“Different? What’s different about you? Don’t we all have two eyes, one nose, two ears, and one mouth?” Vinny teased.

“Is that so?” At that, the cloaked figure let out a few strange chuckles. “Do you want to know what I look like beneath this cloak?”

As he spoke, the cloaked figure removed the cloak.

“?!”

Both Vinny and Milian’s eyes widened, their expressions turning ugly as they stared at the cloaked figure’s face.

That face had a nose and a mouth, but no eyes and no ears. And where the eyes should have been, there was instead a huge spiraling vortex.

That empty vortex had no fixed shape, no color, no concept. It was impossible to describe, as though it were something that should not exist in this world at all. Just looking at it made one’s eyes ache with discomfort.

That vortex seemed to connect to another world, another dimension—something that could not be looked at directly, something that could not be explored.

“With a mortal body, I gazed directly upon truth and true knowledge, and became like this. Yet I do not regret it in the slightest. This is merely the small price I paid to cast off the ignorant slumber of mortals and glimpse one corner of the world’s truth.”

“However, the one who truly knows all the true knowledge of this world is my master, the supreme god.”

“It was He who generously revealed this world’s true knowledge to insignificant creatures like us, not Erunes, that deceitful and miserly fraud. That liar told none of His believers and followers anything at all.”

“Pitiful mortals—ignorant, blindly obedient, utterly unaware of the true danger, yet terrified of a broken body that cannot even harm them, cowering as if before a tiger. How laughable.” The cloaked figure let out a bizarre laugh.

That emaciated old man really did not look capable of posing any threat to them.

“See, in your condition, I really wouldn’t have recommended discharging you from the hospital.” Vinny looked at the cloaked figure with an odd expression.

“You mean I’m insane? Perhaps. Then again, if mortals are steeped in ignorance, is living in clarity not a kind of madness as well?” The cloaked figure shook his head.

“But I really am curious. What exactly are you trying to do? You say you don’t even have the strength to kill a chicken. If that’s the case, why did you mislead those bandits into running wild down the mountain?” Vinny raised a brow.

“Running wild? No. Whether from my perspective or my master’s, I have not done any such thing,” the cloaked figure denied.

“You mean the whole offering-up-sacrifices business wasn’t your doing?”

“It was my doing.” The cloaked figure did not deny that.

“? What kind of bizarre new sophistry is that supposed to be??”

“No, this is not sophistry. What you call wrongdoing is merely humanity’s own subjective definition. If humans truly knew the truth of the world and the universe, they would understand just how inconspicuous they are, how small. No one is deliberately paying attention to them. No one cares about them. Much less does anyone harbor targeted malice toward them. All of that is merely something weak creatures fantasize into existence themselves. Their deaths matter to no one at all, no more than withered grass scorched beneath the sun. It is only part of the world’s evolution.”

“What is this guy even talking about?” Milian said with naked disgust. “Is something wrong with his head?”

“What a pity. I had originally thought that the fact you reached this place meant you possessed more wisdom than those ignorant mortals. But no—you are the same as they are. Foolish to the extreme. Beyond teaching. As expected, mortals cannot understand true knowledge. They reject truth. They cannot be saved.”

“With a lunatic like this, what’s the point of talking?” Vinny flicked Frostfang in his hand. “The moment you start debating with this kind of person, you’ve already lost. He’ll drag you into his nonsense. The best approach is to say nothing and send him straight to meet that master of his who doesn’t dare show his face.”

“There is no need to rush so much, you two. I already said just now that I pose no threat to you. I do not even have a Spirit Soul. Or is it that you are afraid of a blind old man on the verge of death?”

“Blind old man??” Milian froze for a moment, then glanced at Vinny, seemingly asking how this old man could know there were two of them if he could not see anything.

“This is my master’s blessing upon His devout believers.” The black-robed old man seemed to see straight through what both of them were thinking.

“Compared to humans now, the people of the Ancient Empire were far smarter than you. But they were also far more foolish.”

