Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The depth the artist dug into the ground was only a little more than a man’s height. After jumping into the hole, the passage started to shrink. Lin Sanjiu was forced to crawl all the way down, digging chunks of dirt out of her way and transforming them into cards. There was a limit to how many cards she could transform per day, and soon enough, she began to run low on numbers. Fortunately, the passage slowly widened up and extended to a spacious cave.
They could finally straighten their backs. They held onto the dirt wall and moved forward as quietly as possible.
Everything was simmered in darkness, and after reaching a dozen or so meters underground, their sight was blinded and even their fingers became invisible in the darkness. The smell of dirt grew heavy. As they traveled further, at times, they would step on some slippery goo on the ground that would produce a disgusting hiss. The two of them wandered around in the darkness for a while before she sensed a faint scent of fig waft from around her ear. Silvan’s voice then softly entered her ears, “Shed some light,”
Before Lin Sanjiu could take out her [Ability Polishing Agent], a faint white light was cast from her shoulder. She looked over her shoulder and realized Silvan was actually ordering the little robot with claws on her shoulder.
As the light was cast into darkness, it softly spread open and covered the entire cave, which was filled with countless dust particles.
The cave was around 20 to 30 square meters in size, similar to the capacity of a bedroom. The walls of the cave had areas of crooked indentations, as if they were left behind by something walking past the walls. The ground was slippery and puddles of sticky goo glistened softly.
The wall opposite the two of them seemed to have absorbed all of the light source, but was still hiding in the darkness. Lin Sanjiu walked towards the wall, the light followed her footsteps and moved closer, but it soon dimmed in the vast darkness. She checked up and down, and was slightly surprised by what she found. She turned around and said, “It’s an empty space, we can continue downwards.”
“Both sides of the cave have a radioactive alignment; the further we go, the wider it is. But this space is really big.” Once Silvan caught up, he measured the wide space, using the dim light from the robot.
His voice echoed in the broad space and slowly faded. The space behind this cave seemed like the living room that was connected to the bedroom, it was really deep. The light was barely able to reach the dome ceiling, failing to reach the dark bottom.
A slope wider than the walls of the cave connected the cave and the big empty space. There were also many crooked indentations on the ground, but it was much wider and deeper than on the slope, messily intertwining with each other. The two of them stepped on the bumpy indentation and slowly walked deeper into the empty space in silence. The further away they were from the surface, the more it felt like they were getting closer to an outrageous dream.
Beneath the empty space was another and yet another, gradually becoming deeper and wider than the previous. The two of them had walked for who knows how many hours and they could no longer see the walls of the empty space, only the crooked indentations accompanying them all the way. The indentations also became larger and larger, to the point that it was wide enough for two people to stand inside. Silvan took two torchlights out, but after the light pierced a tiny area of darkness, it helplessly scattered and was ultimately devoured by the darkness further away.
“The surface here should be flat.”
As the light and darkness intertwined, it made Silvan’s face look like the reflection of a forest lake, his mortal presence almost gone. He moved the cylinder away from the ground, stood up and said softly, “Maybe there are more empty spaces that lead downwards… Who knows how far we have to go to reach the end.”
Lin Sanjiu looked around, and wherever her eyes reached, she saw endless darkness. The air was not as thin as she thought, as she could still breath smoothly like on the surface. Even though there was another larger empty space ahead of them, they had no idea which direction to go, and no matter which direction, it looked like they were traversing in an expanse of a faraway void.
She stood still for a while before asking, “Why is the empty space getting bigger and bigger?”
Silvan was stunned. He furrowed his brows right away but did not answer.
“How? What do you think?”
“A thought seemed to have flashed by my mind, let me think…” The man with the blonde hair muttered an unfinished sentence but then suddenly lifted his head up. Lin Sanjiu was startled and wanted to ask if he got any good ideas, but to her surprise, he grabbed her by the wrist and asked, “Did you hear that?”
‘Hear what?’
She held her breath and widened her eyes, and shortly after that, she was shocked. “W-What was that sound?”
Like the sound of a storm and rain hitting the land, the rustles from the dome ceiling got louder and clearer. The two of them were petrified on the spot, afraid yet curious; the torchlight shone towards the top. However, before the light could reach the dome ceiling, it was devoured by darkness.
They were deep underground, so even if it rained back on the surface, they would never hear anything.
As the circle of light from the torchlight swept across the darkness, some small thin shadows swept across their sight.
