Book 1-5.6 The Golden Turtle (2)
Suddenly, he noticed that there was nothing underneath his feet, and the sand that had been tickling his skin had suddenly disappeared. Then he felt a strong impact underneath his feet.
“Ow.”
It was so sudden that Yulian could not prepare for it. He had let out a groan after it felt like his foot might have been broken.
“What is this?”
Even in the midst of the pain, Yulian realized that he was lying on the ground. As he was trying to get his bearing, he heard Haisha’s voice.
“Yulian-nim?”
As there was no source of light, even desert warriors like Yulian and Haisha, who had extremely good eyesights like a hawk in the sky, could not see each other. Haisha had relied on his hearing and thought it was Yulian.
“Haisha, is that you?”
“Yes, Yulian-nim. But why…”
“What do you mean why? I came to save you.”
Haisha started to tear up at Yulian’s words. Yes, they were alive, but truthfully speaking, this was somewhere that should have killed him. Even so, Yulian was willing to face all the danger to follow after him. How touching was that?
Furthermore, he followed after him before Haisha could even determine what was down here. That meant that he jumped in without any hesitation to save him. That was what made it even more touching.
“Yulian-nim, why did you do that? You are our Young Glow, Pareia’s hope and Pareia’s great warrior. To face danger to save a pawn like me…”
Haisha spoke like that hiding his true feelings and Yulian responded.
“My hope is the Red Storm. WIthout a warrior to cover my back, even the strongest and most talented warrior cannot use their full strength.”
“Even so, this was too dangerous of a decision.”
Yulian brushed the sand off his face before continuing on.
“Let’s talk about that later, shall we? First, we need to determine if we are alive, and if so, figure out where exactly we are. That’s probably the most important thing right now.”
“Of course we are alive. Otherwise, would we be able to converse like this? But the heavens have truly helped us. To think that there would be an empty space like this underneath the quicksand. Isn’t the quicksand above our head? Then why is the sand not falling in this direction?”
As Haisha looked up and stared at the completely dark ceiling where he could not see anything, on reflex, Yulian also looked up to see.
“I can’t tell since I can’t see anything. Haisha, do you have any flintstones on you?”
“I have flintstones but nothing to burn? Ah!”
As Haisha suddenly screamed, Yulian worried that something might have happened and quickly asked.
“Haisha, what’s wrong?”
“No,it just felt like something was moving in my chest.”
Haisha quickly put his hand inside his clothes and took out the cause of the wiggling. In that instant, there was light in the darkness.
“What is that?”
Yulian asked as the light from the golden item in Haisha’s hand came into his eyes.
“This, well, it’s my first time seeing it as well. I ended up falling in here trying to catch this little guy.”
“Is it a monster?”
Yulian looked carefully at it and realized that it was alive and not just an item.
Haisha shook his head and answered.
“It doesn’t have any attack, and it looks like it ended up in my chest while struggling in the quicksand. I have a hard time believing that something so gentle could be a monster…”
“An animal that lets out a golden light… that’s very marvelous. It’s also the thing we need the most right now. It looks like a turtle.”
“A turtle?”
“I remember seeing in a book. It’s an animal that lives somewhere called the ocean, where there is only water.”
“Since it is glowing in a golden light, I guess we can call it a Golden Turtle.”
The two people who now had a source of light moved the golden turtle left and right to look around them.
First, they looked at the ceiling which they were so curious about. Afterwards, they determined that there was some sort of transparent barrier that was blocking the sand from falling down.
Their surrounding was three meters tall and four meters wide. It was like a long tunnel that was open on both sides.
“I’m worried about how we will get out of here. I’m sure they’re extremely worried about us up there. We need to at least let them know that we are alive.”
“Generally, if there is a way for all things to enter, there’s bound to be a way out. I’m sure we’ll find it if we look around.”
“Haisha, you’re calmer than I expected you to be.”
“There is nothing that’ll get better by being anxious.”
‘This personality must be why so many look up to Haisha.’ Yulian thought to himself as he started to feel the walls around him.
“You are right. Hmm, it doesn’t look like the walls are made by sand coming together. I didn’t expect the bottom of the desert to be this type of consistency.”
Haisha also touched the cold surface and even tapped it as if he was amazed. He also tried scratching it with his Sosoonta.
After looking around for a long time and seeing nothing else that stood out, Haisha asked Yulian.
“There are two paths here. Should we each take a different path?”
“We only have one source of light and we don’t know what monsters may live down here, so let’s go together.”
“Alrighty then. Which way shall we go first?”
Yulian looked at both paths before pointing to the one behind him.
“This side first. I hope it is not like a maze in there.”
Yulian thought about the magician’s dungeons he saw in some books. It talked about how magicians research monsters, and they make a dungeon that monsters would like to use so that they can grow some monsters to use as test subjects and study them.
In addition, the wider and taller the dungeons were, more monsters and higher level monsters could live in there, so it also talked about how you could tell a magician’s abilities based on that as well.
‘To make a dungeon here in the desert, especially in the Monster’s Field, the magician must be really strong. Even magicians are humans, so I hope that they are alive.’
In the case that this was really a dungeon made by an advanced level magician, and the magician had already passed away, then this would really be a dangerous place. So Yulian hoped that this would be a naturally made cave, and if that was not the case and this truly was a dungeon, then he hoped that the magician was still alive and controlling the monsters.
As nothing happened while the two of them walked for a long while, Yulian and Haisha relaxed a bit and started to chat as they walked.
“There’s a light!”
Haisha pointed towards it while shouting. Far ahead in front of them, they could see a speck of light.
“If there is a light then it means there must be a person. Let’s go take a look.”
Yulian could tell that the light was not from a natural source of light like the sun and urged Haisha to quickly run towards it.
Right at that moment...
“Stop.”
The pronunciation was a bit odd, but it was definitely the language of the Eastern Continent.
“Who might you be? My name is Yulian, a warrior of Pareia.”
Yulian shouted towards the direction of the sound, but the response was the same.
“Stop. Go back.”
“We’ve lost our way. We want to go out, but…”
Yulian shouted like that but the owner of the voice did not seem like they would come out of the darkness and reveal themselves and only continued to repeat the same sentence.
“Return. Go back. If you want to come, come back later.”
“We do not have anywhere to go. If you can show us how we can get out, we will do as you wish.”
As Yulian opened his mouth to speak again, he saw something shining in the darkness.
“Ah!”