The night was getting late, and no one wanted to go underground at this time. Dreisser, who looked like a clergyman and a mage, fiddled around the camp as if to set up some sort of vigilance and expulsion formation, while Tuttle assumed a strange pose—one I could not judge based on a superficial knowledge of the major religions in reality—and his body was in a state of mystical meditation.

I wasn't good at formations, so I didn't get involved in the set-up, but helped the Collins trio set up camp. Afterwards, we had dinner around the campfire. Leaning against a relatively smooth rock, I took out my notebook and listened to the conversation of the others, while using the "Gomono" technique to control the pen to write and draw on the page.

"Seungwoo, are you taking notes?"

Tuttle was talking about the precautions for tomorrow's exploration, when he suddenly drew the other people's eyes to me, and the banter on his face was obvious.

"Well, it's just something like a diary. I replied as I controlled the trajectory of the nib, "Do you need information on the location of the groundwater?"

"Oh, that's disrespectful. ”

It wasn't the warrior monk who answered me, but the Dreiser's, unpleasant, hoarse voice coming from under the mask. Why would a simple and resolute monk be willing to deal with these priests who exude an eccentric aura? Anyway, when they were resting, I was able to return to the real world and wake up on my dorm bed.

On the morning of December 5, a group of six people entered the mine. Sensitive and athletic, Tuttle played as the opener with almost no weight, Collins followed him, ready to support, then me, then Acheson, the gloomy and mysterious priest Dreiser, and finally Mallory, who was lightly armed and responsible for the break.

One night didn't make the mine change as drastically as the haunted locations in those horror movies. With a detailed map and my experience, the team was able to inspect the main tunnels and caves in less than half a day.

The next thing to explore, then, are the branches that extend into some of the natural cave systems. I had to concentrate, the sword case was taken out, and the notes were taken back into my pocket.

……

On a cold and windy night, the light and warmth brought by the bonfire make people especially nostalgic. But there were only five figures sitting next to the campfire, five tired, hungry, silent adventurers.

Mallory is missing.

I have to admit that my heart is not as firm and cold as I imagined, and the divine sense that I rely on in exploring the land of dreams is not so powerful and reliable. Is there something wrong with my memory? I don't know.

Revisit today's experience. Our team had their own unique skills, and we were far from being able to move faster than ordinary miners, and by about twelve o'clock in the afternoon, we had basically walked through the main passages in the mine. After a short break and lunch, we walked through one of the branches into a deeper and darker place.

Tuttle at the front, Collins after him, and the mysterious priestess Dreiser, each wielded an eternal torch with magic attached. The flickering light of the fire casts our shadows on the uneven rock face, and the black shapes twisted and swaying like the ghost of the forest are inevitably reminiscent of some evil legends.

The sloping cave isn't too narrow, but the rugged rocks and the occasional crevasses still cause a lot of trouble. Tuttle and I didn't care much about this little obstacle, but Acheson with his weight was different from a priest with a relatively weak body. Overall, though, with the help of the two of us and Collins, the march of the team was not delayed for long.

Further on, we came across a structure that resembled a "fork in the road". The intricate passages of the rock meander in several different directions—not just horizontally, but vertically—and intertwine like cobwebs. At the same time, the dry, cloudy air gradually became damp, and the faint sound of dripping water could occasionally be heard.

For some reason, my sense of consciousness was suppressed in the face of the darkness that took up most of the space, though it was still enough to envelop the six of us. This makes me extremely uneasy. I told the others about it, but the gloomy priest Dreiser, who told me in his or her unpleasantly hoarse voice, was quite normal.

Although the environment was obviously not suitable for digging into the roots, in any case, my superior mental strength was able to record the solution of this labyrinth, and Dreiser also showed a little bit of runic magic that was completely different from Dao - in short, we didn't have to worry about getting lost.

At this point, the traces of man-made excavation were almost invisible, and the group of six seemed to gradually penetrate into some kind of eternal chaos. The size of the cavern gradually narrowed, and the viscous darkness seemed to have substance, like the digestive tract of some terrible beast, pressing at us from all directions, as if to crush and crush the bodies of these small mortals.

"I think we have to get closer, don't get too far away from each other. ”

Tuttle suggested. There was certainly nothing wrong with his words, but no one knew that we should have turned around at this time, if not earlier.

As time passed, the darkness became more and more oppressive to my consciousness, so much so that my mind seemed to be affected by some kind of indescribable influence. Although the route is winding, it can be said to be northward in general – that is, we are approaching, even deepening, beneath the fabled deserted plateau. Does that darkness have a mind of its own? It still refuses to retreat in the light of the fire, as if it were ...... It's like...... When Feifei and I tried to bathe the cat, the latter looked extremely reluctant. Wait, am I wandering? Ah, I really shouldn't, I have to concentrate at this time, right? No, do I really have a consciousness of their own......?

No. That's not true. There seems to be a problem with memory. Fragmentary memories and concepts form a maelstrom in my mind, and new non-existent creations are being thrown out of it one by one. I saw, strictly speaking, perceived, some monster with crab-like eight-legged limbs and an elk's head, and before the stress reaction could take effect, a lich girl with a huge scythe on her shoulder popped up, and the beautiful body supported the brain in some kind of culture fluid.

Later, things became more and more abstract and weird, and there was no connection between them that could be logically thought about. One of the things worth describing is a "short play" of more than ten minutes, in which the characters are roughly a young man named "Underworld" and an unknown girl. The latter seems to have an insatiable hunger, greedily devouring bones of unknown origin. Pale broken bones loomed in the rotting flesh, and these things disappeared into the little cherry mouth at breakneck speed. When the young man "returned"—I surmised, but not very clearly remembered—the maiden pounced on the man like a coquettish man, in exchange for the latter's doting smile and embrace. That scene, to be honest, was really warm and sweet.

What's even more bizarre is that I don't feel the slightest discomfort in these absurd things, and the chic [Void Primordial] "Holy Fetus" is as safe as ever—that is, I haven't gone mad, my Dao heart is still perfect, and my real body is still dominated by my consciousness, and I can easily jump and jump on the treacherous terrain in the cave, like a leisurely walk.

That's all I can recall about that experience. Eventually, it was Dreiser, who was the first to say that Mallory was missing, and we began to walk cautiously back, shouting his name as we went, but all we received was a distorted echo of many reflections—we searched nervously for half an hour before finally deciding to retreat back to the surface.

Sitting around the campfire, I briefly described the anomaly that had happened to me, but everyone else shook their heads, indicating that they had not experienced a hallucination other than unusual tiredness and consequent distraction. Dreiser immediately contacted the other clergy in the city with runic magic, and I—though I was worried about what happened to Mallory, and wondered if she was also engulfed in some kind of dark abyss like the lost city beneath the sea, and what mystical connection it all had to do with me—had to return to the waking world to face Friday's lesson.