The locks.
Honestly, I should have thought of it from the very beginning.
The Treasure Keeper had been carrying six different keys.
The only thing 'locked' in this space was that single Golden Chest.
But there wasn't a single visible locking mechanism on the chest itself.
Which meant it was reasonable to assume the six keyholes were hidden somewhere.
And if somewhere meant anywhere—
— *There are so many places to hide in there…!*
It had to be somewhere inside this pile of gold coins.
Three had already been used, so those would be open. Kill the Treasure Keeper, find the remaining three locked ones, insert the keys—and the chest would open.
"…"
And right there.
I thought of one more thing.
*"The locks are like your own body, so you're keeping them well hidden, right?"*
⟨But of course! As expected, the Inspector knows all!⟩
*'As expected.'*
My hypothesis was confirmed.
I'd used the idiom 'like your own body'—meaning something as precious as your own flesh—but it wouldn't have taken it as a figure of speech.
Because it wasn't a metaphor. It was literal.
The locks were part of the Treasure Keeper's physical body.
My reasoning was as follows.
It had said that over a hundred intruders had killed the Treasure Keeper before.
Yet only one person—a man said to have been wearing a hood—had ever opened the chest.
Wasn't that an impossible ratio?
What could have been so difficult about it?
If you'd already killed the Treasure Keeper, you'd have all the time in the world to search for the locks.
The reason was simple.
*'It was a time attack.'*
Monster corpses in the tower vanish within a few dozen seconds.
If the locks were part of the Treasure Keeper's body, everything clicked into place.
Even if you killed the Treasure Keeper, if the keys and locks disappeared along with it, there'd be no way to open the Golden Chest. Most people probably never even knew the locks existed.
*'Good.'*
I no longer needed to attempt any forced persuasion.
The plan was complete.
*'Find the locks, then kill the Treasure Keeper and use the keys directly.'*
Clean.
And I already had a method for finding the locks.
The Treasure Keeper spoke again in that childlike, excited voice.
⟨Then let us begin the game at once!⟩
*'Hide-and-seek.'*
If it hadn't proposed this game, how would I have ever confirmed the locks existed?
Even if I'd known about the locks, I couldn't begin to imagine how I'd have gotten permission to dig through the gold pile right in front of it.
It was an idea I never could have come up with on my own. The last time I played hide-and-seek was more than ten years ago.
It was a very good thing I'd listened to every opinion on the Gallery.
"Sure! I'll hide first!"
When I said that, the Treasure Keeper covered its face completely with all six of its massive hands.
I immediately turned and headed in the opposite direction.
I flung myself onto a pile of gold coins in a far corner.
*Shhhhhlink!*
The sensation of metal enveloped my entire body.
This was the moment every Gallery member's dream came true.
I was swimming in a field of gold coins.
More accurately—diving.
I began digging into the floor with both hands.
I sharpened the sensitivity in my fingertips.
*'What shape would it be?'*
I imagined what the locks might look like and searched every inch around me.
It felt impossibly vast.
This cavern was enormous, and the gold coins were beyond counting.
⟨I shall begin searching now!⟩
It had started.
I felt the vibration of the Treasure Keeper stomping toward me, having finished counting.
*'So it's not going to use a detection pulse, huh…'*
That would've saved me the trouble of finding the locks myself.
*Thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack!!!*
The sound of six hands excavating through the gold pile like a fleet of excavators.
Twenty minutes later.
It was terrifyingly close.
*Flash!*
The gold coins covering my face were swept aside all at once, and a massive form appeared.
⟨Found you! Ha ha ha ha!⟩
"Ack! You found me already?"
Faster than I'd expected.
*'Isn't it a little too good at finding things…'*
I pulled ten thousand gold from my inventory and scattered it across the floor.
"Here, your prize money."
⟨Ohhhhh! My deepest gratitude!⟩
*'I just threw it on the floor and it's not even counting…'*
As it had said earlier, it seemed to be planning to tally everything after I left.
The Treasure Keeper shuddered all over and bounced up and down.
To my human aesthetic sensibilities, it was a visual shock—but judging purely by the behavior, it looked exactly like a small child.
⟨This is so much fun, Inspector!⟩
*'……'*
Well, for now, it was good that it was having that much fun.
The longer the game continued, the longer my justification for rummaging through the gold would hold.
But.
*'I think I set the stakes a bit wrong.'*
Calling too high a bet was the problem, if there was one.
I'd heard there were 8.1 billion gold coins in this cavern and tried to match the scale—which turned out to be a miscalculation.
The gold remaining in my inventory right now was roughly 590,000.
If I lost ten thousand each time, I had fewer than sixty chances left.
No—wait.
That didn't matter.
*'If it's not counting, I can just hand over whatever amount I want, right?'*
And honestly, the real game started now.
My turn as the seeker was what actually mattered.
Because I'd set the time limit at three hours.
"My turn to search now?"
⟨Yes! I shall hide!⟩
The Treasure Keeper answered in an excited voice and turned its massive body around.
*Boom, boom! Shhhhhhhhhh!*
The thunderous sound of it digging through the gold pile to find a hiding spot.
I faced the wall of the Golden Chest and covered my eyes with both hands.
The vibrations eventually stopped.
"All hidden? Here I come!"
The moment I turned around, I ran in the exact opposite direction from where the sound had come from.
And I mapped out the floor of this enormous cavern in my head.
To conduct a process-of-elimination search.
