Surprise! The Supposed Talent Show Was Actually–?!

Chapter Ch119.2 - Noble Lady

translator: xiin

editors: apricot & juurensha

Wei Yan took his teammate out first, with Wu Jin following closely behind. Vera looked curiously at the door to the instance as it closed slowly and asked, “Did Napoleon really end up ruling Spain?”

Wu Jin opened up the notebook and shook his head, “No. <Giant> was Goya’s fantasy. When Napoleon went to Spain for the first time, he was warmly welcomed by almost all the civilians.”

“But he broke his promise.”

“The people found out that they’d been deceived and rebelled against the French, only to be oppressed by violence––this was the most painful and chaotic period of history in Spain. It wasn’t until the 6th Anti-French Alliance succeeded in fighting against the French army that Napoleon was expelled.”

Behind the giant was nothing but a stretch of darkness more solemn than the curtain of rain.

“Let’s go.” Wu Jin gestured. Outside the instance was still the long and quiet gallery.

<Giant> hung there quietly.

There were several oil paintings nearby that seemed to have the same style of strokes. They should also be works from Goya.

From 1808, 1802, to 1814, and even 1828, the painting styles suddenly converged together. From painting brilliant hopes for the French invaders, praising the Napoleon brothers, to beautiful still lifes, graceful maidens, to miserable and gloomy battlefields where insurgents were tortured and killed by the French army––

Wu Jin gestured to Vera to look at a painting hanging from a high place.

The giant was devouring pale flesh.

Painted in 1819.

The giant’s intentions were totally different there.

Vera gazed at it for a long time, then finally said emotionally, “Goya was also changing.”

From the end of the corridor came the sound of mechanisms again. Wei Yan seemed to have pushed away another wall. Both of them had been forced to leave their blunderbusses in the instance, and Vera was still bitter about this.

“Napoleon’s era is over.” Wu Jin hefted the machete on his shoulder, a smile on his small round face as he comforted, “Welcome back to the Bourbon Dynasty.”

Vera shifted her fingers and suppressed the urge to stroke the small curls.

The two of them moved down the corridor again, and Wu Jin analyzed, “Lemoyne died in 1737, and after finishing his last painting, he killed himself. The oil painting we’re looking for is 170x140cm, and the timestamp should be 1737...”

Vera wondered, “What did Wei Yan’s notebook say about the password?”

Wu Jin shook his head and spoke slowly, “There was no password. The clue in his hands was related to the cause of Lemoyne’s death.”

Veras mouth opened wide in surprise.

The black notebook was opened up again.

“––Lemoyne, the court painter, was at the peak of his life, attracting the attention of everyone. Louis XV favored him, but he was powerless against his depression and paranoia. He began to grow schizophrenic a year ago, imagining himself to be the victim of a court plot, and imagining that his colleagues were scheming against him out of jealousy towards his talents––and after finishing the last masterpiece, Lemoyne died from nine stab wounds.”

There was a long silence.

Vera silently drew a cross for the painter, then hesitated before saying, “... Is the password ‘paranoia’?”

“......” Wu Jin glanced at the beautiful but pale Vera, and shook his head, “It won’t be so obvious. Depression and paranoia––there’s always a reason for it. Let’s look for the painting first.”

The candlelight traveled down the frames again.

Vera spoke in a low voice, “<Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy>, there should be at least four protagonists in the picture, and it was signed 1737. From the gallery, you can only see the year. Only by pushing into the wall behind the frame can you enter the world behind the oil painting––”

Vera suddenly stopped and looked at the painting in the corner, “170x140cm, 1737.”

In the middle of the painting were four ancient Greek mythological warriors, competing in duels.

“Push.” Wu Jin didn’t hesitate at all.

Vera kicked herself up the wall. The warrior in the canvas swung his fist, and the mechanisms made noises as they moved. The angle between the wall and the floor opened up, revealing a big, black hole, and the two jumped down––

A quarter of an hour later, Wu Jin crawled out with an ashen face. This painting was <Ancient Greek Olympic Games>, and the theme was the games, painted by an unknown artist. As a precious girl, Vera could watch from the grandstands, but Wu Jin had been carried away by the instance NPCs and forced to run a 1800m race, and he’d accidentally run until he’d been made to participate in the finals after he made it out of the division competition.

