Secret of the Passage
The further we traveled, the darker the surroundings seemed to get. The air, which was already stale to begin with, seemed to suffocate you with every breath you take, its dry tendrils snaking its way around around us, causing our throats to quiver while our lips cracked. Each step was as loud as thunder, enhanced only by the contrasting silence around us. The echoing of our breathing too, sounded a lot like demons howling in the night, ready to jump out and attack at a moment’s notice.
Of course, in all likelihood, these varying sensations were merely figments of our overactive imagination. Fantasies molded through the tension and ensuing caution we currently draped ourselves with. No realer than the cartoons on a television screen.
Well, the other possibility that these sensations were in fact real and concrete was quite possible too, but I pushed such a depressing thought out of my mind even before we entered the passageway.
Like I’ve confirmed before hand, there were no living things within the passage. The deeper we went, the more I ascertained this conclusion. [Sensory Remapping], my all purpose detection skill, did not catch anything, save for our own breathing and thumping heartbeats. Unfortunately, this sort of conclusion only served to further enhance my paranoia, rather than relax it.
To me, there was no such thing as a place with no monsters within this school. If there weren’t any monsters, then either one, they all died already, or two, you simply weren’t looking hard enough.
I kept this thought mainly to myself, as we progressed further. For 5, maybe 10 minutes, we’ve walked non stop, never stopping our light tread deeper into the ‘tunnel’. Along the way, I noticed a few things.
One, the path was uniform. A 6 feet wide, 8 feet tall passageway that never sloped downwards, nor ascended upwards. Always straight, and in one direction with no signs of ever shifting. If you were to ask what direction, then I’d answer back with west. From the looks of it, this passageway was traversing all across the school, possibly with the old school building, or maybe beyond that as its final destination.
The other thing I noticed, were the support beams. They started appearing after we reached the 500 feet mark of our travel. Long, wooden beams that were embedded and spanned the entire length of the dirt covered walls and its ceilings, all each spaced out about 10 feet away from each other. Looking at it from a passerby’s point of view, these beams could easily be mistaken for the support beams found in an abandoned mine cave.
For all I know, these beams were from an abandoned mine cave. This whole passage way could very well be the entrance to an abandoned mine cave. Of course, I had no way of either confirming or denying this possibility.
Aside from these support beams, no sign of life, monster or otherwise, was present. At least it stayed that way for a majority of our trip.
As we continued walking, I heard a faint intake of breath from behind me. I turned back around, only to see Hina’s expression shift. Her eyes slightly widened, as her face twisted into that of realization. From behind her, Cielle and Cher had also noticed, as they too stared directly at her, Cielle going so far as to shine the beam of light from the flashlight onto Hina’s face.
Noticing all the attention directed at her, she scrunched up her face in a show of awkwardness, before she arbitrarily coughed.
“What’s wrong?” I was quick to question, as I halted my footsteps in mid stride.
“Ah, no, nothing’s wrong it’s just that… I finally realized what this place was.” She replied back, a hint of pride etched in her voice.
Upon hearing her, I reflexively raised a brow as I spoke. “Really? Then what is this place?”
Coughing once more, she immediately replied. “Well, if my guesses hold true, then this passageway should lead directly towards the old bomb shelter located in the old school building.”
“The bomb shelter?” This time, it was Cher who mimicked, seemingly having caught interest in our conversation.
“Umu.” Hina nodded. “Look at these support beams.” She pointed to a nearby wooden pole that directly stood besides the dirt wall. Almost immediately after, a ray of light shined over onto the indicated pole, completely exposing that one spot on the wall in all its splendor.
“If you look closely, the beams over here are still fairly new. No sign of decay or rot, which indicates that this tunnel was newly created. And this coincides with the fact that the new bomb shelter was just recently built as well.
Too add to that, the direction this passageway is heading towards, plus the level of elevation the passageway is at, honestly this is the only conclusion I can think off.”
As I heard her words, I subconsciously nodded. In fact, I never once played with the possibility that this passageway connected with another bomb shelter. Truth be told, aside from the floor I contained myself in, I’ve only ever briefly explored the lower sections of the old school building. In actuality, I had forgotten about the existence of the old school building’s bomb shelter.
