Having quieted me down, the Earth Sage looked around at everyone and asked,

"Do you know how Tantalus came to be?"

Oh, a question we'd already studied. I promptly stepped forward.

"We just went over this! Tyr, tell her!"

"Of course I know. Was it not because of the Overlord's massacre? There are several theories as to why it formed, but Mother Earth's wrath is the prevailing explanation."

Having answered, Tyr looked at me as though expecting praise. But that would have to wait, because the Earth Sage shook her head.

"No! Not the bottomless pit. Tantalus."

"Tantalus? Do you mean this building beneath our feet?"

"Indeed."

"... That, I do not know. They offered to escort me, so I left them to it. When I opened my eyes, I was here."

Naturally, nobody knew. Tantalus had been built inside the bottomless pit, but its history wasn't particularly long. Besides, you couldn't call the people here well-informed even as a lie.

The Earth Sage, the only person in the room who knew the answer, began to speak.

"After the bottomless pit laid the land to waste, the people realized that Mother Earth, too, was a stern deity capable of anger, and began to fear her. With impostors posing as buriers roaming everywhere as well, people gradually came to shun her faith.

"To restore our faith's standing, we had to quell Mother Earth's wrath and undo the bottomless pit. Thus, I negotiated with the Military State."

After its successful coup, the Military State planned massive civil engineering projects to punish criminals while also settling public unrest.

However, it lacked the know-how to undertake construction on that scale. At that rate, the work would clearly amount to burying people alive in the name of construction.

Even the Military State couldn't kill that many people. There was the Overlord's precedent, for one thing, and it would be a loss of manpower in its own right.

Worshipping efficiency rather than loyalty, the Military State made the easiest—and hardest—decision.

It gathered the followers of Mother Earth, who had been living scattered and without anyone to rally around.

"Our agreement was that, if we assisted with its construction projects, it would build us a 'lid' to cover the bottomless pit."

In an age when most people believed in the Sky God and the Saintess, colluding with Mother Earth's faith went against both public sentiment and other nations.

Of course, the Military State wasn't a country that cared about such trifles.

Still, the persecuted followers of Mother Earth wouldn't have simply flocked to its banner. Not without sufficient bait.

"Erasing the bottomless pit was our shared, cherished wish. To bury the buriers' karmic burden, believers gathered from across the world. They trusted me and followed my lead."

And now the truth had come to light: the bait the Military State had used to gather Mother Earth's followers.

"So Tantalus was originally supposed to cover the bottomless pit like a lid?"

"Indeed. Tantalus was originally built as a lid to cover the bottomless pit and seal away Mother Earth's wrath. Just as one puts a lid on a boiling pot, I thought concealing it would calm her anger... Foolishly, that was what I believed."

Well, when a hole is hard to fill, covering it is the first thing that comes to mind. An ordinary idea anyone might have.

It was just that this particular hole was so enormous that nobody had dared attempt it.

Even the same idea could be feasible or not depending on the scale. The bottomless pit was too wide and too deep, so nobody had ever considered covering it. They had neither the resources nor the technology to build a lid that size.

... Except for the Earth Sage before us.

She continued her explanation calmly.

"Throughout the Military State's five years of major construction, we all worked ourselves to the bone, and many of our brothers and sisters fell. Even so, we joined forces for our lifelong wish. Brothers, sisters, sons, daughters—we all stood united and continued our grueling labor. Once we had completed the work we promised, we made our demand of the Military State, and it kept its word."

And so, they had made a structure of blessed concrete wider than the diameter of the bottomless pit itself.

Though she herself had accomplished that tremendous feat, the Earth Sage explained it as dryly as if she were reading from a book.

"Once the lid was complete, the Magic General, one of the Six Generals, personally moved it over the bottomless pit and covered it. That dizzying void, so vast that merely looking at it made one's knees tremble, vanished beneath the lid. Believing we had fulfilled our lifelong wish, we wept tears of joy. It seemed we had finally righted an ancient wrong and put everything back where it belonged..."

It seemed. Her voice caught there, cutting her account short.

I knew what had happened afterward.

I'd read it from a certain Resistance engineer.

"The moment you set foot on it, the ground sank into the bottomless pit. Its curse wasn't something a mere lid could cover."

"... You seem to have heard the story from someone. Well, it was no secret at the time."

Recalling one of the few devastating failures in her life, the Earth Sage gave a dispirited acknowledgment.

"... Precisely. When I took my first step, it sank by that much. The despair I felt then was like the ground giving way beneath my feet."

Now that I had handled the difficult part for her, her words flowed freely.

"How great their disappointment, their despair must have been. How sorry and ashamed I was that five years of toil had brought them nothing in return. I had nothing to say to the companions who had trusted and followed me..."

Her spirits sank. Having led those persecuted people, she felt an enormous responsibility for that failure.

Her parched voice was low and dark, like settled dust.

"Deeply disappointed, everyone scattered far and wide, leaving me alone to dwell on that terrible failure. Yet it is only upon reaching a sheer cliff that the next vista comes into view. After gazing into the bottomless pit for a long time, I realized something. What we had covered it with was not a lid, but land. And that land was the key to reaching the source of the bottomless pit."

The concrete structure should have fallen into the bottomless pit and continued falling forever through imaginary space.

Strangely, though, it didn't sink unless someone set foot on it. Unlike ordinary objects, it hadn't fallen.

But land nobody could stand on was useless, so nobody had considered that fact important.

Except for the Earth Sage, who couldn't let go of her failure.

"To reach the bottom of the bottomless pit, humans had to set foot on this land and live upon it."

A space rendered meaningless by its infinity.

