『An unidentified setting element has been detected.
The discovered element has a Plausibility Destruction Grade of F-.
A corresponding reward will be issued.』
『Reward: 100 Editing Points acquired』
‘That’s stingy!’
Finding a Discarded Setting was nice and all, but the reward was way too small. Ex quietly complained to Serry.
“Why’s the reward so low…?”
『Because the probability of this element interfering with the Main Scenario is nearly nonexistent.』
“Come on, even so…! A hundred points is just cruel…!”
『If you desire additional rewards, you must discover additional elements.』
In other words, he would have to keep finding rooms like this if he wanted more points.
‘Nothing ever comes easy.’
Ex let out a long sigh.
At least he’d had the foresight to bring supplies for camping.
If he hadn’t, he would’ve had fewer opportunities to earn points.
“Why’re you sighing like that? The Goddess will take your luck away.”
“…I don’t have any luck for her to take, so I’ll be fine.”
“There you go saying weird things again… Anyway, you used aura just now, didn’t you?”
Sure enough, Lola narrowed her eyes at him.
Last time, everything had been too hectic for her to notice, but if he used aura right in front of her face, of course she was going to catch on. Not that it mattered if she knew.
Ex confidently raised Lung’s sword, which he had brought along.
“Actually, this sword was given to me by my benefactor, and it…”
“Forget it. It’s you, so I’m sure you did something again. At this point, even if the current you suddenly started using divine power, I wouldn’t find it strange or be surprised.”
“…The current me?”
“So, can we go through there or not?”
Her strangely suggestive choice of words bothered him, but it probably didn’t mean anything.
Exploring the ruins took priority right now.
Ex immediately tossed a spare boot through the doorway.
Nothing happened.
‘So that part hasn’t changed?’
Come to think of it, what he needed to do hadn’t changed at all.
Explore the Ancient Ruins and make his way toward the final reward.
Along the way, he just had to keep finding rooms that belonged to Discarded Settings.
And while he was at it, he could collect any treasures that had been abandoned along with those settings.
“Since we’re already here, we might as well clean the place out.”
They had plenty of time, and no one was chasing them.
“We’ll figure it out somehow.”
Everything would work out.
***
While Ex and Lola were deep into their exploration of the Ancient Ruins.
A new group entered from outside.
“Has it been about a hundred years? This place hasn’t changed at all.”
It was the five-member Reincarnated Hero Party.
Leon gazed at the magnificent sight before him as if seeing it with fresh eyes.
It was a strange experience, returning to a place they had already explored in their previous lives.
“Oh, right.”
As Leon stared at the Ancient Ruins, a question suddenly occurred to him. He turned around.
“Circe, why were you in such a hurry to get here? We don’t even have the compass we used back then.”
Circe scanned their surroundings and gave him a curt answer.
“I’ll recreate the compass spell myself. And we came this early because of the mess you caused recently.”
“Ah, that… I told you, I know I screwed up.”
“Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to her.”
“…I will. As soon as we get back.”
Circe knew perfectly well that Leon was only apologizing because he wanted to get out of the conversation.
She had no intention of pushing the issue.
‘Still, that personality of his isn’t entirely a bad thing.’
In their previous lives, they had needed someone with unwavering convictions.
Those convictions were exactly why the party had trusted Leon enough to follow him.
‘He just doesn’t fit this era.’
Circe let the matter go with that thought.
Exploring the Ancient Ruins came first.
“Rosaria, Diana. Did you find something strange?”
The two of them happened to be discussing something with serious expressions.
They had apparently discovered something while examining the area.
“Ah, Circe. As far as I know, the last expedition here was a year ago, right? There haven’t been any records since then.”
“That’s what I know too. Why?”
“Look at this.”
Rosaria pointed to a mark on the ground.
It looked like a human footprint.
“This is relatively recent. Diana, please.”
Diana placed a hand over the trace and focused.
After a moment, she pulled her hand away and answered.
“…Less than thirty minutes old. Judging by the tracks, one man and one woman. The man is slightly shorter than Leon, and the woman is shorter than Circe.”
That was enough for Circe to know.
‘That bastard. Don’t tell me he came today…?!’
It had to be Ex and Lola.