“Why would they build a passageway that connects with the old bomb shelter?” I asked.
Hina casually shrugged in the process. “Plenty of reasons… Most likely to accommodate the amount of students in case of an emergency. One shelter simply isn’t enough to keep hold of thousands of kids plus staff. They were probably planning on remodeling the old bomb shelter, and it would be rather inconvenient if the bomb shelters were separated with no access between either one of them.
Although, going by how shoddy the work on this tunnel is, I don’t think they ever really finished. They must have ran out of funding along the process… which isn’t really all that surprising, considering how many new renovations the school had recently, like the new swimming pools, and the observatory...”
Hina was quite informative regarding this matter. Although I could guess that most of her information came from her childhood friend. After all, a person on the student council would obviously have access to the budgets and purchases made by the school.
“Anyways, they probably abandoned the project halfway through and decided instead to cover up the passageway with a door and some terrible paint job.” She continued while sighing in exasperation.
“...” I contemplated this information for a moment. If what she said was true, then sooner or later, we’d end up underneath the old school building once again. As this thought entered my mind, I couldn’t help but gaze off into the darkness, still uneasy at what lay at the other end.
From behind me, the sound of shuffling footsteps could be heard. Hina had once again resumed her trod forward, seemingly having closed the subject on her own accord. “Well, in the end, we won’t know for sure until we check things out with our own eyes…”
With those receding words, I turned back around to stare at the passage in front of me. Before I had even noticed, my legs once again moved, propelling me forward into the darkness.
****
After minutes of nonstop walking, something finally changed.
The musky atmosphere created by my restless imagination, seemingly came to life. I was certain, positive, that the temperature had inexplicably increased. It wasn’t to the extent where it became unbearable, but to the level where a dry sweat was starting to form on my forehead. My throat this time really did quiver from thirst, and my lips really did crack from the heat though.
It was like being in a oven on low heat. A temperature hot enough to cause an unpleasant sweat to form.
I was the first to notice this, since I regularly shifted my perception using [Sensory Remapping]. I was using this method of shifting senses as an early warning detection system in case something dangerous were to pop out. When I inexplicably augmented my sense of temperature, the first thing I noticed was the gust of heat. The others still hadn’t noticed, but they had already begun to unconsciously sweat.
After warning the others about my discovery, we proceeded forward, this time with excess caution in our stride.
It wasn’t long before something else interrupted us.I was once again the first to notice, since, after all, I was the one at the front and I was also the first one to see ‘it’.
As I looked downwards, towards the barren dirt floor, a voice from behind interrupted my silent brooding.
“What’s wrong?” It was Hina again. Her face was scrunched in slight worry as she looked towards me. “Why did you sto-”
She peered over my shoulders, only to quickly halt her own words. As she looked onward at the same thing that had caught my attention, her eyes widened from surprise while she too locked eyes with the oddity on the floor. While the two of us marveled at the object beneath our feet, the others had already gathered and were now also staring at ‘it’ with the same level of fascination.
“That’s a…”
“There’s nothing else quite as similar….”
“Yeah, without a doubt…”
“...It’s a Gila headpiece.” I finally managed to choke out the words as my eyes persisted its silent stare down.
Before us, was an ominous looking piece of obsidian. It resembled the head gear that adorned the Gila’s faces, but this one was twice as big, with protrusions sticking out at the side of the head. There were traces of dried green blood on its outer edges, while the floor beneath had obvious signs of corrosion.
Additionally, a few sections of the headgear looked as if it had been corroded or maybe melted off. On top of that, behind the head, on the floor that led deeper into the passage, were drag marks. They were a little faint due to the collected dust, but they were quite distinct in their own right. From the looks of things, the owner of the head piece definitely put up some form of resistance.
Without a doubt, it was from a Gila.
“[Identify!]”
Gila Hive Matriarch Carapace
A portion of the carapace left behind by the corpse of the Gila Hive Matriarch that resides within the Oakwood High School Dungeon.
It is severely damaged and won’t be suitable for crafting.
I quickly confirmed my hypothesis. What’s more, I also discovered that this thing wasn’t just any other Gila, it was a matriarch, probably the elite monster of the Gilas.
