Chapter 337 - 336: True Luck
The group struggled for a long time, deforming the Gold in the process. They finally managed to pry off a large strip. Dorn and Kase grabbed the pried-off piece and twisted it back and forth, trying to snap it off completely.
"This whole thing must be worth a fortune! No wonder everyone says you can get rich in the Undercity!" Kase exclaimed excitedly.
The words had barely left his mouth when the grating sound of stone on stone suddenly echoed through the chamber.
Colin whipped his head around. The wall with the relief sculpture was descending rapidly.
Behind the wall was nothing but a single Skeleton floating in mid-air, clad in Studded Leather Armor and a robe. It reached out toward Colin and the others, looking like a drowning victim gasping for air.
’An Undead controlled by a Ghost? But why is it holding such a strange pose?’
The moment he saw it, Colin realized something was very wrong.
"Dammit, run!"
He rushed forward, shoved Kase and Dorn aside, and violently wrenched the loosened chunk of Gold free. Grabbing it, he turned and fled.
The others reacted just as quickly, bolting through the open stone doorway into the corridor beyond.
As he fled, Colin glanced back. The floating Skeleton had already drifted to the spot where they had just been standing.
This corridor was also unnaturally clean.
The moment they entered the corridor, a wall to their right slammed down, followed by a strange GURGLING sound.
Colin didn’t waste time thinking about it. The group, shouldering their packs, kept sprinting forward, the corridor echoing with the CLANG CLANG of their armor.
’That thing just now must have been a gel block,’ Colin thought.
’It’s a type of Ooze. Their Intelligence is so low it’s negligible; they have no thoughts beyond the instinct to feed. Once swallowed by the transparent cube, the only possible fate is to be digested.’
’Since they can’t change shape and are always a perfectly square, transparent block, their size is usually determined by their surroundings.’
Colin kept running as these thoughts raced through his mind. After sprinting for more than ten meters, another tightly shut fungoid door suddenly blocked the passage ahead.
"Dammit! The group that passed through earlier must have closed it!" Dorn cursed.
Kase silently charged to the front, instantly entering a state of Frenzy.
Leading with his elbow like a living Siege Hammer, he shattered the fungoid door with a loud CRACK. The others rushed into the room after him.
Colin glanced back. The wooden splinters scattered in the hallway were being swept up by something invisible. They floated slowly into the distance, as if an unseen hand had pinched them together and was carrying them away.
Colin gasped for breath. "That was probably a gel block," he said.
"What? Then why didn’t we turn back and kill them?" Ale asked.
"I’m talking about the one back at the altar. That block was probably as big as the room. Didn’t you see that entire wall come down?"
Colin took another ragged breath and continued, "That thing was probably six meters on a side. It would be way tougher to deal with than a normal one. We’d be in real trouble if anything went wrong."
"We already got the most valuable prize. Why would we go back?" Kase said with a grin, eyeing the gold in Colin’s arms.
"You were quick on the uptake. You’d already grabbed the gold before I even realized what was happening," Dorn said.
"Just Survival instinct."
Colin looked down at the chunk of gold cradled in his arms. He didn’t know how much it weighed, but it was certainly valuable. After all, it was a heavy slab of solid Gold.
"Let’s get going. On to the third level," Dorn said, stretching lazily.
The group straightened themselves out a bit and pressed onward.
To their relief, Kase and Dorn noticed footprints along the path as they advanced. The party also came across a number of monster corpses.
This meant another group had recently entered the second level from the same area, and they were likely heading in the same direction.
This discovery made the rest of their journey much easier.
The monsters ahead had already been cleared out, and the tracks guided them forward.
Before they knew it, the floor beneath their feet had changed back to natural, moss-covered stone. The air grew perceptibly more humid, suggesting an underground river or lake was nearby.
After about a full day of travel, following the footprints led them to a large, underground tunnel.
Colin jumped down into the tunnel through a natural opening in the rock.
He looked around. Illuminated by the [Light] spell, the tunnel’s interior was laid bare.
The tunnel was circular in cross-section, with a radius of six meters. Its edges had clearly been chiseled and widened. Moreover, there were clear footprints on the tunnel floor, indicating this was likely a well-traveled route.
"All right, this road will take us to Mist Harbor." Dorn rolled up his map and stuffed it into his pack. "Everyone, get your Cloaks on, and don’t forget your hoods. Staying mysterious is the most basic rule for Survival in Mist Harbor."
As he pulled up his hood, Kase grumbled, "This has been easier than I expected."
"That’s because we haven’t run into anything truly nasty yet," Colin said, already walking ahead.
They hadn’t gone far before they began to see other travelers.
These figures were all clad in Cloaks with their hoods drawn. Aside from their height, it was impossible to make out any other features. They walked in utter silence, like Ghosts haunting the Underground.
The atmosphere was such that Colin and his companions no longer felt like talking.
They could only pray these were all Adventurers from the Surface as they lowered their heads and silently hurried along.
After a while, a small merchant caravan came into view further down the tunnel.
The caravan’s composition was rather unusual. Its two beasts of burden were large, sturdy lizards. Their legs were much longer than a crocodile’s, and they stood about 1.2 meters high at the shoulder. They carried enormous, thick-cloth saddlebags on their backs, which were presumably filled with cargo.
The merchants themselves were six Gray Dwarves—even their Cloaks couldn’t conceal their short stature and extravagant white beards.
They bore a strong resemblance to Dorn, though their faces were far more grim.
Right then, two fully-armed Hobgoblins were standing in front of the caravan, seemingly inspecting their goods.
As our group passed, one of the Gray Dwarves in the caravan shouted something to Dorn in the Dwarven tongue. Dorn heard him and immediately shouted a retort back in Dwarven.
The Dwarves in the caravan instantly became agitated.
Wary of the looks on the two Hobgoblins’ faces, the Gray Dwarves didn’t attack. They just stood their ground, pointing at Dorn and shouting what were clearly insults.
Colin, wearing his Helmet, instinctively pulled his hood lower and urged the others to keep moving, heads down. He casually asked Dorn, "What did you say to them?"
"Just a little joke," Dorn replied softly.
The group pressed on, the number of travelers on the road steadily increasing.
After paying a toll at a small checkpoint constructed from fungoid planks, they followed the crowd for another ten minutes or so before the wide tunnel finally came to an end.
A massive, natural cavern mouth framed Mist Harbor before them like a picture, allowing all new arrivals a clear view of this city within the Undercity.