She had no idea why he had brought Lola with him, but at this point in time, there was no one else who would enter the Ancient Ruins except Ex.
The thought that he might steal the treasures first made her anxious.
Still, she forced herself to think calmly.
‘Even so, that bastard doesn’t know anything about the Ancient Ruins. If we just work through it carefully the same way we did back then…’
She immediately refuted her own thought.
“Aaagh! Of course he knows everything…! That goddamn prophet bastard!!”
“Whoa, Circe, why’re you so mad? What prophet?”
“No time to explain! Everyone, hurry and…”
That was when it happened.
BOOOOOOOOOOM-!!!!!
A tremendous shockwave thundered through the Ancient Ruins.
Whether it had been a massive explosion or the sound of part of the ruins collapsing, they couldn’t tell.
‘What the hell are you doing, Ex…?!’
One thing was certain.
Circe’s mind was suddenly filled with dread.
***
“My lady, can you tell whether a number’s prime or not?”
“Q-Quiet! Shut up for a second! I’m calculating!”
Ex and Lola’s exploration was not going smoothly.
They had run into a problem neither of them had expected.
Straight ahead: 956987.
Right: 395117.
Left: 599303.
The numbers written on each door were completely unreasonable.
‘How the hell am I supposed to tell if a six-digit number is prime…?’
Even Ex had no idea how to determine whether numbers this large were prime.
He knew a lot of things, but mathematics was not one of his strong suits.
You would need someone around Circe’s level to figure this out reliably.
“Ugh, this number is… ugh… Aaagh! I forgot again!!”
Lola, who had managed to calculate a few prime numbers midway through the process, finally collapsed.
“I can’t do this… Let’s just throw something in and see what happens…”
“Well, about that…”
Ex opened the door straight ahead and threw a boot inside.
Nothing happened.
“Then doesn’t that mean this room is safe?”
“Keep watching.”
He opened the other doors and threw the boot into those rooms as well.
Nothing happened there either.
That could only mean one thing.
“I don’t think we can detect these traps just by throwing things.”
“…”
It seemed to be one of the trap rules from the Discarded Setting.
These traps did not react to boots or ordinary objects.
Once Lola understood the situation, she flashed him a bright smile.
“Then let’s go back!”
It was the smile of someone openly declaring defeat.
Ex’s expression darkened.
“My lady, I hate to say this, but if I don’t come back with something valuable, Professor Roxwell is going to beat me to death.”
“Why would the professor do that?”
“I borrowed money from him. Around forty million El…”
“What? That’s barely anything. Just pay him back later.”
“…”
Lola really was an aristocrat.
Her sense of money existed on an entirely different plane.
“It’s not like we’re completely out of options.”
Lola watched as Ex pulled something out.
“What’re you planning? Are you going to collapse something again?”
“If the modern method doesn’t work, we go with the classics.”
“Why are you suddenly talking about classics…?”
What he took out was a set of climbing equipment, including exploration rope and anchoring spikes, along with a trap-disarming kit.
“We’ll disable the traps the old-fashioned way.”
Lola narrowed her eyes at that bold declaration.
“You know how to disarm traps?”
“Everyone keeps forgetting this, but I’m taking ‘Introduction to Scarlett Hidden Weapon Art.’ I know at least the theory behind trap disarming. And this time, I even brought an actual disarming kit.”
“Huh. You’re surprisingly versatile.”
“You’re welcome to praise me a little more enthusiastically.”
Ex immediately began preparing to disable the trap.
He planned to copy what Rosaria had done in the original story.
‘The trap activation formula is on the ceiling of each room.’
The formula was cleverly concealed, making it difficult to spot.
The mana conduit itself was behind the wall, so there was no way to locate that either.
And simply shooting the formula from a distance with an arrow wouldn’t disable it.
There was only one method.
He had to climb up there and disable it directly.
Clang!
Ex opened the door in front of him and drove an anchor into the wall right beside it.
The anchor, reinforced with aura, sank deep into the stone and locked firmly in place.
“If something goes wrong, come in and cast a barrier spell on me. The trap magic always targets the center first, so you should be relatively safe as long as you stay back.”
“Got it. Be careful.”
Ex tied a knot around the anchor and connected the rope to his body.
