Genius Engineer in the Labyrinth - Chapter 94
Only Noblemtl
Black fog completely blocks vision. It can be dispelled with light-emitting tools such as headlamps or torches, but this is only a temporary measure.
When the light disappears, it creeps back as if it had never disappeared. When you are surrounded by fog like that, you become truly blind, unable to even see your own hands.
It is said that when one of the five senses of a person disappears, the other sense develops, but the effect does not appear immediately. Even if it does, hearing cannot completely fill the void left by sight.
Because of its effectiveness, the military and defense industry have tried their best to weaponize the fog of the labyrinth. Naturally, the results were in vain. Even renowned magicians were unable to analyze the black fog.
Such an ominous being. Something that could only be seen in one place was right before his eyes. Even Taylor, who had been rolling around in the labyrinth for decades, could not easily close his mouth.
“No···, what the heck···.”
“Brother, do you see the fog? I thought my optic nerves were damaged because of the holy water I spilled yesterday.”
“What on earth did you do to pour alcohol in your eyes?”
While the two were confused, Alan looked at Harsh.
“I need to explain further. When you say you divided the people, does that mean there is another entrance? You can’t go in and come back out right away?”
“As if they had made an appointment while I was mining as usual, several fog gates suddenly appeared. The second question was also ‘yes.’ I told them to come back after checking what the inside looked like, but I lost contact with them after that.”
There was a reason why they secretly gathered people from all over the place. They originally planned to deal with it with the power of their blood relatives, but as the damage grew, they changed their course.
It would have been much easier to handle if the job had been entrusted to a large organization like Breaker, but perhaps it was due to the pride inherent in the dwarves, or perhaps their greed blinded them, so they only hired a small group.
Since Alan had already signed the contract, he had no choice but to listen quietly to Harsh’s words.
“This must be a success, if only for the sake of the families who died… no, who have lost contact with us. We cannot allow their sacrifice to be in vain.”
“I will do my best.”
There is a saying that labyrinth explorers should not pursue danger, but the brain structure of the people living on this earth was different from that of ordinary people. Alan, who was fired up with curiosity, was no different.
Harsh’s gaze turned to Taylor, who was observing the fog.
“Are you two finished talking?”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“I would like to ask the veteran’s opinion on fog.”
Did Rolf just bring up the subject to Alan? Even if he didn’t know that Taylor worked for Breaker, he knew that he had been an explorer for decades.
Taylor took a step back from the fog.
“It’s not a labyrinth. You know that, right?”
“If that were the case, we would have called the government instead of ending it on our own. If a single blood relative swallows up a labyrinth, it will self-destruct.”
“Labyrinths all over the world have one thing in common: doors.”
The labyrinth gate was huge. Just think of the gate in Maze City alone, it was 50 meters high and 100 meters wide.
All the doors were black and appeared solid. They didn’t really have a physical form, but they could just be passed through.
“So, there’s no way that a fog that’s just over 2m thick can be a labyrinth. In order to make an accurate judgment, we need information about the inside, but no one has returned···.”
“Still, I believe I can deal with it more flexibly than other people.”
Harsh pointed to the fog gate. It was meant to be shown through actions rather than words. The advance payment Duduk had given was also part of the motivation.
“Okay. Before that···.”
Taylor looked at Alan.
“I sent the spider in, and the connection with the child was immediately lost.”
“There’s no need to say anything now.”
Alan nodded and called out to the leopard and the box. When their gazes met, he pointed his staff at the fog.
“position.”
The leopard carried out the order without a moment’s hesitation, and the box slowly went in after rolling its camera eye, which resembled a crab’s eye, back and forth.
Taylor, Shiva, and Harsh passed through the door in that order, with Alan being the last to enter.
The stuffy, gloomy, and bumpy landscape of the tunnel was reversed. An open, bright, flat, and white land greeted Alan.
‘Snowfield?’
