Chapter 86: Dungeon of the Cursed Fallen (1)
The archbishops leaned over the body lying on the ground next to a cat. They immediately exerted an astonishing amount of force to prevent any trouble...
Zaid’s body suddenly vanished. The archbishops grasped at the air and the debris beneath him.
"Huh?" They blinked in confusion, until they felt something flying over them and jerked their heads up sharply, intending to defend themselves against some idiot who might be trying to attack them...
However, what appeared above them was not an attacker—their defenses had failed. It was the body they had been trying to grab just a second earlier. He was floating.
Valia had only a few wounds on her body, so as soon as she returned to the real world, she grabbed Zaid with her tail and carried him. Her wings flapped, creating gusts of wind.
She flew over the archbishops, who were taken completely by surprise. But she didn’t give them time to react.
She recalled the serpent’s words and also remembered the "image" she had seen just a moment ago; she was in no state of mind to think about the secrets that serpent had tried to convey to her. She only remembered the hole it had mentioned—the one she herself had seen...
The hole in the wall, which had been made by Khan’s body, led outside. She immediately flew toward it.
"Watch out!" shouted one of the archbishops when he realized he was about to escape. He summoned his weapon, but before his body could even move, another attack struck the wall beside him.
That attack was so powerful that it pierced through the wall; although this was a basement, it wasn’t actually built beneath the mountain.
"Cardinal..."
Cardinal Marcellus, however, frowned for the first time in a long while and looked toward a corner of the room where a young man was thrusting his spear with all his might toward the center of the room. The spear had deflected his attack by a few millimeters.
"Martin Lawrence... Do you think that will save you?" he asked.
"Pfft," Martin spat. "Whether it saves me or not, I don’t care. What I want is for your church to be destroyed. Do you think you can mess with a Lawrence and get away with it? We’ll see."
Marcellus relaxed his frown. "Even if he escaped from this room just now, he won’t escape our clutches no matter how hard he tries. He will die, just like you, and they will become our new source of power."
He looked at the archbishops and nodded to them. "Go after him—he tumbled down the slope. I’ll speak with the Prophet to let him know that the special guest has escaped, and I’ll give him your names. The ritual will begin without him."
The archbishops nodded immediately. "We’ll take care of it." They went out through the opening.
Those who remained in the room were pinned to the floor; some people had to apologize for the mistake they’d made...
Cardinal Marcellus didn’t take it personally; he simply returned to his natural state, where nothing matters to him—yet everything does.
"Time to go up." Even though he said "up"... after leaving the "basement," they began to go down.
--
Valia and Zaid tumbled down the slope of the hill where the temple stood. They were struck by tree branches and crashed into numerous rocks, causing Zaid to lose and regain consciousness repeatedly due to the pain.
Several wooden stakes pierced Zaid’s body, which kept him awake despite the repeated blows to his head.
They had barely rolled about forty meters down the slope when blood began to cover Zaid and Valia’s bodies. However, just then, they crashed into a rock that brought them both to a halt.
And some system notifications flashed before Zaid’s eyes.
[Entering the Dungeon of the Cursed Fallen.]
[Rank A Dungeon: Imminent danger; certain death.]
[Escape as soon as possible!]
Zaid stared at those system notifications with a huge question mark in his aching, dizzy head.
It took him a while to process the words "Dungeon," "Rank A," and "Certain Death," but when he did, he shuddered and looked around him.
’A-A Rank dungeon? H-here?’ He swallowed hard...
And he needed no confirmation other than what his own eyes were telling him... Before him were hordes of beasts of every kind, kneeling and gazing toward the temple, as if worshiping something or someone.
Darkness enveloped them, but so did that energy—which resembled that of a human, yet also that of a beast.
’What is this? Humans transformed into beasts, who have built an A-Rank dungeon?’
He couldn’t help but recall the guards he had seen and the bishop he had fought... they were beasts, but they had once been human.
"All of these... Were they human before? The Cursed Fallen and their dungeon... The believers of the Seventh Night... Perhaps the failures of a cursed ritual," he muttered.
Fear gripped his body; he had to run.
"Run? Wait... Bishop... That’s right, I was attacked by a very powerful being. Who was it? I didn’t see him... An archbishop? No, it wasn’t one... The Cardinal? I don’t think he’d arrived yet... That figure I saw looked familiar..."
Zaid couldn’t come to a conclusion. He remembered the blow he’d taken that had nearly killed him and looked at his chest and shoulder. The mark was still there, but the wound had closed as if by magic. He was soaked in blood, but he was no longer injured.
What healed him?
"Was it Valia?" He glanced to his side; Valia was coming to, but he quickly grabbed her and motioned for her to be quiet.
"We’re... in a Rank A dungeon," he whispered.
She trembled and looked up... Her body shook when she saw hundreds... thousands of beasts lying face-down on the ground, worshiping some deity. They were uttering sounds of worship and singing disgusting, grotesque chants.
They didn’t speak a human language, but many of them bore a striking resemblance to humans; some even still had the human body or head that had once belonged to them.
The scene was anything but pleasant to behold...
"We’re as good as dead..." Valia murmured quietly.
They hadn’t been spotted yet, but there were so many beasts—Rank C, B, and even A—that it was impossible to imagine they could get out of here alive.
Zaid thought the same thing...