He drove in one anchor after another, slowly making his way toward the ceiling.
Nothing happened on the way up.
‘So the traps really do only activate when you’re on the floor. Though maybe that’s just because this happens to be a safe room…’
Once he reached the target area, he could clearly see the trap’s magical formula.
This room was definitely trapped.
“My lady! Move back a little! I’m going to disable it!”
“Okay!”
Ex opened the trap-disarming kit he had brought.
The moment he pressed the kit against the formula, the Mana Crystal embedded inside flashed several times.
When the flashing stopped, the magical reaction within the formula faded away.
The trap had been neutralized.
“Done! You can come in now!”
Ex adjusted the knot on the anchor and lowered himself back to the floor.
Even after his feet touched the ground, the trap did not activate.
“Did you really disable it?”
Lola cautiously stepped into the room after seeing that.
“If I didn’t, we’d be dead.”
“…Not bad?”
“You may worship me a little more if you’d like.”
“You really have no shame…”
After retrieving the anchors and rope and looking around, Ex saw the notification for ‘Discarded Setting Discovery Reward’ repeatedly appearing on his status window.
‘I’ve made around five thousand by now.’
Five thousand points in a little over an hour was an impressive amount.
And the points weren’t the only reward.
“C-Commoner… There’s one of those here too…”
In the corner of the trap room lay the remains of explorers, reduced to bare skeletons.
They had dried out so completely that not a scrap of flesh remained, and the bones looked ready to crumble at the slightest touch.
‘I don’t know why there are corpses inside a room from a Discarded Setting… Maybe they got moved here when the structure changed.’
“Let’s pray for them first.”
“Yeah…”
After offering a short prayer, they collected the explorers’ equipment.
The corpses carried expensive magic devices, gemstones, and gold coins.
Every now and then, they even found rare artifacts.
“Look at this! This is an artifact, right?!”
“Looks like it. The magical formula is strange too…”
Artifacts were highly advanced concentrations of magic, magic devices that could not be analyzed with the current era’s level of magical knowledge.
That was only natural.
Artifacts existed because the author had needed convenient items with whatever settings the story required.
One thing was certain, though.
Artifacts were extremely expensive.
“At least ten million El each… and we found four of them, so…”
Even after splitting everything evenly with Lola, Ex’s share came to twenty million El.
He had effectively recovered half of his initial investment in a single hour.
No wonder explorers all over the world were willing to risk their lives for this.
“This isn’t bad for pocket money.”
Of course, to an aristocrat like Lola, it was merely pocket money.
“Oh, right. I think I figured something out.”
Lola called to Ex as if something had suddenly clicked.
“Figured out what?”
“I think I can find the trap rooms.”
That came completely out of nowhere.
“You figured out how to calculate prime numbers?”
“No, not that! I can feel it.”
Lola opened the door directly ahead, the one marked 901841, then closed her eyes and focused for a moment.
A few seconds later, she turned to Ex.
“This room has a trap.”
“…Why are you saying that all of a sudden?”
“The flow of mana is strange. Look at the center of the ceiling.”
Ex looked up at the center of the room’s ceiling.
He couldn’t sense anything at all.
“I have no idea. Can I get a hint?”
“You seriously can’t feel how strange the mana flow is?”
“Not even a little.”
“That’s weird. It’s really obvious if you focus just a little…”
Ex genuinely couldn’t feel anything.
Watching Lola’s reaction was starting to make him feel like an idiot.
Then, all at once, several scenes flashed through his mind.
‘The mana concentration is so dense…’
‘Something like the Ancient Ruins could never pose a danger to my daughter.’
Lola’s reaction back then.
The confidence in her father’s declaration.
And even the speed at which she had reached Tier 4 in such a short period of time.
‘No way…’
Ex checked Lola’s Character Information again, despite having looked at it countless times before.
「Base Stats
Stamina: 0.8
Intelligence: 3.7
Agility: 0.7
Magic Power: 2.3
Luck: 1.7
Charm: 2.4」
But contrary to his expectations, Lola’s information looked perfectly ordinary.
‘Nothing’s changed since the first time I checked…’
Of course her Intelligence was high. She was a mage.
Her other stats were ordinary for someone her age as well.
