Chapter 246: The Vanishing Entrance
In another part of the ruin, two people were running through wide passages with desperate urgency.
They were covered in bruises and various degrees of gruesome injuries. Their robes were torn to ragged pieces.
Their breathing was labored and shallow.
Every step they took left a deep blood print behind like a watery crimson signature.
"Damn it," the young man cursed under his breath.
Beside him, the young woman was trembling violently, biting her lips until they bled as she pushed herself to continue running.
But deep down, she knew she was already at her absolute limit. Her body could no longer sustain such a high intensity escape.
’I cannot let them catch me,’ she thought frantically.
’I cannot.’
The fear of being caught by their pursuers made her heart tremble like a leaf in a storm. She knew the fate awaiting her if she were to fall into the hands of her enemies.
Her fate would be worse than any death she could imagine.
’I would rather die than fall into their hands,’ she resolved. Her eyes blazed with firm, desperate determination.
She had thought this ruin would enable her to level up and increase her power. But she was completely wrong.
Too wrong.
From the moment they entered the ruin, nothing had gone according to plan. She found out that none of her party members were trustworthy.
Each one was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, hiding their true nature behind false smiles.
She thought her once righteous captain would stand against injustice and protect his team. But she was proven wrong.
He was a selfish bastard who knew how to hide his true colors. When she thought about those two who always behaved like a newly wedded couple, her heart burned with pure hatred.
She gripped her staff tightly and pushed herself to keep running. She would run until her body failed to function completely.
When her legs finally refused to carry her any further, only then would she stop running.
Thinking of the pain and suffering she had endured to reach her current level; she wanted to stop and weep bitterly.
She had an A Rank Talent, a gift that many envied.
With such talent, everyone rushed to have her in their party. As a healer, this was her greatest pride.
Where others could cast minor healing spells, she could do so much more. As long as the target had yet to breathe their last, she might find a way to save them from death’s door.
This was what gave her confidence.
This was her pride.
For a healer to ascend to the second floor, it was ten times harder than for other professions.
Yet she had done it.
She had done it in less than six months, a feat that few could boast.
Before arriving at the second floor, she always thought the second floor would not be any different from the first floor.
She was terribly wrong.
From the moment she arrived, she had barely survived. She had almost been swallowed by the very Bleeding Desert that surrounded her.
"Let us hide here," the urgent voice of the young man beside her jolted her out of her dark thoughts.
Hmm?
She blinked twice and looked at the young man beside her. She looked in the direction he was pointing toward.
It was a long narrow corridor with broken statues lined on the left side. At the end of the corridor was a broken wooden door with half of it dangling back and forth under the complete absence of wind.
It was strange.
Eerily strange.
But the two did not care about anything else in that moment. Their only thought was to escape from their relentless pursuers.
Quickly, they rushed through the narrow corridor and bypassed the broken wooden door. They entered the chamber beyond without a second glance.
Inside the chamber, they saw many statues all kneeling on the ground with expressions of fervent prayer frozen on their stone faces.
"We need to hide," the young man said in an urgent, trembling voice.
"There," the young man pointed at a particular location in the corner.
At the corner of the room was a small entrance. It was strangely dark, impossibly so. They found it difficult to see what lay on the other side.
"Let us go," he pulled her hand, and they rushed toward the small entrance without thinking.
Whoosh!
The moment they entered, their figures vanished as if they had never existed in the first place.
Outside, at the main hall passage, a group of savage Jackal Beastmen rushed forward with deadly purpose.
Their bloody eyes were filled with anticipation and the excitement of hunters taunting their wounded prey.
"Where are they?" one of them asked in their guttural language.
The Jackal Beastmen looked at their surroundings and sniffed the cold air. Instantly, the group turned and looked in a particular direction.
They howled with savage glee, their eyes burning with hunger as they rushed forward into the narrow corridor.
They arrived inside the broken door chamber and looked around with suspicion. They tried to use their keen sense of smell to find their prey, but they were surprised by what they found.
The fresh human blood scent was completely gone.
Vanished into thin air.
Instantly, their faces were riddled with confusion and frustration. Though they could not detect the scent of their prey, they refused to give up the hunt.
Swiftly, they began to search the chamber with careful precision. Just then, one of them arrived in front of the small entrance with impenetrable darkness on the other side.
Sniff. Sniff.
He sniffed the cold air for a long second and thought for a moment before he walked into the darkness.
Whoosh!
His figure vanished, leaving no traces behind.
Seeing this strange occurrence, the other Jackal Beastmen looked at each other with uncertainty. Then they rushed to follow their companion.
In a single blink, all the Jackal Beastmen had vanished into the small dark entrance.
The chamber returned to its eerily tranquility, and the broken wooden door dangled back and forth at the entrance without the presence of any wind.
Suddenly, from the wooden entrance, many mysterious shadows crawled along the walls like liquid nightmares.
Their movements made no sound whatsoever.
Not even the air itself seemed to sense their unnatural presence.
It was as if they had never existed in the first place.
Slowly, the mysterious shadows descended from the walls to the chamber floor and crawled toward the kneeling praying statues.
Gradually, each shadow entered a statue, seeping into the cold stone like poison into a wound. The moment the mysterious shadow entered the praying statue, something terrible happened.
The statue came alive.
Stone eyes opened and blinked. Stone lips moved, whispering prayers in a strange, ancient language that made the air grow cold.
One after another, the statues rose to their feet and walked toward the small entrance at the corner of the room.
They vanished inside one by one, following the Jackal Beastmen and their prey into the darkness beyond.
The chamber fell silent once more. The broken wooden door stopped swinging.
Everything was still.
****
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