As soon as Zack descended towards the first of the lower floors, he began to feel how the concentration of corruption was getting higher. There could be various reasons behind this increase, but Zack was inclined to believe that, while the cult used the upper floors for their daily life, they used the lower ones to experiment and make their various rituals.

The atmosphere on this new floor was cold and gloomy, and Zack instantly saw how some weapons were lying around while the floor had blood stains all around. Seeing that, Zack couldn't help but think that that place was probably used for human sacrifices, a practice that this kind of cult used to rapidly increase the power of their members in exchange for the lives of innocent people.

Not only that but there were a few shelves filled with poor quality weapons, which could mean that this room was also used as weapon storage or as training grounds.

Suddenly, he began to hear metallic noises that came from the lower floor, and as it didn't seem like there was anything important on that floor, Zack decided to investigate the next floor as soon as his men began to reach that room.

Carefully, Zack began to descend again through the ladder, but when he reached the bottom, he found out that there was a metal door in front of him, but that didn't look like it would pose a great problem for him, as it was rusty and it looked like anyone would be able to break it with a bit of strength, but as he didn't know what lay behind, he decided to wait until a few of his men reached his side.

In a few seconds, six of his men got to the same floor as he was, so the man who had already broken the main door of the tower hit the metal door a few times before it was ripped out of his frame.

After that, the group found themselves in what looked like a dungeon filled with cells.

"This is probably where they keep their victims before sacrificing them." Zack thought to himself.

As soon as he saw this, Zack had a bad feeling that he soon confirmed when he looked inside one of the cells.

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Inside it, there was what looked like a white humanoid. It was bald, and its eyes were completely black.

"It seems like we have arrived too late; they have already become ghouls," Zack said with a pained expression as he continued looking at the different cells with the hope of finding someone safe.

The ghouls were the result of ordinary people being affected by corruption for too long. While cultivators had a certain resistance to corruption, commoners didn't have any. Because of this, if they were exposed to it, they would soon begin to lose their minds, slowly becoming mindless beasts that only cared about devouring the living.

Even though cultivators who weren't too badly affected by corruption could heal themselves or at least live a normal life given enough time, there was no known cure for people who had become corrupted, so the best way to treat them was to kill them immediately to end their suffering as soon as possible and prevent them from hurting anyone.

After exploring the whole floor, Zack was unable to find anyone that had yet to become a ghoul, so he made a few signs to kill every monster inside the cells before going to the next floor.

But suddenly, a mechanical noise was heard all around the room while the doors on each cell opened themselves, letting every single ghoul free.

"Kill them all before they surround us!" Zack shouted to his men as he saw how the situation could become a problem.

Without thinking it twice, he unsheathed his long sword and cut in half the closest ghouls.

Even though there were tens of ghouls and they had become somewhat stronger than before, they were still commoners with very low or even no cultivation, and after the transformation, they lost their ability to reason, so for cultivators such as Zack, unless he was surrounded, killing those monsters was like cutting butter.

The fight lasted for a few minutes, but Zack's group managed to exterminate all their enemies, only suffering a few scratches.

"Not gonna lie, this seems like a trap for me." Zack said." That mechanical noise and the timing suggest that someone was waiting for us, and that means that they would probably be waiting on the next floor too.

After cleaning the black blood that covered their weapons, the group began to look for the ladders that would lead them to the next floor, but instead of ladders, they found a new metallic door that seemed like it would lead them to a new room.

"It looks like this floor is bigger than the others, so let's wait for the whole group to get here. I have a feeling that we are going to have to fight as soon as we enter this new room," Zack said as he made a few signs for his group to reunite in front of the door.