Perdes greeted him warmly, but there was no answer.
Byblos looked at Perdes with a slightly frowning eyebrow as if he found it a bit strange, then asked his disciples standing behind him.
“You said that guy definitely went into the Labyrinth, right?”
“Yes, yes. That’s right.”
The oldest disciple answered on behalf of the others. He too was looking at Perdes with quite surprised eyes.
“I personally took the man to the first archive room.”
“But how did that guy get here?”
"That..."
The disciple, at a loss for words, closed his mouth.
As the name suggests, Labyrinth, there has never been a single case of someone entering Labyrinth unknowingly and being able to escape on their own.
Each time, he had to be rescued by Byblos or an old disciple who was the only one who knew the way.
Of course, he didn't save the thieves who came in after his research materials.
Anyway, when Perdes suddenly appeared there, he was very embarrassed.
If he had simply seen him go in, he would have thought he had been loitering around the entrance and then come out again, but that wasn't the case.
“What? How are you here?”
“Well, well.”
The other disciples also looked at each other and muttered as if they could not understand.
Byblos looked at Perdes again and asked.
“How did you get out of the Labyrinth?”
“Is that place called Labyrinth? Well named.”
As the name suggests, it is like a labyrinth, said Perdes, and Byblos's brow furrowed.
Because somehow he felt like Perdes was teasing him.
“That’s not my question.”
“Hmm? Oh, I asked you how you got out of there.”
Perdes nodded as if he had finally remembered, then took something out of his pocket.
“I used this to get out.”
What Perdes took out of his pocket was a white spool of thread.
“You used that to get out?”
“Does that make sense? Are you kidding us?”
The disciples were dumbfounded, but Byblos was different.
“...”
Byblos, who was looking seriously at the sack that Perdes was holding, closed his eyes tightly and then opened them.
“He tied a thread to the entrance and used it as a landmark when he returned.”
Perdes laughed.
“As expected, you recognized me right away.”
"Of course."
Byblos snorted, crossing his arms.
“I wish you wouldn’t compare me to those idiots.”
The faces of the disciples who had become fools in an instant turned bright red.
What made it even more embarrassing was that they still didn't fully understand the purpose of failure.
“You didn’t expect to enter the Labyrinth, did you? And you don’t always carry failures in your pockets, do you? ...Where did you get failures and come up with the idea to use them as landmarks?”
“Failure is borrowed for a moment from the disciples of the great sage.”
At those words, Byblos turned to his disciples.
But the disciples just looked like they didn't understand it.
Some still debate the utility of failure.
How can one be so stupid?
“Tsk tsk.”
Byblos felt sorry for his disciple, so he clicked his tongue openly.
Perdes continued speaking.
“The brown-haired man there said that he was going to the Master’s archives from now on and that it would be an honor since only a few people who were not your disciples had ever entered there, so I had a feeling that something was up.”
You said something like that?
As Byblos opened his eyes wide and looked up, the brown-haired man, his old disciple, avoided his gaze, sweating profusely.
“For those who work in this field, the data room is a very special place, like a heart. But I couldn’t help but think that there must be some strange ulterior motive behind taking me, who is not a disciple, there.”
“Perhaps he did you a favor because he liked you?”
“No way. These are the people who glared at me as if they were going to eat me from the moment they first saw me, so how could they suddenly become friendly towards me?”
They thought he didn't know because he was always smiling, but he did.
The disciples looked at Perdes in surprise.
“So I made an excuse to go to the bathroom, slipped out for a moment, hid, and secretly eavesdropped on their conversation.”
“Oh, so...!”
When one of the disciples let out a gasp as he recalled the incident, Byblos glared at him fiercely.
The disciple flinched as if he had been hit.
“Then he started talking about how he would leave me alone in the data room, that I would get lost and cry like a child, and that he was sad that he couldn’t see me in person.”
When Perdes heard that story, he had a feeling that the place he was going to from now on was a very complicated maze-like place.
