Aegon, leaning on his longsword-turned-cane, began what was perhaps the slowest and most painful trek of his life, navigating a gloom where he could barely see his own hand.
The space at the bottom of the cage was far vaster and more intricate than it had appeared when viewed from above.
Massive stone walls stretched into the darkness as if they had no end.
The ground was uneven, with shattered rocks, rotten wood, and other hard objects he dared not—and did not wish to—dwell upon, hidden beneath thick layers of accumulated sludge.
Every step required testing the ground first. His injured left leg provided almost no support on the slippery mud; he relied entirely on the strength of his right leg and arms, along with the longsword plunged deep into the mire, serving as his third point of support.
The icy dampness was pervasive. His already soaked clothes clung tightly to his skin, relentlessly stealing what little body heat he had left.
Aegon shivered uncontrollably, and every breath he exhaled produced a faint white mist that immediately dissolved into the colder air.
Light sources were extremely limited.
Only the occasional patch of sickly green, faintly glowing moss adhered to the walls.
The light was hazy and dim, barely outlining the vague shapes of nearby objects, which only added a sense of sinister strangeness to the darkness further away.
He tried fumbling for the tinder he carried—fortunately, although his pouch was soaked, the tinder and flint inside seemed barely usable.
But when he looked around, his heart sank. As far as his gaze reached, there was only wet sludge, slick stones, and scattered wood chips soaked in shallow water—debris that had been rotting for who knows how many years. He couldn't find any kindling, not even slightly dry firewood, that could be lit.
In this underground abyss, even the most basic flame was a luxury.
Aegon could only rely on that meager fluorescence to grope his way forward in the gloom.
A golden light spot on the System Map flickered steadily somewhere ahead, providing him with the only clear direction.
But he dared not walk in a straight line; he had to move along the base of the walls, keeping to relatively solid ground and staying away from the dark, gaping holes.
Those holes resembled festering wounds on a giant beast, silently gaping open. The wind blowing out of them carried a deeper chill and an indescribable, musky odor, like that of some creature's lair.
He didn't know if it was an illusion caused by his severe injuries and hypothermia, or perhaps some ominous "gift" resulting from his excessively high mental attribute.
Aegon constantly felt that just outside the corner of his eye, in the absolute darkness untouched by the Fluorescent Moss, especially in the shadows at the edges of those holes, something "thicker" than the darkness itself occasionally flashed by extremely quickly.
There was no sound, no definite shape, just a pure, malevolent "sense of presence," like an icy gaze licking his spine.
Whenever he abruptly stopped, quickly spun around despite the searing pain, holding his longsword horizontally before him, and fixed his violet eyes on the direction where he felt the anomaly... there was nothing, only ancient darkness and dead silence.
Silence, sometimes, was more terrifying than any noise.
Apart from his own suppressed gasps, heartbeat, the tapping of his cane, and the rustling of his clothes as he moved, there was no other sign of life in the entire vast underground space.
There was no heavy breathing from Henry, no hushed warnings from Karl, no moans or shouts from other survivors, and even the eerie howling of the wind from the abyss, which had been faintly audible before, could no longer be heard here.
There was only a heavy stillness, one that consumed everything.
"Damn it..." Aegon cursed under his breath, not knowing how many times he had done so.
He was cursing the strange environment, cursing his terrible condition, and cursing the feeling of being watched—a sensation that followed him like a shadow yet had no tangible source.
He felt as if he had fallen into the digestive cavity of some ancient behemoth, being silently and slowly consumed.
He didn't know how long he had been moving at this snail's pace. Time had lost its meaning here; only the accumulating fatigue and pain in his body, along with the increasingly pervasive cold, reminded him of the passage of life.
He mechanically advanced toward the golden light spot, simultaneously trying to widen his search radius, his eyes scanning every shadow that looked like a mound, hoping to find Henry's large, heavy body leaning there, or Karl's lean figure squatting down.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Only stones, mud, standing water, and scattered fragments of white bone, so ancient they had long since merged with the mire and were hard to distinguish.
An ominous premonition grew stronger in his heart as his search yielded nothing and his physical strength waned.
Henry, that simple-minded fat man; Karl, that slick but dependable veteran... perhaps they had fallen into an area farther away that he hadn't searched yet?
Maybe they were injured and unconscious?
He forced himself to think positively, but the system's warning about "Them" being "close at hand," combined with the sinister strangeness emanating from the surrounding silence, made true optimism impossible.
Just as his focus began to drift due to exhaustion and worry, and he withdrew his gaze from a fruitless patch of shadow, preparing to move forward, a strange sensation suddenly registered beneath his foot.
It wasn't hard gravel, nor soft, rotten mud, but rather... a sticky slickness.
Simultaneously, an extremely familiar, potent odor—one he desperately wished not to smell here—suddenly assaulted his nostrils, which were already somewhat numb from the cold.
The smell of rust.
The thick, unmistakable metallic tang characteristic of fresh blood!
Aegon froze instantly, all his scattered thoughts immediately obliterated.
He violently lowered his head, subconsciously gripping his sword hilt, his muscles tensing—he ignored the pain it caused his wounds.
Using the sickly green, dim light cast by a small, denser patch of Fluorescent Moss on the nearby rock wall, he managed to see the situation beneath his feet.
It was a pool of dark liquid, not yet fully absorbed by the mud, covering a considerable area and reflecting a viscous, ominous dark red sheen under the faint light.
It was blood, without a doubt. And scattered around the edge of this pool of blood were... things.
Several severed fingers, their skin pallid, black mud packed under the nails.
A fragment of flesh and skin, shaped like it might have been part of a foot.
And... half a human face.
The face lay on its side, half submerged in the blood pool, the other half exposed to the sickly green fluorescence.
The eyes were wide with terror, the pupils dilated, having lost all vitality, yet frozen in the unparalleled fear of the final moment of life.
The cheek muscles were contorted, the mouth stretched open at an impossible angle, seemingly trying to scream, but forever fixed in a silent instant.
Aegon recognized this face.
Although it was distorted by extreme terror at this moment, he remembered it.
It was Old Buck, the slick old Mercenary who had incited trouble on the ship and whom Crows Eye had used to establish authority when they landed at the ruins!
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