“I guess you weren't on good terms.”
Illua nodded at Osian's comment.
“That's Aaron Bertin, an explorer with the Archaeological League, and he used to be a colleague of my father's.”
“Sounds like he's not now.”
“No, they didn't get along, though it was more of a case of Aaron being unilaterally jealous of my father.”
To summarize, Ilua explains
Illua's father and Aaron used to travel on the same team, but they often clashed.
The cause was Aaron's jealousy. He couldn't accept that Ilua's father was better than him, so he quit the team.
The problem was that the team was irreparably broken.
“Aaron may not have been the best explorer, but he was the best networker.”Balud nodded in understanding.
“I see. You don't see that kind of person in any organization. Someone with little ability or talent, but who uses connections, flattery, and politics to get their way.”
“Aaron was exactly that kind of person, coddling when he could, and stomping on anyone he deemed weaker than him. When he split with my father, he broke up the party, dragging out the people he'd always had his eye on.”
“And your father stood by and watched?”
Osian asked, and Illua smiled bitterly.
“My father was, in a way, an idealist. He was the opposite of Aaron. He got where he was based on his ability and talent alone, and he didn't care about anything else.”
Ilua's father was a talented man.
Aaron, on the other hand, is a talentless politician.
If you ask me who is more talented, I'd say the former, but if you ask me who will survive longer, I'd say the latter.
Unfortunately, this is the world.
Eventually, Aaron's political maneuvering earned him a respectable position in the Archaeological League, but Illua's father's influence was waning.
Aaron had a stake in that, and he sabotaged him behind his back.
“My father thought it was important to explore these ancient ruins, so he was excited about it, and here we are.”
Her father was hospitalized by Kursha, who was targeting Balud.
The same goes for other team members who decided to move together.
“I can't do anything on my own, but I couldn't just stand by and let this opportunity slip through my fingers like this, I'd regret it for the rest of my life, so I decided to go.”
Illua had a reason to make this trip to the ruins a success.
Naturally, it must have been painful for Aaron to see Illua take the initiative.
After all, she was the daughter of the man he was so jealous of and hated.
“I see.”
Osian remembered Aaron from earlier, the enhanced humans with him, to be exact.
‘They were like lab mice.’
The enhanced humans were eerily identical in appearance with pale white skin and white hair. They were all the same except for their gender, hairstyles, and physiques.
What was particularly memorable was the way they looked at the people around them.
Their inorganic pupils seemed emotionless, but they were not.
Osian could feel the arrogance in their eyes, the sky-high arrogance.
'They don't even treat the people around them as people like themselves in the first place.’
If they were involved, it was unlikely that anything good would come from entering the ruins.
But even if I warned Illua here, she wouldn't take me up on the offer.
She had her own reasons for going to the ruins.
‘Then.’
As a hired hand, I can only help as best I can.
In truth, Osian wanted this, too.
There were things he didn't like about Aaron, but the way the enhanced human looked down on him like he was a lesser being.
A little, no.
He didn't like it a lot.
*
The people with tickets entered in an orderly fashion.
There was no need to rush, as moving quickly would not make the ancient ruins disappear.
On the contrary, calmness was the most necessary virtue in ancient ruins.
There was no telling what traps might lurk here.
Osian, Balud, and the North Blinders were at the end.
“It seems to me that this side is telling us that we are blatant latecomers.”
Balud muttered, adjusting his glasses.
After all the lobbying and money he'd spent on the Archaeological League, it was a bit of a bruised ego to be treated this way.
But he understands. The North Blinders are a criminal organization, no matter how powerful they are.
Considering our other competitors are warlocks, wizards, the military, and large corporations, we have no choice.
The inside of the tunnels had the feel of a coal mine, with pillars and lights.
As I went deeper, the dirt turned to hard rock, and the sparse human touches disappeared.
In their place were strange stone structures, one after another.
“Is this a ruin?”
“I've never been here before.”
Balud's men muttered in unison.
Normally, Balud would have pointed out the disorganized behavior, but not this time.
He didn't show it, because he too was in awe of the fact that he had entered the ruins.
“Wow. Finally!”
Illua exclaimed.
For the first time, she was seeing the ruins she had only read about in books and texts.
Even if they had only just begun to scratch the surface, the feeling was new.
'Hmm. Does it look like it's been a while since it was built?’
Osian was the only one who didn't seem to be impressed.
Illua asked impatiently.
“Mr. Osian, aren't you surprised? We're in a ruin, a legacy of the past that we have no idea when it was built or how old it is!”
“Who cares about relics?”
Osian had cleared a hundred dungeons in the form of these ruins alone.
He didn't feel overwhelmed or amazed that something like this still exists in this day and age.
Of course, it must be a little exciting to actually feel something he only saw in games.
Nevertheless, Osian's mind was calm, and for a simple reason.
‘It's because the dungeons and ruins in the game aren't that exciting in the first place.’
