SBTYD 03

Chapter 3

 Day 23 — Tutorial

[Name: Sisyphus

Race: Human

Strength: 4 (+2)

Stamina: 3

Power: 0

Mana: 0

Objective: Place the boulder at the top of the mountain]

“Whew… whew… hah.”

I had been pushing the boulder upward until I simply could not go any farther, so I stopped halfway up the mountain.

I pressed the boulder against the railing and braced my back against it to keep it from rolling down.

Had five hours passed? Ten?

My arms were numb, and I could no longer feel my fingertips. My back and neck hurt so badly that they felt like they might snap from being bent over and pushing for so long.

“Damn it.”

After ten hours, I finally looked down and cursed without meaning to.

I had called this place halfway up the mountain, but in reality, I had climbed only about twenty meters from the very beginning of the slope.

“So this is why they call it a prison of time?”

I had experienced something where time seemed to pass this slowly before.

It was during a march in the military.

Ah, that was in my previous life.

I got confused for a moment.

I had trained a few guards in my territory, but it was nowhere near large enough to be called an army. Whenever trouble arose, I usually had to hire a guild.

I glanced past the boulder at the path ahead.

There was a clearly marked section that looked almost like a finish line, as if it marked the end of the first floor.

There were even stakes that looked like they were meant to let me rest the boulder against them for a while.

The first floor I had been climbing seemed to be a tutorial, a practice area. There were hardly any obstacles, and the ground was mostly dirt, so it was not particularly slippery either.

“So that means I can’t let go until I reach there.”

Having a status window would make things a little easier.

[Tutorial in progress.]

[Floor 1 Progress: 36% / 100%]

“Let’s go a little farther.”

I had gotten some rest, and my lower back was starting to ache from supporting the boulder. So I turned around and began putting strength into my arms again.

[Strength increased by 1.]

Consistency was important in everything.

Don’t work too hard, Sisyphus.

You only need to finish what you have to do today.

That was a habit I had learned from my mother.

My father was Aeolus Hippotes. Hippotes was my grandfather’s name.

This was an age before people used surnames or family names, so when introducing themselves, they would either say whose son they were or attach their father’s name after their own, almost like a surname.

I had six siblings. Seven children in total.

It might sound like a lot, but this was an age when population meant labor and strength. Seven children was fairly ordinary.

Our family was not a great dynasty or an illustrious noble house, but we were nobles nonetheless.

Minor nobles.

There were three types of noble families in this era.

First were families of scholars.

Second were families of heroic demigods.

Third were the families of lords who ruled cities.

We were the third kind.

Our family had developed the territory of Corinthos through the lodging business my grandfather had started.

And the woman who was the lady of our household—my mother—was named Enarete.

She was a wise woman.

“Mom, studying is too hard.”

When I was young, I mainly looked after cattle. Cows were needed to plow the fields, and milk was an important source of nutrition. We had more than a few hundred cattle to look after.

Taking care of cattle meant counting them, knowing how to divide up their feed, and deciding what work needed to be done depending on the season and the date.

So I needed to know mathematics.

I thought mathematics was something only great scholars like Pythagoras studied. Because of that, I absolutely hated reading the numbers written on parchment every day.

“You silly Sisyphus! You said you lost a cow! Can’t you even add simple numbers?”

My eldest brother, Salmoneus, had always been quick with numbers. Whenever I made even the smallest mistake, he would scold me.

I hated losing to my brother, but at the same time, I hated studying too…

And so the same unproductive routine continued day after day.

“It’s all right. Don’t work too hard, Sisyphus.”

Whenever that happened, my mother would tell me those words.

“You don’t have to work so hard. People only wear themselves out when they push too hard. Just read as far as you need to today. That’s enough.”

Even if you went slowly, even if you took your time, you only had to do as much as you could.

Now I understood.

Nine out of ten people in the world put off even the things they need to do today until tomorrow.

Just finishing what I could do today was already something I could be proud of.

Besides, there was no way I could beat my brother, who had been born into the world two years before me.

“You learned numbers all the way to ten thousand. Mom is so proud of you, Sisyphus.”

And my mother praised me without holding back.

Thanks to her, I discovered the joy of learning. By the time I was fifteen, I had become known throughout the territory as its greatest scholar and most eloquent speaker.

That must have been why my father chose me, rather than my older brother, as the next lord.

My mother was kind, beautiful, and cared for her family more than anyone.

And then she died.

At the hands of the gods.

“A monster has appeared!”

“It’s a Bicorn! It’s striking the ground with lightning! The entire city is on fire!”

“Lord Aeolus, we must offer tribute to Lord Zeus immediately!”

The gods were fickle.

No.

They were simply a bunch of foul-tempered psychos.

One day, when I was fifteen, I learned that fact firsthand.

