While DDA was desperately searching for the BOSS room, Akimi and the others had already begun solving the puzzle based on the information provided by the key.
Apart from Thinker, Yulier, and Akimi's group, no one else knew anything about the key.
Thinker had entrusted both the key and the exploration entirely to them, while he himself remained in the Black Iron Palace, pretending nothing had happened.
The information provided by the key was simple: at the outermost edges of the 39th floor in the east, west, south, and north, there were four ruin chambers.
Inside each chamber was a different puzzle game, and only by solving all four puzzles could they unlock the hidden area at the center of the 39th floor.
What's more, the puzzles were linked together in sequence and had to be solved in order: east, west, south, and north. The key they had was specifically the item needed to open the eastern ruins.
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Inside the eastern ruins, the three of them were working on the puzzle.
The interior was the same as always—moss-covered, cracked stone walls, no different from other ruins they had encountered before.
The room wasn't large, at most twenty to thirty square meters.
At its farthest end stood a raised platform, slightly higher than the surrounding floor.
In its center was an altar-like structure about the size of a small round table, with seven rectangular grooves irregularly arranged on top.
The "altar" was covered with twisting, branching lines, like an unevenly shaped cube.
On the wall behind the altar were seven rings, connected together by soft red ribbons.
"This puzzle isn't as hard as I expected—in fact, it's way too simple."
Akimi thought for a moment, then shrugged at the seven interlinked rings hanging from the wall.
Kirito and Asuna also nodded in agreement.
The rule of the seven-ring puzzle was straightforward: they had to separate and collect all seven rings with at most two splits, but each time, they could only remove one ring
(first take one, then two, then so on).
"This is really no challenge at all… just split it into three groups of one, two, and four. First, take the single ring…"
While explaining, Akimi pulled up the puzzle's operation interface and began making moves.
"Then, return the single ring and take the pair. Next, after taking one ring again, return all three you're holding and take the four connected rings… and finally, pick up the one and the two in order. OK, that's it."
Once Akimi set the final step, the seven rings dropped one by one into the grooves on the altar.
After a short pause, they began to shift slightly—so subtly it was barely noticeable.
When the movement stopped, the rings sank into the platform, and the etched lines began glowing faintly.
With the sound of gears meshing and turning, the lines widened, and the platform shattered into hundreds of pieces.
At the center of the broken platform rested a plain-looking stone box, about twenty centimeters long on each side.
Its surface was bare, nothing special at all—but in truth, it was only meant to hold the quest item for the next stage.
Akimi reached out and carefully lifted the lid.
Inside floated a key identical to the one Thinker had given them, labeled by the system as "Key · No. 2"—presumably because the original was called "Key · No. 1."
Still, it was worth mocking—why would such an important item be given such a lazy name?
In a traditional MMO, shouldn't it be something like "Key of XX"?
But that didn't matter now.
Next, it was time to head for the western ruins.
"This… is this really related to the BOSS room puzzle? The difficulty's way too low—it doesn't even compare to the puzzles we ran into back on the 6th floor."
Kirito said this while holding "Key · No. 5," looking a little puzzled.
It wasn't that he was looking down on the puzzles inside these ruin chambers, but compared to the 6th floor, where even staying at an inn required solving a Sudoku-level puzzle, these were nothing.
They felt more like children's brain teasers, completely unworthy of being called "the key item to finding the BOSS room."
Of course, it was also possible they had nothing to do with the BOSS room at all.
Akimi and Asuna were also surprised.
So far, across all four ruins in the east, west, south, and north, none of the puzzles had any real difficulty.
Either the solution was obvious at a glance, or it took no more than a minute or two of thought to solve.
"Something's off…"
Just then, they received another message from Argo—
"Kiri-bou, Aki-bou, and Asu-chan, I've got a lead on the BOSS room… but DDA's chasing me hard, I don't have time to explain. Meet up tonight at Aki-bou's place. That's it."
Kirito stared blankly at the message, dumbfounded.
"Huh? Isn't the clue to the BOSS room supposed to be these ruin puzzles?"
But almost immediately, he caught on.
"Wait—did Thinker trick us?"
Akimi frowned but stayed silent.
He felt that Thinker probably hadn't lied to them—or rather, both they and Thinker had been tricked.
Someone had deliberately set this up, a trap designed to stall them.
But there was still something strange.
If someone had gone this far to set a trap, they should have known about Argo's abilities, and that Argo would never keep crucial intel from Akimi's group.
Meaning, no matter what, this trap wouldn't hold them up for long.
So why go through all this trouble?
A plan, layered step by step, pulling in ALF, DDA, and Akimi's team, with PoH lurking in the shadows… what on earth was really going on?
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