For it to gain meaning, humans had to set foot within it and build a history. As people were born, grew, died, and lived out their lives on that land, Tantalus drew closer to the source of the bottomless pit.

That was why the Earth Sage needed people to live in Tantalus.

"To take responsibility for my failure and reach the source of the bottomless pit, I intended to live here alone. Until this land reached the depths below, or until this body was laid to rest and buried."

"But isn't that far too open-ended?"

I drew out her answers with questions here and there.

"The Military State said the same. It called the task far too open-ended and proposed using this place as a prison rather than wasting such a valuable ability. It had plenty of prisoners who deserved to die, it said, and would make this a hell in which to confine them. That way, even their lives would contribute."

"Ah, so that's why the Military State kept cramming people in here."

The Earth Sage nodded bitterly.

"Putting the Military State's prisoners in Mother Earth's hell. In a sense, it was truly... sacrilegious. Yet I accepted the proposal. Purely out of my own selfish desire, I thrust prisoners into Mother Earth's prison rather than a human one..."

Mother Earth had created the bottomless pit. It had become a literal hell, punishing those who defied her.

And so, all this time, people had regarded Tantalus as nothing more than a prison. Hell, prison—the words even had a similar ring in Korean.

Now for the surprising part.

The man-made Tantalus wasn't actually a prison.

It was a structure meant to pass itself off as land, to reach the source of the bottomless pit.

It was humanity's deception of a god.

"Then you're the one who built Tantalus, Earth Sage?"

"To be precise, the Military State designed it to make use of this land. I merely made the proposal."

"That's news to me. I thought the Military State built a prison in the bottomless pit because it was insane."

I'd thought its tech tree looked strange. So it had been payment for a promise. Well, no matter how little else you had to do, you wouldn't build a prison underground. Of course not.

"Those details were confidential. Your misunderstanding is quite understandable."

She let out a long breath. Apparently thirsty, the Earth Sage drained a glass of water before continuing.

"The Military State hauled this land back up and built a prison, and I entered its service to repay the cost. On my own, I spent over ten years working on construction projects large and small. Afterward, I wandered the world in search of a way to restore the bottomless pit to what it once was."

Her voice gradually grew more excited. As her story approached the present, her face brightened. She looked like someone whose present was better than her past, and who expected her future to be better still.

"Then one day, word of a prison break reached my ears, and I came to examine Tantalus again. And I became certain."

With her cherished wish within reach, the Earth Sage's thin frame radiated a desire like an erupting volcano.

"That it had reached far enough into the source. That I could now erase the bottomless pit."

A story told with feeling carried power. Now, nobody dared doubt her words.

They all understood that she had the strength, had put in the effort, and had found the way.

The bottomless pit's disappearance was now a foregone conclusion.

"Wait! What happens to us if you erase the bottomless pit? Won't we disappear along with it?"

On that point, the Earth Sage gave a firm assurance.

"No. Only the bottomless pit will disappear. This land will therefore return to its original form: the great hole in which the Overlord intended to bury three hundred thousand people, before the bottomless pit came into being."

"Hmm! In that case! No harm done!"

As the satisfied undying one nodded emphatically, Callis hurriedly asked,

"How did the Military State respond to your visit, Brigadier General?"

"Respond? I do not know. I merely notified them and entered this place."

Her professed ignorance actually reassured Callis. If the Earth Sage had simply announced her arrival and entered without any advance warning, they would at least have time before the Military State could respond. The more unexpected the Earth Sage's actions, the better Callis's chances of escape.

This time, I asked a question.

"Then when will you erase the bottomless pit?"

"I must recover my strength, and I need to inspect this land a little. I intend to act the day after tomorrow."

A declaration that we could leave this infernal bottomless pit in just two days.

At those words, joy welled up inside me before I knew it.

Not once in my life had I ever thought I liked this damned world. Yet the thought of going up and basking in sunlight suddenly made me ache for the surface.

The cool breeze brushing past my ears, the sunlight scolding my lazy body, even the scenery stretching into the distance.

I'd never thought of myself as the type to enjoy a view. Had I actually been yearning for those things that had been with me my entire life?

"Yaaay! We're getting out!"

I made no attempt to hide my excitement.

"We're going outside anyway! None of this matters anymore! Earth Sage! Eat everything here!"

The Earth Sage politely declined.

"Even if you offer it all, I am a small person, and there is only so much room inside me. I am full. Might I suggest you take your time eating the rest?"

"Oh, no! We're escaping the day after tomorrow. We can't finish all the remaining food in that little time! We'll make tomorrow's food fresh tomorrow! Today's leftovers are going into Tantalus's official slop bucket!"

'Throwing away the fruits of the earth in front of a follower of Mother Earth...? Does he not realize how rude that is?'

As the Earth Sage frowned slightly, I called for Tantalus's official slop bucket.

Dogs had always been entitled to the leftovers. There was a reason even a high minister's dog had a glossy coat.

"Azi!"

"Woof? Me?"

Azi approached with her head tilted.

I set a plate piled with meat on an empty part of the table. Then, pushing it forward with the flourish of a gambler going all in, I said,

"That's right! Eat all of this today!"

"Woof! What's gotten into you!"

Azi immediately sat down, buried her face in the plate, and began smacking her lips. Tasting the clean flavor of freshly cooked meat, she cried out happily.

"Tomorrow! Woof! The sun's rising in the west!"

"I don't know where you learned that saying, but this food isn't from the sun. It's from this lady! Be grateful!"

"Woof-leader! Thank you!"

"... Eat your fill, King of Dogs."

Unable to bring herself to scold a dog, the Earth Sage merely nodded.