Sea Survival: My Luck is Off the Charts

When it was Faye Yardley’s turn to rest, she merely leaned against the inner wall. The wall behind her cracked open, and a beam of white light enveloped all five members of their squad. The next second, the five of them vanished from the sight of the relentless zombies, and their scents dissipated as well.

"Where is this place?"

No one could answer Caleb Colby’s question.

This space was likely underground, perhaps right beneath the spot they had just left.

There was a light source below, and the room looked very clean, without even a speck of dust.

Faye Yardley released a mechanical spider to scout the surroundings.

Zachary Pierce did the same.

"Can these be mass-produced?"

Zachary Pierce shook his head. "We don’t have the blueprints or the specific technology. It would likely take a very long time to develop them ourselves. A major reason we came this time was to trade for some basic equipment to bring back."

Faye Yardley hummed in acknowledgment. After leaving the room, the two spiders went in different directions, and the expressions on both their faces changed.

Her vision followed the spider into a huge room, but...

’Is this a human shelter? Why are there so many skeletons piled up?’

"Let’s go check it out. There’s a huge pile of skeletons over there. I have a feeling there’s something under that pile that made them all gather there willingly. Right, put on a mask." As Faye Yardley spoke, she handed Cole Kensington a mask and put one on herself.

She turned to Zachary Pierce and asked, "Mr. Pierce, did you find anything unusual on your end?"

"It’s just a long corridor over here. I don’t know where it leads; it seems endless. I’m not sure if there’s anything on either side of the corridor, either. All I can see right now are smooth, bare walls." After putting on his mask, Zachary Pierce said, "Let’s go. We’ll check out the place you mentioned first."

In a hall of about 300 square meters, skeletons were piled high, one on top of the other, reaching a height of nearly three meters.

Cole Kensington stepped inside first and said, "I’ll go see what’s under these skeletons."

"I should go instead." Finn Ford took a step forward to block Cole Kensington, but the moment the words left his mouth, Cole vanished.

Caleb Colby clapped Finn Ford on the shoulder and said to Faye Yardley, "Yardley, the people you find are certainly full of personality. What should we do about these skeletons? They look like they’ll crumble to dust at the slightest touch."

They were surprised that Cole Kensington had completely disappeared after going in, but no one asked any questions. After all, everyone had their own secrets and special abilities.

Faye Yardley said nothing, her eyes fixed on the pile of bones. Cole Kensington had vanished without a trace after entering. ’It seems he used his special ability after all,’ she thought.

Finn Ford began to walk along the walls, recording everything. Whether it would be useful or not, it was best to have some video footage.

Meanwhile, Zachary Pierce’s attention was focused on the mechanical spider he had sent out. The light in the corridor was beginning to dim.

Cole Kensington appeared behind Caleb Colby with baffling suddenness. "Faye, it looks like there’s a large Teleportation Array down below, but it’s out of energy. I guess these people were trapped here and died because the energy ran out and they couldn’t leave."

"Whoa, jeez! Kingston, when did you get behind me?" Caleb Colby asked, jumping to the side in confusion.

Faye Yardley said, "So Teleportation Arrays really do exist. How amazing. Let’s move all these bones and see what the array looks like. We should record the pattern, just in case we can use it later."

"How are we supposed to move all these bones...?"

Caleb Colby didn’t get to finish his sentence before he felt Faye Yardley’s gaze on him. He instantly changed his tune. "I’ll clear them."

"Use your backpacks to carry them out first. Don’t mess up the Teleportation Array’s pattern."

Cole Kensington thought that would be too much trouble and would waste too much time. "You don’t have to be that careful," he said. "The Teleportation Array is carved into the floor. We can just crush these bones to dust and sweep them away."

Since that was the case, Zachary Pierce brought his giant sword down with a flat strike, instantly clearing away more than half of the pile.

After it was cleared, the enormous Array was indeed conspicuous.

It somewhat resembled a pentagram, but it also contained traces of the eight trigrams: Qian, Dui, Li, Zhen, Xun, Kan, Gen, and Kun.

"What goes in the middle?"

"The Energy Stone to activate the Teleportation Array."

’Energy Stones again?!’

’This stuff is really that useful.’

Zachary Pierce crouched down and felt the carvings, then asked, "Mr. Kingston, if I may ask, are there any special material requirements for carving this Array?"

"How should I know? I’m not the one who builds these things."

Faye Yardley used her system’s camera function to photograph the complete Teleportation Array pattern before walking to the center. ’To be honest, I have an Energy Stone in my backpack right now,’ she thought, ’but where does this lead?’

’The white light that enveloped us and dropped us here must have been a similar Teleportation Array. So where is that array? Could we pry the Energy Stone out of that one and use it here?’

She shared this theory with the others, and they all agreed.

As they walked back, they discovered that the door they had come through had closed at some unknown point, and there was no button on this side to open it.

"We’re trapped? Does that mean we’re just going to have to wait here until we rot?"

Cole Kensington pulled Faye Yardley to the door. Using the play of light and shadow, he was outside in an instant. Opening it from the outside was quite easy; he just had to press a switch, and the door opened.

Caleb Colby gave Cole Kensington a thumbs-up. Zachary Pierce said simply, "Thank you."

Then he added, "We need to hurry. Something’s not right with that corridor. What the little spider is seeing has changed from a white passage to a black and red one, and there’s some kind of sound coming from deep within."

Back in the first room, they found nothing. Faye Yardley even emptied it of all its furniture.

’It can’t be a one-time, one-way teleport, can it?’

"What’s that?"

Finn Ford’s voice drew everyone’s attention. On the clean white wall, a red skull insignia was slowly appearing.

Meanwhile, the sound from the end of the corridor was indeed growing louder. What was once silent was now not only noisy but also seemed to interfere with one’s Spirit.

Faye Yardley quickly loaded a Crossbow Arrow into her Arm Crossbow, then drew Light Wound and slashed directly at the emerging pattern on the wall.

But the red skull was like an illusory shadow. The wall was cracked from the blow, but the insignia was completely unharmed.

’I can still feel Bella,’ Faye thought, carefully sensing her connection. ’Our link hasn’t been severed, so we must still be close to where we were fighting the zombies.’

"If all else fails, we’ll go back to the hall. I brought an Energy Stone. We can try to activate it."