How to Live as a Genius Scholar in another World

Chapter 14 – Ruin Guard Request (1)

—–CROW—– 

“Three dungeons? It’s a hidden dungeon bargain sale.”

It was a truly dangerous but generous event.

Sardis had many ruins, but dungeons were rare.  Actually, the ruins that were excavated weren’t that impressive either. If this place was a hot spot for amazing artifacts, there would be a branch of the Archaeological Society here.

And I would have been pushed aside by them, unable to find any decent research topics.

I probably would have met an early demise, like a level 7 newbie getting stomped by a Crimson Balrog.

One of my criteria for choosing a city to work as an adventurer was that.  A reasonably safe place with research opportunities.  Sardis was a well-located rural town that I carefully selected.

In 21st-century terms, it was like “a provincial city in Gyeonggi-do, 30 minutes by car from a new city, filled with houses from the 80s and 90s due to a stalled redevelopment project.”

“Bargain… what?”

“Ah, never mind. It’s just an expression from my homeland.”

“Is that so?”

Dorca lost interest and looked out the inn’s door.

“Anyway, the ruins aren’t anything special, but the dungeons are dangerous. They’re both swarming with monsters, and one of them is even trying to overflow.  That’s why all the adventurers are out working.”

“Really? What kind of dungeons are they that things got so serious?”

In this world, “dungeon” was a general term for any place where monsters appeared.

Ruins weren’t considered dungeons.  That made sense.  In ruins that had been abandoned for decades, or even centuries, the monsters inside would have died. They needed to eat too.

There were two main patterns for places called dungeons:

Monster nests and secret bases created by crazy bastards. Goblin dens were a typical example of the former, and hidden lairs of dark mages were the iconic example of the latter.

“Dungeons?  A goblin den and a dark mage’s hideout.”

“A complete set meal.”

What a great lineup of side dishes. Better than my breakfast.

“…But then, isn’t Sardis in danger?”

“The adventurers will take care of it.  And the lord’s army is stationed near the city.”

He expected a lot from the soldiers of this rural town. Relying on the soldiers here was like expecting a rear support unit to handle North Korea.

“Instead of waking up late and taking a bath, why don’t you go and pick up something while you have the chance?  I’ve never seen an adventurer wake up at lunchtime and eat breakfast after hearing about a dungeon discovery.”

“Hehe. I’m a unique guy. And the main character always appears later.”

“The main character appears in the introduction.”

Damn, that was true. People here were surprisingly good at hitting where it hurt.

“Dungeon. Dungeon. Dungeon…”

I muttered, sipping my soup.

A guy who got trashed by dozens of katydids exploring a dungeon?

That was utter bullshit. Was he telling me to die as a Master’s degree holder?

‘I should just go to the bathhouse and finish a cost-effective request.’

There were bound to be some sweet requests left behind by those obsessed with the dungeons. Thinking that, I took another spoonful of soup and suddenly remembered what Dorca had said earlier.

“…Dorca.”

“Huh? What?”

“No, it’s nothing.  What was it?  Which Adventurers’ Guild found the ruins you said weren’t anything special?”

Dorca, who was bringing a large loaf of bread, blinked at my question.

“Audhumla.”

Damn it. I should have slept more.

***

It was around lunchtime.

I emptied my soup bowl, went to the bathhouse, and reluctantly went to work at the Audhumla Guild.

“Damn it.”

As expected, a large poster was plastered on the guild bulletin board.

[###Seeking an adventurer who can decipher these characters###]

This ridiculously embarrassing small-time guild was mine.

While others were exploring dungeons and building up achievements, this guild was stuck with some insignificant ruins. Why couldn’t they give me some options?  This fucking small-time Audhumla Guild.

Other adventurers beside me were also complaining.

“What the hell kind of characters are these?  I could write better with my dick.”

“Are these the ones those cultists worship… what was it?  Anyway, aren’t these those?”

“Just write something random and spend the reward money.  We’re screwed for Silver promotion anyway.”

I felt suicidal listening to their conversation.

This was why adults told you to study hard and get a good job.  It wasn’t just about income or benefits, but about avoiding this kind of social perception.

I consciously blocked out the noise and turned my attention to the characters on the poster.

‘Hieroglyphs.’

They were pictographs, representing objects directly. Like the characters in Egyptian murals, they were closer to drawings.

The meaning was… bird, food, perform a ritual, happy?

‘What the hell is this?’

I frowned.

Hieroglyphs were difficult to interpret even with my ability. They were inherently abstract.

I understood that the first two characters meant “bird” and “food.”

But I couldn’t tell if it meant “fed the bird” or if it was a metaphor for “bird’s food,” like a worm.

The people who used these hieroglyphs would have agreed on their meaning through spoken language, since they used them frequently. But for a third party like me, with no one to ask, it was incredibly frustrating.

That was why hieroglyphs failed to become the mainstream form of writing.

The only successful hieroglyphs I knew of were Chinese characters.  And even those suffered from the same limitations.

That’s why Chinese assigned both pronunciation and meaning to each character. At that point, they could hardly be called hieroglyphs.  In the end, even with pronunciation and meaning attached, they couldn’t manage, and the number of characters multiplied into tens of thousands.

They even used phonetic transcription for foreign words that were difficult to translate into Chinese characters.  Who the hell would look at the characters 咖啡 and read it as “coffee”? It was a culture shock.

Anyway, it was pointless to try and interpret the meaning with just these characters.

Even I, a Carmine graduate, had never seen these characters before. They were probably from some primitive tribe with almost no records.  It was practically impossible to decipher them without any context or clues.

