Chapter 328: Crawling in the shadows
Through the pitch-black door, Lin Ye entered a space completely devoid of light.
The surroundings were utterly dark. Lin Ye switched his headlamp on and off, but couldn't see even a glimmer of light.
Besides the sound of his headlamp switching, Lin Ye could only hear his own breathing.
Those few people probably weren't nearby.
Lin Ye crouched on the ground, touching the surface with his fingers. The texture felt somewhat similar to the mining area's ground.
'So this is a lightless mining area? What was that door? Why did they bring us here?'
Lin Ye felt around the nearby objects and soon touched the mine walls on both sides, confirming his guess.
'If I encounter Fleshy Monsters in this environment, it would be troublesome.'
Lin Ye crawled forward on all fours like an animal. Not knowing what was around, this was the only way to minimize injury risk.
Suddenly, rustling sounds came from the darkness—something was crawling on the mine wall ahead to the right. Lin Ye reached out to grab it based on prediction. Without vision, he wasn't sure if he could catch it.
Slap!
Lin Ye pressed a hard object against the mine wall. The hard object struggled continuously, though with moderate force.
'Hard... has several legs... is this Red Ore?'
Lin Ye felt the thing in his hand was somewhat similar to the legged red ore from outside.
However, this hard object only kept struggling, unlike the dangerous red ore.
Lin Ye brought the hard object to his mouth and took a bite. The hard object broke easily, filling his mouth with a strong metallic blood taste.
'Damn, this is Red Ore.'
Lin Ye felt his body becoming somewhat unstable, as if new parts might grow from somewhere at any moment.
'Indeed, I shouldn't casually pick things off the ground to eat.'
Lin Ye continued crawling forward. After confirming this was a mine shaft, he increased his crawling speed. This wouldn't injure him, though he occasionally scraped against protruding mine walls.
After crawling for some time, Lin Ye suddenly heard numerous rustling crawling sounds ahead. He quickly moved away from the mine wall as many red ore-like things crawled past. Perhaps because he had consumed large amounts of White Ore, these things didn't attack him.
'What a pity. If they weren't passing by in groups, I could catch a few to taste.'
Lin Ye continued crawling forward and soon heard movement again. However, this time it wasn't ore-sized things, but a humanoid creature walking in the mine shaft.
'Could it be those three people? Doesn't feel like it, but also not like that ghost thing. Pity I can only hear footsteps and breathing sounds...'
Lin Ye didn't speak to inquire. In this situation, whoever revealed their position first would be at an absolute disadvantage.
Lin Ye could directly attack the other party now, but considering it might be a teammate, he didn't take action.
After the humanoid creature left, Lin Ye continued crawling forward. He crawled so fast that he nearly crashed into the mine wall at a corner. Fortunately, his right hand touched the wall first, preventing injury.
After crawling in the mine shaft for a while, Lin Ye encountered several humanoid creatures. Some clearly weren't his teammates or that girl.
'Are there others here? What are they looking for?'
Lin Ye felt curious, but now wasn't the time for curiosity. If that girl had also entered this space, then he only needed to find a way out to easily complete the simulation task.
The pitch-black mine shaft had complex structure, but Lin Ye kept mentally mapping it. As long as he crawled fast enough, he would definitely find a way out.
Lin Ye increased his crawling speed, but when encountering passersby, he had to stop and wait for them to pass, seriously affecting his exploration speed.
Encountering passersby in the mine shaft wasn't the most troublesome part—the most troublesome was encountering confrontational passersby.
"Which mining area are you from?"
"None of your damn business?"
"I don't want to fight you. Someone opened the deep mining area. We must find and kill him before he gets the core ore."
"Then go ahead, don't block the way here."
"We're both mining area supervisors. We must maintain mining area rules."
"Idiot."
"You're that person, aren't you?"
"Yes, yes, yes."
"...It's because of supervisors like you that the mining area has become like this."
"You're insane."
...
Halfway through listening, Lin Ye grew tired of it. Using their talking sounds as cover, he turned to leave.
He felt these two would keep arguing for a long time.
"Wait, someone's nearby!"
Lin Ye stopped in place, not moving his body further.
"Bullshit."
"Over there, coming this way... what thing, ah!"
Lin Ye heard a short scream and the sound of a body being torn apart, then one humanoid creature ran past him while another chased behind.
The latter footsteps sounded familiar to Lin Ye—the other's build and stride length were similar to the girl's.
After the two ran far away, Lin Ye carefully crawled near the corpse. The body had been torn in half. He found a piece of ore in the corpse's clothing.
Lin Ye didn't know what color this ore was either. Without much hesitation, he put the ore in his mouth.
This ore didn't taste good, but after eating it, Lin Ye felt his condition had improved significantly.
Lin Ye continued crawling forward. Along the way, he encountered many torn-apart corpses, each hiding one or two pieces of ore.
Lin Ye ate all the ore he found. These ores had almost completely different effects, with varying textures and flavors.
'Feels like it's still not enough. I need to eat more ore before encountering that ghost thing.'
Lin Ye continued crawling forward, eating ore from any corpses he found. Meanwhile, he encountered the girl twice more—she kept chasing people, quite busy.
Although this mining area had complex structure, the overall terrain wasn't too large. If someone kept running, they would encounter others soon.
Before long, the girl had killed all humanoid creatures daring to move around freely. Now the remaining people hid in dark places, afraid to move randomly.
Lin Ye traversed the entire dark mining area but found no exit. However, he found several people who were likely teammates—they had all found hiding spots.
'This shouldn't be right. Why would there be no exit? Then what's the purpose of this space's existence?'
Lin Ye constructed a three-dimensional map of the entire dark mining area in his mind. He suddenly remembered the password for entering the pitch-black door.
'The starting point is here... up, left, down, middle, up, down, right...'
'Damn! So this damn password needs to be used twice! Who designs maps that reuse the same password! This isn't some cloud storage resource!'
'Lucky I have good memory, otherwise I'd never find this position!'