The vicious game instills a tremendous amount of fear and dread in players just by the name of dungeons.
Monsters sneaking up on you from out of sight, traps triggering without warning, poison and swamps spread over large areas, not to mention confusing maze-like structures.
When I finally made it through, I was greeted by the dungeon's boss monster.
Unsurprisingly, the difficulty was quite high, and death was common.
It's better if the dungeon has a save point, but what if it doesn't?
I had to go back to the entrance.
They say that hard memories are usually fondly remembered, but if they're too horrible, they're not even memorable.
Having experienced such a vicious experience so often, it's natural to be suspicious of any ruins or dungeons.
Osian wasn't too worried but he wasn't too happy either.
“Let's go in. Everyone else must have gone first.”
This is now the entrance to the ruins.
Those who had already entered had already rushed into the ruins.
“Mr. Osian is so unromantic.”
Ilua grumbled, but didn't deny Osian's words.
Now was the time to get nervous. Even if the ruins were old enough that most of the traps had been worn away, there might still be some left.
The guardians of the ruins were often unaffected by time.
“We'll go this way, the main road will have been traveled by everyone else, so we'll go the other way.”
On the main road, the big guns would have moved first.
They could follow in their wake, but then they'd have to eat the scraps they left behind until the end of the expedition.
As we entered the ruins in earnest, we saw stone structures occupying a large area underground.
Despite their age, their grandeur still made their presence felt.
The ruins were underground, but that didn't mean they were completely devoid of light.
It was almost curious that it wasn't too dark to make out anything in particular.
“It's strange, it's not dark in the basement with no light. There are hidden light sources all over the ceiling.”
Illua immediately pulled out her notebook and quickly recorded what she saw.
Meanwhile, Balud and his men scanned the area.
They wanted to be on the lookout for any threats.
Osian also took in the general layout of the ruins.
‘Hmm. It's hard to tell what kind of underground ruins we're looking at here.’
If you've played as many rounds as Osian, you should know the layout of dungeons and ruins by heart, but that's not always the case.
I found myself looking at walkthroughs from time to time rather than trying to memorize them, or not revisiting them after I'd beaten them once.
Furthermore, some of the dungeons and ruins had their structures pasted in, making it impossible to tell them apart.
‘I think this is one of those, but I'm not sure.’
Some of them were cut or collapsed due to age, and there were many parts that didn't fit together as clearly as I remembered.
I thought I'd have to go a little deeper to find out.
‘The best I could hope for was to see what monsters or guardians might be here.’
That was too much of a risk.
When Illua had finished exploring the area, she pocketed her notebook and called out.
“Come on, let's move on!”
Her voice was not filled with fear, but with curiosity to explore as much as possible now that she was in the ruins.
As a hired hand, I had no choice but to follow her.
You might think Illua was being obnoxious, but she wasn't.
“Stop!”
Illua stopped Balud, who was just about to step on one of the blocks.
“Stop, it's a trap, I've read about it in the books, see?”
After stopping Balud, Illua threw a rock at the block he'd almost stepped on earlier.
The block snapped into place, and a spear protruded from its side.
An old trap that still works.
If he had moved without thinking, he would have been pierced in the temple.
“We shouldn't go this way, it's a dead end, and the way this place is structured, there's no way there's anything further up.”
Illua was quite competent. Despite this being her first real-world experience, she made good judgments based on the bits of information she remembered.
She didn't get it all right, but having a hit rate of over 80% was certainly impressive.
'With more experience here, she could really become a great explorer.'
Osian couldn't help but think to himself.
Illua's quickness to analyze even the smallest traps that he couldn't remember was definitely not normal.
As the group moved on, they were stopped by a whitish shadow in the distance.
“Wait.”
Balud stepped forward and stared straight ahead.
It was hard to see in the distance, so he pulled out the chemical light he'd packed and tossed it into the distance.
The liquid stick of light green light flew off and rolled across the floor.
The whitish shadows were the other team that had entered the ruins first.
They all lay dead in their places.
Tension hung in the air, which had been loosened by Illua's arrival without much damage.
His skin stretched like a rubber band, making his hair stand on end.
‘The first victims.’
Osian had to remind himself of the feel of the sword at his belt.
'Yes. This is a ruin of unknown deaths.’
It was inevitable that people would die like that.
‘I'm just wondering how they died.’
Osian and Balud exchanged glances.
They nodded wordlessly and slowly made their way toward the bodies.
Fortunately, there were no traps along the way, so they were able to examine the body up close.
The condition of the body was not good. They were full of sharp wounds, as if they had been cut by something.
Some of the bodies were even dismembered.
“Is this.......”
“Yep. Apparently, they ran into the guardian of the ruins that roamed around here.”
More than twenty people had been killed without being able to fight back.
Were they killed because they were weak? Or because they were unlucky?
No, it wasn't.
It was because the guardian of these ruins was a monster.