Rin walked into the light of the newly opened passageway. Following behind her, I quickly examined the new room. There were glowing crystals on the ceiling and bookshelves lining the walls.

“What now?” I inquired, looking toward Rin.

Rin frowned as her eyes focused and scanned the room. She never bothered responding to my question. Maybe she thought it was rhetorical.

This place didn’t exactly look like a room, it was more like a corridor.

A barebones corridor with bookshelves lining the sides and lights on the ceiling leading to a dead end.

There was no empty wall with clues written on it or anything else to indicate a path forward.

Walking to the side, I opened one of the books with one hand and found it completely blank. Despite having words indicating a title on front, the pages of the book were completely empty of writing.

“Why have an empty book?” I furrowed my brow and put the book back, taking another beside it.

Another blank book...

Repeating with a book on the opposite side of the corridor, I opened the new book and found it… blank.

“Why are all these books completely blank?” I scoffed in annoyance, twirling the branch stolen from the tree outside in my other hand. The branch contained enough life-force to steal and test the healing capabilities of the energy on Rin if something happened.

My annoyance at the lack of text in the books was mainly because it was pure laziness on behalf of the trial creator. If these books were filled with knowledge, I might be able to learn more about this universe’s language and common sense.

Instead, they’re completely useless.

…It is that difficulty to buy random books if you’re going to set up some fancy trial?

Regardless of my complaining, Rin had walked to the opposite side of the corridor and was examining the dead end. She tapped rhythmically along the back of the wall whilst examining the sound.

“It’s hollow, there’s a hidden passageway behind this dead end.” Rin announced, looking back and striding over beside me.

“Another puzzle, then? These books are blank.” I nodded, gesturing to the empty book in my hand.

Rin silently analyzed the situation, looking around the room before responding. “The previous clue stated the stars would lead us to hope and light… there is light on the ceiling, but where is the hope?”

“Would there be a book named hope?” I looked at the title of the book in my hands... which ended up being pointless, as I didn’t recognize the word and couldn’t read it.

My statement did cause Rin to turned her attention to the books, walking along the corridor whilst looking at the book’s names.

I began thinking about the word problems in this temple and furrowed my brow.

We had been going through this temple and found nothing dangerous. In Hell Difficulty, that should be impossible. Whilst I believe it unlikely any danger here can actually threaten either of us, there should still be something dangerous in this place.

There are two possibilities.

One… there was danger in the previous rooms but we avoided it by correctly answering the word puzzles.

Two… there’s some condition that must be met before encountering the danger. For example, something dangerous begins to happen after a time-limit.

Personally, I was more inclined to believe the first possibility… but didn’t completely rule out that another condition needed to be fulfilled before something dangerous appeared.

Twirling the branch in my hand as I thought, I walked over to the dead end. It was a regular stone wall. Tapping on it myself, I listened carefully but couldn’t tell whether there was solid rock or air behind it.

The stone echoed with a simple dull noise to my untrained ears. I’ll have to trust Rin’s judgment that it was hollow.

Noticing slight indentations in the stone wall where I’d lightly tapped it, a thought occurred to me.

With my current physical strength, breaking through this wall would be easy enough. Judging by the indentations, it wouldn’t even require much of my strength.

At this point, I could easily break a boulder and crush stones into tiny pieces.

A pure stone wall definitely wouldn’t be able to stop me.

Slightly hesitating, I decided against it.

I wasn’t entirely confident that would lead to a good result. If there were traps aimed to prevent that cheating behavior, I would be causing trouble for no reason.

Forget it.

It wasn’t like we actually needed the treasure in this temple. We were only here to see the sights and travel about. I doubted there would be anything good in this place. Forcefully breaking through the puzzle ran contrary to my original intention of spending time with Rin.

Turning back, I found Rin looking over the various books.

“Find the truth, sort through the lies... Maybe?” Rin stopped in place, muttering to herself and looked back toward the entrance.

Listening to her quiet muttering, I instinctively repeated her words. “Sort through the lies?”

Furrowing my brow, I looked toward the various books in the corridor.

The books are blank and don’t contain the information promised within… In a manner of speaking, a blank book can be considered a lie.

Rin moved through the books, picking up several from the shelves.

“Do we need to sort the books?” I asked, walked over to her.

Unfortunately, even if I was correct, I wouldn’t be able to help her. There were too many books and my understanding of the written language of this universe was limited.

“Truth can be spelled out in a manner of different ways.” Rin showed the books in her hand. “…and some of these books have the letters needed to spell it out.”

“In other words, you need to sort the books to spell… truth?” I looked at the books with surprise.

Whoever created this puzzle must be adept at using double meanings.