I numbly relayed my discovery onto the others, although my head was already preoccupied. The main question that floated into my mind was, what exactly killed it?
It wasn’t the first time that we’ve run into a monster killing another monster, but the Gilas themselves were the highest level monsters we’ve come across up to date. It would stand to reason that the elite monster of such a high level creature would be equally as high leveled. A monster that I probably couldn’t defeat at my current level. If so, what exactly did kill it? Was it a player? If not, what type of crazy strong monster could kill the Matriarch?
While we were all a bit taken aback from the recent discovery, strangely enough, nobody had proposed going back, despite the look of fear on a few of their faces. It might have been due to the fact that we got a bit caught up in the atmosphere, or maybe due to the troublesome thing called human curiosity, but we wanted to progress forward.
If this were a horror movie, then this would be the part where the audience screams at us to turn back. Of course, we’d be the stubborn cast that dumbly proceeded forward.
But more importantly, having something that strong lurking around, with no clue as to what it exactly is didn’t sit well with me. Whether the results of our further inquiry will bring fortune or regret, well, that’s still up for grabs.
… It didn’t take even a minute of walking before we regretted our decision.
In the middle of my stride, a window panel suddenly popped up. It came so fast and so sudden that I inadvertently jumped back in surprise.
The first thing I noticed about this window panel was that, unlike the others, it wasn’t blue. Much like how that initial panel during the start of the apocalypse was black, this panel was also of a different color. One of a vibrant yellow that seemed as if it would illuminate the whole of the passage.
And if the color wasn’t foreboding enough, then the contents definitely were.
Danger!
You have now entered the territory of the Dungeon Boss - Reeflech, the [cursed] Subterranean. Due to one of the features present in the [Oak Wood High School Dungeon], both parties have been made aware of each other’s presence.
Entrance the Dungeon Boss Territory gives the automatic mental debuff, [Fear]. Within the Dungeon Boss Territory, Reeflech’s abilities have been enhanced by a factor of 1.25 times.
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Danger!
“No way…” I inwardly groaned as my eyes scanned through the panel. The first thought to flash my mind as I saw this was that, if Hina’s conclusion held true, then the Dungeon Boss should be located within the Bomb Shelter in the Old school building.
I was quick to realize this, but the depression from not noticing that the boss was directly underneath me the whole time was quite an impact.
While I wallowed, the others, who had just crossed the threshold into Boss Territory, also showed varying degrees of shock, as their eyes widened and they inadvertently jumped back. Quickly though, that shock was replaced by a wave of fear. Their faces paled and their eyes dilated. I could catch the faint quaking in their body, as well as their quickening heartbeats.
Without exception, Hina, Cielle, and Cher were afraid, no- they were fearing for their very lives. The area wide debuff was quite effective.
I was unaffected though. Most likely because of the effects given by the [Psychopath] title.
“Oi, guys, get a hold of yourselves!” I yelled fiercely, snapping them out of their temporary haze. Those doe like eyes all simultaneously turned towards me. Their expressions looked lost, and frightened.
“Just take a step backwards, considering how we suddenly entered the Boss’s territory, we should be right on the edge, so…” As I instructed, the trio quickly followed with due haste.
In no time, the rest of them had scurried back. I confirmed that they had left the dungeon Boss’s territory after their expressions visibly brightened while they exhaled a huge breath of air.
Unfortunately, despite their new found relief, not even a moment passed before a new danger suddenly turned our way.
A wave of heat. A wave of intense heat was currently drawing towards us from deep within the Dungeon Boss’s Territory. With my enhanced sense of temperature, I was the first one to notice this.
“Tch- Quick, get out of the way!” With no time to give a proper warning, I instantly moved my body.
I rushed towards the startled girls, utilizing [Running Dash]’s effects to close our distance. Ignoring the squeaks of yelps of surprise and pain, I quickly tackled them onto the ground. We ended up in a small crevice, created by the chipping walls that were eroding away due to the furnace like atmosphere of the passage.
Without a moment’s delay, that original torrent of heat I first felt, quickly became a searing beam of fire. It rocketed past us, a mere 6 inches away from my crouched figure. The sensation was unbearably painful. As if my back were being licked and prodded at by magma. A pain strong enough to piss your pants over. I managed through only because I managed to shut off my sense of pain.
