Circumference Formula

Gris emerged from the river, eyes fixed on the growing shadow ahead. He ripped his shirt to wrap around his wounded legs, keeping tight hold of the cursed axe.

Limping, he chased after the shadow. As expected, the monsters in doomkeep stayed away from the spot.

"It seems that this curse scares away weak-level monsters and can't bring others into it," he muttered, looking around his dark surroundings.

Leander and Declan were nowhere to be found. But he could still see the doomkeep because the cursed spot had not spread to the entire area.

"Damn, this hurts!"

Gris could not bear the weight on his injured legs any longer. The pain brought back memories of the boy who had slashed him in the death forest.

A moment later, he crumpled to the ground, the axe slipping from his grasp. The cursed spot gradually shrank, becoming a tiny dot before vanishing completely into thin air.

"Young Master!" Leander exclaimed in relief when he saw Gris lying in the mud. He rushed over to him with Declan. "Are you alright? What about the curse?"

With pale and trembling lips, Gris replied, "The cursed circle started at about five centimeters, but a minute later, it stretched out to around seventy-six centimeters in circumference."

"What...?"

"That means the cursed's circumference expanded by about 1.2 centimeters per second! I only need to run faster than that to escape."

Leander and Declan exchanged confused glances. In this era, only a certain class of people had access to math education.

Raised to be a knight, Leander did not learn about the circumference formula. But he heard he could learn mathematics if he joined the Shrines and Religious Learning Centers. Of course, he did not.

Declan, on the other hand, did not go to Pandemonium Academy to calculate the circumference of a circle. He had no intention of pretending to be a builder who needed to study geometry, so he was not interested in math.

"Did you figure out how much the cursed area expanded?" Declan tried to simplify Gris's words.

"Yes, I calculated it," Gris sat up and looked around the doomkeep. "I use my footsteps to calculate distance. If I get the measurements right, I can calculate everything perfectly."

Rather than being astonished by Gris's swift calculations, Leander and Declan were taken aback by his approach. It seemed he intentionally let himself be engulfed by the curse to measure its expanding area every second.

"So, the Soulshard Axe didn't tempt you to keep holding it?" Leander squinted.

Gris nodded. "I deliberately held it to keep the cursed area expanding and only let go when my situation worsened."

"Young Master, you shouldn't play around with curses like that!"

"I wouldn't have taken that risk without a strong intuition. But now, what matters most is tending to my wounds."

Leander felt frustrated that he had been so concerned about the cursed weapon while Gris had intentionally thrown himself into the curse to measure its expanding area.

However, he could not bring himself to be upset since Gris was unharmed. He swiftly retrieved a glass bottle filled with healing potions. Glass bottles were rare, so he had to handle them with care not to break them.

"You should go to the academy right away," Declan spoke as he carefully unwrapped the pieces of cloth from around Gris's legs. "There's a special class for studying curses. I think you can improve there."

Leander did not say anything because he had no detailed knowledge of the academy. He remained silent as he poured the healing potion onto Gris's wounds.

"I heard that curses are the easiest way to kill anything," Gris quoted the information he remembered from the original novel, gazing at his wounds as they gradually closed, almost as if his skin had never been torn by crab monsters before.

"That's right. The fastest way to kill a target is with a curse. That's why many are interested in using cursed weapons despite knowing the risks."

"In that case, the weapon that best suits my class is the cursed one. Do you know when the academy will start recruiting new students?"

Declan shrugged while fitting the new greave boots onto Gris's feet. "That's a secret. Only the committee people know about it. Maybe Lady Gwen knows something."

Gris recalled that today, he was going to see Gwen. He immediately asked the system to calculate his dark energy.

[Your current total dark energy: 110.]

'Not bad. I can use the Route of Death once. I need to find more energy later.'

Gris passed the Soulshard Axe to Declan, instructing him to place it in the special storage box. He stood up from the mud, saying, "Let's clean up in the river before we meet my sister!"

"I'll find the exit portal," Declan walked in the lead, followed by Gris and Leander behind him.

This was the perfect time to ask about the portal without raising suspicion so Gris would not miss it.

"I've never been in a doomkeep before and was curious about the portal. Is it the only way out?"

"Yes, that's it. We can enter the doomkeep easily, but we must find the portal to get out. Do you see that white-colored light over there? That's also a portal, but not for exiting."

Gris glanced at the white light the size of a soccer ball near the trees. The light was still, not moving. He knew that it was a forbidden portal because whoever was sucked into it never came back.

In the novel, Lux was once pushed by the enemy to enter there and he was bounced into a deserted wasteland. He had to struggle alone to find the portal that could bring him back to the starting point.

It was a depressing arc because he still did not return after using several portals that threw him into a strange place with a new kind of monster. 

But in the end, he managed to return to the Amarthia empire and break the belief that no one could return if sucked by a white portal.

"We just have to find the yellow light portal to get out," Declan continued his explanation as he pointed to the small yellow lights that flashed like fireflies.

He gathered the lights in his hand. "Grasp this light, and you will teleport out of the doomkeep in—"

Before Declan could finish his sentence, he had disappeared from the doomkeep.

"That's how portals work," Leander added, motioning for Gris to grasp the small yellow lights.

Gris followed suit, and moments later, he found himself standing in front of the Doomkeep, just as before he entered. He approached Declan, who had come out first.

"Are there other portals besides the white and yellow ones?" he asked.

Leander rubbed his chin. "There are unique portals in high-level doomkeep. But they are still being researched because their use cannot be explained with certainty."

After that, Gris no longer discussed portals. He already knew there were unique portals in high-level doomkeep. It was in the story, but the readers did not get an explanation until the end.

Observant readers always realize there are mysteries when a story ends. And the author of Rise of the Low-class Hero answered readers' questions about the portals.

[It remains a mystery. There is nothing to explain. It's up to you what you think about the portals, just like the characters in the novel don't know for sure.]

At that time, Gris thought that the author forgot to explain the details about the portals, hence the answer. But now he's wondering if the author did forget.

For now, he was not free to explore portals because he was under Blayz's supervision. He also could not discover the strange symbols that bind his hand.

If Blayz found out, he would be interrogated for seeking information about binding magic. The only way for him to be free was to join the academy. Perhaps he would face some problems. But at least he was free.

"You have to be careful with Alberic," Declan suddenly said. "He could have deliberately given you a cursed weapon to kill you. Please ask your father about this."

Gris glanced at the storage box carried by Declan. "Well, it's a bit strange that he'd give a newbie like me a cursed weapon," he muttered as he thought about Alberic.

"Aren't you going to clean yourself up in the river?" Leander approached Gris after finishing talking with Bertrand.

"That's right. Let's go there first!"

The river was located near the doomkeep so that Gris could walk easily. He took off his clothes and started washing his body, which was full of the disgusting smell of frogs and dirty with mud.

Once he finished washing his clothes, he put them into another box and put on new ones. 

"Can you get everything done quickly?" he asked Declan and Leander, who were cleaning their dirty boots.

The two men quickly came out of the river. They frowned as they saw Gris holding a small glass bottle.

"Is that poison?" Leander remembered Gris asking Alberic for poison in preparation for the raid.

"You already know the answer. This poison has high toxicity and is water-soluble. That's what Alberic told me."

Gris poured the black poison into the river, and it spread rapidly. An osprey swooped down into the water in a swift dive, aiming to catch fish.

During its hunt, the osprey drank some contaminated river water. Unfortunately, luck was not on its side that day. Before it could ascend back into the sky, its body convulsed, and it ceased all movement.