Serena and the Mysterious Labyrinth - Chapter 5

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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5. Heuji’s Mausoleum (2)

“I think this place is.”

Everyone’s attention focused on Serena. Though she had grown accustomed to being the center of attention after being reincarnated as a princess, she felt a bit nervous due to the urgent situation.

“Like a royal mausoleum.”

“A mausoleum? Ah, that really existed. As expected of Lady Serena.”

“It does seem like a mausoleum!”

Philia and Hanson immediately agreed with Serena’s speculation. Krom and Lavenda looked puzzled.

“Princess. What’s a mausoleum?”

“Think of it as a large-scale family tomb. Instead of burying bodies, they seal coffins and place them in buildings.”

“Even if it’s large, still.”

Krom looked around and spoke again.

“What kind of tomb has a fountain?”

“I also think that’s strange, but if we’re talking about a stone structure of this scale underground near Heuji City, there’s nothing else that comes to mind besides a mausoleum.”

“Near Heuji City? We were in Heuji City though?”

“District 7 is an expanded area. It was gradually expanded as the population grew. This seems to be a mausoleum built before that.”

Since many people might not know, Serena explained why she thought this place was a mausoleum.

“The Royal House of Heuji, House Huaim, has frequently suffered from grave robbing since ancient times. From the direct royal line to collateral branches, they were particularly severely affected by grave robbing. Before finding safe routes to the continent, grave robbers would even come over those mountains.”

“Wow, they came over there?”

“Good grief, those cursed bastards.”

“So our ancestors, after much deliberation, built mausoleums. But no matter how strictly they kept secrets, the larger the mausoleum, the more people would inevitably know about it. They repeatedly had to abandon mausoleums whose locations were discovered and build new ones.”

Since the dynasty was so old, they also built new mausoleums when they ran out of space to place coffins.

Anyway, while some mausoleums were passed down to descendants and properly maintained, others were forgotten when information was lost. When a royal house lasts a thousand years, records are bound to be lost.

“I think this might be one of those mausoleums. A stone building underground near Heuji City using magical devices. It almost perfectly matches.”

A fountain with endlessly flowing water and a bright lobby without any visible lighting devices. Ventilation facilities that, though invisible and easily overlooked, keep air flowing instead of stagnating.

All of this is the power of magic or equivalent technology.

Philia and Hanson nodded like diligent students listening to their teacher. Krom also nodded as if convinced.

“So that’s what it was.”

“….”

Only Lavenda still had a particularly dark expression. Serena decided to share some relatively good news for her sake, as she was struggling in a foreign land.

“If this place is indeed a mausoleum as I suspect, there’s one piece of good news.”

“Is there another exit besides that one?”

Lavenda immediately took the bait about good news. Serena shook her head.

“Not that, but there’s a communication device installed in the place where coffins are kept, connected to the Royal Palace. That’s the tradition.”

It’s a tradition that dates back to times when medical science wasn’t advanced and death diagnoses weren’t certain.

‘It would be trouble if this was built before communication devices were invented. But even then, they said they connected it to bells outside.’

As she was explaining this, Philia shouted loudly.

“That’s right!”

“What’s suddenly wrong?”

“My communication device! There’s a communication device connected to his!”

“Wow! You have a communication device?”

“My goodness, such an expensive thing.”

Everyone brightened at the news that Philia had a communication device.

“Hmm.”

Everyone except Serena.

Philia hurriedly took out her communication device from the pouch at her waist. She spoke the activation words to operate the device, but it didn’t respond.

“Huh? Why is this happening? Honey! Can you hear me?”

“This gives me more confidence that this place is a mausoleum.”

“What? The communication device not working?”

“Probably you can only use communication devices in the antechamber. Other spaces would be blocked.”

“Do they really need to go that far to prevent grave robbing, Princess?”

“I’m learning this for the first time too.”

“This is news to me!”

“Don’t underestimate grave robbing. They possess the audacity to disregard royal authority, the lack of conscience to disturb the rest of the deceased, archaeological and architectural knowledge to assess the value of burial goods and discover tomb locations and structures, aesthetics, literary cultivation, and the capital to deploy expensive equipment like communication devices.”

Were grave robbers really such terrible and frightening people?

Everyone exclaimed in unison with shock.

The words of a princess from a royal house plagued by grave robbing were overwhelmingly convincing.

