Mage Legend
Chapter 77: Episode 19 Ceiling_2

Chapter 77: Episode 19 Ceiling_2

Lynch encountered trouble; his Lightning Ball accurately struck the enemy, but the Snake-man seemed unfazed, just a sway of its body and the power of the lightning vanished. "Energy immunity!" the Mage exclaimed in his heart.

The Snake-man awakened, raised the spear in its hand, and was about to thrust it at the Mage in front of him. To him, the Mage’s flimsy robe was as thin as paper, and piercing the Mage’s body with the sharp spear was just a matter of moments.

The Lightning Ball exploded.

The Snake-man was suddenly pushed backward by the gust of air, slammed against the stone wall behind it. Its fine scale armor shattered into pieces, with scales from its chest and abdomen flying in the cave with the airflow. Now its front half was like it had been struck hundreds of times with a Wolf Fang Club, turning into a bloody mess.

Lynch still couldn’t understand why his Lightning Spell had the effect of an air explosion...

The Snake-man was indeed incredibly tough and resilient; even after taking such a heavy blow, it didn’t die immediately. Although it could no longer hold its weapon, and its body was swaying, it still opened its mouth wide, preparing to call out.

A Crossbow Arrow shot from around the corner, knocking out two of its sharp fangs, embedding itself deep in the Snake-man’s upper jaw, a gush of blood spraying from its mouth. Before the Snake-man could utter an "Ah~~" from its throat, another Crossbow Arrow followed swiftly, piercing through its neck. The Snake-man threw its head back, clutched its throat wound, and fell.

Lynch let out a quiet sigh of relief: Had the guards here alarmed the monsters inside, escape would’ve been the only option. He turned back and gave Nimo, who fired the arrows to finish the enemy, a thumbs-up, "Well done."

Nimo blushed, quickly lowered his head to reload his rapid-fire crossbow.

The three moved the corpse aside and continued forward. Before leaving, Deluo didn’t forget to strap the two Bloodletting Spears on his back; he wasn’t picky about having more weapons now.

The further they went, the brighter the cave became, and the passage gradually widened. The stone walls were no longer the miserable scene left by brute force destruction but showed clear signs of repairs. The jagged protrusions were polished down, turning the passage into a tube-like shape.

Lynch touched the slightly glistening wall, feeling it sticky on his hand. Pulling back his fingers, a trail of translucent slime stretched between his fingers and the wall. The strange substance coated all the walls. If the Mage hadn’t been sure that it’s just solid stone beneath the slime, he would’ve thought they were in some massive creature’s throat.

The deeper they went, the more slime there was, as if a thick gelatinous layer covered the whole passage, and its stickiness grew stronger. One of the spears on Deluo’s back accidentally scraped the slime and got stuck. Deluo had no choice but to leave it on the wall.

Luckily, the slime wasn’t abundant enough to hinder their progress. After walking about eight hundred meters, the Mages arrived at a high platform. It was a large vertical pit, like an atrium, with a diameter of about two hundred meters. It extended straight down from over thirty meters above to the deep underground. A spiral staircase carved on the inner stone wall of the pit led downward, with passageways leading outside at intervals, each marked by a small platform about three meters square. Numerous simple elevators made of ropes and pulleys connected platforms at various heights vertically.

They were standing on one of these small platforms. Fortunately, the entire pit was silent, with only faint chants coming from the very bottom. Lynch strained his ears but couldn’t make out the language. He looked down; there was no one at the pit’s bottom, just piles of mining carts filled with silver. A giant-sized entrance lay at the lowest level of the stone wall, where the faint chants with bright flickering flames drifted from.

Lynch gestured for everyone to move quietly in stealth, with the three of them moving swiftly along the shadow of the stone wall down the extending stairs.

Throughout the descent, they encountered no obstacles, but the sight at the bottom of the pit left them stunned. Apart from the carts full of ore parked in the center, the entire surrounding walls were covered with hanging corpses.

Bloody corpses.

Over a thousand bodies of various sizes hung with hooks on the stone wall, their skin and flesh ripped and shredded, loosely hanging over exposed white bones. The bodies had cuts, crushes, slashes, whirls, burns, frostbites, some with wounds that even Lynch couldn’t identify their cause. The appearance of these corpses made it impossible to discern their races when they were alive, leaving only skeletal sizes for estimation: there were towering ogres, human-sized corpses; Lynch even noticed some with elven pointed ears; there were small goblins too; the sturdier built ones were likely dwarves, perhaps the missing Gray Dwarves; Nimo even found some resembling Gnomes. Even the Dark Elf wasn’t spared, as Deluo noticed a few black-skinned, silver-haired "meat lumps."

What was most frustrating was that these bodies appeared to have died elsewhere, only to be dragged and hung here, and then frequently attacked by the creatures by various means, leading to this gruesome scene.

Lynch felt he was about to vomit; Deluo’s face turned a bit green, while Gnome Nimo directly returned the three days’ worth of rations to the earth. After numerous deep breaths to steady themselves, they finally shifted focus from the bodies. At that moment, the chanting from the cave began to slowly resurface.

Lynch drew a Magic Scroll from his backpack, wore a serious expression, and was the first to enter the lit cave. Deluo and Nimo quickly followed.

"Someone’s about to have bad luck," thought the warrior suddenly...

---------------------------------------------------

Highly recommend a friend’s book, "Hidden World", by the Daoist Xunqing.

http://www.cmfu.com/showbook.asp?bl_id=54278