"After the struggles that we had, it all made us speechless."
While First and Ninth are observing the time pattern of the barrier, the rest are discussing the cards.
"Do we combine carbon and oxygen? I wonder what the atomic mass or number is… Or maybe the charges." Fourth is pertaining to the 3rd card.
"Carbon monoxide? Or dioxide?" her twin brother, Fifth, guessed. I still don't quite remember what I learned in chemistry. "If it has anything to do with the atomic name or number, it seems unfair for us to answer that because we have memory loss." We nodded in unison at Fifth's presumption that he shared.
"What about the 4th card, it looks harder." Aeith reckoned
"As far as I know, there is no word 'amond' even if we searched it in English dictionary unless it is a foreign word," Sixth shared her thought. We all nodded.
And because I have difficulty with both, I reread the 1st card.
Death throe - 2 syllables
What are the first 2 letters of the words when pronounced?
True, 2 syllables. First two letters, D and T... when pronounced?
"Oh, so that's the spelling of 'throe'. I thought R-O-W, haha!" Seventh have something in his mind but it turned out to be wordplay.
What Seventh mentioned a while ago struck me.
Death-throe.... Det-tro... Det-ro... D and...
I mumbled. "What if…"
"Hm?" Fourth leaned towards me to hear what I muttered.
I took the 1st card lying on the ground.
"Okay, 'death throe' has 2 syllables. The question is, what are the first two letters of two words when pronounced?"
"Yeah, that's what we're supposed to answer." Seventh concurred.
"The answers can be letters D and R." I answered. I'm not confident in my reasoning but I will share this with the team.
"How?" They chorused.
"'When you pronounce 'death throe', the th of 'throe' becomes silent. We can say it's the letter R, like Death Row, so it's D and R."
"Oh…" Seventh pondered. Thanks for what Seventh said earlier, and it gave me an idea.
"The others have already passed here, come quick!" Ninth spoke abruptly and called out Fourth and Aeith because the two of them were near him. They stood up and they entered the invisible barrier without pain or wound. After five seconds, it became visible, then became invisible.
The two were on the other side. We could still see them clearly because the barrier was invisible, but we could barely hear their voices.
"How did you do that?" Fifth asked Ninth.
"Every 10 minutes, the barrier becomes harmless for five seconds. When someone passes by, it's still invisible but it becomes visible for a while and goes back to being invisible and harmful." Ninth explained to us.
The barrier couldn't handle it when we all got through at the same time because the barrier's edge is sparking like there's some sort of electricity, so we just avoided the risk of it. All girls went through first. After 30 minutes, it ended as well. Ninth was the last to go through.
We approached our leader and what was written on the map was
Go to the right
We ran and turned right. While looking around, something fell on my face, it fell at my feet, so I picked it up, the last card. I immediately gave it okay Third and we read it.
Enough Lose
That's what is written. Everyone frowned because of the subtle riddle. Third pulled out the map and opened it to let us know which direction we are going after finding the 5 cards. We are surprised at what we saw. Third was no longer holding a map of the maze but an ordinary blank piece of paper. Third flipped it over but there was really no moving image or text popping out. Ten seconds later, a text appeared on the blank white paper. The font size is big, and the font color is black.
The real game will start in 10, 9, 8,
It is a text and a countdown.
"What's happening?" - Sixth
"Real game? Didn't the game start earlier?" - Fifth
7, 6, 5,
Real game? I bit my lower lip. We can't do anything but leave stunned as we stare at the map. What is your real plan, Author?
4, 3, 2, 1 ... Good luck
Then the texts that popped out disappeared. Third's paper was almost crumpled because he is agitated. Seventh stopped him from tearing the map off because we might still need it.
"Let's solve the riddles," First initiated and everyone agreed.
If so, the game is just starting. After all, there is a reason why the real game will only begin now.
First, why do we have a map that will make it quick to find the cards? I don't think Author will allow it to be that easy. Second, why is there a barrier? If we are really trying to get the treasure, why is something holding us back, and do we have to wait every ten minutes to pass through it? The barrier slows us down towards the goal. Never mind the marathon and traps that our team encountered because it was all just a warmup. Apparently, in parts of the story, we're not yet at the climax. I wonder how's the gold team doing. We all sat on the ground and formed a circle to answer all the riddles.
"Okay, riddle number 1 solved. Help me remember the answers." Third requested for our cooperation on this one.
"Roger!" we affirmed in unison.
"I know the answer to riddle number 3!" Everyone was curious about what Aeith said. "From what Second said earlier, I thought I'd just take the first letters of the two chemicals. According to Fourth and Fifth, the chemical symbol of carbon is C and for oxygen is O. So, C and O."
We all nodded in satisfaction at her answer. I am impressed by what she was working out.
"Alright. We'll consider your and Second's answers, but we still don't know if we can get a word or phrase from these answers." I agreed with what Third stated.
It's not just about coming up with a theoretical answer. We don't know what answer we should come up with, whether it is supposed to be a number? A word? A phrase? A sentence?