Unexpectedly, while I half wallowed in agony, from out of nowhere, a mist of cool water surrounded us.
“[Water Shield!]”
It was Hina. She had been quick to react, and by the time the torrent of flame had reached us, a thin, half inch film of water surrounded our backs, making slight contact with the flames. It somewhat lessened the heat, but as expected, it simply wasn’t enough. As the film of water made contact witht eh torrent of flame, instantaneously, the water was quickly converted to steam.
As the flames finally sputtered out, our vision was now temporarily obstructed by a thick layer of white. Although that didn’t quite stop me, as I immediately began ushering the other girls back the way we came.
They crawled with desperate vigor, while I began following them. Hina was constantly firing off water spells in order to cool our overheated bodies while Cielle had dowsed my back in a fair amount of [Blue Gemini], since I was the closest one to the flames, and, despite not making any actual contact, I had lost quite a bit of hp.
“Run! Run back the way we-”
Before I could even give out complete instructions, my [Sensory Remapping] once again picked up on an abnormally high temperature. This time, it wasn’t quite like that torrent of flame. This time, it was a bit thin, but moved rapidly. It also did not travel in a straight line, but rather….
Smash!
A mass of red slammed down on the spot where I had just been crawling. Luckily, I managed to fling my body towards the center of the room, avoiding the blow by a hairsbreadth. It was unfortunate though, that the floor now seared my flesh in 2nd degree burns, but at the very least, I was still alive.
I turned around to look at what had attacked me, only to see a wriggling tentacle, emerging out from the steam as it danced playfully around the air.
Its reckless movements blew the gathered mist away, revealing a red appendage that illuminated off the firelight created by the burning support beams.
Reeflech - [Cursed] Subterranean
With an identify, I was quick to confirm that the tentacle was indeed part of the boss. Although unfortunately, the usual information, such as the level, or its hp, were not available. Regarding this, I blamed it on distance. I was simply too far away to confirm any of the valuable information.
The tentacle pulsed. It swelled, more enflamed really, to an amazing size, before it quickly regained its sleek outline, as it rocketed in my direction once again.
I dodged by a hairsbreadth by throwing myself up against the wall.
In the meantime, a mass of gelatinous black that seemed to blend in with the darkness of the passage, shot forward towards the tentacle.
It hit successfully, right in the center of its trunk, causing the tentacle to shiver a bit. I had no clue whether or not the actual monster lost HP from that, but that didn’t particularly matter at the current moment.
Using the opportunity created by Cielle’s quick thinking, my body rocketed forward. A diagonal slash with my Efhermet Dagger rocketed out from my hand. At the same time, the tentacle twisted, revealing a black metal plate that was embedded into the tentacle.
My Dagger clashed with that metal plate, as I jumped back to gain some distance.
“RUN!”
A single word escaped my dry, horse lips just as the tentacle resumed its attack.
A machine gun like attack was initiated. The tentacle frantically stabbed at me with blistering speed. I managed to avoid most of them, but a few grazed me on my left cheek and legs. Each time I so much as touched the tentacle, a searing pain, as if a heated metal spoon had slapped me across the face filled every nerve of my body.
I slowly retreated as the attacks persisted, unfortunately, the attacks never stopped. Even after I made it out of the Boss’s Territory, the tentacles still attacked. Most likely, these things had a reach as far as the Gila Carapace that we ran into before. Probably more.
During my one sided dodging, Cielle was able to fire off a few balls of [Dark Gemini]. One landed, giving me enough time to successfully use [Dissect]. The tentacle that I cut off fell flatly onto the floor, forcing a few particles of dust to rise from the impact.
The severed tentacle wriggled in pain, but even before I could celebrate, another tentacle rocketed out from the darkness. This one managed to pierce my left shoulder with its drill like end, before I forcibly separated by jumping backwards.
I held my bleeding shoulder with my right hand while the familiar, comforting sensation of [Blue Gemini] quickly began to spread.
The new tentacle once again rocketed forward. This time, I switched over to my club, as I prepared to intercept it.
SMASH!
