Genius Engineer in the Labyrinth - Chapter 100
Only Noblemtl
Alan was still fascinated by the concrete-like structures he saw between the cliff stratums.
It is possible that the sedimentary rocks happened to pile up in a similar shape, but it was disappointing to witness a part of the ruins’ facilities disappear entirely after being swept away by an unstable space gate.
Alan, who was a voracious seeker of knowledge, could not just pass it by. Under the pretext of recovery and sightseeing, he stayed at the accommodations provided by Harsh and visited the library of the Rings.
“Welcome. If you are a Rings citizen, it is free. If not, there is a fee.”
A holographic woman suddenly appeared to greet Allen. She was a guide hologram of the opposite gender to the visitor. It was a conversational service and a weak AI realized with soul stones.
“You are not a citizen. You can get a discount if you pay the library fee and the guide fee at the same time.”
Alan paid only the entrance fee and walked through the forest of books. The bookshelves were filled with crisp and shiny book covers. It seemed that they had not been well-maintained, but had not been touched by human hands.
With the spread of all things and the popularization of memory correction, books gradually died out. However, there were still people who preferred old impressions, so they continued to live on.
Alan didn’t particularly prefer any particular method. As long as there was new knowledge, he could find fun in it.
I thought this place was like a big discount store. I definitely needed one thing, but when I got to the checkout counter, a cart was full of stuff.
There are many books that catch your attention here and there, but if you read them without thinking, the day could pass by in an instant without you even reaching your original purpose.
‘Geography Corner.’
I recalled my purpose and looked straight ahead to find only the books I wanted.
‘Study of the terrain and natural environment of the White Mountains.’
It was a book so thick that Taylor or Shiva would be horrified if they saw it. They would even leave a comment asking who reads books these days.
It was a time when all one needed was memory modification or information transmission if information or knowledge was needed. The brain expansion device was the basis for that. There was a risk of hacking, but the convenience far outweighed the disadvantages.
‘User ratio, 99%.’
It was a story that didn’t matter to Allen. The magical training method that Taylor named himself after gradually strengthened brain function. Like the upper-level training of the Eastern Continent.
I started doing two things at the same time. With my left eye, I accessed the web and checked information, and with my right eye, I read books in the library.
Compare the contents at the same time, find out what is wrong, and what is a hypothesis. To others, it will look like you are just absentmindedly flipping through the pages.
Alan got to the point through cross-validation.
‘Ice Age. Before the mountains, the terrain was flat.’
The knowledge gained over the past few days converged into one thing: perhaps the snowfields existed in the past.
“Could you summarize it in three lines?”
These were the words that Taylor blurted out while shivering as she listened to Allen’s lengthy explanation at the accommodation.
“This was a snow-covered plain during the Ice Age. Then it rose and became a mountain.”
“What about magical interference? What about the earth elemental king or earth-type transcendent magic?”
“It was so long ago that I couldn’t confirm that. Anyway, the concrete-like structure I saw was most likely buried and then raised due to the uplift.”
In simple terms, this means that the upper layer slides down and the hidden part inside rises up.
“Think of the automaton’s outer armor breaking and the artificial muscles bursting out.”
“Does this mean that the facility existed in the past?”
“Maybe?”
“When was the Ice Age? 50 million years ago? This is a great discovery! This is the first time we have discovered the existence of an ancient civilization.”
“No.”
“why?”
“There’s no evidence. And it’s dangerous.”
Moreover, it was a topic that could have been noisy in many ways. Harsh had earnestly requested that the exploration of the ruins be kept a secret while offering additional compensation, but this was a bigger incident than the ruins themselves.
Taylor exhaled slowly after hearing Alan’s words.
“That’s right. I was so excited.”
He too had the blood of an explorer. The discovery itself was so exciting that his thoughts stopped for a moment.
“Since there is no evidence, we have to explain it with words, but this world is full of lunatics who are frustrated and want to open their heads. Let’s not cause harm to ourselves by drawing aggro for no reason.”
