Chapter 1145 Underground Passage <TOC> Chapter 1147 Engravings on the Door
Previous page password is bold portion: T9fid+e?ewR7
Translator: SumTLMan
At this moment, Angel’s foremost question was: Where am I?
He appeared to be in an underground passage.
Scanning both ends of this passage, beyond the speckles of light at his position, darkness reigned.
He was certainly curious about where this passage might lead, but he didn’t consider venturing further in. Staying here allowed him to keep an eye on the exit, and perhaps once the battle outside was over, he could find an escape route.
Who knew what perils might lurk in the depth of this passage?
After all, this was La Sutherland, the city of demons. Even if an unremarkable demon were to spring up, regardless of how frail, Angel wasn’t confident in his victory.
For Angel, hardly any place in La Sutherland was relatively safe. This explained why, despite having been here for a while, he had never ventured beyond his shop.
Given the circumstances, Angel opted to bide his time right here.
That being said, Angel didn’t put all his eggs in one basket. After all, waiting in place was largely a game of chance, and there was a risk he might end up sitting like a duck, so he had to be prepared for all outcomes.
He summoned two scouting puppets from his bracelet, dispatching them in opposite directions along the passage.
These scouting puppets were products of alchemy, exuding minimal energy waves and were therefore quite stealthy. Using them to scout the surroundings was apparently the optimal strategy at the moment.
As the puppets soared away, the conditions within this passage were progressively captured by Angel.
Both puppets moved at a slow pace. Within a short period, Angel didn’t notice any alterations in the passage, which remained dark, silent, and unchanging at both ends.
After a significant while, one of the puppets finally observed something distinct.
——Flickering light and a dead-end wall.
This puppet had reached one end of the passage, meeting a wall indicating a cul-de-sac. However, on this wall, a residual flicker of light remained.
This flicker of light was the aftermath of a pattern.
Or rather, the wall was adorned with a peculiar design, the glowing lines of which constituted this pattern. However, more than 90% of the glowing design had been extinguished, leaving behind only the faintest glimmer.
Moreover, this glow was continually diminishing. It was evident that in the near future, this illuminating design would entirely dim.
This pattern evoked a profound sense of déjà vu in Angel.
Leveraging the vision of the scouting puppet, Angel felt as though he was peering into a vortex within a mottled light, which seized his consciousness and yanked it inside. At the terminus of his consciousness, he was surrounded by remarkable, luminous patterns. These glowing inscriptions fenced him in, denying him any escape.
An intuition seeped into Angel’s mind, a foreboding that if he attempted to touch these illuminated patterns, his consciousness might be ensnared for good. The patterns bore an aura of imminent danger.
The lone silver lining was the gradual fading of these incandescent patterns. Not too long passed before they had disappeared entirely.
Simultaneously, his consciousness was ejected from the vortex.
Regaining his senses, Angel discovered that the radiant spots on the passage wall at the end had vanished entirely, surrendering the area to the enveloping darkness once more.
“That feeling, it was like…” Angel murmured softly, his thoughts straying back to the recent past when he had seen Olucia in the Phantasmagoria Cabin. On her armor were similar patterns: “Could these be runes?”
With this revelation, Angel felt a wave of understanding wash over him.
The wall was inscribed with runes, and the reason the radiance of the runes gradually faded was exactly as Komodo had mentioned earlier: someone had destroyed the node of the underground runes, leading to their gradual failure.
Angel felt a surge of relief. After sensing that he was being sucked into a vortex of luminescent runes, he made an educated guess: the runes drawn on the walls surely served a purpose of “entrapping enemies.” If the runes hadn’t been damaged, he surmised that a part of his consciousness would have been left there indefinitely…
Considering the existence of these runes, a speculation about this underground passage started to germinate in Angel’s mind.
To validate his conjecture, Angel shifted his focus to the scouting puppet that was advancing in the opposite direction.
This puppet was constantly flying ahead, and by Angel’s estimate, it had covered nearly two kilometers.
According to his speculation, reaching this distance meant that changes should be visible soon——
Sure enough, as Angel was silently calculating the negative distance in his mind, the scouting puppet finally sighted something unusual.
At the end of the passage, there was a door, seemingly cast from metal.
The door was sealed shut, impervious to pushing.
Though Angel couldn’t discern the situation beyond the door, his speculation was nevertheless reinforced. From the moment he landed in this underground passage, he had already synthesized the external information previously gathered to determine his current spatial coordinates.
Subsequently, Angel silently constructed a simulation map in his mind.
Thanks to the powers of the Gate of Dreams, Angel’s understanding of simulated maps was deeply ingrained, making the construction process straightforward.
