Lorne stared at the game buttons on the stone door, unsure what to do.
"There shouldn't be any game consoles in this world, right?"
"So this could only have come from a transmigrator..."
"No, it might just happen to look like a game console."
"Lucky, what do you think?" Lorne looked at the cat beside him.
"Meow..." Lucky gave a meow, then leaned forward and lay down on the ground. Her utterly relaxed posture seemed to say that she was just a cat and he should leave her alone.
"Maybe I should try pressing them." Lorne placed his fingers on the buttons, still hesitating.
"No, I should do a divination first."
"Pressing the buttons on the stone door will cause danger."
After a brief wait, the blue crystal Pendulum swung slightly counterclockwise, indicating a negative answer.
"Does that mean there's no danger?" Lorne considered the situation before him.
There was no writing on the stone door. Did that mean its builder hadn't wanted to communicate with whoever came after them?
If the builder was a transmigrator, that didn't make sense. If they hadn't wanted anyone to know, there would have been no need to install a game controller on the door.
So was it simply meant to keep the locals out? After all, this world had no game consoles.
"No, that's not it..." Another possibility occurred to Lorne.
What if it wasn't that the builder hadn't wanted to leave a written message, but that they'd been afraid other transmigrators wouldn't understand it?
If transmigrators originally came from different countries, people from other countries might not understand the builder's native language. But if they left a message in this world's language, the locals might discover the secret inside.
That was why they had left something like a game controller, which a transmigrator would recognize at a glance.
Lorne placed his hand on the "controller" and swallowed.
"To hell with it! I'm already here. Might as well give it a try."
"Come to think of it, the most famous code for this kind of NES controller should be..."
"Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, B, A."
Following the cheat code he remembered, Lorne pressed the buttons one by one.
"Nothing happened... holy crap." Just as Lorne started to think he'd gotten it wrong, he felt the ground shaking.
A muffled boom suddenly rang out through the underground chamber, followed by an unbroken rumble of tremors...
"Don't tell me this is a trap for transmigrators!"
"It self-destructs as soon as you enter the right cheat code."
Lorne scooped up the cat in front of him and prepared to run outside, but the moment he took a step, he heard the grinding roar of gears turning.
Gray-green moss shook loose from the gap in the door. Before Lorne's astonished eyes, centuries of accumulated dust surged out through the opening, mingled with cold subterranean air.
He hurriedly covered his mouth and nose, holding the torch up with his other hand. In its light, he could faintly make out a sizable space beyond the door.
"There won't be any danger, right?" Rather than make a rash move, Lorne tossed the torch straight inside.
Clatter!
The torch arced through the air and landed safely beyond the stone door.
Seeing that the torch was still burning, Lorne relaxed a little.
If the flame could keep burning, the air was circulating, so he wouldn't suffocate.
There probably weren't any pressure-triggered traps at the entrance, either.
"Should I go in? I might as well do another divination."
"There is danger behind the stone door."
Lorne picked up the Pendulum and performed another divination.
Once again, the Pendulum swung slightly counterclockwise, indicating there was no danger.
"No danger again? Isn't that a little too convenient?" On his first treasure hunt, Lorne found this string of smooth successes rather surprising.
At a crucial moment like this, he had to know when to chicken out... ahem, when to be cautious.
Charging blindly inside because you thought there was treasure, only to get yourself killed, was a common death scene for minor characters in novels.
"To go or not to go," Lorne muttered to himself.
Seeing her owner hesitate without making up his mind, Lucky seemed to be drawn by something. She leaped straight out of Lorne's arms and slipped behind the stone door.
"Hey, watch out! It might be dangerous!"
Left with no choice, Lorne drew his pistol and followed her.
The space behind the stone door was much smaller than he had imagined. By his estimate, it was only about thirty square meters.
A rectangular structure stood in the center of the room.
Only when Lorne approached did he realize it was a stone chest, roughly large enough to fit an adult.
This... isn't a coffin, is it?
Hey, I came here to hunt treasure, not rob tombs.
If I open it, will a corpse suddenly rise up?
Scenes from all kinds of horror movies and novels-Mr. Vampire, Ghost Blows Out the Light-ran through Lorne's mind.
He activated Spirit Vision and examined the stone chest before him, but found no spirits of any kind, vengeful ghosts included.
"Am I being too cautious? I'm a transmigrator!"
"This is obviously the sort of scene where I get free gear. What am I afraid of?"
After giving himself a thorough pep talk, Lorne placed his hands on the stone slab and pushed hard.
Rumble...
As dust rose into the air, Lorne grabbed his pistol and aimed it into the chest. When the dust settled, he saw another chest inside.
From that moment on, the nature of the situation changed.
Expressionless, Lorne opened another lid, only to find a slightly smaller chest inside.
Refusing to give up, he opened that chest too, then discovered an even smaller chest.
Looking at the chest before him... no, by now it deserved to be called a box, Lorne was left speechless.
"What is this, a nesting doll?" Lorne was now certain that a transmigrator had built this place. Only a transmigrator would pull a stunt like this.
Once again, Lorne opened the box, and once again, he found a smaller box inside, this one a little over ten centimeters across. Unlike the previous stone chests, however, the little box inside appeared to be wooden.
Somewhat numb by now, Lorne opened the wooden box.
"This! This is... absolutely nothing!"
Staring at the utterly empty box before him, Lorne felt a cold breeze blow past. He almost seemed to hear crows cawing in his ears.
"What a rip-off!"
Lorne fought down the urge to hurl the wooden box away.
"Calm down, calm down. Impulsiveness is the devil."
"Even Emperor Roselle said that... pah, he was just a plagiarizing bastard."
Gradually calming down, Lorne began examining the wooden box before him.
"Could it be that the box itself is the treasure?"
"This..."
"Place is probably hundreds of years old, so this box should count as an antique." Lorne picked up the box and studied it carefully in the dim light.
Unfortunately, even after examining it for quite some time, he couldn't make anything of it.
"Forget it. I'll take it back and study it later."
"Lucky, time to go," Lorne called to his cat.
"Lucky..." When the orange cat didn't respond, Lorne called again.
Fortunately, the room wasn't large. With a slight turn, Lorne spotted Lucky crouching nearby, pawing at something.
"What are you doing?" Lorne walked over to her and bent down.
"This... is this a monocle?"
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