Lightning struck, patterns flashed, and the ant monster hit by the bolt trembled violently.
The sight inside the stone chamber was utterly surreal.
Unconsciously, the exploration team stepped back from the electric current flowing throughout the entire stone chamber.
Once they had put some distance between themselves and the stone chamber, Latinam, who had finally come to his senses, was the first to speak.
“That thing. Doesn’t it look different from the ones we saw outside?”
If the ant monsters seen outside had been about the size of large dogs, the one inside the chamber right now was as big as a horse.
At Latinam’s words, the young black man answered with a pale face.
“This one looks really scary. If the ones outside were worker ants, this one is like a soldier ant.”
It seemed like words spoken without thought, but everyone agreed with him.
Everyone was surprised by the unexpected sight, but now was not the time to stand around in shock.
“For now, we need to take care of that thing first.”
Just as Magreta said, the ant monster had already reached the end of the stone chamber.
In front of the passage where we were.
The ant monster had endured the lightning bolt and crawled all the way here.
The party prepared to fight once more.
They formed the same formation as before, with shield-bearers at the front and the others supporting them from behind.
Since the passage was narrow enough to be blocked by three people standing side by side, the formation looked much sturdier from outside.
Kwaaaarrrr!
The ant monster that had escaped the stone chamber lunged at us.
It struck the shields with blade-like arms and tried to bite the shield-bearers with its saw-like jaws.
However, the shield-bearers blocked the ant monster’s attacks.
“I-it’s more manageable than I thought.”
The young black man, who was holding off the monster, groaned but spoke with confidence, and spears and ropes poured down upon the halted monster.
Its seemingly hard shell cracked, and its thick legs were bound by ropes.
The ant monster that had looked so fearsome fell easily to the party’s hands.
“It doesn’t seem as strong as it looks.”
“Its shell isn’t that different either, and its speed and strength are only slightly greater, it seems.”
At Latinam’s words, David nodded.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief that it was weaker than expected, when Huiwon cautiously spoke.
“Could it be that it was weakened by the lightning?”
“All the other traps were broken. If it’s a trap that was made a very long time ago, would it really have been that effective?”
Her words were immediately met with Latinam’s rebuttal, but the people’s expressions weren’t very good.
Because Huiwon’s words had sounded plausible.
Latinam’s words were merely everyone’s wishful thinking.
While the people were looking at the ant monster with complicated expressions, Magreta asked.
“What should we do? Keep going like this? Or turn back?”
At her question, David’s eyebrows twitched.
David seemed displeased with her question, but it was the most important question at this point in time.
“We saw an active trap and an ant monster, so doesn’t turning back right away seem a bit much?”
On the surface, the businessman seemed to be right.
But the problem was that a living ant monster had emerged from inside these ruins.
“Could there be more ant monsters in here?”
Huiwon had tried to put it as delicately as possible, but everyone understood what she meant.
It meant that these ruins might have now become a den for the ant monsters—an anthill.
Everyone began sizing up the situation.
Returning from the survey so quickly couldn’t be good, but it wasn’t more important than their lives.
If dozens or even hundreds of ant monsters lived in these ruins, advancing as they were now would be no different than thrusting their heads into a lion’s den.
As the mood gradually soured, the middle-aged businessman opened his mouth again.
“Why don’t we go a bit further? For the team, and it would be good to have something to bring back when I return to Earth.”
“Once a businessman, always a businessman. Only thinking of himself.”
Another middle-aged man grumbled at his words.
“I’m saying this for everyone.”
Various opinions were exchanged, but the one to make the decision was David.
He decided to keep going.
“It hasn’t even been a day. It’s too early to turn back now.”
Some nodded, while others sighed.
Still, everyone seemed to accept the decision.
Magreta pointed ahead.
“If we’re going to continue, we’ll need to deal with that trap first, won’t we?”
At her words, David examined the darkened stone chamber again, then looked straight at me.
“Can you disable it?”
He had seemed unconcerned, but apparently he had been watching me discover traps the entire time.
Of course, finding traps and disabling them were different matters.
Finding traps required sharp eyes, senses, and experience, but disabling them required knowing the trap’s structure well.
However, I was good at both.
My senses helped me grasp trap structures even more than finding traps.
The trap in front of me was quite different from the others, but since I had seen it activate, I was confident I could disable it.
Honestly, emotionally, I wanted to pretend I didn’t know how.
Even if I said I couldn’t disable it, no one would blame me.
I had heard we were exploration team members together, but until now, I hadn’t felt like I was on the same team as them.
‘They think of me as a porter. A useful porter who can use the box.’
Thanks to that, I got to be called an exploration team member, but I wasn’t in the same position as them.
Magreta had been relatively kind, but that kindness had been suspicious from the start, and even Huiwon, who was Korean, felt somewhat distant.
‘But I can’t just act on my feelings.’
Right now, I had to show that I was useful.
Only then could I stick with this exploration team, and I had to be with the exploration team to survey the ruins.