“Do Breaker and other major corporations know about the existence of ancient civilizations?”
“That could be so. So you want to go down more passionately?”
As Taylor said, organizations or groups that put in some effort organized their own expeditions and went down into the labyrinth. They went down so deep that it took almost half a year to return.
The labyrinth keeps spitting out hostile monsters to chase away the explorer. The stress of repetitive battles and unidentifiable spaces is immense.
“Is there something you want to achieve even if it means jumping over that?”
“Desire, hope. Humans are animals that will go all the way even if they have just one of the two. The labyrinth endlessly stimulates both elements.”
The sun was slowly setting. Alan stood in front of the window, looking at the sun, then turned his head toward the cliff. It was not visible from here.
Shiva, who had been lying on the bed praying, opened his eyes slightly.
“Brother, if you’re really curious, why don’t you go hiking?”
“It’s okay. It’s a place frequented by rock climbers, so everything that needed to be revealed would have already been revealed.”
“But can concrete last that long?”
“It may have been surrounded by rocks and protected, but was recently exposed. There were quite a few broken rocks at the bottom of the cliff. The building itself may have been protected, as it was imbued with magic.”
Or maybe he was mistaken about the sedimentary rocks, but Alan hoped it wasn’t a mistake. It was much more fun that way.
As the sun completely disappeared, Alan turned around and stared at Taylor, his expression somewhat uneasy.
“Why? I used my head a lot today.”
“Isn’t the terrain below the primeval forest a snowy field?”
“···.”
Taylor’s mouth snapped shut at the same time as Alan’s question. He had unconsciously experienced the ‘cold’ in the labyrinth after seeing the snowfield inside the ruins.
“Looking at it now, it seems like the activation condition for the ban includes whether or not you are aware of it.”
“···.”
“If it’s unconscious speech through hypnosis, umm···.”
Alan raised his head out of curiosity. The gold had taken its toll on his brain.
“There aren’t many uncles here, so if you mess with them carelessly, you’ll be in big trouble.”
“···!”
Taylor kept her mouth shut and looked betrayed.
*
Back in Maze City, Alan added the star characters to the box based on the Mammoth’s soul stone.
The mammoth was an unusual automaton. The suicide bird it carried was not made in advance, but was created on the fly according to the situation.
In short, the Mammoth was an automaton that built automatons. It was a land-based aircraft carrier and a walking manufacturing plant. Originally, it would have collected broken automatons, fixed them, and then re-entered service.
‘I wish I could have seen that sight···.’
If that had been the case, the battle would not have ended well. The mammoth would have been destroyed by the power plant’s overload, and the explosion would have contaminated some of the soulstones.
The parts where the star characters were crooked or missing had to be found by Alan himself. It wasn’t something that could be fixed right away, so it was time to upgrade Taylor as promised.
First, I put the soul stone in the box into the spider, and it started to run around, beating around. Its behavior was the same, so I tapped the leopard’s armor. The leopard just lay there strangely still.
Alan turned around and showed Taylor the quote site.
“Before going to the salon, you need to purchase the Magic Wear first, so if there’s anything you don’t like, please have it modified.”
“This product vibrates so much that the screws loosen up little by little. This is the best value for money product, but there was a leak issue. I wonder if it has been fixed now.”
Taylor, who was revising the estimate, looked up from the holographic window.
“If you do the surgery yourself, you’ll have money left over. Use that money to buy a higher-end product.”
“No. Magicware is my domain, but my body is not. I need a doctor.”
“Even if you’re a night owl, it’s still a night owl.”
“Incompetent black marketeers are dead to the customer’s complaints. And someone like Mr. Ulpa is just like a licensed practitioner. In fact, he must have much more experience.”
Interest is a great motivator, and the threat of death was in a similar position. I will perform the procedure with the mindset that the customer’s head could be pointed at any time, so how many practitioners can keep up with Ulpa’s concentration?