“Then we just need to go to the antechamber and contact the outside!”

Lavenda’s lavender-colored eyes sparkled. She looked ready to run off immediately to find the antechamber.

Introductions were finished, they knew where they were, and the escape method was revealed. Now it was time to move.

Without anyone directing it, everyone’s gaze turned to Hanson.

“Hic.”

One precious princess, and another noblewoman who looked even more precious than the princess.

A woman who did hard physical labor, but it happened to be massage.

And one elderly woman who looked quite healthy.

“Me?”

Hanson pointed to himself. In this situation, I’m the only one who can step forward! Whether I like it or not, it’s only me!

“I’ll! Go, go!”

If he had to step forward anyway, volunteering would look better and improve his reputation.

“I’ll go and come back!”

Hanson grabbed his spear and bravely stood up. Perhaps nervous about having to step forward, his speech became strange again.

“I also want to get my cart now.”

Krom also got up from his seat and dusted off his bottom. Lavenda glanced around wondering whether to step forward or not, while Philia remained seated as if it were perfectly natural.

“I’ll go too.”

“What? Lady Serena should stay here!”

“That’s right, Princess. It could be dangerous, so please stay here.”

Philia and Lavenda actively dissuaded the princess from her reckless act.

‘I don’t want to go either.’

Serena frowned inwardly. Serena also desperately wanted to wait calmly like Philia.

‘Philia. You’ve served me for over five years and still don’t know? The only time I, who hate working, move.’

Is when there’s absolutely a reason I must.

Where there’s good news, there’s bound to be bad news. Serena had more news to tell the four of them.

“If this place is indeed a mausoleum, there’s one more fact you all need to know.”

Sensing from Serena’s tone that it was bad news, everyone’s expressions darkened. The already nervous Hanson became more nervous and gulped.

“Even after changing tomb locations due to grave robbing, they would eventually be robbed anyway. Unable to endure it any longer, our ancestors made a major decision.”

“What kind of….”

“They turned all mausoleums into dungeons.”

Dungeons.

In the games she played in her previous life, they were usually places advantageous for leveling up and farming, where monsters and treasures gathered.

Even in this reincarnated world, the part about monsters gathering was similar.

In this world, places where traps and monsters are deployed to prevent outside intruders—among monster lairs, wizards’ secret laboratories, or nobles’ secret vaults—are called dungeons.

Both natural and artificial dungeons exist, and all of Heuji’s mausoleums were artificial dungeons.

“Then are there monsters?”

“It’s mainly traps rather than monsters. Monsters could disturb the rest of the deceased.”

They’re also hard to manage. To deploy living monsters in a dungeon, you’d need to construct an ecosystem and continuously maintain it, which would obviously expose the mausoleum’s location immediately.

Undead monsters were excluded from the start since they could adversely affect the corpses interred in the mausoleum.

So House Huaim mainly installed golems and traps in their mausoleums. They always used the latest technology and carefully designed mechanisms so traps would work even if power was cut off.

“But those traps….”

Serena trailed off as she searched her memory.

‘This isn’t just ordinarily bad news, it’s very bad news.’

As a member of the royal family, I naturally learned about mausoleums while studying the family’s history.

Since all the elders who could properly teach had been wiped out, I self-studied in the secret library, but the information about traps installed in mausoleums was always the same.

“There will be an enormous number of traps.”

There is no mercy for those insolent enough to disturb the peace of the deceased. All traps are lethal and have evolved alongside advancing tomb-robbing techniques.

At the news that there wouldn’t just be traps, but an enormous number of them, despair settled on everyone’s faces.

Serena quickly tried to reassure the people. It would be troublesome if morale dropped so soon after they had just fallen.

“Don’t worry too much. This place seems to be a mausoleum so old that even I don’t know it, so it should be easy to avoid.”

“Because the traps are old and broken?”

“That’s also possible, but.”

Serena answered as she had learned through self-study.

“Even after traps were installed, tomb robbing never ceased. The methods became more cunning too. So the traps evolved accordingly, meaning the more recently built a mausoleum is, the harder it is to get past the traps.”

“If there are so many traps, don’t you visit graves, Princess?”

“There must be secret passages!”

Double Hanson went on about secret passages again.

“They’d use magic, wouldn’t they? Even a country bumpkin like me has heard about it. There’s magic that responds to bloodline, right? Royals can pass through while traps block tomb robbers, isn’t that how it works?”

