Chương 60: The First Tunnel

They climbed down the ladder, one by one, at least 40 feet into the darkness. Evan glanced down and spotted flickering lights below him. He reached the last rung and jumped down, landing on the stone floor. Oliver followed close behind, then Luca, and then Catriona, with Lys clinging to her back. They found themselves in a wide tunnel. The walls were made from a black, shiny stone-like material, maybe obsidian, just like the arched ceiling high above their heads.

Glowing orbs, placed every few feet along the smooth walls, lit the way, but despite the light, the tunnel felt oppressive.

"Definitely not the sewage tank," Luca said, craning his neck to look at the ceiling.

"We're in the right place," Catriona said.

"I can't put my finger on it, but I can feel the high mana levels."

"I feel them too," Evan confirmed. The mana seemed to pulse through the walls and floor. Not as intense as in the Old Forest, but stronger than he'd felt at the estate above ground. They followed the tunnel, weapons drawn. Lys wanted to run ahead, but Catriona called her back. They'd found the secret dungeon of the Vason estate. The place where the noble family had hidden all their treasures and their most dangerous weapons. It wasn't a question of if they would encounter traps and defenses, just when.

The tunnel bent and curved several times, and Evan was already starting to feel restless, when a door came into sight. It was a large portal, arched, just like the ceiling, and clearly magical. The stone rim around the wooden door gave off a low, glowing light. When their group got close, the light changed from soft white to a bright red.

"That can't be a good sign," Luca said. Evan looked at the red light with concern.

"Too bad none of the Beasts had any kind of key on their bodies. I had kind of hoped for that."

"We'll have to fight our way through," Oliver said sternly.

"We were prepared for this possibility." He put his hand on the intricate iron door handle.

"Everyone ready?" He looked over his shoulder, eyes burning with determination. The rest of the group nodded, so Oliver pulled the door open. Evan gripped the hilt of his sword tighter, expecting a monster to shoot through the opening door at any moment. Nothing happened. Beyond the doorway was another tunnel, looking exactly like the one they'd just passed through.

"That's it?" Luca asked.

"A bit anticlimactic." Catriona looked at him, scoffed, then rolled her eyes.

"What?"

"You're going to eat your words in just a few moments," she said. Oliver stepped through first, shortly followed by Evan, then Luca and Catriona with Lys. Luca looked around, then gestured at the empty hallway.

"See? Nothing. Maybe the defenses are inactive after all. Maybe the mana batteries—" Before he could finish his sentence, the door slammed shut behind him.

"Oh…" was the last thing Luca got out before all hell broke loose. From nowhere and everywhere, hundreds of bat-like creatures emerged. Evan had always thought bats looked kinda cute, but these flying monsters were anything but cute. They were only the size of a pigeon, but their skeletal bodies, covered with black skin stretched too tight, were equipped with three long razor-sharp claws on each foot and two long spikes at the end of either wing. And they were fast. Damn fast.

Within seconds, Evan was surrounded by a whole swarm, hacking at his head. He swatted at them with his sword, but besides one or two glancing blows, he completely failed. The little beasts just fluttered away, avoiding his blade with ease. And despite their small size, their claws did a lot of damage. His face was already scratched and bleeding, but the bat monsters seemed especially keen to claw out his eyes. Somewhere behind him someone squealed, probably Luca.

A few feet ahead, Oliver grunted, waving his sword around like a flyswatter. Catriona was the only one of them who actually managed to hit the bats, but her arrows offered little reprieve from the swarm. She was a fast shooter, but it would still take her days to shoot them all down, and the rest of the team would be torn to shreds by bat claws by then.

Evan knew it was be smartest to save as much mana as possible for when they found the Professor, but the very first enemy they encountered on their way to the laboratory made that plan obsolete. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. He summoned his [Starlight Shield] to protect his face and especially his eyes against the monsters' claws, then channeled mana into his palm and whipped out a [Comet Shot].

Just like they had dodged his sword strikes, the bats managed to avoid the projectile, but the shower of magical sparks that rained down on them after the [Comet Shot] had slammed into a wall clearly hurt them. At least a dozen of them dropped to the ground dead.

"Use your special abilities," Evan yelled.

"They're fast, but easy to kill." He followed his own advice and threw out three more [Comet Shots] in short succession, causing the bats to flutter away in a panicked flurry. Oliver utilized his [Gravel Burst] to hit many bats at once, occasionally accentuated with [Petrifying Strike] whenever he could get within reach of one of the fast monsters. Even a glancing blow was enough to turn their wings to stone and make them drop to the floor.

Catriona used [Thorn Volley] to multiply her arrows, allowing her to take down several bats at once, and even Luca chipped in with [Current Pull]. He trapped several of the beasts in the water stream, then slammed them against a nearby wall or onto the floor. After a bit of practice, Evan figured out how to use his [Starlight Shield] as an advantage. If he positioned his body correctly, he could swat an attacking bat against the wall with it and then crush it between the stone wall and his magical shield.