I was barely able to deflect the incoming blow. The force behind it was enough to make one’s knees buckles, but I managed to hold on somehow. Unfortunately, I noticed that despite successfully blocking it, my HP still decreased by a bit. The indirect force behind it was that strong.
I once again instructed everyone to run backwards, while I one sidedly defended against this single piece of the boss. My nimble footsteps, coupled with Hina’s buff spells, and Cielle’s constant healing was enough for me to not outright die on the spot. The tentacle which repeatedly flew past my face over and over again, they came so close that I began to notice the tiny bristles of hair on the appendage that quivered and danced each time it whizzed through the heated air.
Slowly but surely, we were making our way back. Shooting a glance behind me, I could see the rest of the girls doing their part. Cielle and Hina were the farthest back, giving off much needed support even from that far away. Cher was the only one who didn’t play an active role during this process. She stood as middle guard, in front of the sisters, but otherwise stayed away from the ensuing battle. She fully realized the emmense gap in current abilities. Even if she were to help, she’d die in a moment’s heartbeat.
This one sided struggle continued for quite some time. On my side, I was quickly losing steam. The act of just dodging was quickly consuming my stamina, while on the other side, the tentacle showed no signs of having a limit. How long this thing could stretch, and how far it would go in pursuing us was all a mystery. And as if to make the situation worse, another tentacle quickly emerged from the darkness, bringing the difficulty level up by a staggering amount.
Just as I was positive that this stalemate would break, only to be followed by a one sided slaughter, a sudden shout from behind reached my strained ears.
The voice was clearly Hina’s but unfortunately, I couldn’t quite catch what she had said. Despite that, my body naturally flung itself backwards, bracing myself for whatever magic Hina had prepared.
With a slight rumbling noise, in the next instant, a wall of earth was forcibly pulled up from the ground. The earth wall separated us from the tentacle.
Not even waiting for a response from the other side, my body was already sprinting backwards.
I ran towards Hina, who once again stood wobbly on her feet, looking as if she’d pass out at any given moment. She had used up all of her mana once again, the effects of [mana exhaustion] were now activated for the second time tonight. I shouldered her fragile body as I continued running. From upahead of me, I could see that the other two were already sprinting backwards with all their might.
Not even 5 seconds after I started running, I could hear a distinct cracking sound, followed by the subsequent noise of blocks of earth falling onto the ground.
I ignored that sound. I ignored the sound of a destroyed earth wall as I continued to run. The only thing going through my mind was run. Run, run, run, run, and even more- run.
I don’t know how much time passed before I realized that the tentacle had stopped pursuing us.
By that point, my legs were crying. My chest was heaving up and down. My throat croaked with obvious sign of dehydration. The others were the same, well, except for Hina. She had passed out sometime during our escape.
After our narrow escape, we headed back towards the bombshelter, a feeling of emptiness howled within us during the process.
****
Afterwards, we traveled back to our base.
I carried a few ziplocs of rice, some canned goods, and MREs in a backpack, and left the Bomb shelter. Hina (who had recovered after I gave her a mana potion), Cielle, and Cher had similar equipment, as we moved towards the stairs.
We took the shortest route back to the stair case. No Gilas pursued or attacked us. This didn’t seem like much of a surprise, considering this time around, we didn’t quite enter the Gilas’ ‘territory’, which consisted of the east wing of the basement.
The Gilas, who seemed to have developed a fear for the bomb shelter, did not attack us.
We passed without incident, and retraced our steps back to our base. The travel back was much slower this time around, mainly due to the added supplies we carried, which mainly consisted of the Bomb Shelter Supplies, and the few clubs and weapons I crafted during our trip here. Despite that though, nobody voiced any complaints.
Along the way back, we hunted down another boar using the same hunting method as before. It was an incredibly risky move as always, but in the end, we did it without much incident. I managed to properly skin it this time, after I emulated the things I learned from the guide books from the library.
It was about 6 am in the morning when we finally arrived back to our base.
After confirming that nothing had been touched or tampered with, I settled down for some sleep. I had the second shift in “nightwatch” (although it wasn’t really night anymore), so I had about 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep before then.
In the meanwhile, I fully planned on taking advantage of the next 3 hours. After all, last night was particularly taxing.