*'Divide the circle into pizza-slice sectors.'*
Honestly, I'd have preferred to just sweep from upper-left to lower-right in a nice clean grid.
But that would raise suspicion. The Treasure Keeper was large enough that I wouldn't need to search every inch to find it.
I had to run around erratically, pretending to look for it, while dividing my path into irregular fan-shaped sectors.
I divided the space that way and buried myself in a gold pile.
*Shhhlink.*
First, I felt along the floor with my hands, one patch at a time.
This vast space.
The absurd mountain of gold coins.
I felt slightly dizzy.
But I'd prepared myself for this from the start.
And.
*'Honestly, even 300 hours wouldn't be enough to search all this by hand.'*
I already had a method in mind.
*'Copy what the Treasure Keeper did.'*
Detection pulse.
When that vibration had swept through the room, I hadn't just been standing there with my mouth open.
My Sense stat was currently 85.
A superhuman who had long since left the realm of ordinary people far behind.
I closed both eyes.
I plunged my palms deep into the gold pile.
And with a faint coating of mana around my fingertips, I gave my hands a light tremor.
*Ripple. Ripple.*
Then I rotated my circle, imagining the Treasure Keeper's pulse.
*Hmmmmm—*
A faint vibration of mana extended from my fingertips and spread through the gold coins.
I felt it.
The echo of the vibration bouncing back off the coins and returning to me.
In my mind, tens of thousands of small, round outlines began to form like a pointillist painting.
*'It's working…'*
The range and performance were incomparably smaller than the Treasure Keeper's, but the imitation had succeeded.
I set up a quick experiment on the spot to confirm it.
I pulled a half-eaten snack bag from my inventory and buried it deep beneath the gold pile.
Then I stepped back three paces and tapped the floor.
*Tap. Tap.*
*Hmmmmm—*
Within the returning echo, amid the countless round outlines, the crumpled shape of a plastic wrapper was registered.
"Good."
With this method, I could find the shape of anything that wasn't a gold coin—without seeing it, without scraping through everything by hand.
*Tap. Tap. Tap.*
I swam through the gold, vibrating my hands without pause.
I erased the map in my head as I explored each sector in an irregular path.
Three hours passed in a flash.
"Can't find you! You win!"
⟨Ha ha ha! I have won!⟩
When I surrendered, it burst up through the gold pile from far away and cheered.
Not a single sign of boredom.
*'As expected.'*
Three hours was nothing to it. Not even close to boring.
This was a creature that had stood alone for five hundred years, after all.
Anyway, here was my tally.
*'Ten percent.'*
The area I'd finished searching up to just now.
Originally, I'd thought covering five percent in three hours would be more than enough.
But as I got the hang of it, the range of my pulse widened, and the search speed turned out to be twice as fast as expected.
*'At this rate, I can search the entire cavern in ten turns.'*
My heart was pounding. For different reasons than that creature's—but pounding all the same.
After that, the game settled into the routine I'd designed.
Its turn as seeker.
I hid in some obvious, sloppy spot as quickly as possible.
Got found immediately.
"Ah, caught again. Here, ten thousand gold prize money."
I scattered coins on the floor.
It cheered and bounced up and down.
Then my turn as seeker again.
It was about halfway through.
*Tap.*
*Hmmmmm—*
*'…!'*
My closed eyes snapped open.
The waveform of the vibration returning through my fingertips delivered a sudden jolt of wrongness.
A sea of repeating small, round outlines.
And right in the middle of it, completely out of place—something rectangular.
*'Found it.'*
I held my breath and dug through the gold pile, feeling directly for that spot.
My fingers touched something.
I pulled it out and checked.
*'This is a lock…!'*
It was exactly the right size to match the keys the Treasure Keeper had been carrying. A long, rectangular slot was carved deep into it.
And it was locked.
*'That's the first one…'*
I wanted to plant some kind of marker here, but I couldn't do that.
Instead, I opened my hologram and recorded the coordinates in a Gallery post.
Then I resumed the search without delay.
*'Second one!'*
Near the tail end of the same turn, I found the second lock.
But this one had a twisted latch.
One of the three keys that had been used—this was where it had been opened.
An already-unlocked lock.
And so the turns kept passing.
The routine repeated.
Get caught, scatter money, lie back down and send out the pulse.
And finally, my seventh turn as seeker.
The total number of recorded locks: five.
Three open locks.
Two locked locks.
The unexplored area was now barely ten percent remaining.
The next turn would definitely turn up the last locked one.
And then came the Treasure Keeper's seeker turn.
I shoved myself into a shallow, obvious spot.
All I was thinking about was getting caught fast, scattering the money, finding the last keyhole, and driving a Death Mark into it.
The very moment I settled into a comfortable position buried in the gold pile—
*Krrrrrrreeeeeek—!! Shhhhhhhhhhhh—*
The sound of gold coins being pushed aside.
I turned my head toward the source of the sound.
"…!"
The door.
The door was opening, pushing the gold coins out of the way.
[Warning. An intruder has reached this floor.]
[Defense battle commencing.]
"……Now?"
I couldn't believe it.
The timing was too early.
If they'd come straight here the moment the floor-60 blockade ended, it was technically possible—but that was the theoretical fastest speed.
And if they'd cut through the monsters that quickly to get here, the intruder was strong.
Considerably stronger than the Blood Knight, without question.
I thought that, and stayed still, buried in the gold pile.
*'For now, let me just hide here and get a read on the situation…'*
Floor 100 wasn't under my jurisdiction yet.
*'Treasure Keeper… you've got this!'*