Chapter 123 The Underground Labyrinth
Saul looked at the spirits whose movements were so neatly organized that it was eerie, at their bare shoulders, and instantly recalled the mountains of arms he had seen on the cliffs before he had entered the crypt.
The arms were out there calling for help, but the bodies were walking underground in a hidden and careful manner.
If these spirits were the souls of the dead, Saul couldn't even imagine what horrific scenes they had gone through when they died.
The first time he heard Senior Byron recount the tragedy in the Valley of the Drooping Hands, Saul thought that all those wizards and apprentices should have been crushed, squeezed, or suffocated to death. Otherwise, they would have died from killing each other while fleeing.
But the truth was clearly not that simple.
Those white shadows were many in number, coming out of the center passage in rows, and mechanically walking into the left passage one by one.
There were too many of them.
If it weren't for the subtle differences in the stature and looks of each of the shadows, Saul was afraid that he would have thought that these shadows might have been copies of one or the other.
The left and center passages were now crowded with these shadows, and only the right passage was clean.
Bill, who stood at the front, observed for a while and did not sense any danger, so he asked in a low voice, "Byron, are there evil spirits here?"
Bill could tell that the vapors in front of him were nothing more than the remnants of a broken spirit, not even a soul fragment.
However, he could not be sure if this phenomenon meant that there were evil spirits infesting the neighborhood.
Byron called out to Sol, "Sol, let's go over there together and take a look."
Saul followed Byron and walked through the passageway that Bill and Wright had sidestepped to make way for.
They stopped three meters from the fork in the road.
Saul took the lead and entered a semi-immersive meditation.
Instantly, the humanoid silhouette without arms in front of them disappeared, and there was only a single, bleak-white, faint flame in mid-air.
Those flames that were so faint that it seemed as if they would go out at any time were moving in mid-air, hopping from one to the other, in the same rhythm as those silhouettes had just advanced.
It was silent and trembling.
Even though he had already lost his human form, Saul could still feel a suffocating tension from their neat jumps.
He scrutinized the three caves and withdrew from his meditative state.
"Whew…"
His chest expanded violently twice, as if he had only just recovered from suffocation.
"Anything?" Wright asked in a low voice, relying on the airflow in his throat as he saw Byron and Saul stop watching one after the other.
Saul and Byron glanced at each other, and with uncanny understanding, they both raised their hands – in unison – and pointed to the passageway on the left.
The corner of Bill's mouth twitched slightly, "Is this meant for us to walk alongside those guys?"
Byron walked straight over and reached out to wiggle his hand between those white vapors.
Those shadows were not affected in any way, still raising their legs high and dropping them gently, walking carefully.
"At the moment, these remnants just look strange, and are incapable of affecting us in any way for the time being."
Wright touched his arm, "That's why I've never liked dealing with spirits. I never know if attacking them is a waste of my own magic."
Bill said nonchalantly, "But if you put your mind to the fluctuations of spiritual energy they emanate, you wouldn't be surprised by a bunch of phantoms."
"Ha, like you weren't nervous just now."
"I'll go to the front this time." Byron ignored the bickering between the two and glanced at Sol, signaling him to follow him closely.
"Good," Wright followed, "you're on your home turf now. When we deal with the evil spirits later, I'll just have to do what you command me to do."
As they spoke, the four of them inserted themselves into the ranks of the white vapors one by one.
"Actually, there aren't necessarily evil spirits here." Saul gave the two seniors a dose of prevention, "It might just be that the Evil Spirit once wandered here and caused some contamination to the place."
"Understood!" Wright had no frame of mind, "When I went to catch trachoma worms, I often only picked up their dried feces as well."
"No need for that example!" Bill hated to raise his hand and knock Wright on the head.
Several people continued on their way.
The white vapors that were parallel to them turned right at the next intersection and entered another hole in the ground.
"Another fork in the road." Wright frowned, "I don't like walking through mazes." "That's how it is down in the Valley of the Drooping Hand." Byron replied bemusedly, his attention focused on distinguishing the path ahead.
A few more people traveled past a few more forks in the road, this underworld was even more massive than Sol had imagined.
And this was just the outskirts of the Valley of the Drooping Hand.
"There's movement." Byron suddenly stopped.
At this moment, the crowd had just stepped into a wider space, where up and down, there were surprisingly eight forks in the road.
"Why are there so many holes in the ground? I feel like I'm going to be unable to remember the route I came from." Wright covered his face with both hands.
His thin face was as pale as a dead man under the dim light of the Shimmering Art.
Bill was also visibly impatient.
"I don't think it's too reliable to look for evil spirits based on contamination either. That's just a trail they left behind, and it's not like they're necessarily still here." He pointed to the passageway leading underground, "I think we'd better keep going down."
After saying that, Bill headed that way and didn't seem like he was going to consult with anyone.
But Saul glanced over and felt something strange, "Wait!"
Just as he was in mid-sentence, Bill jumped down the passage.
Bill's body landed in mid-air, and the passageway on the ground suddenly began to close up.
It looked like the man was about to be cut off at the waist, but Bill was not shocked but pleased.
He only saw a large pile of purple foam instantly emerge from the skin of his hands and feet. That foam looked soft, but it was able to hold up against the shrinking ground passage.
Bill then pressed his hands on the side of the tunnel and jumped upwards, leaving a pile of foam stuck in the hole at the same time, while he himself jumped into mid-air.
Saul's side didn't have the time to watch the others fight.
After the first hole suddenly contracted and bit, a hole in the ground to Saul's left suddenly leaned towards him.
The mountain contracted as if it was a giant suction cup that was going to suck Saul's entire body in.
Saul immediately felt a strong suction force.
He raised his leg, stepped on the lower edge of the sidewall, and against that suction, flung his hand and flew out a Strike Necromancer.
The hole contracted violently twice, but unfortunately the attack was not as effective as it should have been.
But Saul had just struck just to buy himself some time.
He immediately unleashed the Shot Vector Technique.
The sharp arrow gained more kinetic energy by following the suction of the hole, and almost instantly drilled into the interior of the hole.
This time the hole shuddered violently and spat out a stream of green slime.
But then, it suddenly expanded, instantly expanding from a small hole with a diameter of less than a meter by nearly two meters, and the suction force once again increased greatly.
This time, there was no place to fix his body under his feet, and he was about to fall into the cave that was even bigger than his whole body.
Suddenly, a thorn protruded from underneath Saul's feet, and it was stuck directly into the mountain above his head.
Saul clutched the thorn to prevent himself from being sucked in.
However, his feet were difficult to stand firmly due to the huge suction force, and he floated into mid-air, only able to rely on one arm to hold the ground thorn firmly.
Saul's other hand wasn't idle either, and after quickly reciting an incantation, a translucent moth began to float on his arm.
Saul casually flung his hand, and several of the moths were sucked into the cave.
The reason why he chose Soul Cavity as his first 1st rank sorcery was because it was a rare sorcery amongst the low rank sorceries that could attack both the physical body and the soul at the same time.
Although it wasn't that kind of instant death sorcery, the striking surface was very full.
Not more than a few seconds later, the hole instantly shrunk again, while the suction force decreased greatly.
Sol's feet were finally able to land back on the ground.
(End of chapter)