Chapter 5: The Center of the Solar System

Vera shivered when the morphling, in Kat’s form, invited her deeper into the dungeon’s bottom floor. They entered a separate room and took seats opposite each other.

“…We could have just chatted in the other room, but I thought we may as well use the same room to talk as everyone else did.”

“Where are they now?”

“…They’re in another waiting room. Once we’re done talking, I’ll guide you to them.”

Vera nodded, hoping there were no falsehoods in what the dungeon master’s proxy said. It wasn’t likely, but all the other girls could have been somehow victimized under the guise of having a chat. Vera felt a bit less concerned seeing how the dungeon master was actually having simple a chat with her, even after all of her allies were out of the picture.

“…What are your thoughts on the dungeon?”

Vera didn’t mind answering this question. Of course, she was a newbie adventurer and was quite up front about this fact. The dungeon master accepted her admission and encouraged her to be fully honest.

She got the sense that he wasn’t really all that interested in her opinion, even though he was being entirely polite. Was it because she was the least experienced? Perhaps he didn’t want to hurt her feelings by asking the other, more experience adventurers what they thought, and then not asking her. Even if he was going to mostly ignore her feedback, she appreciated that he was being nice about it. She wasn’t so arrogant as to think her opinion about Guild matters was worth anything down here.

“…So, why did you join the Guild?” After several minutes of Vera offering observations and opinions about the layout of the dungeon and the variety of monsters, the dungeon master changed the subject for her. She was somewhat of an unusual presence in an environment like this, so she could understand why he’d be interested.

“I know it’s extremely uncommon for priestesses from the Church, like myself, to join the Guild, but I thought it was a mistake to simply look the other way or give up on others. I wanted to share my beliefs and values with fellow children of God who live in the same city I do, whether they are congregants or not.”

“…That sounds commendable, but I don’t know much about your beliefs or values, so I can’t really comment.”

“I—I would be delighted to tell you more about that!” Vera was being honest. Although her recent mission was assigned to her involuntarily, she truly did adore preaching and sharing her beliefs with others who were interested enough to listen. “First, may I ask you a question about our world?”

“…You may.”

Vera was suddenly very nervous. The question she was going to ask was fundamental to her beliefs, and to the Church’s doctrine, yet she was going to ask it to a dungeon master and a presumed monster. How would he react? How would his answer affect her for the remainder of this discussion? As far as she was aware, no member of the Church had ever been on the precipice of such a moment before.

“Dungeon master, if you journeyed to the surface, you would see the sun rise each morning and set each evening. At a glance, the sun, the moon, and the stars are all traveling in a great circle around our home. How do you explain that?” Vera noticed a long pause before the morphling eventually responded.

“…In essence, you are asking me if the sun is revolving around this planet, or alternately if the planet revolves around the sun?”

“Yes.” Vera inadvertently gulped. The dungeon master had so succinctly boiled down the question to a meaningful dichotomy. To her, it felt almost as if he understood the ramifications of the question, and answer, better than she did. While waiting for his explanation, she glanced down and her hands, resting on her knees, and noticed her fingers were trembling ever so slightly. Vera silently prayed that he would provide a favorable response.

“…What outcome should I expect if I provide the answer considered by your Church to be entirely incorrect?”

“Please rest assured that I will do nothing other than discuss the issue with words. I’m under no obligation to punish or even criticize those who have aberrant beliefs.”

“…If you fail to convince me of the truth, what will happen when you report this back to the Church?”

“I… couldn’t possibly say. It is my sincere wish that an event like that will not come to pass.”

“…Am I correct in assuming that, in the most extreme cases, people have been punished by the Church for spreading lies about the answer to this very question?”

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“I cannot deny that the Church has taken a hard line on this issue. But that is only because of its extreme importance!”

“…What would you do if the Church ordered you to punish people for harboring incorrect beliefs on this matter?”

“I couldn’t possibly…” Vera paused to think. She’d never been asked by the Church to do anything that would make her so sad. Using violence, or a strong punishment, against someone because they held heretical but nonviolent beliefs was beyond her capabilities, she was pretty sure. She’d never had to disobey the Church because only reasonable things had ever been asked of her. Still, she knew there were others with stricter mindsets and even firmer beliefs within the Holy State that would take action to defend their doctrine.

“…I believe you.”

“What?” Before Vera had a chance to express her feelings, the dungeon master had already uttered words of support.

“…I can tell from your facial expression. You wouldn’t raise your hand against someone for answering your question incorrectly, but you know of others who would.”

