Chapter 2. Day 21
“Wow, what the hell is this?”
After wrestling with the boulder for quite some time, I quickly collapsed, drenched in sweat.
There was no way a human could push this thing.
There was a limit to how much someone could mess with me. How the hell was I supposed to push this up a slope?
“Damn it! Damn it!”
Unable to contain my anger, I punched the innocent boulder repeatedly.
Of course, the only thing that hurt was my hand. Even after scraping the back of my hand until it bled, I couldn’t calm my breathing.
“Gaaah! Gaaaaah!”
My adrenaline wouldn’t settle down, so I ran around wildly for quite some time.
I was angry. I was furious, but what could I do about it?
The faces of Zeus, Hades, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Dionysus, and Hermes.
The faces of all twelve of them still lingered in my mind. I probably wouldn’t be able to forget them for the rest of my life.
“To think I’m supposed to be trapped here for the rest of my life, rolling a boulder around.”
It would be one thing if I’d committed some heinous crime that destroyed the world.
But all I’d done was defy them and hurt their feelings.
No matter how angry I became over such an unreasonable punishment, all I could do was run around screaming like a monkey.
The memories of my reincarnation had returned, and the modern values from my previous life were mixed together with my current ones, leaving me even more confused.
But when I looked back on the twenty years I’d lived as Sisyphus, there wasn’t a single thing I was ashamed of.
I had a life I’d lived as Sisyphus.
I had a family. I had friends. I had spent years struggling desperately to survive in this bleak world.
And it had all been taken away from me.
It was far too cruel to simply accept it as a story recorded in mythology or as fate.
“Hoo.”
How many hours had passed?
I couldn’t keep running around like a madman forever.
I decided to calm down and assess the situation.
I looked around at the scenery.
The altar where the boulder rested was surrounded by grass on the left, right, and behind it. The sunlight was bright, and the surroundings were completely natural, yet I couldn’t hear even the sound of birds.
There was something strangely unsettling about it.
The front was a mountain.
That was the direction in which I had to push the boulder, and the ground sloped upward.
The mountain seemed divided into levels, almost like stages in a game, with each level having a different theme.
There were volcanic areas with lava flowing through them, as well as snow-covered mountains where blizzards raged.
It even felt like I was climbing a tower.
The higher regions were hidden by clouds, making it impossible to see what they looked like.
“Wait a minute… A game?”
I tried to recall my memories more carefully.
This scene.
The slope where I had to push the boulder.
The structure divided into different stages, one level after another.
“I think… I might have played something like this in my previous life.”
If this really was a game world based on mythology, then it made sense that it differed so much from the original myths.
This boulder-pushing stage might have been some kind of bonus minigame.
“The problem is that it became the rest of my life.”
Obviously, I had no intention of spending my entire life pushing a boulder around.
Not for one year or two.
It could be a hundred years, a thousand years, or perhaps even tens of billions of years until the universe itself ended.
And I was supposed to push this boulder the entire time?
All by myself?
Absolutely not.
I had to find a way out somehow.
“Can I get out?”
Zeus had called this place Tartarus.
In other words, hell.
He had also called it Cronus’s prison of time, if I remembered correctly…
I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant. Cronus was a Titan god from the generation before Zeus. Apparently, there were different kinds of hell as well.
As an ordinary human, I could assume that escaping from here was currently impossible.
As far as I knew, the original mythology didn’t give Sisyphus a happy ending either.
But—
“If this really is a game, then things are different.”
If it was a game I’d played…
There was only one game I could remember that was based on Greek and Roman mythology. I couldn’t remember its name anymore, but I think it had been a dark-fantasy action RPG.
The player raised a character and became a hero capable of wielding “mana,” unlocking “talents” to learn “skills” and “magic.”
You hunted monsters using skills and magic, gaining experience and growing stronger.
You could also join a guild called “Eranoi” to build up your faction, or construct a territorial city called a “polis.”
“Wait. Isn’t that exactly the same as the world I lived in?”
The possibility seemed increasingly likely.
Then…
Could I use those skills too?
“‘Spatial-Time Break’… Was that what it was called?”
I thought that was the name.
It was an incredibly powerful skill that could tear space apart.
I remembered it because it was such an impressive ability—it could even send an enormous monster flying with a single strike.
“If it’s really a skill that can tear through space, maybe I can use it to escape.”
There was a way to find out.
A word that only a modern person who had been reincarnated could possibly say.
I pushed my embarrassment aside for a moment and spoke the word aloud.
“…Status Window.”
……
Unfortunately, nothing appeared before my eyes.
“System. Status. Σύστημα.”
I even tried saying it in Greek, but all I received in response was silence mockingly emphasizing my pathetic situation.
“Tch.”
Was the status window something only given to protagonists?
“Come to think of it, all the game characters were heroes.”
Heracles. Odysseus.
Heroes from mythology that everyone would recognize just by hearing their names.
What about me?
Sisyphus.
One of the most obscure criminals imaginable, with practically zero recognition.
An ordinary human from an ordinary birth.
I was an extra among extras.
No epic had ever been written about me. I hadn’t participated in any wars.
What was it again?
Wasn’t I supposed to be a symbol of a pathetic human being?
Right.
I hadn’t even felt mana once during my twenty years of life.
