Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
The Light Ball from the illumination spell drifted ahead, moving in sync with Roland as he moved forward.
It could be suspended roughly 20 meters away from Roland, so it was able to completely illuminate the scenery ahead.
One shouldn’t underestimate this small amount of distance. A lot of the time, this tiny bit of distance could eliminate certain ambushes or dangers.
The cave wasn’t very wide, but it could accommodate three people walking side by side, so it didn’t seem too cramped.
A musty, earthy smell rushed past everyone’s noses, but they didn’t take it too seriously. They walked slowly, trying not to make too much noise, and at the same time cautiously surveyed their surroundings.
By the looks of the shape of the cave wall, it must have been artificially created. Hawk held his shield as he walked forward, and after a while, he stopped suddenly.
Everyone was startled for a moment, and then they adopted battle stances.
Hawk didn’t say a word and simply shook his head. Then, he grabbed a handful of mud from the cave wall, sniffed it, and tasted it with the tip of his tongue.
The four bystanders felt somewhat uncomfortable at his actions, as if they themselves had eaten the mud.
Then, Hawk threw away the dirt under the puzzled gazes of the other four and whispered, “I found it strange earlier—the smell of this cave is a bit ‘fresh,’ so I tasted the dirt. This passage was dug only recently, less than three years ago.”
Jett’s eyes widened. “Oh dang, you’re a tomb-raiding officer1 in real life?”
“Bug off, I’m a civil engineering graduate,” Hawk said bitterly.
3Jett, however, nodded. “They’re about the same—both are excavating jobs.”
“Far from it.” Hawk stood up and said helplessly, “One builds upward, one digs downward, how could they be confused with each other.”
1Then, Jett noticed something odd. “Do the current civil engineering students have to learn the skill of tasting how long silt has been dug out for?”
“No, it’s just a school specialty,” Hawk explained. “Every university has a different instructor in civil engineering, so the specialty differs. For example, the unique skills for talents that graduate from Qing Something University’s1 civil engineering are ridiculous personnel commands and dreadful time control. They are best at building large projects in a short period of time, using the scientific tactic of an overwhelming labor force. They’re representative of brute force aesthetics in civil engineering.
2“Our university’s instructor isn’t that impressive. His background was originally in archeology. This is why he was quite an expert with using tools and building materials to construct buildings with unique styles, and since he was once a major in archeology, he had the habit of tasting building materials with his mouth to check if the building materials were qualified or not. I only learned a little of this from him.”
Dumbfounded, Jett said, “Oh f**k, I suddenly feel that I’m wasting my life, having mediocre skills and only passing the exam to be an instructor without any unique skills in a second-rate university.”
Roland felt that this was quite normal. His instructor was quite impressive in the area of artificial intelligence but had recently vanished—he more or less knew why, now.
1The two of them chatted softly and continued to walk forward slowly.
Logically, in situations where one didn’t know whether there were dangers ahead or not, one should remain quiet.
However, being too quiet was adverse instead.
As they walked further inside, the natural winds and chirps of birds and insects were already cut off from outside. If they didn’t speak, only the sounds of their heartbeats, their footsteps, and the rubbing of their bones would reverberate inside the passageway.
Without the mixture of sounds of nature, such silence could drive people to irritation, or even drive them crazy if they had poor psychological resistance to stress.
This was why they talked quietly all the time, and Roland occasionally cut in on the conversation.
Before entering the dungeon, they assumed they would encounter enemies halfway through—ghosts, for example, or monsters.
However, they ended up walking the entire length of the tunnel into a massive rock hole without encountering any enemies.
In front of the entrance was a stone field, and in the distance there seemed to be a faint flicker of light.
Roland controlled two Light Balls and sent them forward so that the five of them could clearly see the space.
It was a large square space, the ground laid out with gray unknown rock, about a hundred black sarcophagi in a semicircular shape encircling a flight of steps in the distance.
The steps were about a meter high, and above them lay a large white sarcophagus, which seemed especially conspicuous amidst all the gray.
1Behind the white sarcophagus was a tall white stela. Glowing light blue lines resembling veins slowly emerged and faded from the stone, repeating in this way.
1This place was very quiet, so quiet that it was as if they were in a void. It was also very cold.
Hawk let out a long breath and a white mist came out of his mouth. “This situation is a bit familiar. When we walk over, will those glowing lines enter our bodies? And then a ghoul will rise from the white sarcophagus with a long frost sword and yell at us with unrelenting force1?”
“You’ve played too much Maiden Scrolls1.” Jett laughed and teased, “And you probably installed a lab2.”
2Roland, Hawk, and Link all revealed mysterious smiles at the same time.
Betta asked rather curiously, “What’s Maiden Scrolls?”
1Roland was at a loss for a moment and said helplessly, “Go search it yourself online, I can’t explain.”
The other three people snickered.
While the five of them were talking and laughing, they walked out of the passageway and carefully entered the vacant square space.
A Light Ball flew up into the air. There were pillar-shaped rocks above their heads and temporarily no danger in sight.
In the middle of the hundred sarcophagi, there was a passage that divided the sarcophagi between two sides.
The five of them walked over and had just reached the end of the passage, but they suddenly stopped. Their line of sight had been obstructed by the sarcophagi, but they discovered that at the end of the road, four bodies were lying in the corner of the steps beneath the white coffin.
1“Be careful, corpses mean danger.” Hawk inclined his shield in front of his body and walked forward slowly.
At this moment, Roland had a strange expression on his face. He looked left and right and suddenly said, “All of you wait, I think something is not right—it feels a bit uncomfortable.”
Upon hearing these words, the other four immediately retreated and surrounded Roland in the middle.
Hawk diligently looked right and left, trying to find an enemy.
Jett started to cast status magic on himself, things like brute force enhancement, agility enhancement, nimble body, and so on.
1The atmosphere was tense all of a sudden.
Roland said quietly, “Let’s retreat a little.”
Everyone retreated as he said.
Retreating back to near the passage, the other four people relaxed their nerves a little.
Under their puzzled gazes, Roland said, “I am a mage, and I can sense the mental power fluctuations of others within a certain range. Walking down the aisle just now, I suddenly noticed that the coffins in the surroundings also exerted mental waves—it might have been because the sarcophagi isolated them that I could only recognize them when I got closer.”
Everyone felt shivery as they instinctively looked toward the sarcophagi.
Jett asked, “How many are there?”
“Almost all of them.”
1Now, the other four didn’t want to speak even more—no wonder Roland’s reaction just now was so strange.
Hawk was startled for a while before he gasped out, “I knew this dungeon quest wasn’t that easy.”