When forced to face her cognitive dissonance for the first time, she felt a bit ill. Small tears formed in the corners of her eyes, although she wasn’t sure what painful emotions she was actually feeling. Once again, the dungeon master spoke before she could react.

“…I will answer your question. To the best of my knowledge, this planet revolves around the sun.”

“It does!?” Vera jumped to her feet.

“…I take it that’s not the answer you were looking for.”

“Huh? No, that’s it! I was so fearful that you would say the sun revolves around the planet simply because that is how it looks, at a glance, from the ground.”

“…Wait. The Church’s explanation for what we see is that the planet is orbiting around the sun?”

“Yes! How pretentious would we be if we actually believed that the sun, the source of all life and energy, revolved around us!? We are insignificant. The Church teaches all to be humble. We are all the same, nearly insignificant, in the eyes of a greater power.”

“…Fascinating.” The dungeon master paused for only a moment before continuing. “…And others have been ostracized by the Church, if not punished, for insisting that the sun revolves around the planet, just based on what they witnessed with their own eyes?”

“Yes… As I said, I cannot deny such things have occurred.”

“…I guess the poor treatment of Galileo was unjustified whether he was correct or incorrect…”

“I’m sorry?”

“…It’s nothing. Do you know what causes this planet to revolve around the sun?”

“What do you mean?”

“…I’m asking, why, physically, does the planet go in a circle instead of just continuing in a straight line and departing the vicinity of the sun entirely.”

Vera brought a hand to her chin in thought. “We… We are subordinate, as the smaller and lesser entities. Both us and our planet. We revolve around the sun because it does not revolve around us.”

“…But you didn’t explain why one has to revolve around the other at all.”

“That’s true…” Vera was starting to realize there was still much the world of humans didn’t understand.

The morphling stood and lifted one of the chair legs off the floor. As Vera watched, the morphling released the corner of the chair, causing the suspended chair leg to smack into the floor. “…Why did the chair return to the floor when I released it?”

“All things fall down when they are dropped. It is known.”

“…Why? Why don’t they fall up? …Why don’t they just float there like a bit of dust?”

Vera gazed down at the floor, deep in thought. She was trying to decide what the dungeon master was getting at. Did he know some secret about why everything falls? She figured, of course they fall! If they didn’t, everything would float away and life couldn’t even exist!

“I don’t know.” She decided to appeal to the dungeon master for an explanation. Perhaps he knew some interesting information that only monsters were privy to?

“…Gravity.”

“What is that?”

“…I suspected as much. Do you want to know the basic reason why objects fall to the ground? …Do you want to know the reason why the planet orbits around the sun?”

Vera jumped to her feet and stuttered several times before responding. “I—I—I—If you know such important information, I’m hardly the person you should be telling!”

“…It’s true that I asked you to share your beliefs with me. I didn’t obtain your agreement to share my beliefs, my theories, with you. …If you wish, I will keep these thoughts to myself.”

Vera was torn. She could sense that whoever heard the dungeon master’s next words on this subject would be accepting a tremendous responsibility to the Church, to the nation, and possibly to the world. However, this person or creature was offering to provide what could be a rock-solid argument that supported what the Church had been preaching and advocating for since centuries past. How could she pass that up? She sat back down and gestured for the morphling to continue.

“…Objects are naturally attracted to each other. The more massive the objects are, the more forcefully they approach one another.”

“You mean, the sun attracts us?”

“…Let’s start with something smaller. Why did the chair fall towards the planet a moment ago, but you do not fall sideways towards the morphling right now?”

“Uh, the planet is much bigger than the morphling?”

“…Correct. The planet pulls with much more force than the morphling because it is much more massive. …You can feel the pull of the planet because of its mass, but you cannot feel the pull of the morphling because it’s so many times smaller. The sun is more massive than the planet and also pulls with much more force.”

“That makes sense.”

“…When a big object pulls on a little object, the little object revolves around the big object.”

“Just as the Church teaches!”

“…Yes. Also, the further the objects are, the weaker the attraction. …The sun is quite far from the planet, but it’s so massive that even here, the pull is still strong enough to make the planet go in a circle.”

“Interesting…”

“…The moon revolves around this planet just as this planet revolves around the sun. The explanation is the same.”

“How could we prove this?”

“…You, a representative of the Church, want to prove the explanation behind your beliefs?”

“Is that wrong of me?”

“…Honestly, I’m not even sure what to think.”

“S—So?”

“…It would take some time and effort. Through a series of experiments, and a tremendous amount of measuring the position of everything in the sky every day, I think you could more or less back up everything I said.”

“Just how do you know all this, anyway?”

“…This is why I’m the dungeon master!”