“They were different from ordinary mortals. They were very clever, and they discovered traces of the world’s truth. But they were also very foolish. They wanted to follow those traces and take shortcuts, to become the laws themselves. It was like a fool trying to lift the entire continent, forgetting that he himself was standing on the earth.” The black-robed old man walked over to one of the stone pillars and pressed a hand against it.

“You do not understand what I am doing, and so you think I am engaging in some crude, idiotic act like sacrifice. But in truth, this is merely for the rapid replenishment of energy, and life energy is simply the most direct and efficient method. I merely set up an absorption magic array.”

“I killed no one. It does not matter who was used as expendable material to fill Nym-Gud Vine. They simply happened to pass by, and I happened to use them. No one is paying attention to a pile of trash formed from flesh chunks arranged at random. No one cares whether they live or die.”

“Nym-Gud Vine??” Milian felt that the name sounded vaguely familiar, as though she had heard it somewhere before.

“This place has been abandoned for far too long. The magi-energy core forged by the Ancient Empire has long since run dry, and can no longer power Nym-Gud Vine. This was the fastest method. Whether it is you or those imperials, all of you ought to thank me for giving this ruin, which should have remained buried forever, a chance to see the light of day again.”

“Now, the ‘bait’ is already in place. All that remains is the final portion of life energy, and Nym-Gud Vine can be awakened.” The black-robed old man seemed to be murmuring to himself.

The moment those words fell, a shrill crack of splintering bone suddenly rang out. One of the black-robed old man’s arms twisted into an angle no human body could possibly make.

“Ha, hahaha, HAHAHAHAHA!...” Pain tore through the black-robed figure’s nerves, yet what came out was not a scream, but hysterical laughter.

Then the old man’s other arm snapped as well, as though some invisible, formless, blurred force were wringing his body apart.

The sound of cracking bones kept coming from his body, and very quickly he turned into a bloody, mangled mass, like a lump of flesh-smeared mosaic.

“You mortals chosen by my lord Sanares have the honor of witnessing the world’s truth and its real history.” Before the black-robed old man’s neck was twisted apart, he laughed madly. “Be grateful for my lord’s generosity.”

Within the bursts of blood mist, it almost seemed as though his hysterical laughter could still be heard.

PLOP.

The black-robed old man, broken into who knew how many chunks and segments, scattered onto the ground just like that and went still.

The ground was like a swamp. The corpse chunks and blood strewn all over were slowly absorbed into it, just like the corpses of those bandits before.

“An absorption magic array?” Vinny frowned as he watched.

So that was it. The reason those bandit corpses had vanished into thin air earlier was because the black-robed man’s absorption magic array had used them as the “fuel line” for that thing called Nym-Gud Vine?

“This guy... he just died like that?” Milian looked at the scene, suddenly at a loss. She had still been thinking about getting justice for her own people. “And also, is he actually dead?”

Vinny said nothing. Before either of them could think further, the shaking from the ground forced both of them to stop. The earth beneath their feet suddenly lurched, followed immediately by a violent surge of weightlessness.

This is?!

Vinny sensed invisible shadows gradually wrapping around him. When he looked up, he found the ceiling of the secret chamber where he had just been growing farther and farther away. Only then did he realize that the ground beneath them had caved in.

Instinctively, Vinny reached for something to climb back up with, but in the blink of an eye, the opening above was sealed shut again by some writhing colossal thing.

Before the light vanished completely, Vinny saw what it was.

A gigantic green worm, its whole body covered in moss. Every fold and ridge on its body was clearly visible—the kind of enormous thing that would make anyone with a fear of giant objects faint on sight.

The ground beneath them was still dropping at terrifying speed. The two of them could feel it trembling violently. They could not keep their balance, and at the same time they had to endure the overwhelming sensation of weightlessness.

It felt like one of those drop-tower rides from his previous life’s amusement parks—except the weightlessness was dozens of times stronger, the descent so fast it was like plunging in a malfunctioning elevator.

Everything returned to darkness once more. Visibility was pitifully low, and with the mounting weightlessness, it left a person deeply unsettled.

