Chapter 443 - Welcome (Patreon)

The passengers Tess’ [Farsight] spotted were killed by monsters that move even around here. Tiny bug-like things that like to cling to the walls and spread some invisible gas-like poison.

It's powerful enough to slowly kill people close to level 200 and even over it if you stay longer in it or if it's more concentrated.

At first, you only feel a bit lightheaded; later, you have trouble breathing, and in the end, you find yourself unable to breathe. Your chest unable to move.

Sure, because of your body, you can survive a bit longer as you don’t need that much air, but that, combined with knowing what’s about to come, only elongates your suffering.

Tess and Min-Jae and some guys from other groups kill these monsters from a distance, while there are some guys with wind skills who disperse the poisonous clouds around, as when they are not concentrated they barely cause any trouble.

And so we continue. A group of around 30 people heading deeper underground to meet a shut-in Champion who has been here for over 100 years. Step after step and finding more and more corpses of the passengers.

There are even some groups who pass by us, hurriedly returning to Deathtrap and to the cave, either to try something with the old rusty SDAT, wait for us to do all the work, or to hide.

They can’t move Deathtrap, not even a bit. There is not a single speck of mana remaining in the core, and even all the important rooms are closed off. Heavy metal-plated doors closing off the entrance. An emergency shutdown me and the remaining guide triggered.

I’m also sure the monsters will be up there as well.

The tunnel starts tilting down more and becomes even wider, currently wide enough to accommodate a large building within its walls. Like tiny sparks of light, our orbs and items fly around, throwing light on just small pieces of it, unable to light it entirely because of the sheer size.

I have a theory it’s so wide so more sand can rush in. The thylarin brothers said a grain of sand can cause the effect if the Champion touches it, but I also think there is a chance there are more ways to trigger it.

Champion leaving his cell? Champion using mana somehow? It’s something I would do if I wanted to trap such a being.

Walking even deeper, we find a group of 20 people, all of them dead, each member of that group cut into a dozen or so pieces.

The cuts are extremely smooth and clean, and it just looks like it all happened at once. I keep my orb floating over the bodies and move another one a bit further ahead before sitting down. The same as me, the others also start observing from a distance, trying to come up with what could’ve caused this.

I sense Izzy and Sophie looking for the presence of living beings. Tess is scanningwith her eyes. Min-Jae uses his eye to look for shifts in gravity. He said every body should have the tiniest gravitational field, so he should be able to see it with his yellow eye. He wasn’t able to do it until now, but he keeps trying.

“We will all die down here.” The guide plops on the ground next to me.

As before, his face is still exhausted, tired, bags under his eyes, messy hair.

“Want to try to fly Deathtrap?” I ask him curiously.

“We can’t.” Resolutely shaking his head, he buries his face into the palms of his hands. “SDAT is made like that on purpose. Yes, for a while, you can control it with two people, maybe one, but then the ship starts its checks, and if there aren’t three people, it will stop flying.”

“Could you modify it?”

“Given a few weeks? Probably yes, but actually no. I can’t talk about it more, but if I tried anything like modifying it, I would die.”

“In worst case, I will do it,” I shrug my shoulders.

“That doesn’t solve our problem with mana.”

“Yup, you are right.”

Our conversation ends with that, and I continue to try looking for what killed the passengers.

Unfortunately, Tess beats me to it. “Threads, there are spider-like threads stretched out all over the place, even deeper below.”

To show us that, she reaches with her [Psychokinesis] and grabs one leg.

She lifts it up and then moves it towards the right, where an impossibly thin and strong thread cuts it in half almost without any resistance. At least that’s what I think is happening.

The question comes to mind. If there was someone with very high constitution or body strengthening, would that person be able to just walk through while tearing these threads apart? Logically, it should be possible.

I watch as they find the thread closest to us and test different stuff against it. They cut into it with a weapon, and most of the time the weapon loses, just the ones of mid epic and higher rarity win without getting damaged. Disruption skills also do not work as they are not made with mana. You can’t even sense them with mana senses.

Fire seems to work well against them, it just needs to be concentrated, and the thread then burns. A serious weakness, but understandable.

We loot the bodies for anything worthwhile and continue deeper.

Two members of the groups under Famir and vyssari Heryd die, cut apart by a thread they missed or by moving too much to the side. One of them doesn’t die instantly and screams and begs Lily to heal him.

She even tries to move, but Tess grabs her shoulder and holds her back. She whispers something into our healer’s ear, and the man dies a few seconds later.

They loot his body, and we continue.

Ten minutes later, we reach the bridge. It’s wide enough just for a single person, and it stretches far, far ahead. I shoot a small thermal orb right over it, and it is impossibly straight, and when the tiny dot of light disappears, Tess continues to watch.

An estimate is a few miles.

Just the structure of this bridge makes me more nervous than the threads before, than our ever-decreasing mana reserves and dangers ahead.

The bridge is made out of stone, but there are no support pillars under it. It’s as thick as a human and a bit wider, and its only supports are connections to where we stand and the other side.

Yet it holds strong. Tess and Min-Jae grab some huge stones and shoot them far ahead, where they crash against the middle of the bridge, but there is no damage at all. The bridge doesn’t even shake, even though these stones are heavier than a half dozen people combined.

