I Got a Fake Job at the Academy

Chapter 814 - Side Story 87: Ancient Ruins (4)

The interior of the ruins was quiet. It was a place that had been forgotten for a long time, so it was natural that nothing lived there.

However, Rudger didn't act carelessly.

'Given that the entrance is hidden, the ruins' system is functioning normally. If the outside is like that, it means the inside is the same.'

The ruins were remarkably well-preserved. Even if they couldn't obtain anything meaningful inside, just discovering the preservation method of these ruins alone would make the trip here worthwhile and then some.

'But it won't flow that simply.'

Rudger stopped walking. Casey and Veronica did the same.

"It's a fork in the road."

Veronica let out a groan. The path that had been running long as one had finally reached a fork in the road.

"Is one the correct answer and one a trap?" 

"Perhaps both could be correct answers."

Or both could be traps.

"As you saw from outside, the ruins are quite large and spacious. Inside, there must be multiple divided sections, and naturally they wouldn't have made just one path." 

"That means from here on is time for choices."

Rudger nodded his head. If they were moving in groups of dozens, they would have split the team here. But only three had entered this place.

'It's awkward to split up.'

The numbers were too few. While their skills would surpass groups with dozens of people, complacency was forbidden. With ancient ruins of this caliber, it wouldn't be strange for some bizarre incident to occur inside.

'I'd like to spread magic waves to check the entire internal structure, but.'

Rudger instinctively felt that he shouldn't do that. As a mage, relying on intuition might be called foolish. But Rudger's intuition was the result of having grown with the soil of countless experiences crossing lines of death.

If he didn't trust that, he wouldn't trust the papers of renowned scholars either.

Rudger signaled to Casey with his eyes. Quick-witted Casey also noticed what Rudger was trying to say and withdrew her energy.

She too had been feeling frustrated and was thinking of using her magic to examine the ruins' structure.

Perhaps sensing this atmosphere, Veronica asked questioningly.

"You're not going to use magic?"

"It seems better to exercise maximum restraint. If nothing else, these ruins appear to react particularly sensitively to magic."

Veronica nodded, agreeing it made sense. These were ruins with mana flowing everywhere and even the entrance hidden by magic. If even she, a knight, could feel it this vividly, it would be even more cautious from the perspective of Rudger and Casey, who were mages.

"Then we need to choose one of these two." 

"Whichever we go to won't be immediately problematic, as long as we don't do anything foolish."

They had entered through the main gate. At minimum, they weren't people who hadn't been permitted. That's why the ruins were this calm.

However, the moment they did the foolish things Rudger mentioned, there was no telling what punishment the long-dormant ruins might inflict on unwelcome guests. There were no previous cases to even give examples, leaving it to imagination.

"This is difficult. Having to choose just one when we don't know what's where." 

"Rather than this, how about we just camp out here and block people?"

Casey offered an opinion.

"After all, our purpose is to prevent relics or artifacts in the ruins from falling into the hands of unsavory people. If we're the first to establish position and occupy it, wouldn't the other side be unable to do anything?"

At those words, Veronica was noticeably flustered. Her reaction showed she hadn't expected the option of doing nothing after coming all this way.

"That could be a method in its own right. But I don't really want to recommend it."

Casey, who had suggested it, let out an empty laugh, knowing that herself.

"Well, I suppose so. If we wait here, the other side will set up camp outside and wait. We're only three, and as humans we can't stay in one place for long." 

"R-right!"

Veronica immediately chimed in agreement. Rudger and Casey could tell why she was so desperate.

Both had observation skills that vastly transcended ordinary people, so they couldn't help but know even if they tried not to.

"It seems achievements are important to Knight Veronica."

Casey asked mischievously. Veronica was at a loss for words, rolling her eyes around before drooping her shoulders.

"Well, having come all this way, to return empty-handed is a bit..." 

"I understand. When they dispatched a Master-class knight to the field, not just anyone, if all we did was just block unsavory people, there would be quite a few disappointed people." 

"Yes. That too, but the Empire's capable intelligence agents died. For their sake as well, I must obtain something here."

Veronica wasn't being greedy for personal advancement. Though Rudger hadn't met with Veronica often, he knew how upright and principled a person she was.

She was a talent befitting a knight, perhaps the most knight-like knight.

Being such a person, she couldn't just pass over the Empire's agents who died in this incident.

She wanted to achieve definite results that would allow her to confidently request from superiors that sufficient compensation go to their families.

"Well, I'm also not very keen on waiting here indefinitely. With ruins of this scale, there won't be just this one entrance."

Would there be people who would give up just because the main gate was blocked? They would desperately try to enter the ruins somehow.

'It could be a side door or a window. If not that, they could tear down walls to make a door that didn't exist.'

It wasn't something just three people could handle in the first place.

"Whatever it is, let's move right away." 

"Uh, is it okay to go right away?"

When Rudger chose the left path without hesitation, Veronica showed bewilderment.

"Or is there something you can feel about what's over there?" 

"Not that. Just, my intuition called out that way."

Since they couldn't obtain proper clues, it didn't matter which they chose. Then it was better to just go the way intuition led.

Sometimes it's better to move as your heart directs rather than thinking too complexly.

"You don't need to worry about traps. At least, these ruins don't seem evil enough to turn away guests who properly entered through the main gate."

There was something he felt while coming to the fork.

These ruins were functioning properly. Probably the moment the unsavory people revealed their true intentions, the ruins would bare their teeth to punish them.

This calmness meant that the path Rudger chose wasn't wrong.

'In other words, it's not a secret facility that must be unconditionally hidden and concealed.'

Indeed, if it were a place that had to be hidden, they wouldn't have built it as such a massive structure. They would have made it deep underground somewhere secret and invisible.