The crunching noise was unpleasant, but so was getting his face clawed at by bat monsters. He felt little remorse about smooshing the little creatures to death. Once they had started using magic, the bats started dropping quickly, and the fewer bats were swarming around them, the more breathing room they had to fight back. Catriona shot down the last stragglers who'd stuck to the ceiling with her normal arrows.

They all looked like they'd intimate relations with a bramble bush, and the floor was littered with hundreds of monster corpses, but they were done. [You have killed 104 Clawbats] [You have earned 357 experience points] [You have looted 670 mana stones] Evan took a look at his progress to rank 5: 91%. He was getting so close. Maybe he could hit it before they had to face the Professor and the last living member of the Vason family.

He had no skill gem to gain a new skill, but he would at least be able to add Catriona to the party proper. Luca readied himself to replenish their health with [Refreshing Mist], but Evan stopped him.

"We need to be careful about our mana use," he reminded Luca.

"Oliver and I are doing okay. Catriona, how low is your health right now?"

"Down to 73%," she said. As the team member with the lowest Strength attribute, she'd taken the worst damage.

"Alright, she can have a healing spell," Evan said, glancing at the party menu. Luca had lost nearly as much health as the young archer and was down to 77%.

"And you heal yourself. Oliver and I can knuckle through it."

"How is everyone's mana?" Oliver asked.

"I used nearly half of mine."

"I used about a third of my mana pool," Catriona said. She sighed in relief when Luca's [Refreshing Mist] hit her. The bleeding scratches on her face started to heal over.

"Same, after healing her and myself," Luca said.

"Mana is at 68% now. What do we do about that? Mana potion? Or do we just rest and wait for it to replenish on its own?"

"No, we push forward," Oliver said quickly.

"And we save the potion for later," Evan added.

"No one is critically low, and we can always chug the potion mid-fight if we have to. I would rather wait and see what else awaits us before we waste the potions." They continued their journey. The dead bat monsters crunched under their feet as they crossed the hallway, but thankfully another doorway awaited them after only a few hundred feet. Evan took a deep, steadying breath. The bats had been annoying to fight, but relatively easy to dispatch. Would their luck hold?

He had the feeling that the defense's difficulty level might increase the closer they got to the center of the dungeon. Straightening his shoulders, he pushed the door open. To his surprise, there wasn't another tunnel behind it, but a large, rectangular room. They stepped into it, staying close together, and looked around. Unlike last time, the door didn't close behind them, and no monsters descended upon them.

The room stretching out in front of them was empty, sans for a large number of shelves, lockers, and something that looked like weapon racks, all picked clean.

"What is going on?" Luca asked.

"Why is nothing attacking us? Ah, damn, I jinxed us again, didn't I?" He didn't. They carefully ventured into the room, peeking behind the sturdy wooden shelves. Evan startled after spotting several humanoid shapes in a dark corner. He already had a [Comet Shot] ready to go when he realized the shapes weren't moving at all. After getting closer, he recognized they weren't monsters, but mannequins—the kind clothing stores used to display their wares. Catriona joined his side, studying the wooden dummies.

"I think we might have found the armory," she said.

"I bet those were used to hold armor." Luca kicked open the lid of a wooden trunk and scoffed in disappointment.

"Very few weapons for an armory. I'd hoped we would find something cool, not just dust and rat droppings."

"I bet the guilds took everything valuable from the estate after they'd won against the Vason family," Evan said. Luca shrugged.

"Yeah, probably. But we should still give the room a thorough search. They might have left something behind. I could use a new dagger or two."

"No," Oliver said immediately.

"Searching the room would take hours. We keep going. No detours, no delays."

"But—" Evan shook his head sharply, cutting Luca off before the discussion could escalate.

"Oliver is right. The hours we would spend here would mean more hours the victims of the Professor would have to endure his torture. It's not worth it. We came here to save the abducted villagers, not to find loot."

"I agree with the boys," Catriona said, already moving toward the door at the other end of the room.

"We can always search this room on our way back." Luca pouted but followed the team.

"If we're coming back alive," he grumbled. Oliver slapped his back.

"If we die, you have no use for new daggers anyway."

"We won't die," Evan said.

"We've done really well so far. We can do this. The Celestials Guardians wouldn't have granted us the quest if we had no chance to survive this, right?" Catriona gave him a quick half-smile.

"You have a point. The Guardians picked us for this quest for a reason."

"Technically, they picked Evan. Endless-Mana-Evan," Luca argued, "We just happen to be his party. We could very easily die." Evan glared at Luca.

"It's not endless mana, it's just refilling very fast, and I won't let any of you die. Understood?" Before the mood between them could sour even more, he opened the next door. Behind it lay another tunnel. Smooth black walls, arched ceiling. It looked exactly like the tunnel they'd come from. Evan lingered in the doorway, scanning the space for traps, levers, or monsters lurking in the shadows. He spotted nothing. Just several hundred feet of empty hallway, ending in another door.

But after their experience in the last tunnel, he was pretty certain the defenses would only activate once they stepped through it. So he took a deep breath and did just that. For a moment, nothing happened. Not until all four of them had entered the hallway. Then the door shut behind them, and the floor beneath their feet turned into ice.