There was nothing particularly unusual about her Talents or Titles either.
‘Was I just imagining things?’
He was about to put aside his disappointment and move on.
「Seriously. How long are you going to take before you notice?」
Snap!
The ring on Ex’s finger flashed once.
At the same moment, the sound of fingers snapping rang out.
Bzzzt-!!
The system display in front of him crackled with static, and the information changed.
‘What the hell…?’
The altered information was so shocking that Ex momentarily forgot all about the mysterious voice.
「Base Stats
Stamina: 0.8
Intelligence: 3.7
Agility: 0.7
Magic Power: 7.3 [Disguised State]
Luck: 6.7 [Disguised State]
Charm: 2.4」
‘Magic Power 7.3, Luck 6.7…!?’
Her Magic Power and Luck were absurdly high.
Until now, he had only ever seen stats like this from members of the Hero Party.
Even the Hero Party didn’t have Luck this high.
And her Talents were just as shocking.
「Talents
Mana’s Favor (SSS): Magic Power +5.0, Magic Power Growth +500% [Disguised State]
Born Lucky (S): Luck +5.0 [Disguised State]」
‘Mana’s Favor…’
It was the first SSS-rank Talent Ex had ever seen.
The name meant exactly what it said.
Mana itself loved her.
That was why she was so sensitive to magic.
Still dazed, Ex asked Lola a question.
“My lady. When did you start being able to sense things like the flow of mana?”
“What, do you think my arms and legs suddenly grew in one day? Obviously I’ve been able to do it since I was born.”
In other words, she had lived her entire life loved by mana.
‘No, more importantly, it says Disguised State…?’
Unlike Sealed State or Fixed State, the meaning of ‘Disguised’ was obvious.
‘Someone deliberately hid this from me…?’
If that was true, then it wasn’t difficult to guess who had done it.
‘Was this Elysia’s doing?! But why…?’
Everything Elysia did had a purpose behind it.
When had she first started paying attention to Lola?
Why had she placed this restriction on her?
Why hadn’t she attached any condition for when the disguise would end?
There had to be an intention behind it.
There had to be a reason.
‘I don’t have enough information right now.’
Unfortunately, he had no way to figure out the answer immediately.
But there was one thing he could be certain of.
‘If it’s only a disguise, then her real stats must have been active this whole time. Just like how sensitive she is to mana right now.’
Which only made something else even harder to understand.
“My lady, this might be a rather rude question.”
“What?”
“Why are you in Class F?”
If she had been sensitive to mana from childhood, she should have learned magic extremely quickly.
And as the daughter of a count, with every form of support available to her, she might have reached Tier 5 by now.
Yet Lola had only been Tier 3 when she first entered the academy.
‘It’s not like Tier 3 is low by any means, but…’
For several reasons, Lola being in Class F made absolutely no sense.
Especially since there was no chance the academy had failed to recognize this kind of talent.
“…I’ll tell you later.”
Lola’s expression darkened instantly, and she refused to answer.
That reaction alone told Ex there was something complicated behind it.
He nodded and changed the subject.
“Then can I leave finding the safe rooms to you?”
“Yeah! Leave it to the talented me!”
Lola began identifying traps so quickly that all the work Ex had put into painstakingly disabling them started to feel almost pointless.
Before, they had managed to get through around twenty rooms per hour.
Now they were clearing close to fifty.
No matter how enormous the prime numbers written on the doors became, Lola identified the traps without hesitation.
‘She really is incredible.’
For a mage, being sensitive to mana meant having that much more freedom with magic.
If someone could manipulate mana with the slightest gesture, there would eventually be no need to construct elaborate magical formulas at all.
The more freely a person could control mana, the closer they came to becoming something like magic itself.
‘But what was that voice? And the sound of someone snapping their fingers…?’
This was the second time.
The first time, he had dismissed it as his imagination.
But this time, he had heard it clearly.
And the sound had directly caused the information in front of him to change.
His suspicion deepened.
If there was some unknown entity interfering with him, then surely,
「You’re annoyingly quick to notice useless things like this.」
Snap!
The moment that sound rang out, Ex’s train of thought stopped.
“Commoner, exploring the Ancient Ruins is pretty fun!”