And there is a pit of darkness down below, a darkness that doesn’t even get driven away by our skills, orbs, or items.

Any light that touches it doesn’t pierce deeper, but the stones we throw in fall for around 20 seconds. Min-Jae estimates it to be a mile deep.

I can fly, I can use kinetic energy to move myself to the other side.

But I don’t do so.

Together with the others, I step on the bridge and walk carefully.

The bridge doesn’t shake, there are no monsters popping up, there are no other traps. Even so, my heart is beating wildly.

Step after step, thirty or so people quietly walk across that narrow bridge. No one says a word. No one makes a noise.

I can fly. I repeat to myself. I can be considered superhuman and there are dozens of ways I could survive if I fell. Anchor, mana arms, kinetic energy. I could even survive landing down, using my skills to slow down my fall. But for some stupid, illogical reason, my heart is beating like it’s about to jump out of my chest.

I shouldn’t be, but I feel fear, and I’m savoring that feeling.

One of Heryd’s vyssari falls down. He just loses balance and screams, immediately disappearing into the darkness under the bridge.

We can hear his voice as he falls for 20 seconds, getting quieter and quieter, and then there is a thump and silence.

Then something starts eating the body.

We shouldn’t be hearing it from such a distance, yet we can. As audibly as if he were just a few steps away. A wet noise of a sharp maw tearing still-warm flesh and slurping on the blood. We hear bones snapping and something akin to slurping noises.

When it stops a dozen seconds later, I know the body is gone. And we continue over the bridge slower than before. Quieter than before.

When we reach the middle of the bridge, the darkness surrounding it reaches our knees. That’s the best way I can describe it. It’s not smoke, no skill, nothing physical I could sense. It’s just that our lights stop being able to pierce it.

The bridge that was already narrow is now gone, invisible to us, the stone under our feet an only reminder that it is still there.

Our small expedition stops, and I can feel something touching my feet, something I can’t see nor sense. There is no mana, no heat, no kinetic energy in the movement.

A scream sounds from around me, and another member of the expedition falls down.

Twenty seconds. Thump.

Sounds of flesh being torn, and bones snapping.

Then quiet.

Someone laughs maniacally, and a bombardment of attacks shoots into the darkness below us.

Nothing changes.

Around half of the expedition turns around to leave.

Group 4, Dravos, Drekar, Kallus, Heryd and some of his group, and Famir and most of his group stay.

“Let’s continue,” Tess’ calm voice sounds in the darkness, and she jumps into the air over a few people from the expedition.

She lands gently at the front of everyone, on the narrow bridge that is now invisible. Just a small deviation, and she would be falling down.

A silence.

I can fly, Tess can fly. There are dozens of ways to survive this. I remind myself of that again. But something feels off.

Everyone here is close to level 200 or over it. So why did people like that just fall down? How come they didn’t have reflexes quick enough to grab the bridge? How come they can bulldoze through most buildings, some can destroy entire cities.

Yet they fell off the bridge?

Something touches my feet again, it feels like a wave washing over my feet, like a myriad snakes crawling over them.

Everyone is the same, some swing their weapons at whatever it is.

They hit nothing.

We continue to walk much slower, everyone takes a step after step, feeling the edges of the bridge with their feet before placing a step.

Our progress slows down to a crawl, but we continue.

Tess refuses to answer how far the end is, so with no other choice, we walk.

No one else falls, and we reach the opposite side of the bridge.

All on the other side, we turn around, the darkness now retreated back under the bridge that stands there the same as before.

I etch that view into my memory. A narrow stone footbridge partially lit by my orbs, the darkness below it pitch black, as if absorbing the light.

We turn our backs to it and continue.

There are no more monsters, no doors, no traps, and like that, we reach the center of this place and light it as much as possible.

It’s a massive platform surrounded by the same darkness as before. We throw a few stones into it. They fall for 20 seconds as before, then there is silence.

We cross that darkness on another footbridge, this time much shorter. Only a tenth of the one from before. No one dies this time.

The platform is extremely big and circular. Its surface is made of metal of a dark blue color that nears being black. It’s extremely smooth, there are no cracks in it, no imperfections. It looks near alien. That platform has three bridges leading off it, the one we used included. Three different ways from most likely three different entrances - the one Deathtrap flew into one of them.

In the exact center of the platform is a massive, perfectly round hole cut into the metal-like surface. The edges are unnaturally smooth and precise, as if made by something far beyond anything we know. The sides of the hole are smooth, polished, and descend straight down, about the height of a fifteen-story building.

We can see the bottom, where the light reflects faintly off the same alien material, giving it an unsettling, mirrored look.

There, a single man sits, his back resting against the wall.

He is looking up. Not just looking up as if out of the hole, no, he is looking straight at us even before we look over the edge.

The man has blue skin, but this thylarin has six arms, instead of the 4 they usually sport. We'll, he would've, but instead of 5 of them he has short stumps poking from the white clothes he is wearing.

He smiles at us and waves with his remaining hand.

“Welcome,” he says, his voice calm and oddly soothing.

***

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