The party that chose the left path calmly walked the ruins' corridor. Since it hadn't been cleaned for a long time, dust had accumulated and there was a musty smell, but this much could be overlooked as charming.

"I felt it from outside too, but it's really large and spacious."

Perhaps to break the silence, Veronica spoke first.

"Yes. And it's much more spacious than what's visible on the outside. When I surveyed from outside, there was a massive structure underground too."

Casey answered.

"A structure?" 

"I was curious how there could be such a lush forest in this extreme environment, so I checked below. Since a massive water vein flows beneath the forest, it wasn't difficult to confirm."

What she learned through that process was that underground in the ruins was an underground facility far more massive than the surface.

"This tropical rainforest-like forest too could be maintained thanks to the underground water flowing below."

"Even if underground water flows, it's amazing that there's a tropical rainforest like this." 

"I was wondering about that too. The underground water flowing below was hot enough to remind one of hot spring water. The strange thing is, there's no lava zone below that." 

"Wait. That means..." 

"Yes. Probably what's influencing this forest itself isn't the natural environment but these ruins."

To have such great influence as to create a tropical rainforest in the cold northern continent. Rudger let out a groan inwardly.

'If it can change the surrounding environment to something completely different, there must be a relic.'

Perhaps the reason these ruins remained intact through long years was thanks to the existence of such a relic.

'I don't know the exact performance of the relic, but if it can create a tropical rainforest in the Arctic, it must be extraordinarily remarkable.'

Perhaps it could create the opposite. Like creating a massive glacial zone in the middle of a desert.

Whatever it was, it definitely couldn't fall into the hands of unsavory people. If used even slightly wrong, it would cause a disaster reminiscent of strategic nuclear weapons.

"It seems we'll have to be a bit more serious."

He had thought to finish as quickly as possible and return before classes scheduled until next week. As expected, reality didn't seem so easy.

Stairs leading downward appeared before the walking party.

"Stairs. And ones going underground."

A slight joy tinged Veronica's voice at the fact they had chosen the right path.

"Perhaps the opposite path was the place heading to the upper levels of the ruins. My intuition did its job properly."

The party went down the stairs. The descending path was dark, but no one lacked good night vision. Rudger examined the wall surface while going down the stairs.

Metaphysical letters whose meaning was unknown were engraved as if scraped out with an awl.

It was an ancient language he didn't know. Perhaps his teacher might know.

'Archaeological elements that would make archaeologists go crazy with excitement if they saw them.'

Such things were densely engraved on the walls, so it wasn't for nothing that people coveted ruins.

In the underground they arrived at, paths split in multiple directions, and on both sides of each corridor, firmly closed stone doors were spread at regular intervals.

"From here it looks like the real thing."

Rudger swept his hand over the nearest stone door. He felt the energy of mana inside. The moment they tried to open it by force, there was a high possibility an alarm would sound.

'There are more doors than expected. Befitting a massive facility, it must be composed of various rooms for all sorts of purposes.'

They couldn't check all of these. At minimum, they needed something like a map that could grasp the internal structure.

For now, they decided to split up and look around nearby. Though there were only three, if they stayed together, efficiency would decrease proportionally.

Rudger swept his hand along the wall, examined the ceiling, and lightly flowed mana along the floor.

Honestly speaking, it wasn't that he wasn't interested in the ruins themselves. If there hadn't been other matters, he would have stayed here for at least a month or more continuing exploration.

However, with time pressing now, Rudger had no choice but to postpone trivial curiosity to the back burner. It was when he was thinking that was rather regrettable.

Casey, who should have been examining another direction, approached with Veronica in tow.

"What's wrong?" 

"There are traces."

At the word traces, Rudger straightened his body that had been slightly bent to examine the floor.

"Let's move right away."

The place Casey guided them to was a corridor no different from other corridors. However, as she said, in the center of the old corridor were traces of people having visited.

It was surprising. It meant people other than themselves had come here.

'But not recently.'

Footprints were engraved over traces of years accumulated in layers for a long time, and these footprints too were estimated to be quite old.

'Compared to the ruins being hundreds of years old, the footprints are at least 50 years old at the shortest.'

Of course this was old too, but compared to the entire age of the ruins, it was relatively recent.

Rudger looked in the direction the traces headed.

"Here it is."

Following the traces and moving, they finally reached before a stone door.

"How do we open this?"

Instead of answering Veronica's question, Rudger tapped the stone door with the back of his hand.

"Hmm. About this thickness." 

"You don't mean?"

Casey guessed what Rudger was trying to do and tried to stop him. But before she could, Rudger's body disappeared as if swallowed by shadows.

A moment later, with a rumbling sound, the stone door opened. It was quite smooth for something old.

Through spatial movement, Rudger had opened the door from inside.

"Moving one person a short distance isn't difficult." 

"...You know if the stone door had been just a bit thicker, you would have been stuck in the wall?" 

"Considering that much, I was quite curious."

Rudger looked around inside the room.

The overall design was estimated to be some sort of situation room. There was something like a table made of stone in the center, and whether someone had been there, vines and dust that had grown were cleanly wiped away.

Rudger approached there and brought his hand close.

"This is an artifact." 

"That rough-looking thing?" 

"Yes. And it's still usable now."

Rudger lightly flowed mana into the artifact.

Bluish mana flowed over the artifact presumed to be a table, then soon filled the inside of the room with brilliant light.

Beautiful light like blue constellations filled the entire room. At its center appeared a man embodied as a constellation. A charming middle-aged man who appeared to be in his mid-50s with a neatly groomed beard.

[Nice to meet you.]

He looked precisely at them and spoke, his blue eyes shining like stars.

[I am Lexer. A great explorer and mage, they say.]