Ruins Guard Request (1)

"Three dungeons? It's like a hidden dungeon bargain sale."

It was truly a dangerously tempting event. Sargadis had plenty of ruins, but dungeons were rare. The ones being discovered weren't particularly impressive anyway. If this place spat out artifacts so incredible that it became a hotspot for the entire archaeological world, there would have been an archaeology branch office here by now. And I would have been shoved aside by those people, unable to pick up any decent thesis material. If I'd gone into the ruins first, I probably would have died in seconds like a level 7 rookie getting stomped by a Crimson Balrog.

One of the reasons I'd chosen this city for my adventurer activities was exactly that—a place reasonably safe with decent research potential. Sargadis was the well-selected, nicely located rural town I'd carefully picked out. In 21st-century terms, it was like a local city in Gyeonggi Province, thirty minutes by car from the new developments, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠where redevelopment had started but stalled, leaving it packed with 80s and 90s family homes.

"Bargain... what?"

"Ah. It's just something from my homeland, so don't worry about it."

"Really?"

Dorka brushed it off with a disinterested grunt and glanced out the inn door.

"Anyway, they say the ruins themselves aren't much, but the dungeon side is dangerous. Both are crawling with monsters, and one group is even trying to break out. That's why every adventurer in town has gone out to work."

"Really? What kind of dungeon makes it this big of a deal?"

In this world, dungeon was the general term for any place where monsters appeared. Ruins weren't counted as dungeons. It made sense—ruins left abandoned for anywhere from decades to centuries would have seen all their internal monsters starve to death. Even monsters need to eat.

There were two main patterns for places called dungeons. Lairs created when monsters gathered together, and secret bases built by complete lunatics. Goblin dens were the poster child for the first, while black mages' hideouts were the industry icon for the second.

"Dungeon? They say it's a goblin lair and a black mage's hideout."

"It's a full gourmet course."

The side dish lineup was incredible. Way better than my breakfast.

"...But then isn't Sargadis in danger?"

"The adventurers will handle it. Even if the monsters reach the city, the lord's army is right there."

Expecting a lot from village soldiers. It was the same as hoping the rear-support troops would somehow crush North Korea for you.

"You should be the one getting off your lazy ass instead of sleeping in and heading to the bathhouse. Why don't you go grab something while the opportunity's there? In all my years running this inn, you're the first adventurer I've seen who wakes up at lunchtime after a dungeon gets discovered and then eats breakfast."

"Heh heh. I'm a unique guy, what can I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠say. And the protagonist always shows up fashionably late anyway."

"You have to appear in the introduction to be the protagonist."

It was a fucking fact. The people here were surprisingly good at dropping truth bombs.

"Dungeon. Dungeon. Dungeon, huh..."

I muttered while sipping my soup. A guy who gets his ass handed to him by a few dozen crickets wants to explore a dungeon? There was no bigger load of bullshit than that bullshit. Was this world telling me to go die grinding for a PhD?

I should just hit the bathhouse and then knock out some cost-effective requests.

There were definitely some sweet quests the dungeon-obsessed guys had left neglected. Thinking that, I scooped another spoonful of soup when I suddenly remembered what Dorka had said earlier.

"...Dorka."

"Yeah? What?"

"No, nothing special. That thing you mentioned—the guild that discovered those 'not much' ruins. Which one was it?"

Dorka, who had been carrying over a large chunk of bread, blinked at my words.

"Audumla."

Aigoo, fuck. I should have just slept more.

It was around lunchtime. After I finished every last drop of soup and even visited the bathhouse, I reluctantly dragged myself over to the Audumla Guild.

"Fuck."

As expected, a huge notice was plastered prominently across the guild bulletin board.

This idiot-level garbage would be embarrassing no matter where you showed it off. While everyone else was out finding dungeons and stacking up achievements, we were over here doing our own thing and discovering some useless fucking ruins. Why don't you give me a single choice for once, you piece-of-shit Audumla Guild.

The other adventurers around me were also grumbling.

"I mean, fuck. Who writes letters like this? If I scribbled with my dick it'd look better than this."

"Isn't this what those heretics worship... you know, that thing?"

"Can't we just write some random crap, cash the reward, and call it a day? It's not like we're getting that Silver promotion anyway."

Hearing the level of conversation around me made me want to kill myself. So this was why adults always nagged you to study hard and get a good job. The social perception was worrying even before you got to income or benefits.

I consciously tuned out my hearing and focused on the string of characters on the notice.

Hieroglyphs.

It was a writing system that directly copied the shapes of objects. Like the characters in Egyptian wall paintings, they were closer to pictures than letters. The meaning... bird, prey, perform a ritual, enjoy?

What the fuck is this supposed to be.

I frowned. Even with my ability, hieroglyphs were extremely difficult to interpret. They were inherently very abstract in nuance. I could tell that the first two characters in the sequence meant 'bird' and 'prey' respectively. But whether it meant the act of feeding prey to a bird or was a metaphor for the larva that served as a bird's food, I had no way of knowing. The original users would have had a spoken consensus on the meaning since it was a common expression, but as a third party ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠with no one to ask, it felt like getting completely screwed.

That was also why hieroglyphs never became a mainstream writing system. The only successful example I knew was Chinese characters, and even those suffered from the exact same limitations. That was why Chinese assigned separate 'pronunciation' and 'meaning' to every character. At that point it was barely a hieroglyphic system anymore. In the end they still couldn't manage it and ended up with tens of thousands of characters. They even phonetically transcribed foreign words that were hard to render in characters. Who the hell looks at coffee and reads it as "coffee"? It was a massive culture shock.

Anyway, trying to interpret meaning from these characters alone was pointless. This was a script I'd never seen before, even coming from Carmine. It was probably the writing of some primitive people with almost no surviving records. Interpreting it without any comparative material or traces was practically impossible.