Since the magicware he ordered would take some time to be delivered, Alan decided to take care of other things. He got up, taking a small wooden box containing the seeds of the bloodsucking flower, and Taylor, who was already dressed neatly, followed him.
“Where are you going?”
“Maze City is too dangerous. So I’ll follow you.”
“You don’t have to do that. Just rest.”
“Oh! If an adult says that, you just have to nod and say, ‘Yes.’”
Taylor, walking faster than usual, quickly boarded the monorail.
The monorail, which weaved between buildings like a roller coaster, stopped in an area filled with pharmaceutical factories. As I opened the door to Western Sky, greenery filled my view.
It was time to go back down into the labyrinth, so I needed to check my body and get the necessary medicine.
You need 2 seeds a month, so if there is no discount, you will have to pay a fixed amount of 6 million coins. It is an amount that you can easily afford now, but where else can you get free health checkups so often?
Taylor quickly passed the fairies who were shooting flower petal water guns. The afterimage of the reflex axle lingered for a long time.
Alan walked leisurely. He knew where he was going. When he arrived at the examination room, Taylor was there as expected.
“Sister, I’m here.”
“Brother. Come on. Alan’s been here for a while, and it’ll take about six hours for the test to be finished. Won’t you be bored?”
“If you help the fairies, time will pass quickly and it will be okay.”
Around Taylor’s waist was a belt I had never seen before, and it was full of tools for tending plants, including a hoe and garden shears.
“Oh, I can just sleep next to you.”
“I do this because I like it.”
Taylor walked out with her arms crossed, and Yohwa saw her off with a smile.
Alan, who arrived late, looked at her.
“Why should I stop her if she wants to do it? Gardening is a great hobby that also cultivates peace of mind. My younger sibling also said it was fun, so it’s a good thing.”
In fact, there was not a single plant in the storage room that Alan used as his home. When I looked outside, after chasing away the demons and angels fighting inside me, I saw that Taylor was only wandering around the workshop. I could tell that he was up to something.
Meanwhile, the vine chair supported his body gently. The power suit, which had lost its core, stood tall next to him.
The fairy smiled faintly as she looked at the power suit.
“That little kid can already handle this kind of equipment.”
“I was an adult even then.”
“He’s still a baby to me.”
Dandelion seeds fluttered around, sticking to various parts of my body. The information measured by the seeds was expressed as a moss graph on a wooden board.
The demon who had been nodding his head opened his mouth.
“You’ve reached the 23rd floor of the Primeval Forest? I heard that you can explore safely.”
“···.”
It was obvious who heard it. Someone was crouching down and diligently digging the ground. Fairies who used supernatural powers or innate magic gathered around to watch the craft, as if they were amazed by it.
“···yes.”
“I want to improve the blood-sal flower, but I wonder what happens to the seeds that have received the energy of the labyrinth. Could you help me with that? Of course, I will make sure that you don’t feel bad about the compensation.”
“The 23rd floor is easy.”
“It’s going to be a tough place there, with the bases blocking the blood flow to the ground. The place I want is further down.”
“Does Feng Shui apply to the labyrinth? … Well, the magic power concentration varies depending on the floor. How many floors do you want?”
“I heard that the Swamp of Life is appearing 25 floors below.”
Alan looked at Taylor again. He had told him that the swamp that occasionally appeared with the fog was home to rare creatures, and that it was valuable information, so he should not spread it around carelessly.
‘Is that why Breaker put a ban on it?’
It was a useless imagination. If it had been that important, the emperor would have prevented him from saying anything.
Alan, shaking off his distracting thoughts, faced the demon again.
“Plant them there and observe them for about a month. Then, bring them back when the seeds have formed. If that’s too long, two weeks or a week would be fine.”
“How much research have you done?”
The witch’s eyes trembled slightly as Taylor told her the average cost of a commission.
End