That means the initial puzzle was not only meant to inform us of the path to walk, but also the solution to this puzzle.

Rin really is smart.

I had only figured out that I needed to sort the books. I was thinking more along the line of sorting alphabetically similar to a library.

That would’ve taken forever, and likely would have been pointless if Rin is correct.

“It’s only an idea.” Rin shrugged and continued searched through the books.

After Rin had collect six different books, she placed them side-by-side on a shelf.

When the six book were placed next to each other, they began glowing in a bright light. The books had combined into a single book with the word 'Truth' in the universe's language on the front when the light faded.

Rin picked up the book and opened it. “Huh.”

“What?” I leaned forward and looked at it.

The pages in this book were also blank.

… I was left speechless.

Was there a point to all that build up? Another empty book.

Holding the book of truth, Rin looked at the stone floor and declared. “The floor is made of stone.”

I looked at stone floor, wondering if Rin was referring to some important clue. Thinking about the information we’d gather and everything else, I quickly concluded it was pointless and turned to her with a questioning gaze. “Obviously?”

“Try to lie.” Rin shrugged, looking in my direction.

Attempt to lie?

I looked at her suspiciously, before coming up with an innocent lie and resolutely declared. “This world is spherical.”

Huh…

“What the…?” A puzzled expression appeared on my face and turned to Rin for an explanation.

I had intended to say that this world is flat, my brain seemed to automatically filter the word out and I said spherical when I reached that portion of the sentence.

“People can only speak what they believe to be the truth within the confines of five-meters of the book of truth.” Rin explained and shut the book, before adding. “It only works whilst open.”

“What a useless artifact.” I snorted.

If you know the conditions, the artifact zone of truth can be easily avoided. You can simply not speak or tell partial truths.

“It’s not useless… but certainly not effective in combat.” Rin stated and packed the book away in her bag.

“Well, you’re right.” I freely admitted that Rin was correct.

The artifact did have some usefulness. It could at least confirm that someone believes a statement to be true and they aren’t purposefully lying to you.

Unfortunately, in Hell Difficulty, the majority of people couldn’t be bothered to lie.

Duke is too arrogant, believing that lying to ants is pointless.

Stanley is too kind to lie and Tracy was similar unlikely to lie with her heroic personality.

Rin is too indifferent to bother lying about most things.

That basically only means only Hansoo and myself are going to bother lying… but neither of have anything important to hide.

It’s not a bad artifact.

Unfortunately, the book of truth is useless in Hell Difficulty. The people in this zone are simply too unlikely to lie.

“Are we leaving then? Is there anything else?” I inquired, looking toward her.

Rin looked around the room with an indifferent shrug, “The hope referred to in the previous clue should also be this book. The passageway beyond this corridor is likely a trap or something similar.”

Well… I’m glad I didn’t forcefully breakthrough the wall. If the passageway exists as a trap, my attempts to help would’ve only caused Rin trouble.

“Does that mean this is the only artifact in this temple?” I asked curiously.

“Perhaps not, but it’s likely the best artifact.” Rin indicated for us to begin walking out of the room.

I followed beside her as we walked back to the entrance. Exploring this temple had gone so smoothly I could hardly believe it.

There were no traps or danger, and we only had solve some puzzles and obtained the artifact.

“You really haven’t been here before?” I quizzically asked.

It had gone so smoothly that we’d run into effectively nothing dangerous. We’d basically collected the main artifact in the temple without running into a single trap. I could hardly believe that Rin solved all those word puzzles on the spot.

“Maybe I have, it’s been too long. I don’t remember every temple I’ve explored.” Rin shook her head and added. “I don’t specifically remember exploring this temple, and certainly hadn’t acquired the book of truth in the past.”

“I see…” I lowered my head, thinking about her statement.

Indeed.

Despite only going through only a handful of temples before, I only remember a few of them and not everything in them. Rin has explored more and is liable to forgetting about a specific temples. Especially if nothing of interest was found inside the temple at that time.

I suppose it doesn’t really matter whether she explored it before.

“Anywhere you want to head whilst we’re touring about?” I inquired as we reached the exit.

Rin thought about the situation and replied, “Besides the fruit from the world tree, there are few other artifacts worth collecting.”

“Are they on the way?” I inquired with curiosity.

Honestly, I had almost no idea where the majority of temples were in this zone. I don’t know if they were well-hidden or I’m simply unlucky and cannot find them whilst wandering about randomly.

“Not really.” Rin sighed and shook her head.

“Shame.” I shrugged and looked toward the world tree in the distance.

While you couldn’t see the world tree from within the forest under normal circumstances, the underground temple created a type of clearing with only smaller plants and allowed you to see the gigantic tree in the distance.