As of today, I decided on two plans to get out of this place: Plan A and Plan B.
Plan A is to look for a way to open the ancient door. As long as I can get the ancient door to open, I will be able to access the inner part of this dungeon/ancient ruin, map it out, and get out through the front door. My years of dungeon delving experiences tells me that the key to opening the ancient door must be related to the engraving on it, the four-winged dragon biting its own tail. But what does that engraving mean? Is it some kind of puzzle related to the undead dungeon that I visited prior to getting trapped in this place? What do I need to do to get the door to open? I’ve been thinking about it all day, but I still can’t figure it out. That’s why Plan B comes into play.
Plan B will cover just-in-case scenarios, such as if I can’t open the ancient door or if anything beyond that door is something that I can’t deal with. While we usually can’t enter or circumvent a dungeon/ancient ruin from outside by digging into the ground, we definitely can leave by digging an escape tunnel from the inside. Of course, it’s frowned upon to leave a dungeon/ancient ruin using this means due to the damage it will cause to the local ecosystem, but never mind that.
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The escape tunnel will be made by expanding the air path of the six o’clock hole. I chose the six o’clock hole precisely because the air path is much more straightforward than the branched, and winded air path of the three and nine o’clock holes. The estimated length of the air path is about twenty kilometers. And if I dig about a hundred meters every day from today, it will take me about two hundred days to reach the surface. It’s a feasible plan as I already dug a hundred meters tunnel into the hole, and it only took me no more than four to six hours. I placed all the digging debris—past digging endeavors included—in the space along the wall between the three o’clock hole and the six o’clock hole as I’m sleeping near the well now.
Escape plan aside, in the afternoon, I noticed that the snake skin that was left alone to dry was exuding a rank smell. I threw it into the slime trench for the slime to deal with it. The slimes looked so ecstatic towards the snake skin, and with that I realized that my stools alone haven’t been enough to feed them all. It seems like I can expect a Bigger Slime or two to appear in the slime trench by tomorrow.