Chapter 276
Ronan took a step down the stairs and called out, “I’m coming in, okay?”
There was no response, and the unsettling feeling in his gut only grew stronger. After not hearing a single reply from Elsia, Ronan descended the stairs, each step echoing in the silence. As soon as his foot touched the first stair, the entrance behind him began to close automatically. Sita, who had followed him down to the entrance, recoiled in surprise as the door shut with a hissing sound.
“Byait?!”
“Keep an eye on things up there. If it gets too cold, you can head south and wait for me,” Ronan said, glancing back and waving his hand at Sita. The entrance was too narrow for the large creature to follow him down into the depths.
“Byaba!” Sita chirped, flashing a reassuring smile as if to say there was nothing to worry about. It seemed she had already adjusted to the cold, which had bothered her so much when they first arrived. Relieved, Ronan turned back to the task at hand and continued down the stairs.
The staircase seemed endlessly deep, just as he remembered from his previous visit. It was as if it led straight to the heart of the earth, or even deeper. The corridor that opened up at the bottom of the stairs was lined with strange, glowing lights that cast an eerie, artificial glow.
“Even now, it’s still amazing,” Ronan muttered to himself. The light sources, which looked like fragments of the sun itself, were made from a material called light-emitting diodes, or something like that, according to Elsia. She had mentioned that this place was a relic from a time when humanity had reached the peak of its civilization, and Ronan thought it certainly lived up to that description.
But there was no time to admire the surroundings, so he hurried forward, guided by the memory of the layout he had vaguely grasped on his last visit. Eventually, he reached the heavy iron door leading to the Preserver’s chamber. His lips twisted in frustration as he realized a significant problem.
“…Shit. I don’t know the code.”