The outer wall of a building had been carved into the inner wall of the canyon. Its design was different from Petra, which I had seen on the internet.
A building carved into a canyon wall like an ancient stone chamber, yet with a modern-feeling design.
It made me realize once again that the people who had created these ruins were different from us.
“We’ll eat, perform brief maintenance, then enter the ruins.”
We were inside a canyon surrounded by cliffs, but the sun was visible overhead.
It was noon by this planet’s standards..
“Give me combat rations.”
“Me too.”
Maybe everyone had gotten sick of monster meat, because they all wanted combat rations.
As I took the combat rations out of the box, I felt like I had become the meal distributor again after a long time.
After the short meal, everyone took a brief rest.
During that rest, the advance team members drank water and chatted.
“If only I had coffee, I’d have no regrets.”
“For me, cigarettes.”
“Not marijuana?”
“Same thing.”
At that dizzying exchange between the middle-aged man and the young Black man, Margreta and Huiwon joined in.
“I need the internet.”
“The drama I was watching must have more episodes out by now...”
Listening to them talk from the side, I realized the advance team were ordinary people too.
People who had been drafted, like us.
‘Was I looking at them through tinted glasses because they were Americans?’
While I was thinking that, the young Black man asked the middle-aged white man who looked like a businessman.
“Benedict, is there anything you want?”
“...”
Perhaps he had been lost in thought, because he could not answer right away.
Instead, the Latin man answered the question.
“He probably doesn’t need anything. Benedict’s in the first return group.”
‘Return group?’
Could that mean returning to Earth?
“Oh, right. Wow, I’m jealous. How on earth do they decide that order?”
“Who knows? Maybe the higher-ups decide. Maybe it’s in order of who has the most money.”
At the young Black man’s words, the rough-looking middle-aged man muttered under his breath.
Even though he must have heard it, the man who looked like a businessman did not seem to care.
The businessman still lost in thought, and the people envying him.
Looking at them, I asked Huiwon, who was sitting beside me.
“What is the return group?”
“Ah, you were in the follow-up team, weren’t you? Then you probably haven’t heard yet.”
She explained what the return group was. It was not different from what I had expected.
“The return group refers to the people who are sent back to Earth.”
However, the reasons for sending a return group were more varied than I had thought.
“When enough Dark Stones are gathered, they have to be sent to Earth, and Earth needs to be informed of the situation on this planet.”
I had expected the Dark Stones, but I had not expected communication.
I had not expected it, but it was only natural.
“We’re forty light-years away from Earth, so ordinary communication would take forty years. And it’s not as though we have any other means of travel or communication... We have no choice but to send people through the ruins.”
Just as we hunted with spears instead of guns, communication with Earth also had to be done by sending people directly.
“Since a Dark Stone is used every time we travel, we can’t activate the ruins often. But this time, we have to send word that the follow-up team arrived safely. Benedict is the one who’ll go to deliver that message.”
“Then can the others go back midway too?”
At my question, Huiwon’s expression darkened.
“...Only the advance team, and only the Americans, will probably be able to. I heard it’s difficult to grant leave to us because we were conscripted.”
‘Ha...’
A sigh escaped me on its own.
Those government bastards were making full use of the fact that this was a war.
When it came to returning, Huiwon, who was both in the advance team and a public official, was no different from me, a member of the follow-up team.
Just then, Margreta, who had come over beside us at some point, said with a smile,
“Mr. Hyeon, I don’t think you need to be jealous.”
“Huh?”
When I looked at her in bewilderment, she said something hard to believe.
“Because Mr. Hyeon will be going too.”
“Uh... right.”
Huiwon, who had been just as bewildered as I was, seemed to realize something and looked at me with surprised eyes.
“Mr. Hyeon is the box carrier who brought the backpacks. If they want to bring supplies from Earth, they need someone who can move the backpacks.”
Now that I thought about it, some of the combat rations they were eating had also been brought by me.
“You can move ten, twenty times as much luggage as others during spatial travel. There’s no way they’d just leave you here.”
She was right.
And if that were the case, this job as a porter was a far better position than I had thought.
“Wow, I’m really... jealous.”
This time, Huiwon looked at me with envious eyes.
It seemed the others had overheard our conversation as well.
“You’ll be locked up in the base the whole time and then come back anyway.”
Perhaps he did not like the conversation, because the businessman named Benedict cut in.
At that, Margreta grinned and replied,
“You won’t be staying only in the base either, will you, Benedict?”
“I’m American, after all.”
Maybe he disliked that she was taking my side, because he subtly crossed the line.
Margreta’s face hardened.
“You shouldn’t say things like that.”
“Ah, my mistake.”
He must have realized he had made a mistake, because he apologized to Margreta.
‘As expected, he doesn’t apologize to me.’
Maybe because I had heard the apology, I did not feel offended.
Or perhaps it was because, even if it was a honey trap, I liked that Margreta had taken my side.
No, the truth was that it was because I had heard I could go to Earth.
On this occasion, I decided to become a magnanimous person.