“There!” Lin Sanjiu called, and the light from their torchlights immediately converged in a single direction. The circle of light continuously burned the darkness away, revealing a tiny spot, but the spot within the circle of light was empty. The rustling above their heads became louder, and the buzz echoed in the space and formed a wave of muddled sounds.
Just when Lin Sanjiu thought she had mistakened what she saw, another irregular-shaped shadow moved across the light. Thump! Something fell down on the ground further away.
The thump was like a signal, for countless chunks of dirt started to rain down from the dome ceiling. As a dust storm stirred up, shadow after shadow of different shapes and sizes jumped across the circle of light. Further away from the circle of light, many more raindrop-like black shadows swept across the sky and rained down on the ground.
“Let’s retreat for now.” Silvan pulled her up, and the two of them ran towards the direction they came from. An instant later, the black shadows that rained down from the dome ceiling pelted heavier like a storm. Before they could run away from the dome ceiling, countless wet and small things landed on them and started to wriggle into their clothes.
As Lin Sanjiu held her disgust back, one of her hands covered her head while the other swatted the things off her body. A familiar rotten stench once again entered her nose.
The last time she smelled the stench was from the humanoid figures formed by the purplish-black tongues.
“It’s the purplish-black tongues!” she trembled and shouted at Silvan. [Defense Forcefield] shone on her and covered herself whole. “Be careful!”
Silvan let go of her hand before several lightning bolts shone brightly from him, and with loud sparks, it shattered the air and struck several of the black shadows. As more and more black shadows rained down, he suddenly paused his steps, covered his face, and shouted back, “Something’s wrong, look at your feet!”
Lin Sanjiu almost bumped into him. She lowered her head in a hurry and became frightened.
It was true that the fishy stench came from the purplish-black tongues. The things that fell from the ceiling were those black maggots, or more accurately, pieces of black maggots.
Mushy meat blanketed the ground, and crushed shells were littered everywhere. Little sections of iron needles and a puddle of liquid of unknown origins gathered up, all muddy beneath their feet. The rotten meat glistened softly like the swamp’s surface when the light shone on it. Lin Sanjiu endured the invasive sensation from the filth and formed a tent-shaped barrier above them. As the rustling noises rained down on the barrier, she finally heaved a breath of relief.
She looked down and sized up the ground for a moment, her mind puzzled by a sea of questions. When she looked up again, she locked gazes with Silvan.
“Why… why is the meat as mushed as mud?” When she opened her mouth, the smell seeped into the seams of her teeth. She spat several times and wiped her mouth before asking, “Where did they come from? What are they trying to do?”
If it was similar to the earlier situation, the purplish-black tongues coming out from the ground might be able to inflict unexpected damage to them in the dark.
Silvan’s figure was coincidentally outside the torchlight’s range, the contours making him look like a statue. He removed his wet uniform’s coat and tossed it away. He then unbuttoned his shirt and wiped his face clean before saying softly, “Don’t you think these things are familiar?”
“We’ve crushed who knows how many of them. Of course, they are familiar.”
“No, I mean… these are the things that we crushed earlier,” Silvan said softly, his voice almost inaudible under the rustling of the black storm.
Lin Sanjiu, bewildered, sized up the bottom of her feet again.
“Are you saying… when we crushed these things, their bodies… came from…” When she opened her mouth, she somehow felt what she was about to say sounded outrageous.
She looked up at the black air and muttered a question, “…came from the surface?”
“Or they were brought down here by another force.”
The man with the blonde hair kicked away a black meat strip with the tip of his boot. He looked at the thing and said softly, “They are all dead, no wonder they aren’t moving.”
‘What kind of force would that be? Why is it bringing them down here?’
While Lin Sanjiu was recoiling in shock, Silvan continued, “You asked me why the empty space is bigger and wider than the other, and it gave me a thought.”
“What thought?”
“These empty spaces, I think they were prepared for the thing I called queen to settle down underground, which means it started off the size of a room and got bigger and bigger, so it had to dig bigger spaces to contain its body…” His voice trembled slightly as if he was enduring some exhilarating excitement.
Even though Lin Sanjiu’s nervousness was numbed, her heart still skipped a beat.
“You feel that? Behind us, something big has appeared…” Silvan whispered with a sigh. His soft voice grazed her ears, and his breath fluttered her messy hair and tickled her neck.