Why did they handle things like this? Were they trying to give me cancer from stress and assassinate me that way?

‘…Doesn’t this guild have anyone specializing in archaeology or linguistics?’

Of course not. I quickly gave up hope and went to the reception desk.

There were two men at the desk today, both of whom I had never seen before.

“Excuse me.  I’d like to receive the reward for the sewer reconnaissance request I completed.”

I should get what I was owed.  3 coppers was 30,000 won.  Enough to order two servings of cost-effective half-and-half fried chicken with radish kimchi.

“Sewer reconnaissance? What’s your name?”

“Nord. Here’s my plate.”

I took off the plate hanging from my neck and showed it to him. The receptionist checked my name written on it with his gloved left hand.

“Mr. Nord… Ah, yes. Since there was a problem with the request itself, you’ll receive your reward.”

It was only natural. They sent three Iron-class and one Bronze-class adventurers into a sewer swarming with killer bugs. I should be demanding compensation for emotional distress.

“Here’s your reward, 3 coppers.”

—*Clink, clink.*

I received the three coins and put them in my wallet.  Then, I casually asked a question.

“By the way, about the characters on the bulletin board… those aren’t all the characters excavated from the ruins, are they?”

“Huh? Ah, yes. I heard they only copied a part of the inscriptions from the ruins.”

I knew it.

What the hell were they thinking, asking for the meaning with only a part of the text?  Did they plan to find someone who could decipher it and take them to the ruins?

While I was fuming inside, the male receptionist looked at me curiously.

“But how did you know those were only a part of the inscription, adventurer?”

Uh oh. What should I say?

I felt a cold sweat running down my back at the unexpected question.  If I messed up my answer, they would find out about my specs.

And the moment they found out I was a Master’s degree holder in archaeology, the guild master or his lackeys would come running and offer me a job.

“Ahem.  What’s so surprising?  It’s simple.”

I used the typical civil servant’s “Uh… um… uh…” speech pattern.  It was very effective for buying time to come up with an excuse.  Everyone should try it sometime.

“If it was just a few lines scribbled on a wall somewhere, would they bother copying it and asking for someone who knows the meaning?  It was either written somewhere incredibly conspicuous, or they only copied a part of a very long inscription.”

“Wow, your deduction skills are amazing. You’re right. I heard those characters were written all over the ruins in a very suspicious manner.”

The receptionist at the desk was surprised and impressed by my words.

He was probably amazed by the deductive skills of a 21st-century elite university student (dropout) after dealing only with adventurers whose brains were rustier than a rusty millstone.

There were incredibly smart people here too, but the proportion of such people seemed significantly lower compared to Earth.

That was a good thing for me. I would have wanted to die if all the other adventurers were professional intellectual mercenaries who looked down on me for not being able to keep up.

Anyway, the receptionist continued excitedly.

“I heard those drawings covered all the walls, from the entrance of the cave to the ruins inside.”

“Covered all the walls?  Is that true?”

It sounded terrifying.

The adventurer team that copied those drawings had bravely entered and explored that cave.

Were they crazy? To a modern person, it would feel like a psychiatric ward with eyes and faces drawn all over the walls in red pen.

Damn, I respected them.  Those adventurers had defied the rules of horror movies and returned alive.

Or were they already possessed by ghosts?  Was there going to be a zombie outbreak in Sardis soon?

“That’s admirable.  I would have done an entrance cut… I mean, I would have run away as soon as I felt something ominous at the cave entrance.”

“That’s the wise choice for anyone below Silver tier.  The adventurers who first discovered the ruins didn’t explore them, they just came back and reported it.  Of course, they still received a reward. 1 copper per person.”

“…1 copper per person?”

“Yes. 1 copper per person.”

Damn it.

See? I made the right choice not working here.

In this industry, even if a mountain of gold was found in the ruins, the discoverers wouldn’t get a single crumb.

That’s why money-hungry adventurers would sneak into ruins without reporting to the guild, trying to increase their share, and end up dying, making things worse.

If they treated adventurers like that, imagine how they treated their fellow receptionists.  If I had worked at the guild, I would have been treated like a free translator and gossiped about behind my back.

‘Just how much do they plan to entertain me, this small-time guild?’

It was a ridiculously primitive and stupid system, but when I thought about how stupid small-time company executives and CEOs were on Earth, it was the same here and there.

Humans became stupid when it came to profit.

Even if they were lucky enough to start a company with some capital, the uneducated nature of small-time CEOs wouldn’t disappear.

They didn’t know the first thing about management, ignored the opinions of those working in the field, and did whatever they wanted, making life hell for their employees.

I might need to prepare to cut ties with this small-time Audhumla Guild at the right time.

I couldn’t work five times harder than everyone else in a small company and earn 220,000 won a month with my qualifications, could I?

“Ah, right. There’s a good request related to the ruins. Are you interested?”

“A request?”

I had been internally complaining so much that the mere mention of a request made me feel repulsed.

Since it was a ruin, I might be able to find something for my thesis inside, but even so, this inexplicable feeling of rejection kept popping up. It was the characteristic of a small-time company employee.

“It’s a request directly from the guild. They’re looking for someone to guard the ruins until the person who will analyze them arrives the day after tomorrow, to prevent theft or damage.”

So it was a guard duty. Sounded boring.  I was about to refuse when he said,

“The reward is 10 coppers, and those below Iron class will receive significant benefits for promotion.”

“I’ll take it. I’ve been waiting for this request.”

Again, humans became stupid when it came to profit.

And I was also just a human.

—–CROW—–