“I can’t say I won’t go now, so I thought about how I could avoid getting lost, and that’s when I came up with the idea of a thread. If you tie a thin thread to the entrance and go in, and roll it up and trace it back when you come back, you won’t get lost.”
That's how you use failure.
So that's what it was.
The disciples, who finally understood what had happened, were amazed.
Some people sneered at him, saying that he was just being unlucky and using tricks.
Byblos was equally impressed.
Although he did not show his emotions as openly as his disciples, he looked at Perdes with a completely different gaze than when he first met him.
Perdes noticed the change in gaze and smiled inwardly.
He promises to never let this hard-earned opportunity slip away.
“I guessed it when I overheard their conversation, but you put me there to make me suffer, didn’t you?”
Perdes sighed deeply, his expression looking terribly hurt.
“I said I was helping you out of pure kindness...”
“Ahem.”
The disciples, fooled by that face and with pricked consciences, turned their heads away and cleared their throats.
The oldest disciple, who had insisted on putting Perdes in the Labyrinth, watched Byblos, who was glaring at him fiercely, fidgeting.
“Master, I...”
“It’s noisy.”
“...”
The disciple's mouth closed at those words as cold as frost.
“By the way, I have finished organizing the books that he asked me to do.”
“Pour oil on fire,” Perdes added with a grin.
At this, the old disciple's face turned pale, like someone who had not been able to eat a bowl of soup.
"Ha."
Byblos looked back at Perdes, sighing deeply and rubbing his pounding head.
Although his first impression of Perdes was that he was rude, his cleverness changed his impression of him, but that didn't mean he liked him.
But he couldn't get angry or ignore it like before.
Because his own disciple had been very rude to him.
Since this also happened in his lab, it was right for him to take responsibility as a teacher and the owner of the lab.
“My disciples have been very rude to you. I will apologize on their behalf, so please do not take this matter to heart.”
“I’d like to do that too, but I don’t think it’ll be easy. If I hadn’t tied the string to the entrance and come out, I’d probably be wandering around a dark labyrinth, crying by now.”
As Perdes wrapped his arms around him, muttering something as if the mere thought was horrifying, Byblos scratched his head in annoyance.
It was because he sensed that Perdes had another ulterior motive.
“What do you want?”
Byblos didn't like asking questions in circles.
When Byblos laid out the board, Perdes answered as if he had been waiting.
“I have a favor to ask of you, Great Sage.”
A familiar sentence he's heard many times.
'I guess so.'
Byblos, who guessed what Perdes would ask, shrugged his shoulders and spoke somewhat arrogantly.
“If you want to become my disciple, decline in advance. I have no intention of taking on any more disciples.”
“I have no intention of becoming your disciple either.”
If it were anyone else, he would have thought they were lying to save their pride, but when Perdes said it, it sounded sincere.
'No way.'
You are coming as my disciple, so there is no way you are sincere.
Everyone, even royalty, begs and pleads to be his disciple.
So he wanted to think that he was mistaken, but no matter how he looked at Perdes' expression, it looked genuine.
You dare reject me?
Byblos' pride was hurt, but he couldn't show it because of his pride, so he suffered inside and asked as calmly as possible.
“Then what do you want to ask for?”
“I discovered a peculiar magic circle.”
When the story of the magic circle came up, Byblos's sullen expression changed in an instant.
His eyes, filled with curiosity, sparkled sharply.
“If it’s a special magic circle, what kind of thing is it?”
“I’d like to show you in a quiet place. Is that possible?”
It meant that the two of them wanted to talk alone.
What on earth could possibly be causing this?
“Come this way.”
Byblos, whose curiosity was piqued, willingly took Perdes to his laboratory.
For someone who had the title of Great Sage, his lab was quite small.
“Come on, show me.”
Instead of answering, Perdes picked up a piece of paper and pen from his desk.
And he drew the magic circle of the problem he had seen before on paper.
Byblos looked down at the paper with curious eyes.
As the black lines connected, they gradually took the shape of a magic circle.
When Perdes had drawn half of the magic circle, Byblos screamed in surprise.
“Stop it now!”
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