How to Suck Honey at a Warrior’s Party

“The wind… my senses must be wrong.”

That was what the warrior said after a long silence.

We were on a long road that only went in two directions, so it was understandable.
He had assumed that the sylphs were the reason the wind was blowing from the direction of the wall.

But that was a mystery.

“It’s too soon to tell.”

“But Cylon.”

“Look.”

I told the warrior to go and stand at the spot where the sideways wind was strongest.
He hesitated for a moment, then moved back a few steps.
I stood next to him and stretched my hand out to the wall in the direction of the wind push.

The hand that seemed to touch the wall went right through it.

“Oh.”

The warrior glanced over, frowning.

“Is this a hidden path?”

He asked, extending his arm after me.
He put his arm through the wall and swung it around, as if trying to gauge the width of the path.

But more often than not, the ‘wall’ is actually a door.
It’s just a matter of whether there’s only one path leading to the door or more than one.

So, no one could be sure whether the wind pushing the warrior towards the hidden path was a sylph or a dungeon prank to confuse the challenger.

“There are two ways, Mohan.”

The warrior, who had walked off into the distance with his arm through the wall, turned back to me.

“One is to go every which way the wind blows, because I’m sure the spirits will be near us.”

“That would be the most obvious, but it would also take the longest.”

I nodded and continued.

“The other thing you could do is retrace your steps and investigate the rock golem you defeated earlier – whoever created it is probably the same person who created this dungeon, and that might give you some idea of the nature of this dungeon.”

Personally, I was familiar with the latter.
Now that I was on the run from the tower, the last thing I wanted to do was do research or anything like that, but it was actually the thing I felt most confident about.
There was no way I was going to be comfortable on my feet when I’d been holed up in my room with my head in my hands.

The warrior studied my face as if he knew me well and chose the latter.

We walked down the long corridor again.
This time the wind slapped me in the face.
Whistle, whistle, the sound of the wind urged me on.
A sense of urgency came over me.

I muttered under my breath.

“I must be doing something right….”

I wondered if there was an easier way and tugged at the hood that kept pulling back.

The warrior, who was silently looking ahead, answered simply.

“I’m the warrior, and I’m the one who chose this method.”

I glanced at him sideways.

This… this is what a warrior looks like? I could hear my heart beating loudly.
I’m impressed, what can I do…

It seems that ‘coolness’ is the basic condition for becoming a hero of the world, a big star of an entire continent.
What I admired most was that that line was spontaneous, not scripted by someone.

As I stared at him, I reached a spot where I could see the fallen golem.

Feeling a surge of energy, I uncharacteristically quickened my pace.
Once I reached it, I took a look at the section I hadn’t been able to get a good look at earlier.
It was so smooth, it looked like a well-cut rock.
To the touch, it felt like cold, slightly damp rock.

He focused his magic on his eyes.
A silver glow flickered in my vision, then brightened.

I immediately frowned.
The dungeon itself, as well as the golem, had magic circuits drawn on it.
It looked like a geometric pattern of blue lines merging together and then spreading out in different directions.

I scanned the dungeon from wall to ceiling for a while, but then stopped.
Even if there was such a thing as a fractal principle, this was a magically distorted dungeon.

No matter where I looked, I couldn’t be sure if it was in its original shape or not.
If you guessed the whole thing by looking at a magically distorted part, you could spend the rest of your life rotting in the dungeon.

It’s like when a math equation gets stuck in the middle, and it’s hard to find it unless you work it all the way through and then do the math.

A golem was better.
I blinked rapidly to clear my quickly stiffening eyes, then looked at the golem.
It was the smallest piece in the dungeon, and probably the least affected by magic.

“Mohan, can you hold this section so that it looks straight?”

“Sure.”

The warrior simply grasped the huge boulder.

Just in case….
I guess the four stars rating is a lie, huh? The warrior was tall and quite muscular, but I didn’t get the impression that he was bulging with muscle.

I remember hearing that you have to be pretty advanced to have compressed muscles like that.
I can’t be sure that wasn’t from an expert, but it seemed credible that those compressed muscles weren’t unusual.

Many of the circuits carved into the golem were designed to keep it moving, and it was clear that great care had been taken to keep it moving over time.

“Ohhh….
…hoooo!”

An exclamation came out of my mouth.

Come to think of it….
Isn’t this like picking apart a golem that the archmage has ground to bits?

I was suddenly excited.

“Hmmmm….”

Before I knew it, the warrior was sitting next to me.
He must have thought I was going to take a long time.

How did he know?

I continued to examine the golem.
The magic circuits were carved from the inside out, so I analyzed them from the outside in.
The outermost part was the golem’s appearance, and as I moved inward, I analyzed its materials and properties, its duration, its attacks, its conditions of appearance, and its reason for being.

Finally, I reached the innermost part.
My nostrils flared with excitement.

Surely there’s something really great, amazing, fantastic inside, right?

Sure enough, when I analyzed the circuitry, a short text appeared.

[The purpose of this dungeon]

Wow! It was true that the first graders bragged about opening a functional dungeon!

It was fashionable in ancient times among those who were called masters and artisans to create dungeons one by one, and the most important part of the fashion was to write down the reason for the dungeon in the most essential part of the dungeon! You actually wrote it in magic circuitry!

The most revolutionary thing about writing with magic circuits is that ancient and modern characters are interpreted differently.
It was a record that could be transmitted regardless of the passage of time or changes in language systems, as long as you knew how to analyze it.

It turns out that no matter how advanced the world gets, there are always a few surprises to be found in ancient artifacts.

Only the first-grade bastards saw this in person, right? I remembered the way they kept glancing at me as they boasted.

“Cylon, did you find anything amazing?”

“Yeas, wait a minute.”

Whoa, I took a deep breath and deciphered the latter part.

[The purpose of this dungeon is to support me, the great mechanic Yosaham.
Foolish mages, how dare you defy the Mechanic, and watch what he does with his magic!]

“Damn it!”

I jumped to my feet, kicking the golem, and immediately fell to the ground, clutching my foot.

The warrior approached in surprise.

“Does it hurt a lot? What’s going on? This is pretty hard….”

I didn’t kick the rock because I was stupid, warrior.
It hurt so much that I couldn’t even come up with an excuse.
All that came out of my mouth was a groan that wasn’t even a word.
Only after my foot was crushed in your hands for a long time did I finally catch my breath.

It was a pain I’d never experienced before….
It burned me… white.

“Now tell me, what did you see?”

I gritted my teeth for a moment, then opened my mouth.
The warrior needed to know.
Except for what I was expecting and analysing.

“It said that this was a dungeon created by the ‘Great Mechanic Yosaham’ in ancient times.”

“And?”

The warrior didn’t let it go.

I glanced away, then spoke, slower than before.

“And… that he created the dungeon using magic to punish the mages who had laughed at him in ancient times.”

“Oh, I see.”

Apparently, he thought I was angry at the sentence about ancient mechanics trying to mess with mages.

I wasn’t, that had nothing to do with it!

I pondered for a moment whether my original reason, or his, was more tasteless.
I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble.

“Anyway, I have a rough idea of how the dungeon works, trust me, Mohan.”

I said, clenching my fists.
I couldn’t wait to forget this newly created black history.

“Oh, that’s so great, so wonderful.”

The warrior’s sparkling eyes reflected my own.

I stared into those vaguely jewel-like eyes and realized that my grand plans had gone terribly wrong.
Like my plan to be an extra, a fellow warrior who’d gone unnoticed because he was so good at what he did.