“What? Ah, yeah. I’m having fun too. We’re making money and earning points.”
“What points?”
“Ah, I meant bonus points. Academy bonus credits.”
“Academy…”
The moment Lola heard that word, her face fell.
“Elia… Why is she ignoring me? She hasn’t said a single word to me since that day…”
Of all things, the academy had become the trigger.
“Is it because I did something she hated after all…?”
For someone of her social standing and age, Lola was remarkably emotional.
Most aristocrats learned from a young age to suppress their feelings for the sake of political struggles and power games.
Lola, apparently, had never learned anything of the sort. Every emotion she felt showed plainly on her face.
Maybe that was why Ex found himself worrying about her more than he otherwise would have.
“My lady, I don’t think that’s it. Think about the last thing Elia said to you.”
The final words Elia had spoken to Lola were simple.
“‘I’m sorry’… That’s what she said.”
“You don’t apologize like that to someone you hate. If anything, you say it because you care about them and don’t want them to hate you.”
“…Then why is she ignoring me?”
The reason was obvious.
“Because of me. It’s because you’re spending time with me.”
“Because of you? Why?”
“I lied to Elia.”
Ex closed his eyes as if the weight of his guilt was pressing down on them.
“I told her a lie that’ll be very hard to forgive.”
“…It wasn’t just a misunderstanding?”
“A misunderstanding is still a lie, really. I deliberately led her into believing it.”
Lola fell into deep thought after hearing that.
It was true that Ex lied all the time.
But he had never told her any truly malicious lies.
At worst, he would say something to tease her or mess with her.
That hadn’t changed even after his hair turned white.
Ex had always been Ex.
That was why Lola couldn’t imagine what kind of lie he could have told that had managed to infuriate someone as kind as Elia.
“What did you tell her?”
“That’s… honestly, I’m a little scared to say it…”
Lola was startled by how sincere he sounded.
She had never expected to hear Ex say he was scared.
Wasn’t this the same man who could stare down a demon without even blinking?
Lola decided not to press him any further.
“Then apologize properly later. I’ll stay with you when you do.”
For some reason, those words made Ex genuinely grateful.
She was right.
Once everything was over, he needed to apologize to Elia.
At the very least, if Elia and Lola were ever going to be friends again, then that was something he absolutely had to do.
“Of course. I will.”
And so Ex made himself a promise as well.
He would make sure Elia forgave him.
“Then let’s keep going! Leave the traps to me!”
Lola immediately opened the door directly ahead.
The number Ex glimpsed on it was 1000003.
‘We’ve finally crossed into seven digits.’
At least the number itself looked fairly simple.
It seemed like it would be easy enough to check whether it was prime.
Of course, there was no reason to bother calculating it now.
“This one isn’t trapped! I’m going ahead!”
Lola sensed nothing unusual and walked straight through.
Her senses were, without question, accurate.
There was no magical trap in that room.
But both of them had become complacent.
If they had been exploring rooms built according to the original setting instead of a Discarded Setting, Lola’s method would have worked perfectly well.
If they had continued checking traps with boots, or disarming them with the trap kit, they would also have been fine.
But they had done neither.
Most importantly, this was a place created from a ‘Discarded Setting.’
It was an unknown area whose every detail was beyond even Ex’s knowledge.
The idea that they could clear it using only the existing methods and rules they already knew.
That assumption itself had been a colossal mistake born from complacency.
‘Who said every trap had to be magic?’
Another kind of trap from the Discarded Setting suddenly came back to him.
Traps did not necessarily have to be magical.
There was another kind.
Something much more classical and traditional.
‘A mechanical trap…!’
And then there was the seven-digit number written on the door.
1000003.
Even if Ex was bad at math, that number looked very likely to be prime.
Which meant this room might be trapped after all.
“Wait, My lady-!!!!!!”
“What?”
Click.
Before Ex could reach out his hand.
Before Lola could finish turning around.
GRRRRRRRRRRRR-!!!
The room moved.
In that brief instant when Ex’s thoughts had stopped.
The room Lola had entered was swapped with another room.
“…Ex?”
And standing before him was Circe.
The price of their complacency was far greater than either of them had imagined.
–TL Notes–
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