Mana was something that only people born with the ability could control.
In the first place, mana was the exclusive domain of the gods.
It was mainly demigods who were born with talent who could wield mana.
In other words, the vessels capable of becoming heroes were decided from birth.
“Hah.”
A hollow sigh escaped me.
In the end, it meant there was no way for me to escape except by pushing the boulder.
“Wait. Do I even need to stay here?”
The thought suddenly occurred to me.
What was the name of the mountain where I was?
Acro… something-or-other Mountain.
This wasn’t a game.
This was reality.
The world I’d lived in.
Maybe I could simply walk down from here.
“Let’s go.”
I immediately turned around and ran toward the forest.
The moment I pushed through the trees where there wasn’t even a path, I soon emerged from the forest into an open area.
Right in front of the same altar where I had entered.
“This damn place…”
I hadn’t moved around long enough to lose my sense of direction.
Had I even run for ten seconds?
It was as though the two ends of the forest were magically connected.
I immediately ran between another group of trees.
But the result was the same.
By the time I had wasted enough time doing this, the sun had set.
They called it a prison of time, yet I didn’t feel hungry or sleepy.
My injuries also healed much faster than normal.
Not only had the wounds from the torture I’d received already healed, but even the ribs I’d injured when I slammed into the boulder earlier had completely recovered.
I had no idea how it worked.
But I still became tired, and pain remained the same.
If I ran, I became out of breath, and my legs went numb.
Was it only the laws of physics that applied here?
In other words, even dying wasn’t a way to escape.
It truly was a hell maliciously designed to torment its prisoner.
Two days.
Ten days.
Another three weeks passed.
I didn’t know what meaning it held, but I decided to mark each day on the ground with a slash.
On the day I made the twentieth mark, I had completed a thorough exploration of the entire area.
I reached one conclusion.
There was no way to escape.
I had explored every single corner of the area I could reach on foot.
The starting point where I was, and the altar where the boulder rested, were surrounded by grass.
The entire area around it was enclosed by dense trees.
A forest.
They were trees I’d never seen before.
Paleozoic? High-altitude? Whatever they were, the plants looked unpleasant.
There were no edible fruits either.
Even though I wasn’t hungry, not having anything to eat was incredibly frustrating.
I tried plucking grass and chewing on it, only to cut my tongue.
As for the areas that weren’t forested, there was naturally only one way to go:
Up.
The path was approximately thirty meters wide.
The slope was around twenty-five to thirty degrees.
On both sides of the slope were what could be called high guardrails, or perhaps barriers designed to keep the boulder from falling off.
I couldn’t climb over them, and I couldn’t see what lay beyond them either.
When I tried walking up the slope, I couldn’t move more than a few steps.
It felt as though a magnet were pulling me backward.
Magic, or something like it.
It seemed to mean that if I wanted to climb higher, I had to bring the boulder with me.
I was slowly beginning to get bored.
I was tired of plucking blades of grass and using them for fortune-telling.
I was tired of lying on the ground and rolling around.
I was tired of having fits like a madman while cursing each of the Twelve Gods individually.
“Haaah.”
One day, I sat in front of the boulder and stared at it all day.
It almost felt like the bastard was challenging me to a staring contest.
“What am I supposed to do with you?”
Even if I managed to get it to the summit, it would probably just roll all the way back down the opposite side anyway.
Judging by how it felt when I struck it, it had to weigh at least a ton.
“…Should I try?”
I didn’t want to.
I really, really didn’t want to.
In my previous life, I’d only signed up for a gym once in my entire life.
I think I’d impulsively paid for six months, gone for a month, and then quit.
How many kilograms were the heaviest dumbbells I’d even lifted?
It definitely hadn’t been anything like this boulder.
Still, I had no other choice.
In the end, I stood in front of the boulder.
“…Hoo.”
The moment I placed my hands against it for the first time, all I could do was sigh.
Its surface was perfectly smooth and completely round.
If I applied even a little force incorrectly and slipped, it would roll straight back down the slope.
“There’s no solution here.”
Standing in front of the boulder was overwhelming.
It felt like the thing was going to eat me alive.
“I can’t even see the summit.”
The starting point was a massive altar.
I raised my head and looked toward the summit of the mountain.
It was impossibly far away.
From what little of the course I could see, all sorts of obstacles were scattered everywhere, while constantly changing weather conditions made the place look like a living hell.
“Let’s do this.”
I spread my arms and placed both hands firmly against the boulder.
The cold, inorganic texture already felt like torture.
I bent my back and planted my feet firmly, putting all my strength into my legs.
“Gnnngh.”
Only after putting every ounce of my strength into it did the boulder finally move with a grrrrk, producing a horrible grinding sound that seemed to torture my ears.
I reached the slope and began pushing upward.
My breath caught in my throat, and the muscles in my arms screamed.
Well, I’d already started.
What else could I do?
I had to keep going until I succeeded.
“Hnnngh.”
I continued to exert force.
[Strength has increased by 1.]
[You have entered ‘Cronus’s Tartarus.’]
[This is a prison of time created by the authority of the great ruler, Cronus.]
[The flow of time here differs from that of the mortal world.]
[All lifeforms in this place possess the ‘Immortality’ trait.]
[Once the boulder reaches the summit, the exit will open.]
[Good luck.]
