Chapter 165 - 164: The Final Test
A house needs human presence; only with life does the house thrive.
A house left uninhabited will "age" very quickly.
In reality, there’s no such thing as an aura—it’s just that without people living in it, small problems left unchecked can quickly evolve into major issues. It’s similar to how weeds and creeping vines, if not dealt with promptly, can aggressively grow roots that damage the structure of a building. These plants also attract insects, which burrow into walls and weaken the structure, leading to an unending cycle of deterioration.
All in all, an underground city so well-preserved likely has one or more guardians to watch over it. Perhaps only some annoying black puddings or green soft mud appear along the way, naturally occurring nuisances.
A massive lion with wings and the head of a female humanoid—a female-faced Sphinx—is one such guardian of this underground city. She’s responsible for maintaining the entire structure and protecting it from destruction.
The female-faced Sphinx crouched in the deepest part of the underground city. She could observe everything happening in the city... Well, she couldn’t perfectly see who entered or clearly hear their conversations, but she could certainly feel it faintly.
Two individuals—though perhaps not strictly humans—let’s call them two targets for now—had somehow opened the magical door to enter the underground city.
However, there seemed to be some issue with that magic door. At this point, she couldn’t sense it anymore and thought she’d have to find a chance to go out and check it, repair whatever was wrong. Otherwise, if anyone could easily push open the door and wander in, the underground city would lose all its mystery.
The magical door might not stop every intruder, but it could block most adventurers. Those who only rely on brute force often can’t even notice the puzzle, let alone piece it together to open the door.
"They’ve entered the underground city, now in the tunnel..."
Gaining access to the underground city via the magical door was only the start of the challenge. Those black puddings residing in the tunnels likely wouldn’t trouble adventurers who’d already passed the door’s test, though they were never meant to. The true test lay in strategy.