Ignoring Milian shrieking beside him, Vinny focused on sensing whether there was any other presence around them besides himself and Milian. At the same time, he did his best not to let the anxiety erode him, forcing himself to stay calm and think.

So the black-robed red-eyed man had incited those bandits to rob and murder so many travelers just to awaken that thing that looked like a gigantic green worm?

That was Nym-Gud Vine?

Was it a vine or a worm?

Vinny remembered the man mentioning that the Ancient Empire’s magic core, which had supplied it with energy, had dried up because too much time had passed.

But then what was the point of awakening Nym-Gud Vine? The black-robed man himself was already dead. Was the whole point simply to make them fall down here?

While Vinny was still thinking through those questions, the ground beneath them finally seemed to hit bottom. With a massive BOOM, Vinny and Milian were tossed up like food in a frying pan, bounced once off the floor, and then crashed back down.

“Ugh... that hurts!” Milian rubbed her little head pitifully, though no one knew why a person without a head would rub one.

The instant he hit the ground, Vinny scrambled back to his feet. In a place like this, he absolutely could not let down his guard—especially after seeing those things floating in the air, glowing faintly like jellyfish.

“Huh? These are... Ghostlight Mushrooms?” Milian got up while rubbing her waist, and looked in surprise at the jellyfish-like things all around them, shining with a dim blue light.

“Ghostlight Mushrooms?” Vinny had never heard of them.

“You’ve never seen them? They’re a kind of fungus with extremely strong vitality, and they give off a dim light. They look a lot like jellyfish, and have multiple tendrils.” Milian explained, “Their vitality is very strong, but they only grow in dark places without light, and the light they give off can provide a certain amount of illumination. So some basements deliberately cultivate Ghostlight Mushrooms in case of emergencies.”

“These mushrooms should have been cultivated by human hands.”

“Cultivated by human hands? How high up did we fall from?” Vinny looked upward, but there was no light at all to be seen. It was pitch black, as though they had fallen into a bottomless abyss.

“Damn it, can we even get back to the surface from here?” Vinny cursed.

“Looks like we can’t go back that way. The opening above has already been sealed shut, and we still don’t know just how deep we fell. We can only look around and see whether there’s another way out.”

“We... still fell into a trap after all?” The dim surroundings were making Milian deeply uncomfortable.

As a Golden Elf, she had always lived in places full of sunlight. She had never known a place this dark.

“Maybe. But I don’t think that black-robed old man did this just to harm us. If he wanted to hurt us, he had plenty of ways to do it. Why go through the trouble of making us fall down here?” Vinny said. “I saw it just now. That so-called Nym-Gud Vine of his—something that huge would definitely consume an enormous amount of energy if it wanted to move. It probably can only move once. That one move just now was likely it.”

“Nym-Gud Vine... I remember now. I saw it once in an encyclopedia in our library. It’s supposed to be an extremely rare ancient giant vine. They usually grow beneath the earth, and when they squirm, they can cause tremors just like an earthquake.” Milian tried to recall.

“Don’t tell me there’s an entire Nym-Gud Vine clinging beneath all the ground in this area??”

“Could this Nym-Gud Vine have been used by the Ancient Empire as an ‘elevator’?” Vinny guessed.

“What is an elevator?” Milian asked, confused.

“Think of it as a magical device that can transport people between upper and lower levels,” Vinny explained.

“You said these Ghostlight Mushrooms were cultivated by human hands? Mm, there really are a lot of traces of deliberate excavation here.” By the dim glow of the Ghostlight Mushrooms, Vinny walked over to a stone rack.

Nothing was more comforting than seeing something like this. These things were obviously made by people.

Which meant they had not fallen into some unknown natural stratum. This deep underground chamber had most likely been built by the Ancient Empire.

Vinny had a feeling that the secret of Gaflei Fort was hidden here.

“There seems to be a door up ahead?” Milian’s sharp eyesight caught the outline of something in the shadows ahead.

“Hm?” Vinny pulled his gaze away from the stone rack and looked in the direction she was pointing.

“Stay here. I’ll go check it out.”

“Hey! W-wait a second, can’t the two of us... go together?”

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