Words were written on one side of Alan’s vision.
Durability: 99%
Magic Fusion Reactor: 99%↓
Rune activation rate: 15%↑
Outside temperature: -30℃
Alan looked at the temperature and wondered if the sensor was broken, but when he looked closely, there were no such signs.
As I checked the side, my doubts quickly subsided. Looking at Taylor who was crouching, Shiva who was fastening the zipper that was left open, and Harsh who had turned into cookies and cream because of the snow, I could tell that this was indeed a snowy field.
The leopard lowered its body as usual, and the box kept digging into the snow with its claws. Its intention to store it was obvious, but as the snow was broken into small pieces, the box also lost interest.
“Alan, it’s so cold out here, are you feeling okay…?”
Taylor, who had been speaking, closed his mouth. This was because he had witnessed the snowflakes that touched his helmet visor turn into water and flow down.
“We have taken good measures against temperature changes. Don’t worry, you’ll be warm thanks to [the fever].”
“Yeah, it was a needless worry···.”
“If you need, I can write down the runes for you.”
“You’ll continue to consume magic power, right?”
“yes.”
“Okay then. Just bear with it, and if it gets too hard, I’ll ask you.”
It was winter outside to begin with. Since Lynx is at a higher altitude, it was colder than Maze City, so I prepared warm exploration clothes.
“It doesn’t seem that cold, perhaps because I’ve experienced it in the labyrinth before.”
Alan focused on the word ‘cold’ itself rather than judging whether the statement was a bluff or not. He had not heard the story under the primeval forest because of the ban, but judging from what he was saying now, the terrain must be similar.
‘But how did you say it? Do you not react to words that are blurted out unconsciously? Or is it because they are not important?’
Alan shook off the thought. It was never too late to worry, so he had to solve the problem at hand first.
“Mr. Harsh, are you cold?”
“please.”
Although he was dangling from his magic tools and exploration gear, Harsh’s specialty was not exploration, but mining. Although he was physically strong, he could not match the mental strength of an explorer who always risks his life.
Alan bent the iron plate, embedded the magic stone, and engraved [Fever] on the outside. When he handed over the improvised magic tool, Harsh’s expression became much more relaxed.
“I didn’t know there were snowfields deep underground. Now I know why my cousins didn’t come back. They got lost in a place without any landmarks…”
The fog gate didn’t even exist. From the perspective of the first arrivals, it looked like the latecomers had suddenly appeared in that spot.
Taylor, his collar open, tapped Harsh on the shoulder.
“Just move. If you stay in a place where you can’t even make a call, you’ll just lose body heat. Alan, do you see anything?”
“No. I only see the eyes.”
Even when I asked Alan, who had the best eyesight, I only got a disappointing answer. Above all, the snowstorm kept interfering with my observations. It was a natural phenomenon that seemed almost malicious.
Taylor took the lead first. He dragged his legs through the snow to make his way. When he showed signs of difficulty, Shiva took the lead, and sometimes Alan took the lead.
It was a cold that even the breath froze. Of course, Alan didn’t feel it, but he thought so as he looked at the frost that covered Shiva’s beard.
“Are you okay?”
“The air is clean and cool. Brother, you should experience it too.”
Alan raised his visor slightly out of curiosity, and was startled by the sharp wind blowing inside. As his body shivered involuntarily, Shiva grinned and stepped forward. As his beard moved with laughter, the hanging frost fell off with a thud.
Alan also collected the dry trees he saw here and there. Using the trees as firewood saved his magic power.
By the time a good amount of firewood had been piled onto the makeshift sled pulled by the leopard, the sky had darkened. It was not that the sun had been obscured by the blizzard, but that night was coming.
The group, looking for a place to rest, happened to see a terrain that looked like a slightly cupped palm. They blocked the wind with a tent and lit a fire, and as if by magic, the snowstorm disappeared.
Harsh, the ice disappearing from his beard, looked up at the sky.