Why the hell did they handle work this way? Were they trying to give my muscular body cancer as an assassination attempt?

...Does this guild not have a single archaeology or linguistics major?

Of course they didn't. I quickly abandoned that hope and headed to the reception desk. The two men on duty today were both new faces.

"Excuse me. I'd like to collect the reward for the sewer reconnaissance request I completed last time."

I might as well take what I could get. Three coppers was thirty thousand won—enough for two orders of half-and-half chicken.

"Sewer reconnaissance? May I have your name?"

"Nord. Here's my plate."

I took off the plate hanging around my neck and showed it. The receptionist checked my name with his gloved left hand.

"Mr. Nord... Ah, yes. The request itself was treated as having complications, so you are eligible to receive the reward."

It was only natural. Sending three Iron ranks and one Bronze into a sewer swarming with those murderous bugs—they should have been paying me hazard pay.

"Here is your reward of three coppers."

—Clink clink.

I took the three coins and put them in my wallet. At the same time, I casually asked a question as if it were nothing.

"By the way, about those characters on the bulletin board. Those aren't the complete set excavated from the ruins, right?"

"Hm? Ah, correct. I heard they only copied down a portion of the inscriptions from the ruins."

I knew it. Fuck, if you're only bringing part of it and asking for the meaning, what do you expect? Were they planning to find someone who could ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠interpret it and drag them to the ruins?

While I was internally groaning at the absurdity, the male receptionist looked at me with a curious expression.

"But how did you know those were only part of the full set, adventurer?"

Oh shit. What excuse could I give? I felt cold sweat running down my back at the unexpected question. If I handled this wrong, my real specs would be exposed. The moment they found out I had a master's in archaeology, the guild master or one of his lackeys would come flying over with their asses on fire asking if I wouldn't like to become a guild member.

"Ahem. Is there anything surprising about that? It's simple."

I used the classic civil servant "uh~ um~ uh~" speech pattern. It was extremely effective for buying time to think of an excuse. Everyone should try it sometime.

"If it was just a few lines of graffiti scribbled in the corner of a wall, would they bother copying it down and looking for someone who knows the meaning? It must have been written in a really obviously suspicious location, or they only transferred part of an extremely long inscription."

"Wow, your reasoning is impressive. That's correct. I heard those characters were written all over the ruins in a very suspicious manner."

The male receptionist at the counter exclaimed in admiration. After dealing only with adventurers whose brains turned slower than rusted millstones, he must have been stunned by the reasoning power of a 21st-century elite university student (dropout). Well, there were insanely smart people here too, but their proportion seemed significantly lower compared to Earth. That was a good trend for me. If every other adventurer was a professional intellectual mercenary who treated me like trash for not keeping up, I would have wanted to die.

Anyway, the receptionist continued excitedly.

"From what I heard, those drawings were densely packed across every wall from nearly the cave entrance all the way to the inner ruins."

"Densely? Wait, is that for real?"

Just imagining it was fucking terrifying. The adventurer team that copied those drawings must have boldly entered that kind of cave and come back after exploring it. Did they have balls the size of their stomachs? From a modern perspective it would feel like an abandoned hospital with eyes and human faces drawn in red pen covering every wall. Fuck, I respected them. The adventurers who explored that place had smashed the national rules of horror movies head-on and returned alive. Or maybe those bastards were already possessed. I hoped a zombie outbreak wouldn't hit Sargadis anytime soon.

"I'm impressed. If it were me, I would have noped out at the entrance... I mean, I would have run away the moment I felt the ominous vibe at the cave mouth."

"It's wise to do so if you're below Silver tier. In fact, the adventurers who first discovered the ruins didn't explore it and only came back to report. Ah, of course you still get a reward just for that. One copper per person."

"...One copper per person?"

"Yes. One copper per person."

Fuck. Look at that. Good thing I never took a job here. This industry was structured so that even if a mountain of gold came pouring out of the ruins, not a single crumb would fall to the discoverers. With that kind of bullshit, money-blinded adventurers would sneak in without reporting to the guild to increase their share, die horribly, and only make the problem bigger. If they treated their own adventurers like that, I could only imagine how they treated the new receptionists in the same organization. If I got a job at the guild I'd clearly be treated like a free translation machine and get all the shit work dumped on me.

Just how far are you planning to entertain me, you piece of shit?

It was a primitively stupid way of doing things when you thought about it, but when I considered how stupid the executives and bosses of shitty companies on Earth were, it was the same here and there. Humans become stupid when profit gets involved. Even if they luckily had the capital to start a company, the uneducated roots of small-business owners don't go anywhere. Bastards who don't even know the first thing about management ignore the opinions of the people doing the actual work and do whatever they want, so only the people below them suffer.

It might be better to prepare to cut ties with this shitty Audumla at the right time. I couldn't work five times harder than everyone else at a small company for 220 a month with specs good enough to enter a large corporation, right?

"Ah, that's right. There's a decent request related to those ruins. Would you be interested?"

"A request?"

Since I was in the middle of internally cursing, just hearing the word request filled me with instinctive rejection. Since it was ruins, going inside might let me gather some thesis material, yet this rootless sense of rejection kept surging up anyway. It could truly be called the species trait of a shitty company employee.

"It's a direct commission issued by the guild. We're looking for people to take guard duty inside the ruins to prevent any theft or damage until the analyst arrives the day after tomorrow."

Basically night watch duty. It sounded boring. As I, who wasn't particularly drawn to it, opened my mouth to decline—

"The reward is ten coppers, and for those below Iron Class there will be significant promotion benefits."

"I'll do it. I've been waiting for exactly this request."

Let me say it again. Humans become stupid when profit gets involved. And I was no exception as one human being.