Having accepted the bet, Zenita bombarded me with questions about the book.
She must have had several reasons for her confidence. The belief that she knew the book better than I did, the assumption that I hadn't read it properly, and above all, the loophole in this bet.
Zenita had declared that I would only win if I answered "all" the questions correctly. However, she didn't specify the total number of questions.
She could come up with an endless number of questions until I got one wrong. In other words, there was no way she could lose under normal circumstances.
“……Question number 48.”
However, not to brag or anything,
“What is the weakness of the Gorgo sisters?”
“There isn’t one. You won't catch me with such a clumsy trick question.”
I could see beads of sweat forming on Zenita’s forehead. By now, she was blurting out questions before even thinking them through.
She had long run out of pre-prepared questions and was scrambling to come up with new ones on the spot, drawing from whatever she could remember from the book. Naturally, the difficulty and quality of the questions continued to plummet.
‘And of all books, she chose this one for our bet.’
The book I had just finished reading, the one staked on our bet, was about myths and monsters.
It was a topic of great importance and interest to me, especially since I had to clear the game "Etius." And it seemed my interest wasn't unfounded in this world either.
Zenita was already at a significant disadvantage with our bet involving weaving and crafting, but to choose a topic I was passionate about? She must have thought the odds were in her favor, but that was just her wishful thinking.
“Qu- Question number 50.”
Zenita grabbed her head in frustration.
To anyone watching, it would seem like I was the one being tormented, but I was the one answering the questions. It was rather inconvenient that the question-asker was the one racking her brain.
“Question number 49……”
“If you can’t think of anything, just give up. I wouldn’t want to burden you with such a difficult task, Zenita.”
“A-Are you serious? Ha! No way! I’m not giving up!”
Honestly, it was getting a bit tiresome.
What made it even more tiring was Zenita’s strangely earnest personality. By this point, one would expect her to start making up random questions, but Zenita insisted on asking questions she herself knew the answers to.
The fact that she had already asked 48 questions was a testament to her near-perfect knowledge of the book.
Zenita, deep in thought, suddenly shot up as if struck by inspiration, her arm raised triumphantly.
“Qu- Question number 50!”
“It’s 49, I told you.”
“Question number 49!”
Zenita’s voice was filled with renewed energy.
Had she thought of a particularly difficult question?
Whatever it was, if it was from the book, there was no way I could get it wrong.
“On the continent of Agoris, where was Hercules last seen?”
I maintained a brief silence.
Believing it to be her victory, Zenita spoke to me with a smug look.
“Hmph, what do you say, Teacher? You don’t know this one, do you? This is something you would never know unless you pieced it together by reading the entire book,”
“That information is not in this book.”
I presented the book to Zenita.
I showed her the myself.
“This book is a compilation of myths about Gods and monsters, their weaknesses and characteristics. While Hercules does appear, it’s only a brief biographical sketch. It doesn’t delve into the current events of the world.”
As she listened to my explanation, Zenita looked at the , found the section about Hercules, and checked it. Then, with a bewildered expression, she scratched her cheek.
There was no doubt about it. Zenita had mistaken her own knowledge as being from the book.
But if that was the case, there was one fact we couldn’t ignore.
“Zenita, you’ve been asking questions you knew the answers to, right?”
“Yes, o-of course. Otherwise, I wouldn’t know if you were right or wrong when you answered.”
Right. Within the framework of this bet, Zenita genuinely wanted to beat me.
And that earnestness of hers was about to backfire.
“Then you must know the answer to your last question, Zenita.”
“My last question? Uh……”
Zenita began to nod at my words, then flinched as if noticing my gaze and drew back.
I didn’t know why, but I asked her anyway.
“Where was Hercules last seen?”
“……Teacher, you really,”
“You sound like you’re going to kill Hercules.”
Zenita said, looking somewhat frightened.
“Why would you think that?”
“Your eyes, they look……”
“That’s absurd. It’s pure curiosity. Besides, how could I possibly kill Hercules?”
She replied, but her expression still showed a lack of conviction.
Perhaps due to her inherent sincerity, she told me where Hercules was last seen.
‘That’s quite a distance.’
Unfortunately, it was quite far from here in Atlas. It wasn’t a distance that could be covered in a day or two.
“Where did you hear this information?”
“Well, I’m not sure. I thought it was in that book.”
Of course, if she had misremembered the source of the information in the first place, it would be difficult to recall the original source.
“W-Well, I’ll be going then.”
With that, Zenita awkwardly tried to get up,
“Where are you going?”
She froze at my words.
“Th-The bet is over, so I’m going to……”
“But I haven’t received my prize yet.”
“Wasn’t that information what you wanted….?”
I smiled brightly at her words.
“Of course. If you had offered that information as a prize, I would have accepted.”
“But Zenita, you gave me that information out of goodwill. It wasn’t something I won as a result of our bet, was it?”
Zenita’s jaw dropped at my words.
“I’ll be paying you a visit at your dorm soon. I want to make sure you’re living comfortably.”
“Liar! You just want to see if there’s anything worth taking!”
“That’s hurtful. I’m just fulfilling my duty as a teacher.”
With that, I gathered the book and stood up.
“Next time, before you give away information, make sure you exchange it for something of appropriate value. That’s what it means to be an adult.”
“……Being an adult sounds cowardly.”
It’s cowardly, unfair, devious, and even a bit dirty.
Of course, Frondier was only a year older than Zenita, but after today, Zenita would take another step closer to adulthood.