“Um…ah…the two short pairs of feelers aren’t vestigial I think. Even with manatees, those are organs that move proportional to the force field…” Haha. Sorry, never mind if you already mentioned that.”
If I had to say, that was really it.
When I said that, Petrus made a face like he’d been caught off guard.
Seeing that, Rita laughed.
“Hahaha! No no, don’t mind! That was Petrus’s mistake! Everything else was good right?”
“Yes. I truly thought it was an amazing presentation. Things I couldn’t even imagine crossed my mind.”
“I see I see! Good for you, Petrus!”
“Yes. It’s the highest honor, Lord Strauss.”
“I’m very sorry! In the first place, I don’t have the knowledge to evaluate…no, it was just so fundamentally stimulating and felt so good and was on such a large scale–“
It really lit that curiosity in me again after a long time.
“–It seemed like it would let me see an even bigger background, that grandeur, you could say.”
I was giving my impressions.
“It’s incredible, don’t you think? If you develop the ideas you can get from this, it means in the labyrinth, extinct organisms are continuing to evolve as they were, in a realized form.”
That’s what it should be, yet when I glanced around as I was speaking, I noticed.
The air had changed.
Rita stood up.
“Everyone, listen. Right?”
She spoke to the participants except me. Without affirming or denying, they looked at me appraisingly.
“Mr. Strauss. Correct. We have a greater purpose.”
Rita came closer step by step and said:
“Any Labyrinth Maniac reader should be able to imagine the big picture, what we’re trying to accomplish and prove! Right?”
“The big picture?”
“Yeah. I wrote it in the preface too! Say it, Mr. Strauss.”
Put on the spot like that, I swallowed.
But I did have an inkling.
“The labyrinth’s location…?”
“Correct!”
Rita said in her clear voice.
There’s a commonly told conjecture, what is the actual structure of the labyrinth?
The starting point of the talk is simple – if you want to go deeper, can’t you just keep digging down? And there are sporadic stories of people who actually tried it, mostly ending with they couldn’t finish digging.
Two hypotheses emerged.
One, the underground theory. The interval between floors is too vast to dig through by human power.
The other, the separate dimension theory. The labyrinth is a special structure that expands on already existing space, a fantastical idea.
“Okay, next. One element of the 98th floor was a major turning point in thinking about the labyrinth’s location. What was that turning point? Understand?”
I have an idea about this too. It’s obvious.
“The existence of the ‘sky’.”
“As expected. The existence of the ‘sky’ completely denied the underground theory of the so-called labyrinth structure. The separate dimension theory just slapped a label on something unknown, so we have to return to the question [If it’s not underground, where is it?].”
She waved her arms and issued instructions.
“Now, this is hypothetical. The key is the evolution of the vegetation and animals, monsters. Identifying species was extremely difficult because conditions vary too much between floors, but as research progressed, commonalities and gradations emerged.”
She went up to the podium.
“And the ecology of plants and organisms directly links to the element of climate.”
The presentation materials were put away and a large poster was stuck to the blackboard.
Drawn on the poster was a large shape. A balloon-shaped diagram separated into red, blue, green, and purple sections.
“Now, this is a hypothetical continent. We think the labyrinth is on another continent! See?”
Rita stated decisively.
READ THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATION AT GADGETIZEDPANDA.COM
A hypothetical continent refers to a thought experiment about what climates the different areas of a continent would theoretically have, assuming it exists spreading across the ocean, based on ocean currents and wind directions.
In front of the diagram of this hypothetical continent, Rita stood holding many flat, round magnets. Small numbers were written on them.
“One mystery of the labyrinth is that the floor order doesn’t make much sense right? For instance, the monsters and ecosystems of the 26th and 27th floors are totally different. But it’s not like all floors are separate – the wyvern subspecies appears on both the 26th and 97th floors, for example. So somehow, it feels connected somewhere, but no clear order emerges even from temperature, soil, flora, and fauna.”
I nodded.
It seemed that related to the labyrinth’s fundamental mysteries. The source of that indescribable yet certainly present unity of the labyrinth.
