Chương 80: The Secret Tunnel

The noise originated directly from above our heads. I looked up and spotted a dozen metallic bells suspended from an incredibly thin wire that snaked from one quarters to the next. The line was violently jerking back and forth, causing the bells to toll in a frantic rhythm. Activating my x-ray vision, I discovered that one of the four guards I had recently drained of mana had already regained consciousness.

Despite his hands and feet being bound, he was using his teeth to tug relentlessly at the wire connected to the bells in his room. This was the improvised warning system this faction had engineered. I had suspected as much when I first laid eyes on the layout. I just hadn't anticipated that anyone could recover from the absolute exhaustion of a forced mana vacuum this quickly.

The cultist we were interrogating appeared to be shaking off his hypnotic state as well, the repetitive clanging of the alarm snapping him back to reality. I told Nathan to abandon him and bolt straight for the exit. Reaching the stairs that led out of the sub-cellar, I ground to a halt. Meeting Nathan's bewildered stare, I said:"You need to get out of here right now. Find Mantir and Jonas, get down to the town, and break the news to everyone. They have to evacuate immediately. Take the main road.

If they go on foot, they'll be able to climb over the landslide debris." Though the risk of secondary rockfalls loomed, it was still infinitely better than remaining in this trap. Nathan asked, "What about you?"

"I'm staying behind to buy you all some time. If they unleash the ghouls right now, none of you will make it off this mountain alive." I caught a flicker of reluctance in his eyes when he realized I was staying behind. He undoubtedly believed that staying down here was a guaranteed death sentence. But I wasn't going to die. The moment Nathan scrambled out of the cellar, I slammed the stone trigger to seal the hatch from the inside. A massive, thick stone slab slowly ground forward, completely barricading the exit.

The exterior trigger mechanism was already broken. If I wanted to guarantee the ghouls couldn't escape into the wilderness, this was the only viable method. Consequently, it meant I had effectively sealed myself inside this basement. However, if this place was engineered with the same blueprint as the Great Cathedral in the capital, then a specific structural feature had to have been built here as well.

I had already double-checked it earlier using the Halunar's Eye—this church's basement also housed an emergency escape hatch. As I hurried back toward the holding cells, three masked cultists from the subterranean laboratory were already ascending the stairs to investigate the alarm. If I fled right now, they would easily be able to override and break open the main hatch. Therefore, I began sliding open the latches to the ghoul cells.

Catching sight of my actions, the three cultists yanked up their masks and screamed, "Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Ignoring them completely, my hands blurred as I flipped open another cell door. The three robed cultists lunged forward to intercept me, but right at that moment, the first four ghouls I had liberated burst out from their cage. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

These men possessed negligible combat capabilities to begin with and caught completely off-guard. Within seconds, a ghoul lunged and pinned one of them to the stone floor, its teeth tearing frenziedly into the heavy fabric of his robe. The remaining two cultists desperately scrambled to retrieve something hidden within their garments. However, one was in such a blind panic that he tripped over the hem of his own sweeping robe and fell flat on his back.

The last man managed to fling a pouch filled with some kind of powder directly at the ghoul charging him. The moment the powder made contact, the creature's movements became visibly sluggish and rigid. Capitalizing on the delay, the heretic narrowly evaded a lethal strike, only to step directly into the clutching grasp of a second ghoul that had snuck up from his blind spot. That powder must be the agent they use to pacify and control the ghouls.

Refusing to waste the distraction, I used the ensuing chaos to slide open the latches of another dozen cells, hoping this sheer volume would be more than enough to butcher every fanatic down here. As for me, I needed to make a swift exit. By the time I reached the cell block holding the living human specimens, three more masked cultists had emerged from the lower laboratory. Right behind me, a swelling horde of slavering ghouls was giving chase.

I dropped low, executing a tight roll across the stone floor to duck out of the way, intentionally redirecting the horde's aggro toward the three newcomers. Without looking back at the horrific screams erupting behind me, I sprinted down the right-hand corridor. This wing also consisted of a row of quarters, but they were exceptionally cramped and narrow, used primarily by the cultists for storage. Hidden among them was a particularly restrictive room containing nothing but a defaced statue of the Goddess Halunar.

The statue's head had been completely smashed off, likely the handiwork of iconoclastic cultists. Fortunately, the trigger mechanism to open the hidden passage was integrated into the abdomen. I had to maintain my x-ray vision for a prolonged moment to decode the mechanical lock of this hidden door. According to the internal schematic, the exact switch was located right in… the navel. I know what you're thinking, the architect behind this layout had a rather eccentric taste.

But then again, who doesn't harbor a few fetishes? I just felt a twinge of retroactive guilt for Rachel's younger sister, who had to blindly grope around to find this exact switch. The stone wall behind the goddess shifted smoothly, revealing a low, narrow gap that required a full-grown adult to crawl through. The moment I squeezed inside, I sought out the internal closure mechanism. This one wasn't difficult to locate; a single stone brick protruded noticeably from the wall.

Shoving it back into place caused the door to slide shut. The interior corridor was slightly more spacious than I had anticipated—measuring 1. 8 meters in height and 80 centimeters in width. Anyone with a tall, broad frame would find navigating this shaft an absolute nightmare. Conveniently, I stood at just 1. 7 meters. This tunnel had been constructed a lifetime ago and had likely never seen actual use, leaving it caked in thick moss and a suffocating, musty odor.

The further I advanced, the steeper and more restrictive the shaft became. Gradually, even someone of my shorter stature was forced to hunch over completely. I channeled the Halunar's Eye to gauge the remaining distance, yet my vision was met with nothing but solid earth and fractured rock in every direction. When I finally reached the terminus of the tunnel, the reality of the situation hit me. The exit had been completely caved in.

Whether it had collapsed decades ago or was a direct casualty of yesterday's massive landslide no longer mattered. The bitter reality was that my only remaining option was to turn back, re-enter the main cellar, and face the horde of ghould and toxic Miasma head-on to find another way out. On my trek back through the claustrophobic tunnel, my mind mapped out several scenarios regarding the current state of affairs.

In the best-case scenario, those masked cultists managed to put down a few ghouls before being entirely wiped out. If that were true, all I had to do was systematically eliminate the remaining stragglers. I would survive, and so would the populace down in the town. In the worst-case scenario, one of the robed fanatics somehow managed to breach the basement hatch. A few ghouls escaped into the wild, the cultists unleashed the entire payload of Miasma, liberated the remaining ghouls, and scattered into the wind.

A handful of ghouls would eventually track their way down to the town, butchering dozens of civilians. The entire mountain would become a toxic wasteland of Miasma. In truth, that specific "worst-case scenario" wasn't actually the worst outcome for me personally. In that scenario, I at least wouldn't be forced to duel a swarm of undead monsters within a sealed, claustrophobic arena. I might encounter a few stragglers on my descent to the town, but I wouldn't be completely mobbed.

The absolute worst outcome for me... The absolute worst outcome for me was currently happening.