Chapter 334: Golden Eyes
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Toby kept trying to say something by using body language.
“You sensed something terrifying?” Angor read Toby’s meaning and frowned. He reached out with his spirit feelers.
Nothing.
When he nodded to the bird, Toby quickly dived into the murky water. Toby closed his eyes and remained there for two seconds before he dashed back into the Purification Field.
Angor threw a Cleanse and Purify at the bird.
Toby waved his wings around again and took out a new outfit from Snowy Feather so that Angor could help him get changed.
“… Bikinis,” Angor murmured as he looked at the lace-brim, breast-support undergarment in his hand. With a disgusted expression, he proceeded to tie it around Toby’s body. “I don’t really need to remind you that you’re a male bird, right?”
Toby didn’t know anything about a human’s perspective. He only enjoyed his new clothes while he kept flapping and tweeting.
“You smelled something different in the water?” Angor read Toby’s posture. Without a special nose, he couldn’t sense different smells out of the pure stink. “You mean a powerful monster is living here? But, nothing like that showed up when I completely messed up the lake,” Angor considered.
“We don’t have another way anyway. We’re going, even if a monster awaits ahead. The monster probably isn’t that strong since it didn’t attack us already. Or… maybe there’s something else.”
Being cautious didn’t mean acting cowardice. Since Toby told him, he really believed that there was a monster. Though he wasn’t going to run away before facing it.
“I have a magic scroll I got from Devildare. A powerful monster won’t be really deadly to us,” Angor said as he took out the Aster Barrier scroll from his bracelet. This powerful magic array could deflect wizard-level attacks.
They felt somewhat safer with the magic scroll in hand. Wizard-level monsters were always rare since every part on its body meant valuable treasure. A wild wizard-level monster wandering outside would quickly get overwhelmed by hunters.
They kept swimming deeper inside the cave.
The tunnel first went downward, before it tilted up slightly. Now Angor found them moving upward instead, at a very mild angle.
He felt good about it too. A way up meant this path was very likely to take him outside.
The flame of hope returned to his mind.
After swimming for about a minute, the tunnel grew wider and the sides around him moved almost ten meters apart.
Before he could draw a map in his mind and figure out their possible position, they reached the surface of the water, unexpectedly.
He didn’t see light though.
So the path didn’t lead toward the outside world?
He cast another Light and noticed that he was now looking at a small cave. Another path was ahead of him, and it was leading toward the dark distance.
Angor climbed out of the water and canceled the Purification Field.
And he immediately smelled the stench in the air, as well as breathable oxygen. This meant the cave wasn’t sealed, and there had to be another way out.
He maintained Light and carefully walked down the path.
He noticed something strange soon. The air in the cave was moist, but the ground was still too wet.
He walked to the cave wall and rubbed a finger against it, collecting something wet on his hand.
A whiff suggested that the wall didn’t smell bad at all.
Next, he tried against the water on the ground, and he didn’t need to move his finger close to sense the encroaching stench.
So the water on the walls and on the ground is different…
Angor poked at Toby, who had been very alarmed until now.
“You’re right. A monster is here, and it’s watching us.”
The watermark on the ground was proof.
It led to another question though. The tunnel had to have been made by this unknown monster. Why? To draw them in?
No one knew. One thing remained the same, that they had to act really carefully now.
They proceeded slowly, and Angor kept observing the surroundings. He went over possible encounter scenarios in his mind so that he could act quickly enough to take the upper hand.
The cave path was large. There were hanging stalactites above his head, dripping water. Stones of different sizes and shapes collected on the walls on the sides. There were many corners he couldn’t see from his position around the obstacles, so he kept his spirit feelers out, just in case.
After walking for about half a kilometer, Angor saw a corpse at an open ground.
The corpse already rotted all the way to bones, along with most of the corpse’s clothes. A shoulder strap still remained, which was connected to a small iron chest.
Angor recognized the chest because he had just obtained one from the lake bed not long ago.
“Another medical box?” He opened it out of curiosity.
The content of it was exactly the same. Healer tools.
He only inspected the first box by using his spirit feelers. Now that he could look into one, his attention was attracted by the strange marking again.
A snake covered in glossy black scales swirled around a silver, pointy rod.
A clan emblem? Not likely. Angor didn’t believe that any family would draw their emblem on needles too. The mark seemed to be in perfect condition. The snake looked very lively after all these years.
He put down the box and looked at the corpse.
The bones were still intact, which shouldn’t be the case if a monster killed this person.
He kept walking for about another ten minutes and saw about 20 more corpses along the way, along with six more medical boxes with the same design.