“But we didn’t give up on finding that order. Factoring out the effects of magical power on growth and resistance, we hypothesized their original forms. We covered organisms suspected to exist across floors, and saw through cases where two species weren’t considered the same but actually were. The rest was comparison. We conclusively determined what climates the organisms on each floor originally evolved under.”
Rita showed me the numbers on the magnets.
I finally understood the meaning.
Those numbers were floor numbers. In other words, the magnets represented the floors themselves.
“And based on the determined climates, we arrange the floors on the hypothetical continent! See?”
The magnets were stuck on the diagram a bit creepily.
When she finished, Rita said loudly:
“Well? This explains everything. For instance, the wyvern subspecies showing up on the adjacent 26th and 97th floors I mentioned earlier.”
Looking, that was certainly true.
And right next to those two magnets was the 33rd floor.
The wyvern subspecies appears there too.
“You understand what this means, right?”
After coming this far, there’s no way I wouldn’t understand.
I visibly swallowed. Seeing that, Rita cheerfully said:
“In other words, through the transfer circles, we were transported to and traveled different parts of a continent!”
I stared hard at the poster again.
It worked.
Floors with clearly anomalous biomes were positioned far apart from other floors. It seemed suggestive that the 98th floor with the aforementioned “rain tiger” was on the coast.
“We call this the continent hypothesis. We think there’s another continent with the labyrinth, separate from ours! Proving that is our highest directive now!”
“It’s a tremendously grand theory.”
“Yeah! It’ll shake Villebron upside down if proven!”
Looking at Rita, her tone was feverish, and her gaze didn’t seem fixed on the real world. But the amount of evidence built up and the scale of what it suggested were exciting enough to be called fantasy.
No mistake.
I finally realized I had been half-doubting because of appearances.
She was none other than Dr. Heinkes.
“But, it’ll flip things upside down so we can’t announce it too openly. Remember? People don’t like that kind of thing.”
Grounding herself, she lowered her voice.
“That’s why we’re doing this secretively despite properly being the guild’s investigation team. Labyrinth Maniac would surely get banned if marketed aggressively too. So keep it hush-hush ‘kay? Especially the continent hypothesis today. It’s still hypothesizing after all.”
“Yes…”
“So…was it interesting?”
Her spirited tone changed to an anxious question that made me falter instead. I sensed special meaning in it.
Her large eyes seemed to await my words openly.
My answer was decided.
“Yes. Very.”
“Great!”
The sunken expression she showed for an instant switched cleanly and she returned to her bright, innocent smile.
“Thanks so much for visiting today! And I’m certain you can become one of us! No, that’s wrong – we’re already kindred spirits!”
“Ah, well, that’s…”
“No no! I’m not telling you to quit Night Dragonfly and join us! We’re just a circle! I want you to participate sometimes, contribute papers if you get good topics! That’s all!”
Ah, that kind.
“If that’s the case, I would be delighted! Thank you!”
“Mm-hmm!”
Scattered applause went up.
Everyone had different tempos and lengths, soft and natural.
“You’ll keep watching right?”
Rita says.
Having come this far, may as well see it all. Though underground so no windows, it must already be late night. I gave up on sleeping today and nodded.
Walking home under the lightening sky, a sturdy fine cloth-wrapped board was gripped in my hand.
–An invitation! We’ll be doing a large-scale investigation soon too! Come for sure! It’s an official one as the Adventurer’s Guild investigation team! If you show Camilla she’ll properly give you permission! Oh…don’t mention my name. She doesn’t like me!
What should I do about this?
Despite coming with no resolve, I witnessed an astonishingly grand tale.
But…somehow, it was fun?
It’s weird for me to say that.
I should be satisfied with my treatment in Night Dragonfly, living fulfilled days.
…Yet what’s this, I wonder?
Despite not properly resting today in preparation for the labyrinth dive, I somehow felt light, like that.
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Thank you for the chapter!
It’s an interesting theory but I haven’t given up on my “secretly mad scientist” theory either.