Chapter 96: What Lies Beneath

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Ring-a-ling...

A bell suddenly began to sway, shattering the deathly silence of the underground hall, as though something had been awakened.

A disturbance came from within the walls.

Scratching, squeaking, and the chaotic sounds of countless things scurrying about poured from inside them.

Yet before three seconds had passed, an unfamiliar but soothing melody, played on instruments such as pianos and pipe organs, rose from the darkness and calmed the agitation within the walls.

But the several survivors who had finally escaped the room were drenched in cold sweat at the sound.

“Damn it... We can’t escape now.”

The man at the front had bloodshot eyes. After days of torment, his mind had already begun to fracture.

The four survivors behind him were in no better condition.

If not for the even greater terror and fierce desire to survive suppressing their emotions, they would certainly have revealed how abnormal they had become.

The man surveyed the area, quickly taking in everything around him.

It was a lavishly decorated underground hall. Smooth marble covered the floor, while the walls were adorned with exquisite decorations and sculptures.

Even the least conspicuous pillars were richly artistic. Their upper sections curled like thorny vines, while twisted stems and leaves adorned their lower halves.

The dim, cold light radiating from the luminous pearls embedded in the pillars kept the place from falling into complete darkness.

Overall, it resembled an opera house.

An old, aristocratic opera house covered in dark brown stains.

The smell in the air was especially vile. The unmistakable stench of rot mingled with feces, excrement, and sour sweat, nearly enough to make a person faint.

The man had no time to care about that. Enduring the dizzying music, he swept his gaze across the hall.

Relying on his earlier memories, he recalled the direction of the dreadful creature’s footsteps when it had discarded their lanterns.

His eyes settled on a dark stone archway whose destination could not be seen.

If nothing went wrong...

It led outside.

As for how they would escape once they got there, they had no idea—and no energy left to think about it.

Even if they died...

They had to die outside.

“Let’s hide for now...”

The man made his decision.

He knew that once the bell rang, they—exhausted, hungry, and mentally unstable—would have no chance of escaping in the short term.

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The others nodded one after another. None had much objection, nor the strength to raise one.

Perhaps Fortune had taken pity on them. After an extremely brief search, requiring almost no thought, they miraculously spotted a huge curtain beside the opera house wall.

The curtain, which had probably once been red, had fallen to the floor. One side of the rod supporting it had broken, and it clearly had not been tended to for a very long time.

They should be able to hide there without being discovered by those loathsome creatures.

As the thought crossed his mind, the man urged the other survivors to hurry behind the curtain.

If nothing unexpected happened, according to the habits of those terrifying creatures, they would soon gather in the hall and bring up the survivors who had completely broken down, beginning a ravenous feast...

After the feast ended, they would leave and descend to an even lower level...

The man did not know what the monsters went underground to do, but without a doubt, that would be their last chance to flee.

However, just then, the screech of opening doors suddenly rang out.

It came from the passages leading through the various stone archways.

The man’s expression stiffened, and he was even more grateful that he had not chosen to stake everything on that route.

The direction of escape contained those horrifying creatures as well.

He hurried his pace, but after only two steps, a piercing pain suddenly shot through the sole of his foot.

Something sharp seemed to have pierced his left sole, breaking through the skin and sinking into the flesh.

Blood...

He was bleeding.

His eyes had adjusted to the gloom enough for him to see that a sharp fragment of bone had pierced his foot, and blood was flowing from the wound...

His mind went blank for a moment.

Then indescribable rage and unwillingness erupted within him.

“Damn, damn, damn, damn...”

The sound of dragging footsteps began to emerge. Something was approaching from every direction.

The man clenched his teeth, forcibly suppressing his fear and swiftly regaining his composure.

Enduring the pain, he pulled the sharp bone from his sole. He did not throw it away; instead, he placed it directly in his mouth.

Then he gripped the wounded foot with his left hand, covering the bleeding hole.

At the same time, he tore open his collar with his right hand. With a sharp rip, he tore off a strip of cloth, then dropped to the floor in an awkward posture and vigorously wiped away the bloodstains.

When he felt the traces had been removed sufficiently, he stuffed the blood- and dust-stained cloth into his mouth.

After doing all this, he could sense that the monsters were almost upon them...

No more than ten seconds at most.

There was still time...

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He glanced at the floor and, after confirming that no further accidents lay along his path, immediately pushed himself up with his right hand. Grabbing his foot with his left, he prepared to hop behind the curtain on one leg.

But then, as though he had thought of something, he stared at the curtain less than three meters away and clenched his teeth hard.

“Damn, damn, damn, damn... Why me?”

His eyes widened in fury as uncontrollable emotions surged through him.

In the end, after a brief hesitation, he abandoned the spacious curtain as a hiding place. Instead, he rolled beneath a dining table that appeared to have been used recently.

During the process, he saw several human remains scattered across the table.

Among them was a hand that looked vaguely familiar, one he seemed to have seen before, now chewed almost beyond recognition...

For some unknown reason, two fingers were missing from it.

The owner of that hand...

“My servants...”

The man immediately remembered the two slaves who had accompanied him through the darkest moments of his life.

The two fingers had been lost while protecting him.

And yesterday...

One of those servants had died in his place.

At that moment, beneath the dining table, where the stench was overwhelming, the man’s heart filled with emotions too complicated to name.

Despair, fear, anger, regret...

But more than anything else, there was a crushing sense of helplessness—the realization that he could do nothing to change the scene before him.

Their lanterns had been destroyed. The scrolls, crafting table, and all their supplies had been forcibly confiscated.

Then, like livestock, they had been “kept” in the dungeon.

Each time, several people at minimum and more than a dozen at most were slaughtered little by little.

Nearly a hundred slaves had been completely devoured yesterday.

Every day, every hour, every second, they heard desperate screams that tormented what little sanity they had left.

By tomorrow at the latest, the rest of them would be eaten clean.

However, as several staggering figures entered the hall, fear crushed every thought from the man’s mind.