Chapter 166 Tedious Work

Chapter 166 Tedious Work

With his mind made up, Charles dusted off his backside and stood. He took down a torch from the stone wall behind him, moved closer to the central column, and began examining it carefully.

Charles once had an archaeologist friend who'd contributed significantly to his writing career. Most importantly, this friend had helped with the ancient language portions of 'Word Games' and some regional dialects.

The script on this central column bore strong similarities to hieroglyphics. But Charles could read hieroglyphics—he could read virtually any artifact containing hieroglyphic writing without difficulty. Yet now, facing the text on this column, he was completely lost.

The relationship between the column's script and hieroglyphic symbols was probably like that between two writing systems belonging to the same ancient family but having diverged long ago. It was that state scholars described as "seemingly sharing the same origin, but whose structure and usage have long since taken different directions."

Without a translation or dictionary, attempting to decode this writing was pure fantasy.

Logically, facing such a desperate situation, Charles should already feel despair. But unfortunately, the Entropy Insects made it impossible for him to experience such despair.

He lowered his head, fingers rubbing his chin, brow furrowed, trying to find patterns in this script—rules he could use to decode it.

The idea was feasible.

The side directly facing Charles contained about fifty characters. Among them, over a dozen shared partial writing formats. This phenomenon appeared in every language, though identical writing formats didn't necessarily mean identical meanings. However, since there were similarities to hieroglyphics, the decoding process should be the same.

Charles mentally recalled all the hieroglyphic systems he could think of: ancient Egyptian, Chinese oracle bone script, and Mayan script.

Though all three belonged to hieroglyphic writing systems, their writing methods and pronunciations were completely different—that was the distinct charm each hieroglyphic system possessed.

Now, facing this new script, Charles simply treated it as a new hieroglyphic system to decode. Without a translation, he'd use those three systems as references.

This method was actually quite crude, but so far, Charles had no better way to decode these characters.

Before officially starting, Charles thought of the stone wall marked with 'F'. To avoid missing any potential messages, he checked beneath several other torches but saw no similar letter hints.

After confirming he hadn't missed any information, Charles began the decoding work.

The work was tedious and mentally exhausting.

Charles had no paper or pen—he could only use picked-up stones as writing tools and moss-covered walls as paper.

He had no idea how much time passed.

There was no sunlight here, no wind—only the constantly crackling torches.

Charles was immensely grateful for this torch. If not for it constantly making sounds to keep him company, he might have gone mad already.

He thought: After getting out, this torch deserved a name. Perhaps Akri would be best.

Akri was the first word Charles decoded. He'd deciphered it using ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, then confirmed its pronunciation using Mayan phonetic symbols.

In the text, it occupied the first row. Among the fifty characters, this word appeared three times.

Though Charles didn't know what Akri represented, it was clearly progress.

Looking at the calculation process on the stone wall, Charles frowned and scratched his chin. The slightly prickly stubble didn't pull his attention away but instead made his thoughts sink deeper.

After sacrificing the second torch, Charles finally decoded most of the text.

But without a proper translation, he had no idea what these characters were actually saying. The decoded content was more like garbled text pieced together from three languages.

For instance, one passage read: [Big foot Madefu octopus always listen character big step]. It seemed to have no particular meaning—complete gibberish among gibberish.

Charles clicked his tongue lightly. He felt like he should be despairing right about now.

Yet his thoughts only grew clearer, making it impossible to feel any negative emotions. He knew this was all the Entropy Insects' doing and didn't dwell on it.

Shortly after that string of garbled text appeared, Charles felt like giving up.

He simply couldn't figure out how to get out of this place. Besides a slight anxiety, he felt no other emotions.

After aimless wandering, he finally found some useful information on the column of the next level down.

The lower level's script was roughly fifty percent similar to the upper level's. Also, fifty characters, with about twenty being identical.

But this clearly wasn't the most important part. Most importantly, beside the text was a small section of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. If he was lucky, this might be the translation for these characters.

Charles immediately began a second round of decoding.

Though on the verge of cracking this mysterious script, Charles felt no joy—only intense confusion and wariness.

He clearly remembered—when he last saw this column face, there were no ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics on it.

Yet now, not only were there Egyptian characters, but they'd thoughtfully chosen text with fifty percent similarity to the upper level to provide the translation.

To say there wasn't something fishy about this—Charles couldn't believe it.

But right now, decoding the text was clearly more important.

With his previous experience supporting him, Charles only needed twenty minutes to decipher the text before him.

'Akri' meant Outer God. In this text, it represented Nyarlathotep.

The entire text was praise for Nyarlathotep.

However, Charles had read descriptions of Nyarlathotep in books. The entity was typically described as an extremely malicious deity.

Having gained no information about the assessment, Charles decisively abandoned this stone tablet and went up to the upper level.

Though the upper level's text also contained praise for Nyarlathotep, the overall volume was smaller. It also mentioned two other Outer Gods—Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, and the rarely mentioned Nyog'Sothep.

As for that previous string of gibberish, its meaning was 'fear and despair are the greatest hymns.'

Hymns?

Charles frowned slightly, another idea rising in his mind. Since these two emotions were hymns, if he compiled words representing fear or despair and sang them out, could he pass this assessment?

This idea was admittedly exploiting a loophole.

But having nearly run out of options, Charles was unwilling to abandon any opportunity. He lowered his head in thought, considering how to sing it out.