Serena shook her head.

“There are mausoleums built that way, but I heard they were useless because tomb robbers discovered the secret passages. As for bloodline magic… distant descendants can become tomb robbers too.”

Philia brought up something she vaguely remembered hearing from her parents.

“Then do you finish paying respects outside the mausoleum? I think my mother said the royals used to go inside the mausoleum…”

After the tragedy 18 years ago, the Heuji Royal Family stopped visiting graves. Instead, they hold memorial services in the capital every year.

“There are classes that only direct members of the royal family take.”

Since there was bad news, it was time to bring out good news. Serena put on airs to boost the fallen morale.

“Classes where you memorize the trap layouts and patterns of mausoleums.”

‘Though everyone who could teach died, so I self-studied.’

When the entire family died during a grave visit, who exactly would grab young Serena and teach her trap layouts?

Grandfather, who lost his wife, children, grandchildren, siblings, and all other relatives?

Father, who was a drug addict and fell out of favor with the late king, couldn’t participate in the grave visit, and that became his fortune as he survived?

Cousin brother, who was thought dead all along but miraculously returned alive a few years ago, and was a teenager when he went missing?

But it was fine. Serena had self-study books and a study companion.

‘There are times when that flower trash actually helps.’

For the first time, Serena felt it was worthwhile to have searched through mausoleum blueprints with her younger brother Seraph in the classified archive that only direct royal family members could access.

She had thought it pathetic when Seraph got excited about royal privileges and examined trap structures, but who knew it would be this helpful.

‘I only looked briefly, but it should be fine. It’ll really be okay. This place is old, so the traps should be simple too.’

How nice it would be if that flower trash were here right now.

‘They say even dog dung is nowhere to be found when you need it for medicine.’

For the first time since reincarnating, she missed her brother’s absence.

‘Let me pull myself together. I’m the only one here with knowledge about traps. How many times in their lives would those people have seen traps?’

At least Serena had encountered traps through various media in her previous life, and through written materials after reincarnating. She was better off than others.

“There are traditions in mausoleum trap layouts. I know more than you all, so I must go too.”

‘There’s only one guard, so I can’t send him alone to die.’

Double Hanson seemed like he’d die from nervousness without even knowing where traps were installed. She couldn’t trust him at all.

“I want to go too.”

“Countess? I-I’ll go too!”

When Serena moved, Philia moved with her. Philia, who had made this her motto after becoming Serena’s maid, stood up.

Lavenda also stood up, seemingly not wanting to be left alone.

‘It would be nice if at least one person stayed behind, just in case.’

Couldn’t someone else come while all five of them left the lobby? A rescue team might come.

Hanson was essential manpower, so he was excluded.

Krom had been going on about the cart, so if left alone, he’d probably leave the lobby to look for the cart.

‘It could be dangerous for Philia if she’s left alone and meets strangers. Lavenda would be in danger too.’

With strangers plus golems possibly roaming around, it would be strange to ask young women with no self-defense abilities to guard the lobby.

Serena thought for a bit then gave up. After living thoughtlessly since reincarnating, suddenly trying to worry made her head spin.

‘Ah, whatever. Let’s just all go together.’

There was something to do before that.

“Since you have both a spear and sword, it would be better for someone else to carry one.”

Serena pointed to the longsword fixed at Hanson’s waist. She had already decided who to give it to.

‘I’m obviously excluded. Philia won’t do either. The sword would swing Philia around. Lavenda has good grip strength judging by her massages, but seeing how soft her hands are, she probably hasn’t done rough work.’

“Give the sword to Krom.”

‘Since he said he does sculpting, he’d handle bladed tools better than us.’

At least Krom probably wouldn’t hurt himself while swinging a sword.

“Ugh.”

“What’s wrong? If it’s because of guard regulations, it’s fine. I ordered it, and it will be permitted due to emergency circumstances.”

“The thing is…”

Hanson drew his sword from its sheath. Thinking he was about to swing it at himself, Serena was startled. Her reaction was too slow to dodge.

Fortunately, Hanson hadn’t drawn his sword to attack Serena. He knelt while holding a wooden sword.

It wasn’t a sharp-edged longsword but a wooden sword. Seeing wood instead of metal, Serena’s eyes widened.

“I have committed a crime worthy of death.”

‘This bastard?’

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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