Step!
Cink~
Step!
Clink~
Somewhere outside the Finsterer Forest, there were many soldiers walking neatly in a line.
They looked like a swarm of ants.
Every step they took always produced a soft metallic clinking sound.
Their footsteps are noisy because they all wear full-body armor.
Some of them even carried flags like they were on parade.
"What is the name of this village?"
"This is the village of Lovus, Sir Baldwin."
At the very front of the parade, there was one man in the lead. The armor the leader wore was different from that of the other soldiers.
If the other soldiers' armor was gray, the leader's armor was predominantly gold.
In general, the luxury of one's armor could already describe how powerful the owner was.
A weak person with good armor would quickly die from being robbed, after all.
The leader named Baldwin, and with a bald head, was certainly the most powerful person in the parade.
"Why is this place so quiet? Where have all the residents gone?" Baldwin asked his subordinates who were following him from behind.
"I've been doing some investigating. According to some travelers, this place used to be the most densely populated village around here. However, around three months ago, it was attacked by mysterious people."
Baldwin began to enter the abandoned houses.
Some of the houses had collapsed columns, and some had holes in their roofs.
Furniture such as tables, chairs, and even beds was all destroyed. Some were split open, and some seemed to have been hit so hard that they fell apart.
"Ugh! They didn't even leave anything or anyone behind."
Baldwin walked through Lovus' village while covering his nose.
The stench of rotting corpses was in everyone's nostrils.
Inside the houses, beside the houses, and even on the streets, there were all traces of decomposed human corpses.
"This place has become a ghost village."
"Sir Baldwin, I just got the information from the messenger bird."
One of Baldwin's subordinates came and immediately gave a report.
"According to the remnants of the people around this area, all the people in this village have been kidnapped and taken into the Finsterer Forest!"
"What do you mean?"
"According to the testimonies of the rest of the villagers in the surrounding villages, the reason why many of the villagers went away or migrated to other places was because they knew that there was a group of people who liked to kidnap the villagers around Finsterer Forest. And that group brought them into Finsterer Forest."
"You mean there's a group of people who can freely go in and out of there?"
"That's right, sir."
"How? Even after various kingdoms sent many magic cultivators, none of them could get out of Finsterer Forest after entering it..."
"...I don't know, sir."
Gleam!
As Baldwin thought while stroking his head, the sunlight from the sky shone on his bald head until the reflection of the sunlight made his men behind close their eyes.
There was only one of them who dared to ask, saving the other soldiers from complaining.
"Will you continue to pursue the young lady's trail, sir?"
"Of course. We can't go back until we find Young Miss Livia's whereabouts."
Baldwin and his horde of followers quickly made their way out of Lovus' village like a line of ants you trampled.
Then they boarded their vehicles and headed into the Finsterer Forest.
The vehicle they would ride was not a horse, like the medieval Europe theme this world portrayed.
They all boarded a zeppelin.
Hum!
The sound of the propeller on the zeppelin's tail began to be heard.
Thrum!
The zeppelin began to vibrate with a deep thrum as it gained altitude.
Rumble!
And finally, a distant rumble signaled the zeppelin's departure.
***
As we all knew, the crystal cavern had two sides.
One side was for mining, and on the other side was a maze-shaped cavern if you wanted to escape.
The way to escape?
For myself, it was actually quite easy.
Right when the dragon was above the small valley, I ran into another part of the crystal cavern by breaking through the dispute between the kidnappers and the slaves.
Everyone automatically turned their eyes to the sky, after all. I could easily break through their riotous ranks because of that.
As for how the other slaves could survive...
Just as the dragon opened its mouth, the kidnappers who realized the dragon's breath attack immediately ran away and ignored the slaves.
The slaves were the same.
They immediately ran into the side of the cavern to escape.
Ka-Boom!
The sound of an explosion resounded.
Waves of fire crashed down until the dragon's breath finally succeeded in destroying the small valley.
Like the climactic scene in a movie, Livia ran at the end of the line, the last person to arrive. Her hand joined Dmitri's.
'What a cliché scene.'
The two of them finally jumped up and were greeted by Tumelo, who had already entered the cavern.
From behind them, a huge fire crashed down.
If they were even the slightest bit late, they would become roasted meat.
In order not to get lost in the cavern, we ran in the footsteps of the kidnappers who had already escaped.
Boom! Ka-boom! Boom!
The sound of explosions continued to echo from behind us.
The explosions came from the fight between the Wurm and the dragon.
'How can a boss of a villain who appeared at the beginning of the story fight a dragon one-on-one?'
Unfortunately, I didn't have time to dig further into the questions in my head.
The rocks behind us had already started falling.
Soon, this maze cavern will collapse.
I remember it took tens of minutes to reach the small valley from the cavern entrance.
When lives were at stake, it turned out that it only took an instant to get through this maze-like cavern.
Just as we spewed out of the cavern, the entire cavern structure was flattened to the ground.
Drip!
Tears began to flow down Livia's face.
Unlike myself or the other slaves, who could only sit on the ground, widen our eyes and mouths, and stabilize the rhythm of our heartbeats, Livia was already standing, looking at the destroyed cavern.
"Forgive me!!" She lowered her head while apologizing.
Livia wept for the slaves who had been killed. Whether they were killed during the conflict with the kidnappers or when we were all running out of the cavern.
There were bloodstains on almost everyone's body.
Those blood spots came from slaves who were hit by rocks or stalactites in the cavern.
I said all this as if I had escaped from danger from the start. In fact, I was no different from all the other slaves, nearly crushed to death by rocks.
I was not Livia and her obsessive fan who had definitely survived. I was running with the shadow of death ready to come to me at any moment.
"Livia, you can't continue to drown your sorrows. We still need to escape further." Dmitri came up to Livia and patted her shoulder to encourage her.
What happened next was just as you'd imagine. Livia automatically dispelled her sadness and smiled. "That's right. I still have to guide us all out of this forest."
While watching the cliché scene acted out by Livia, I thought to myself, 'Will I finally be able to return to Earth?'