They would give humans abundance, then unleash monsters and take it all away in an instant, enjoying the spectacle the entire time.

“Damn it, it’s the middle of winter! Where are we supposed to find grain to offer…?”

“Why did this have to happen now?!”

I watched helplessly as monsters attacked our territory, burning the fields, destroying buildings, and trampling people to death.

And then there was the bastard flying through the sky, mocking us.

A handsome young man wearing winged sandals.

Hermes, the messenger of Olympus and god of thieves, was watching us and enjoying the spectacle.

“Ah, this is hilarious. Look at them running around in panic. We don’t even need to hire a theater troupe for this… Hm?”

With a swift flutter, Hermes flew straight toward me. Then he gave me a strange, crooked smile.

“So you’re the little brat who humiliated my son Autolycus.”

Autolycus was a middle-aged lord who ruled a neighboring city in our territory. He and my father did not get along, so he was always picking fights with us.

He would sometimes sneak into our territory and steal things. I noticed what he was doing, so I predicted what he would steal and marked those items with numbers and signatures beforehand.

This time, it was cattle.

I had hidden my signature on the cows’ hooves.

Autolycus had been caught red-handed. He was forced to compensate us with twice the value of the twenty cows he stole, then kneel before my father and me and apologize.

I had no idea Hermes was his father.

So he had learned his thieving skills from Hermes, the god of thieves himself.

Did that mean Autolycus had the potential to become a hero, only to waste it on stealing?

It was also strange that the father of that greedy old man was this handsome young man.

That was when I realized the gods merely looked like humans.

They did not age, and they were strange beings who enjoyed killing people.

“I won’t kill you, Sisyphus. If I did, wouldn’t that ruin my son’s fun?”

Hermes sent Zeus’s monster into our home before flying high into the sky, laughing loudly.

I ran home in a panic, but the tragedy had already happened.

My father had been gored by the monster’s horns and lost both legs, becoming permanently disabled.

And my mother would never open her eyes again.

My siblings who had not been home at the time escaped the disaster, but that only made the grief even heavier.

It took several more days for the heroes to be dispatched and subdue the monster.

With my father unable to move, I took over as head of the family and lord of the territory.

Fifteen was young even by the standards of this era.

That was why I had to live even more desperately.

Day after day, I stayed faithful to the present, just as my mother had taught me.

Fortunately, Corinthos managed to recover and flourish once again.

[Strength increased by 1.]

[Strength increased by 1.]

[Strength increased by 1.]

Push, rest, push again.

The sun rose, set, and rose again.

Another day had passed.

Little by little, I pushed the boulder higher.

Since there was nothing else I could focus on during this repetitive labor, all sorts of thoughts came to mind.

“My mother used to say something else.”

Old memories came back to me without warning.

“Make good friends wherever you are.”

I had failed to follow that advice.

I had been too busy running my territory.

There had been one person I considered a friend…

But after the monster attack, it had become difficult to treat him the way I had before.

Hermes.

Even thinking about that bastard made my blood boil.

But what could I do?

Even heroes could not lay a hand on him. An ordinary human who hated an omnipotent god had no means of doing anything about it.

When I saw him again in the palace of Olympus, my vision had practically turned red with rage.

But I had already been tortured so badly that I did not even have the strength to get angry.

“Ah.”

Maybe because I had been distracted by my thoughts for a moment, the boulder caught on a protruding rock.

I lost my balance while supporting it with both hands.

“Whoa, no!”

The disaster happened in an instant.

—Rumble!

The boulder, completely indifferent to my desperate efforts, rolled all the way back down to the starting point.

“…Ha.”

I stared blankly at the sight.

How did I feel right now?

Utterly miserable.

I had been so close to getting past the first floor.

I trudged all the way back down to the starting point.

The boulder was waiting for me, its smooth surface reflecting the sunlight.

“Argh!”

Bang!

Unable to contain my frustration, I slammed my forehead against it.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

I struck it again and again.

Maybe it was because the shadow reflected on the boulder’s surface reminded me of Hermes’s face.

By the time I was dizzy from the blood pouring down my forehead, I collapsed onto the ground.

For a long while, I simply stared into the boulder’s eyes.

“…Hah.”

The blood smeared across its surface looked almost like a human face.

I stood up and quickly drew a face on it before the blood could dry.

🙂

“Friends are important no matter where you are.”

My mother had been right.

“From now on, you’re Wilson.”

🙂

Wilson looked pretty happy, too.

“Let’s go together again, Wilson.”

I pushed with both arms.

Gr-r-rk.

Wilson rolled across the ground in response.

“You get better at this the more you do it. It’s easier to push than it was at first. Or maybe you’re helping me, Wilson?”

🙂

What a good guy.

[Strength increased by 1.]

[Name: Sisyphus

Strength: 10 (+5)

Stamina: 5 (+2)]