira saw that each side of the cube was separated into a five-by-five grid, and each individual piece had a design carved into it. All in all, there seemed to be six different designs scattered throughout the cube on different pieces.
Despite the puzzle having shapes instead of colors, Mira immediately recognized the cube blocking their way. “Puzzle? This is just a Rubi—” She clamped her mouth shut. Indeed, it was a Rubik’s Cube. With an annoyed look, she turned to Cleos. “A five-by-five, though… That’s a bit rough. What do you think?”
A five-by-five cube was incredibly more difficult than the standard three-by-three. These sorts of puzzles were never her forte.
“It’s not that I can’t do it, but it would probably take me somewhere around six hours to complete,” he said with a sheepish grin.
“Six hours…?”
They weren’t in any particular hurry, but that was still far too long to spend on just a puzzle. Just as irritation set in, Mira heard a loud bang, and some hidden mechanism stirred to life. The door unbolted and opened slowly.
“Hrmm? It’s opening?”
Mira spotted Hinata staring at it, and the professor’s tail shot out behind her in surprise as they locked eyes. The professor quickly placed the completed puzzle in her hands back on the pedestal as her cheeks reddened.
“Did you just solve that?” Cleos asked, gawking at her.
“I’m pretty good at puzzles. I was thinking I might be able to help…”
“Absolutely marvelous! A godsend!”
“Hrmm, agreed. Where did you pick up such a skill?”
Hinata’s tail slowly rose and she smiled happily at the unexpected praise. As they walked through the door, Hinata explained that with so much free time at the academy, she’d taken up solving puzzles to keep her mind sharp. Professor Siegfried from the Department of Sorcery had helped out by lending her and recommending his favorites.
After solving so many different puzzles, she’d developed a knack for it.
“Ah, I see.” Cleos gave a strained smile. Not exactly how he’d like to see his professors pass their time, but he couldn’t necessarily protest, given the poor state summoning had been in.
The next area appeared to be dedicated to marine biology. The shelves were stacked high and covered in thick vegetation. Huge aquariums took up the space between them.
“It’s like we’re lost deep in the ocean,” Mira murmured in admiration, peering into one of the tanks. Fish swam around inside among shimmering aquatic plants. The tank had formed its very own isolated universe.
“Even the palace scholars were surprised by these. They estimated these micro-ecosystems are over a thousand years old.”
“A thousand years? Quite the archeological discovery.”
Ecological as well. Mira knew this world operated on slightly different rules than her home world, but this section was a biological and historical wonder. Naturally, like the rest of the materials in the dungeon, the tanks were guarded against theft so researchers couldn’t even open the aquariums, much less remove them.
Intrigued, she stared intently into the tank. Hinata was also staring at the fish, but her cat eyes seemed less focused on the historical value and more on the…culinary opportunities.
This section also contained many skeletal remains of giant creatures, as well as taxidermy specimens. Another guide map was affixed to the wall. Deciding to enjoy her surroundings as a museum rather than a dungeon, Mira left the monster-handling to her Dark Knights and let Cleos lead the way while she looked around at this and that.
Behind her, Hinata carefully watched the armor spirits as they went about the grim business of slaying any monsters that tried to ambush the party, and she took down detailed notes as she observed. This also helped to distract her from the seafood on display.
The path took them up ladders, over fish tanks, across bridges, down stairs, and ever onward. Finally, they arrived at a chasm preventing them from proceeding.
“I don’t think this is supposed to be the end,” said Mira, looking things over.
A descending switchback staircase nearby led to a complicated-looking mechanism. It controlled a bridge supported by pillars rising up from below. But it was no ordinary bridge—it was made up of different-sized blocks. Some were straight, while others were L-shaped, and they formed five columns and ten rows. Fifty levers stuck out of an adjacent pedestal. This puzzle was clearly the barrier to the next section.
“Not this again,” Mira groaned.
Cleos explained the rules. “So for this puzzle, the position of the bridge corresponds to the levers. Flipping a lever causes a piece to spin 90 degrees, the neighboring pieces to spin 90 degrees in the opposite direction, and the pieces one step beyond that to spin 90 degrees in the same direction as the first piece.”
The rules were simple enough, but the challenge came from the number of pieces that moved with each pull of a lever. Mira was sure she could solve it if she had to, but she couldn’t bring herself to bother with it.
She sighed. “All right, I get how it works. How long did it take you to solve it?”
“This took me three hours,” Cleos replied, somewhat proudly. Less than the last puzzle, but three hours was still a long time to wait.
“Hrmm. Hinata?”
“Well, I’ve never done one quite like this, but…I think I can probably solve it.” Hinata looked out at the bridge and the levers as she thought back over the rules.
“It would definitely be a big help. Can we leave it to you?”
“I’m on it!” She nodded happily, overjoyed at being asked for assistance by someone so talented.
But as soon as she took position before the pedestal, her expression shifted from joy to extreme focus. After a minute or so of staring at the bridge, she got to work, pulling levers one after another without a moment’s hesitation. The corresponding pieces spun left and right incessantly, and less than a minute later, the bridge was perfectly completed. Mira and Cleos stared, dumbfounded, as a solid path stretched out to the other side of the chasm.
“Done!” She turned back to the other two with a serene smile, taking pride in a job well done.
“Indeed it is. You’ve got a splendid talent there!” Mira couldn’t help but smile back at the honest look of joy on Hinata’s face.
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