“The moon has risen here too. I still can’t tell if it’s real or an illusion. Explorer Alan, you look very young and calm.”
“There is no place more magical than a labyrinth. And I recently experienced something similar.”
“Can we talk?”
“I’ll skip the detailed explanation. I quickly realized that it was an illusion, but it’s hard to judge here. Is it an illusion, or a space confined by a barrier…?”
Taylor, who was thawing his throat with warm water, added a word.
“It’s probably closer to the latter. He must be a high-level barrier magician with a depth of 7 or higher. I don’t know why he would hide a place like this underground. The symbol is really annoying.”
“Is it because it’s a magic stone mine, so it’s easy to supply power?”
“There was absolutely no sign that anyone had dug a tunnel. It was just filled with rocks until our family dug the tunnel.”
Harsh’s answer made my head spin even more.
Alan’s left eye, which was organizing his thoughts, moved on its own. To be exact, it responded as if he had typed the star character. It pierced the darkness beyond the campfire.
Race: Elf, Human, Dwarf
Features: The dwarf’s outfit matches the Harsh
“Someone is coming.”
At Alan’s words, everyone stood up. As the Inyoungs came closer, Harsh, who had been protected at the back, stepped forward.
“It’s my cousin. Put your weapons down. Lois!”
“Brother Harsh!”
The two hugged each other tightly like family that had been separated for years. How much more so, since they had met after suffering through difficult times in an unfamiliar place.
The employers could rest, but the workers could not. A muscular elf who seemed to be the leader of the party stepped forward.
“Let’s exchange information.”
“Okay.”
The elf’s eyes moved up and down as Taylor stepped forward.
“The weather is such that the elderly should refrain from outdoor activities… Is the joint lubricant okay?”
“As expected from Malbonsae. It looks like you’re taking steroids. That can lead to you becoming a eunuch.”
Taylor, who was no stranger to the subject, immediately responded. In the world of explorers, they exchanged information, starting with a heartwarming phrase that would be equivalent to, “The weather is nice today.”
Of course, the more we talked, the more we realized that we knew nothing about this place. We only talked about things we already knew, like snowstorms, snowfields, and traces of invisible people.
“I was just wasting my time.”
“What I have to say.”
They left the tent and made a tent right next to it. Lois, who followed them, stayed with Harsh, as if she had no intention of leaving.
“We decided to go together.”
It was something I expected. If there was a way to contact each other, we would split up and search this place, but since that was impossible, it was much better for us to go together.
Of course, it would be inefficient to stick close to each other, so we would move while keeping an appropriate distance to the left and right and exploring the surroundings.
*
Day 2 of exploration.
No income.
Day 3 of exploration.
Join another party.
Day 4 of exploration.
Alan and his group, who were in charge of the left wing, discovered the building.
As the signal flare was fired, the parties that had spread out far away rushed in. In front of them was a destroyed door and a staircase leading down.
Harsh, who had been examining the door, opened his mouth.
“It looks like it was broken outside.”
Alan, who had been watching the stairs, looked out of the corner of his eye.
Outside temperature: -10℃
Even though the door was broken, there was a 20 degree difference. Even the snow on the stairs was very thin, as if someone had cleared it away.
At that moment, a sound was heard from below. As the sound grew louder, people’s hands naturally reached for their weapons.
The ones who finally appeared were a group of toad-shaped automatons. They swallowed eyes with their large mouths and then made eye contact with the people on the stairs.
Beep!
He screamed like a herbivore that had encountered a predator and ran down the stairs in a panic.
The elf party immediately began to pursue, while Alan and his party moved slowly. There was no need to move hastily when they didn’t even know what was there.
Alan, having reached the bottom of the stairs, found another broken door. Passing through it, he saw a brightly lit hallway.
The toads rolled their eyes like pieces of bread from a fairy tale. Alan’s steps naturally led him in that direction.
End