Vera clapped for him, “My fault...”

Wu Jin quickly comforted her. A few minutes later, they found a second painting that met the requirements.

A goddess wore a hood and had her head bowed while three warriors saluted her sincerely.

“Only this one fits...” Vera whispered a reminder.

Wu Jin finally nodded, “We’ll push in again.”

The wall flipped over, and a full 20 minutes passed this time––

The two of them walked out of the instance with numb expressions on their faces and came face to face with Wei Yan, who’d just run 1800 meters.

The painting <Artemis Praying at the Full Moon> was also by an unnamed artist. Wu Jin had been forced to sing the hymn to the moon goddess alongside the warriors due to the rules of the instance, while Vera had to follow Artemis and wield a sword to kill the evil spirits who attacked the goddess.

The two teams passed by each other while a thumping sound rang out in the distance. There seemed to be other players with oil painting instance cards outside the entrance.

After Wei Yan left, Vera finally voiced her complaint, “I guess the program group is doing it deliberately––”

The young woman suddenly stopped speaking.

The two of them had gone through to another gallery, and the painting style around them changed.

Inside the gallery, works from the same artist were often hung together. Displayed here were five or six paintings of a woman, showing her changing from a young girl to a woman, up until where she lay in a funeral home bed––

Vera hissed and sucked in a breath of cold air, reluctant to look at it for an extended time.

In the middle of the last painting, there was only a cold, dead noble lady.

“There’s only one protagonist... It’s unlike <Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy>, and the year isn’t 1737.” Wu Jin reminded her.

Vera looked at the 1736 in one corner of the painting and sighed emotionally, “The size is right, it’s 170×140, even if it’s not the one we’re looking for.”

Vera then added, “She must have been very fortunate.”

Wu Jin was surprised.

Vera tugged at her idol’s combat suit, “She’s looking at the painter, and it’s the kind of look filled with love.”

Wu Jin looked at it a little more carefully and nodded agreement despite not really understanding it.

The next hour was long and boring. They entered another instance, encountered Wei Yan once, and other C-level trainees four times. Vera expressed deeply that if they continued searching like this, they wouldn’t be able to hold up no matter how good their eyesight was.

Wu Jin thought about it, “We should give up a hypothesis.”

Vera: “What...”

Wu Jin slowly started to say, “The painting <Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy> was framed in 1737, and is sized 170x140cm. Neither of the latter two assumptions is consistent with the first––”

“This can only mean that a painting that can satisfy all three conditions at the same time doesn’t exist.”

Vera’s eyebrows leapt up, “Then, how can we find––”

“Discard the assumption about the frame’s height and width.” Wu Jin finally looked up, “I wonder if there’s a situation where the ‘last painting’ mentioned in the notebook is not the same one as the locked box.”

“!!” Vera was suddenly struck with inspiration, “Then, we can directly find the 170×140 painting that fits...”

Wu Jin shook his head, “We use the first two conditions to find it. What appeared on the notebook and the part that was highlighted by the ghost must be an important clue.”

It was like an instructor who personally emphasized a test point prior to the exam.

The two of them finally had a clearer idea of what to do. Leaving aside the frame size limitation, Vera no longer wasted time on painting content that was different from <Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy>, and when they stepped past a corner they’d passed by several times––

Vera quietly sucked in a breath.

The height and width of the canvas was 180×148, which didn’t conform to their third assumption. In the middle of the canvas, a bearded man held a sickle, his right hand lifting up a naked goddess as he knocked two enemies into retreating on the ground. One of them held a fake mask.

Wu Jin narrowed his eyes, “Time is holding the sickle, saving the goddess Truth, and Falsehood is the one with the mask. The last one is Envy.”

Vera kicked the wall open without Wu Jin’s prompting.

The two of them fell down together at the same time, and a line of small text finally emerged––

<Time Saving Truth from Falsehood and Envy> François Lemoyne. 1737.

Juurensha: As always, Little Witch is the smartest!