After burying the remaining trash in the ground, we entered the ruins.
Passing through the weathered entrance of the ruins and going deeper inside, we found a broken plaza, a hall.
Collapsed pillars, shattered walls, even a burst-open floor.
Unlike what had been carved into the canyon wall, the interior of the ruins was a mess.
“It does not seem to have ended up this way simply because of the passage of time.”
At my words, Margreta looked around.
“There was a battle here. When these ruins were still intact, a very long time ago.”
I glanced at her.
She had not said it casually. She had said it with certainty.
She had inferred the events of the past just by looking at the ruins.
‘Is she not just an ordinary queen bee who ensnares men?’
Whatever her identity was, I needed to be more careful.
As we looked around and moved deeper into the hall, David raised his hand and stopped the group.
“We don’t know what lies ahead from here, so proceed carefully from this point on.”
Seeing Huiwon looking around at David’s words, it seemed this was her first time entering this place as well.
Instead of her, I asked Margreta.
“Did you come this far before?”
“The entrance was already in this state, so we didn’t think of going any farther. Before the follow-up team arrived, we had only decided to scout.”
At her words, I adjusted my grip on my spear.
At the same time, I awakened my senses.
The sixth sense that had saved my life through the war and numerous operations.
Since coming to this planet, my body had grown stronger, and I had become able to cloak my spear in energy, but this sense was still my lifeline.
This sense, which allowed me to distinguish living creatures even in the dark night, see faraway places, and locate hidden enemies, was highly effective when moving through tunnels.
Because I could discover enemies inside unseen caves in advance.
And one more thing.
“Wait. Stop! There’s a trap ahead!”
I could find hidden traps.
“There’s a trap?”
The trap was at the entrance to the passage inside the hall.
The Latin man quickly headed to where I pointed, and there he found the trap.
“Ah, found it. There’s a broken trap here.”
Unfortunately, the trap we found was already broken.
A trap that had failed to withstand the passage of time and had stopped while activated.
“The floor opens, and you’re stabbed by the spikes underneath?”
I could see old metal spikes rising beneath the opened floor.
“That’s an incredibly classic trap. To think people with technology capable of crossing forty light-years would use a trap like this.”
At the young Black man’s words, Margreta said with a regretful expression,
“Or perhaps only traps like this remained. They say the more advanced a civilization becomes, the less long its legacy lasts.”
Come to think of it, I had heard that records left on stone could last thousands or tens of thousands of years, but CDs or USB drives would not last even a hundred.
It was likely the same for the people who had lived on this planet.
“But the ruins for spatial travel operate just fine.”
Her words were immediately refuted by the Latin man, but,
“That’s only the ones on this planet. The one on Earth was barely restored, wasn’t it? How many of the ruins they’ve found are actually usable?”
At her following words, the Latin man also shut his mouth.
Once again, I secretly glanced at Margreta.
Just like a moment ago, she knew far too much.
Enough to beat even the Latin man, who seemed to be at the level of a deputy team leader, in an argument.
Because the trap I found was a broken trap, people were not surprised when I found the first one.
But after that, I continued to find traps.
They were all broken traps, but the way people looked at me began to change little by little.
“That’s amazing. It’s an ability an exploration team absolutely needs. Even if you weren’t the box carrier, you should have been chosen for the exploration team no matter what.”
Unlike the others, who kept glancing at me, Margreta praised me to an excessive degree.
The praise, more excessive than expected, bothered me a little.
Still, this time I accepted it with a magnanimous heart.
Had Margreta’s continued praise bothered him?
The Latin man, who had been examining the surroundings, spoke up.
“More importantly, don’t these ruins have too many traps?”
At those words, David’s eyebrow twitched.
“It feels like there’s a trap every hundred yards...”
It seemed David had been wondering about that as well.
Indeed, there were far too many traps in these ruins.
In the spatial travel ruins, I had not seen traps, nor any traces of traps having been removed.
And yet, to see so many traps in the second ruins.
“Could this be a military base?”
David seemed to know something.
Had he seen ruins like this somewhere else?
As we continued along the passage while avoiding traps, not long afterward, we saw a trap still in motion for the first time.
And it was not a conventional trap, but one made of dark energy.
Krazzzzzt.
At the end of the passage, in a small stone chamber where the path split, lightning was striking down.
Every time the lightning struck, patterns appeared and disappeared across the entire wall of the chamber.
They were translucent patterns I had seen many times before.
Patterns drawn with black stone.
However, the patterns drawn in this stone chamber were visible only when the lightning struck.
The fact that they were visible only when lightning struck meant they were usually hidden.
Those patterns were the trap.
We were not the ones who had triggered the trap.
Nor had I detected it in advance.
There was a prior guest in the stone chamber before us.
A guest standing in the center of the chamber and being struck by lightning.
It was something we knew.
The monster we had seen in the canyon before entering the ruins.
It was the “ant monster.”
A monster more than twice as large as the one we had seen outside, and looking far sturdier, stood in the center of the stone chamber, withstanding the lightning.