Ch.275[Chapter 275] Repayment

Sir Dominic looked with a bewildered expression at the locked door, the final security measure leading to the private room.

No, to be precise, he was looking at the padlock attached to that door.

The padlock had a simple structure that opened with a key.

It was somewhat old-fashioned, but not much different from an ordinary padlock.

“I think I understand… why they said this was the biggest security measure.”

However, Sir Dominic clicked his tongue at the sight of that padlock.

The door Sir Dominic was looking at was a castle gate reaching 20 meters in height, and the padlock securing it was as large as a decent-sized house.

It was literally the physically largest security measure.

“I wonder where on earth they acquired such a padlock.”

Sir Dominic brought up the subject of the padlock to Mister Wang.

“It couldn’t be helped. At the time, I thought it was truly a good idea.”

“Don’t tell me you created this security…?”

Mister Wang awkwardly stroked his beard.

It seemed that Mister Wang was indeed the person who had conceived this security device.

Rather than criticizing this absurd security measure, Sir Dominic focused on the fact that Mister Wang had created it.

“That’s fortunate. Being the creator of the security, you must know how to disable it.”

“About that…”

Mister Wang wore a perplexed expression at Sir Dominic’s words.

“A key is needed to open this door. The door won’t open unless the padlock is unlocked and moved aside.”

“Because it’s a pull door,” Mister Wang said as he stroked the padlock with his hand.

“Originally, one key for this security was held by the facility manager, and another spare was kept somewhere inside the facility.”

“And you? As the creator of the security, I would think you had a spare key.”

Mister Wang looked at Sir Dominic.

His eyes seemed to ask how Sir Dominic knew, but then he quickly turned his head away as he realized his mistake.

Watching this, Sir Dominic thought his intuition was particularly good today.

Surely, since Mister Wang had created this security, wouldn’t he have made a duplicate key to bypass it?

“Now, unlock the security. If it takes time, I’ll help you.”

“…”

Despite Sir Dominic’s urging, Mister Wang remained silently still.

Wondering why he was acting this way, Sir Dominic suddenly had a thought cross his mind.

“Could it be… you lost the key?”

Mister Wang’s body twitched.

“Perhaps when you left Mountain Bridge Marsh, you brought it with you just in case, but after neglecting it for too long, you forgot where you put it and couldn’t find it, so you just gave up?”

Mister Wang’s body twitched again.

It seemed Sir Dominic’s guess was correct.

Sir Dominic sighed.

This meant that to unlock this enormous padlock, they needed to either find the facility manager or locate the spare key.

Currently, Sir Dominic and Mister Wang were heading to the private room to find the highest-ranking official who managed the facility, so essentially there was no solution other than finding the spare key.

“This is a serious problem. Where is the spare key?”

“I don’t know. The spare key was supposedly hidden by generations of facility administrators who kept its location secret…”

Ah. Sir Dominic let out a long sigh at Mister Wang’s words.

It was a situation where progress was completely blocked.

There were no hints, nor was there any element that required spending money.

The padlock simply existed, and to open it, they needed either the facility manager’s key or the spare key, which was in a secret location. And nobody knew where that secret location was.

It felt like the frustration of playing an 8-bit or 16-bit era RPG game.

“There’s no choice. Let’s think about our next move from here…”

Mister Wang sat down cross-legged and fell into meditation.

It seemed he was trying to formulate a plan to overcome this situation.

Sir Dominic watched Mister Wang for a moment, then turned his gaze back to the enormous padlock.

“It truly is an absurdly large padlock.”

Sir Dominic expressed his amazement at the house-sized padlock.

The door alone was 20 meters high, and each door panel was nearly twenty paces wide.

The padlock appeared to be made of crude iron, with some coating peeled off revealing slightly rusted areas.

Could those rusted parts be exploited?

A light bulb went off in Sir Dominic’s head.

However, Sir Dominic soon had to abandon the idea, as neither he nor Mister Wang had brought equipment capable of cutting through those thick iron bars.