Angel roughly mapped the significant landmarks of La Sutherland’s core area onto this simulation sandbox. Then, utilizing this sandbox, he calculated the direction and distance of the passage, eventually arriving at a conclusion:
The direction of this passage pointed directly towards the Void Obelisk at the heart of La Sutherland.
Beforehand, he was mentally calculating the distance in his mind, estimating the range between the scouting puppet and the Void Obelisk. When the scouting puppet entered the negative distance of the Void Obelisk and a door appeared, Angel was almost certain that this passage was likely an underground passage leading to the Void Obelisk!
Having drawn this conclusion, Angel, however, still couldn’t act.
Because he had no understanding of the Void Obelisk or, to put it another way, even the demons living in La Sutherland knew nothing about the Void Obelisk. Half-demons like Canaan wouldn’t even dare venture near the Void Obelisk, fearing an encounter with a Great Demon who might find them displeasing, and then… there would be no “then.”
The only thing Canaan knew about the situation in the Void Obelisk was: apart from the Great Demons from the Seven Seats, nobody could enter.
Thus, even if Angel knew where he was, he was still powerless to act.
Furthermore, considering the information gathered from outside, it could roughly be inferred that Iadase should be in the Void Obelisk… While Angel had a fleeting acquaintance with Iadase, he couldn’t be certain that if he encountered him here, he would let him pass.
Aside from this, there was another unknown person in the Void Obelisk.
Iadase had clearly mentioned during a conversation with Komodo that the intruder who had destroyed the master node rune was also within the Void Obelisk.
Iadase had not taken action against this intruder, implying it was probably a strong peer. This kind of entity was not something Angel would dare to confront casually.
After pondering, he felt it would be better to stay put, waiting for the outside situation to clarify.
Angel let out a long sigh, “Although the gains have been meagre, at least it is certain that this underground passage is somewhat safe.”
However, what Angel didn’t expect was, not long after his words fell, a warning signal was issued by one of his scouting puppets.
The warning was from the scouting puppet Angel had left at the end wall of the other side.
Angel was taken aback for a moment and shifted his focus back to that puppet. When he got a clear view of the situation, he was surprised to find that the wall, previously engraved with runes, had cracks appearing after the light spots had completely disappeared.
Not only that, but this crack was also spreading at a pace discernible to the naked eye. It was not limited to the wall, even the surrounding ceiling had vein-like fractures appearing.
With the emergence of these cracks, large amounts of rubble fell from the ceiling. Accompanied by a thunderous rumble, the bottom of the passage… collapsed.
And this collapse hadn’t ceased. With the extension of the ceiling fractures, The Collapse was rapidly spreading throughout the entire underground passage.
It wouldn’t be long before the cracks would extend to Angel’s location!
This abrupt cascade of collapses took Angel by surprise, particularly because he had just claimed the underground passage was safe not too long ago; little did he expect such a scenario to unravel the next moment!
Angel could not help but turn back to glance at the Frost Seal floating beside him… Bina Jonis’s dragon scale had not lost its function, nor had Toby’s Doom Curse spread.
So why did this happen?!
Now Angel understood that when one’s luck runs dry, it’s more grueling than a curse!
Angel’s thoughts began spinning rapidly. How should he confront this sudden disaster now?
If the collapse is as it seems on the surface — a commonplace accident, it wouldn’t inflict much damage on the current Angel, and he could even withstand it physically without the need for a defensive spell.
However, the horror lies in the fact that once the passage collapses, the chaotic energy from above would immediately flood in.
Angel even began to suspect that the collapse of the passage was due to it failing to resist the tumultuous energy from above, following the disappearance of the previous runes.
The distant rumbling was growing nearer.
As he saw the cracks ready to spread, Angel finally made up his mind. He ran a distance into the dark passage, then pulled out a scouting puppet, sending it towards the only exit above.
He planned to probe the situation outside, unsure if the battle between Fafnir and Komodo had ceased.
However, as soon as the scouting puppet left the exit, Angel could no longer sense its condition.
This was also within his expectations.
As the scouting puppet was shielded, he felt a slight prick in his sea of consciousness. As this prick occurred, Angel, without looking back, ran towards the other end of the passage.
After all, the scouting puppet was imbued with a shred of Angel’s mental energy. If the puppet got destroyed, even if the exit had blocked the connection, the piercing feeling connected to his sea of consciousness would still transmit.
The existence of this pain implied that the scouting puppet was destroyed the moment it went out, it also signified that Fafnir and Komodo hadn’t ceased their battle.
Under these circumstances, Angel naturally didn’t dare to exit. His only option was to flee deeper into the darkness.
Chapter 1145 Underground Passage <TOC> Chapter 1147 Engravings on the Door