Two-Person Exploration
Two-Person Exploration
The papyrus bearing the map had become a completely different object from the one we'd seen before entering the ruins.
While the front remained unchanged, still depicting the terrain, the reverse—which showed the interior of the ruins—now displayed an extraordinarily complex internal structure in full detail.
"Now I see why he was so desperate to find the map. Count Chaipree must have known its secret."
When he couldn't find it, he must have decided to force his way through using the royal family's power instead.
Fortunately, the map clearly showed the maze the Princess and I had fallen into.
"Though memorizing all this seems impossible."
Instead of putting the map back in my pocket, I turned toward the Princess.
Having regained her composure at some point, the Princess was looking at me.
"Are you alright?"
"Yes. Young Lord Alex, you saved me, didn't you?"
The Princess asked calmly.
Just as when she had charged at the monsters earlier, she was displaying a maturity far beyond her years.
"I just happened to be right next to you."
"Thank you."
Though I tried to brush it off modestly, the Princess still made sure to thank me.
Even with only the two of us in the dark passageway, the Princess didn't seem afraid.
But her expression was slightly somber.
"Was I in the wrong this time, too?"
It seemed she was thinking back to what had just happened.
"I should have just stayed quiet. I needlessly stepped forward and ended up putting Young Lord Alex in danger, too."
I couldn't help chuckling softly at her words. Knowing who had taught her, who was she trying to fool?
"If the exact same thing happened again, would you really stay still?"
"..."
As expected, the Princess couldn't answer my question.
We could hardly blame her for our fall down here, either.
"Originally, neither Your Highness nor I should have been in any danger."
"...Pardon?"
I explained what had happened as we fell into the trap.
"There was a noble who used an ability to stop us from climbing back up?"
When I said that, the Princess's eyes widened.
"And before that, there was a knight who tried to kill me."
She seemed to find that hard to believe.
"Don't tell me... my elder brothers...?"
"Well, it could have been their subordinates' overzealous loyalty. Or perhaps they discreetly passed down something resembling an order."
This was likely the first time the Princess had faced a direct threat to her life.
After all, the incident in which the entrance ceremony venue exploded had been undone.
Experiencing this for the first time, the Princess was at a complete loss.
Though she put on a front of adulthood far beyond her years, she was still just a young ten-year-old girl.
Her sharp intellect and the thorough education she'd received from Katrin and the Queen kept it from showing, but she had yet to gain any real-world experience.
'I suppose she'll be learning about reality from now on.'
Perhaps that was how one slowly became tainted by the world, step by step.
As her restless thoughts continued to spiral, the Princess seemed to discover another worry.
"If that's the case, Katrin is in danger!"
"Katrin should be fine. She couldn't have seen them deliberately dropping us. If they believe Your Highness is dead, Katrin will actually be safer."
I shook my head at the Princess's words. The Princess was their target, after all. Not everyone was involved, and they hadn't been caught, so there was no reason for them to kill Katrin needlessly.
But the Princess meant something entirely different.
"It's not that—Katrin will be looking for me!"
Ah, I hadn't thought of that.
If Katrin went out on her own under the pretext of searching for the Princess, then she would naturally be in danger, too.
I looked upward. The ceiling was closed shut, as if the trap had reset itself.
Had it not been for the scattered remains of the maggot monsters strewn around us, it would have been hard to believe we'd fallen from up there.
For Katrin's sake alone, we needed to hurry.
"Can you move?"
At my question, the Princess pushed herself up.
"The passageways... are incredibly complex. Is this a maze?"
Examining the map, I nodded at her words.
"Finding the exit shouldn't be difficult."
The Princess looked at me with puzzled eyes.
"Um... what is that paper you're holding?"
I wondered when she'd ask.
"It's a map of these ruins."
"Pardon?"
I must have surprised the Princess several times already in this short span of time.
"How do you have a map of the ruins?"
"During the field trip, I was stranded here in the Seal Grounds for a week, remember? While searching around back then, I found it near the corpse of a knight. I didn't know what it was for at the time, but it turned out to be a map of these ruins."
"Ah. That knight must have belonged to Count Chaipree's house."
I added a little truth to the lie, and the Princess believed me.
As expected, the Princess was still an innocent girl, untainted by the world.
"I'm truly glad to be with Young Lord Alex."
Hmm. Perhaps she wasn't untainted so much as she simply trusted me.
Regrettably, already contaminated as I was, I felt not the slightest pang of conscience.
"I've checked, and it seems there's no direct path back up to where we fell from."
I showed the map to the Princess.
The interior of the ruins depicted on the map consisted of several floors.
The floor the Princess and I had fallen from was the topmost one, and where we stood now was the bottommost.
By locating the trap we'd fallen through and determining our position in the maze, I found that, fortunately, we weren't far from our destination: the heart of the ruins.
Normally, without a map, one would wander aimlessly through this lower maze until dying. But with the map in hand, it looked like we could reach the center of the ruins first.
"To meet up with the others, we'll either have to reach the center of the ruins and wait for them, or run into them on the way back."