Afterward, several other ideas occurred to Sir Dominic, but due to practical issues, all his ideas sank into the abyss of thought like shipwrecked vessels.

Sir Dominic felt his head throbbing and sighed.

He had apparently been thinking too much.

Rising to his feet to clear his head, Sir Dominic glanced at Mister Wang.

Who knew if he might have come up with a good idea?

But Mister Wang seemed to be in the same boat as Sir Dominic; his facial expressions kept changing, but no look of clarity emerged.

Sir Dominic considered speaking to Mister Wang but decided against it as Mister Wang was so deeply concentrated.

Instead, Sir Dominic began wandering around the massive padlock, thinking he might take a walk.

He thought perhaps viewing it from a different angle might yield a solution.

That’s when Sir Dominic suddenly realized there was a large rug spread beneath the padlock.

From a distance, it had been obscured by the padlock’s overwhelming presence, but there was indeed a rug in front of the door.

Sir Dominic quickly turned his head to see if there were other such items he had missed.

A few potted plants and one rug.

That was all Sir Dominic had overlooked due to the padlock.

The plants and rug were of such ordinary size compared to the door and padlock that they hadn’t caught his eye.

Sir Dominic suddenly recalled something from the past.

‘And this is a first-class security measure, with the spare key always under the potted plant. If it’s not there, check the corner of the carpet, and you’ll find it, so remember that.’

Those were the words v.a.l.l.o.c., his senior, had taught him when Sir Dominic arrived in Gacharland and coincidentally got a job at System Industries.

Following those instructions, Sir Dominic began checking under the potted plants. Unfortunately, beneath the plants he found a level 5 security card, an amusement card for rhythm games, and a drill for lockpicking, but not the key he wanted.

After returning the plants to their original positions, Sir Dominic checked under the rug.

After examining each of the four corners, Sir Dominic finally found a key in the last corner—a key so large he wondered how it could have been hidden under such a small rug.

Of course, it was small compared to the padlock, but considering the keyhole of the padlock, this size seemed to match.

“Alright. Let’s give it a try.”

Sir Dominic muttered to himself as he hugged the key with both arms.

Then, aligning the end of the key with the padlock’s hole, he pushed it in with all his might.

The key entered the hole with some difficulty, as if the inside was somewhat rusted, but Sir Dominic soon heard a clicking sound.

It seemed this was indeed the right key.

Now Sir Dominic needed to turn the handle part of the fully inserted key.

Rubbing his hands together and jumping in place, Sir Dominic managed to grab the upper part of the key handle ring.

As he gradually turned the key using his body weight and momentum, there was a sudden clunk, and with the sensation of his body falling, the padlock unlocked.

“It worked.”

Sir Dominic lost his grip on the key ring due to the shock of the unlocking padlock and ended up rolling on the dusty floor.

After shaking off the dust covering his body, Sir Dominic approached Mister Wang, avoiding the falling padlock.

“Don’t disturb me. I’m thinking, and if you disturb me, I might fall into a trance—”

Mister Wang was still so engrossed in figuring out how to unlock the padlock that he hadn’t even realized Sir Dominic had already done so.

As Sir Dominic approached, Mister Wang finally noticed him and was about to say something when he was startled by a loud BANG! and jumped up as the padlock fell, raising a cloud of dust.

Mister Wang blinked in confusion, not immediately registering that Sir Dominic had unlocked the padlock, but then realized that Sir Dominic had solved the problem.

“This is incredible. How did you unlock it? No matter how much I thought about it, there seemed to be no solution!”

“It was under the rug.”

Sir Dominic pointed in the direction where the rug had been, but that spot was no longer visible as the fallen padlock now covered it.

“…The secret key was just lying there like a spare house key?”

Mister Wang looked at the fallen padlock in disbelief.

“Well, it was certainly a big security measure in many ways.”

Sir Dominic shrugged.

He felt somewhat proud of having solved the problem.

“Anyway, let’s quickly move on to the next step.”

Sir Dominic looked at the open door that was becoming visible as the dust settled.

“Beyond that door is the private room.”

To be precise, beyond that door.