Even now, I was curious about what lay inside that stone chamber.
It was a curiosity that had gotten me into trouble several times even during the war.
If not for my senses, I would have died several times over by now.
And because of those senses, I was confident I would be safer than the others this time too.
“I think I can do it.”
Having made my decision, I went to the front of the stone chamber with David’s permission.
The stone chamber, with neither lightning nor patterns glowing, was pitch black without a single point of light.
Holding a torch in one hand, I stood right in front of the stone chamber and heightened my senses.
I could feel the power inside my body flow into my head and activate a part of my brain.
I hadn’t known before, but now that I knew about Dark Energy, I felt like I understood how my senses were activated.
The interior of the stone chamber, which had been barely visible even with the torch, was all felt through my senses.
I could even feel the traces of the patterns.
I didn’t know why, but even with my senses, I couldn’t feel the patterns themselves.
However, scorch marks from the lightning remained over where the patterns were drawn.
They were faint marks invisible to the eye.
Following those marks, I could find where the patterns began.
It looked no different from the rest of the stone chamber now, but when the lightning had struck earlier, I had been able to feel Dark Energy gushing from that spot.
That power had been transmitted throughout the patterns, and the patterns had converted that power into lightning.
If I destroyed that spot, I should be able to stop the trap in the stone chamber.
I once again channeled power into my spear.
Through my senses, I could feel the spear glow.
I threw the spear at the place where the patterns began.
Thunk!
Once again, the spear embedded itself exactly where I aimed.
Nothing particularly special happened after the spear struck.
No lightning flashed, and no patterns glowed.
The stone chamber remained dark as before.
I reached my hand into the stone chamber.
My fingers crossed the chamber’s boundary, followed by my palm and arm.
Finally, my entire body entered the stone chamber.
No patterns flashed, and no lightning struck down.
Even with a person inside, the chamber was silent.
The trap had been disabled.
“Wow, you disabled it in one shot.”
Magreta exclaimed excitedly and stood beside me.
After her, the others also cautiously entered the stone chamber.
“Well done.”
David offered a word of praise as well.
It was praise that didn’t really sound like praise, but it didn’t matter.
Because right now was the time to show them that I was useful.
By the time everyone had entered the chamber, Magreta had already gone to where the spear was embedded.
She examined the spot where the spear was stuck and asked me.
“Was this the trap’s weak point?”
The spear I had thrown had broken through the stone chamber wall and lodged itself in a jewel inside.
It was a jewel large enough for the spear to embed itself in.
An egg-sized Dark Stone. The Dark Stone sat within a groove behind the wall, where complex patterns were hidden.
“It’s a socket system. This Dark Stone seems to be rechargeable too.”
After checking the broken Dark Stone and the patterned groove, Magreta spoke to David.
“Then it was useless even before it broke.”
At her words, David clicked his tongue.
“It must have been operating for thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years. If it weren’t rechargeable, it couldn’t have been maintained.”
“What a shame. To think the first artifact we found is one we can’t use.”
“Right? If only we could figure out how to charge the Dark Stone, we could save an enormous amount of them.”
There were several things in their conversation that I was hearing for the first time.
When I looked at Magreta with a puzzled expression, she explained to me.
“Among the artifacts we’ve discovered, there were some that could charge Dark Stones. They were artifacts engraved with patterns similar to this groove.
Unlike the teleportation ruins, we couldn’t figure out how to use them, so we couldn’t recharge the Dark Stones. If we could only learn the method, we could save an enormous amount of Dark Stones.”
Fortunately, this didn’t seem to be a secret.
If it were, I might not have been in a position to hear those words either.
Anyway, I learned that the Americans, too, knew that Dark Stones had various uses.
And that Dark Stones could be recharged.
And that there were artifacts they couldn’t use because they didn’t know how to operate them yet.
And even that Magreta, who kept many secrets, was more trusted by David than I had thought.
It seemed his mood had improved now that the problem was solved.
“Good. Now that we can deal with traps, let’s find some artifacts quickly and head back.”
The businessman Benedict was the first to step forward.
The others also passed through the stone chamber holding torches.
After putting the broken Dark Stone and the ant monster corpse Magreta handed me into the box, I followed after them.
Perhaps it had been excessive worry, but they didn’t encounter any ant monsters that day.
The traps had decreased too. They had encountered only one active trap until that night.
This time, it was a trap that spewed fire from the middle of the passage.
Disabling it was no different from the lightning one.
I threw my spear at the ceiling, breaking the Dark Stone, and the fire no longer came out.
That night, we found a stone chamber that looked clean and tried to get some sleep.
After eating combat rations, all we did was lay out the leather we had put in the box on the floor, but the people were immensely pleased.
“During the first survey, we didn’t even have anything to lay on the floor, and food was scarce too.”
Indeed, if we hadn’t had the box, we would have had to carry all our gear on our backs.
Fighting and hunting while carrying all that gear would have been difficult too.
After spending the night feeling gazes that had changed somewhat, we finally encountered an artifact the next day.