After studying the map closely, the Princess nodded. Even after looking it over herself, she'd reached the same conclusion as I had.
"Then let's rest for a moment before setting off."
"We can go right now."
"No. Your Highness and I both need to recover our stamina."
To be honest, I was still fine, but the Princess was clearly exhausted.
Besides being on the move nonstop, she'd endured a brief but intense fight and a fall. Though tension and anxiety had kept her from noticing, she desperately needed to rest.
She tried to object to my words, but soon realized just how tired she was.
Leaning against the wall, she caught her breath while still standing.
But as I sat down on the floor, I suggested:
"To truly recover your stamina, you have to rest properly."
At my words, the Princess carefully sat down on the floor.
I closed my eyes first and began circulating my mana.
I felt the Princess's breathing slow. It seemed she was circulating her mana just as I was.
As expected, she was a good Princess who followed instructions well.
Fortunately, I sensed no sign of anything approaching.
After about ten minutes had passed, I regulated my breathing and opened my eyes.
The Princess still had her eyes closed. Her breathing remained slow, and faint murmurs escaped her lips.
Infusing mana into my ears, I listened closely.
"Mom, it's okay. I can do it. Katrin, Auntie Katrin, wait for me..."
She was talking in her sleep.
I didn't know what she was dreaming about, but her sleep-talking revealed her true, childlike self.
"I'm scared. But... it's okay."
As I'd thought, she wasn't fearless—she was simply enduring it.
Anyone who saw this young girl slumped against the wall of a dark passageway, softly talking in her sleep, would feel pity for her.
I got up from my spot and tapped the wall with my sword.
Clang. Clang.
"Time to move."
I felt a little sorry for the Princess, too, but that was as far as it went.
Perhaps I was simply that coldhearted, but I had enough on my own plate without worrying about the Princess.
"Ah..."
Startled, the Princess looked up at me.
She quickly gathered herself.
Realizing she'd fallen asleep, her face flushed bright red.
The Princess got up from her spot as well.
After checking the map once more, I set off. The Princess followed close behind me.
'First I fell beneath the tomb with Katrin, and now I've fallen here with the Princess. What a strange coincidence.'
Chuckling inwardly at the thought, I kept moving forward.
The maze was truly complex.
The maze floor covered half of the interior map on the back of the papyrus.
There were countless forks in the path, and simply following one wall wouldn't lead to an exit.
On top of that, it was designed so that no one could escape simply by walking.
"Here, this stone looks strange."
I pushed with all my strength against the stone set into the wall that the Princess had pointed out.
Only after channeling mana and exerting several times the strength of an ordinary person did the stone finally budge.
Rumble.
As the stone moved, the opposite wall sank downward, revealing a new passageway.
Hidden paths were concealed at dead ends like this.
If they hadn't been marked in a different color on the map, even I would have had trouble finding them.
The maze was not only complex, but also filled with traps.
"Stop! There's a trap ahead!"
The Princess froze mid-step, her foot hovering in the air as she blinked in surprise.
Grabbing hold of her, I carefully pulled her back.
Although the traps were marked in a different color on the map, it was hard to tell exactly what kind of trap each one was.
I broke off a stone embedded in the wall and hurled it hard onto the floor where the Princess had been about to step.
Clang!
The stone bounced off the floor, and—
Swish!
A massive scythe shot out from the wall, then retracted back inside.
The Princess flinched violently. Had I not stopped her, that scythe would undoubtedly have sliced her in half.
To calm the startled Princess, I voiced some frustration at the creators of the ruins.
"I seriously don't understand why they built a maze and traps like this. If they wanted to hide something amazing, they could've just built a sturdy vault."
I was just rambling without thinking much, but the Princess answered my complaint.
"They say it was a trend back in the Old Empire. I heard it was a way for people to show off their wealth and power."
Good grief. I'd thought there was some legitimate reason, but in the end, it was just rich guys showing off.
In short, this maze was the equivalent of luxury watches, designer bags, or sports cars in my past life.
After hearing this unexpected bit of historical trivia, I became even more curious about the Royal Library.
Neither the Duke's estate library nor anywhere else had any records concerning the Old Empire.
It was a level of historical erasure comparable to burning books and burying scholars, or the Cultural Revolution—yet records apparently still remained in the Royal Library.
At any rate, thanks to the map, we were able to bypass the traps.
But there were things even the map couldn't reveal.
"Roll forward!"
At my shout, the Princess threw herself forward, and at that very moment, a maggot monster burst through the wall.
"Die!"
I swung my sword with all my strength.
Though it was a maggot large enough to swallow a human whole in one bite, my sword, shimmering with an invisible heat haze, sliced it cleanly in two.
Monsters weren't listed on the map.
Since these were monsters that wouldn't have existed when the ruins were originally constructed, we had to stay on high alert at all times, and their initial appearance had been quite dangerous.
Fortunately, there weren't many of them. It seemed few monsters had made their way down to this lower level.
After navigating through the maze, avoiding traps, and dealing with monsters, we finally arrived at the central heart of the ruins.