Transcendent Gene
Chapter 260: Bloodless Crypt [4]

Chapter 260: Bloodless Crypt [4]

From Gio’s attitude thus far, the others somewhat knew that he was dead serious about what he’d said to them earlier. He was letting them come along, but he wasn’t going to wait for them.

He had become progressively more unresponsive like a beast that was approaching the end of a scent trail.

When they broke into the catacombs, he took off. With no regard for anything else, he rushed in the first direction that came to mind. He didn’t stop to let Neriah pathfind them to VNGRD. He just ran.

There was no way to decide which of his three goals was most crucial. In fact, depending on circumstance, the answer changed. All three of them were important for the future, and to Gio as an individual, trying to determine which one to follow was too much of a burden.

He couldn’t prioritize himself over the world or vice versa. It wasn’t a decision he could make, because he was aware of which of the two was more important.

So, he didn’t decide. He allowed the world to make the decision for him.

The catacombs were filled with human bones, but they were not like the ancient ruin of legend where the walls for kilometers on end were formed by the skulls of the dead.

This catacomb was mostly made of dirt and clay-like materials. The human bones in the walls were full skeletons that had been assembled perfectly into the forms they had before their bodies decayed.

It was a much more intimate burial ritual than merely sticking a skull in the wall.

They were everywhere. The most space between two skeletons was merely around five or six meters. Most of them weren’t further than a few feet from each other, and some were even entombed together with their hands still joined.

One could imagine the feelings that went along with each corpse.

These humans, trapped in a world that was not their own, would become prey the moment they went to the surface. They had to find ways to eat and survive, yet this was either an era without Sequences or one when humanity barely understood them.

These people were hopeless. They scavenged for scrap and lived day to day before eventually dying as fate intended for them.

However, within that miserable existence, they still found the time to build this entire structure. They found time to pray for their safe return and to bury their dead with rituals that likely meant the world to them.

Their screams were engraved in the clay. They molested Gio’s ears with horror and melancholy, yet their efforts were for naught.

He could not hear a single thing. He could only see the world that was getting further and further from the one he knew. Without a destination in mind, he rushed through the world of these ancient humans until he had nowhere left to go.

His steps slowly came to a halt in front of a blank wall. It was the first wall he’d seen without a single skeleton embedded in it, but that didn’t change the fact that it was a dead end.

Gio walked up to it and placed his hand on the clay, trying to sense any signs of airflow or other change on the other side of the wall. Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to find a hidden doorway so easily this time.

He turned around. His friends weren’t close, but they weren’t far enough to be out of eyesight. There were only ten or so meters separating them.

’It’s not below. It’s not on the sides. This is just a dead end.’

"Dammit."

Gio sneered at the irony. He had nothing to show for his rushing besides a dead end.

He walked back towards his comrades, shaking his head.

"It’s a–"

"We know," Neriah said with a nod.

"I saw it a while ago, but you didn’t look like you’d want to listen," she continued with narrowed eyes filled with blame.

Nevertheless, she shook her head. They couldn’t understand Gio’s current head state unless he told them more about his blood debt.

"I don’t know if you’re lucky or if your instincts are just that good, but this isn’t a bad place to be."

She pointed left and then pointed right.

"There’s something over there, and there’s something over there. For your sake, I won’t tell you what I think each one is, but we’ll find something in either direction."

Gio nodded and gave her a thankful look.

He knew he was acting out, but there was something wrong with his mental state that he couldn’t fix.

His only choice was to go left or right to see what fate would place in front of him.

His gut told him right.

Precisely because his gut told him to go right, he went left.

He passed through four more corridors leading to what he assumed as northwest. Finally, when he reached another blank wall that looked like a dead end, he saw a door.

It was a crude metal door with bars covering its only window like the door of a prison cell. It looked heavy and poorly secured to the wall, but it was a door carefully crafted by humans who saw it as protection.

The presence of a door mostly ruled out the existence of other people. It would have been torn off its hinges already if people passed through this area.

’Dammit.’

His heart was unfulfilled, but he still carefully pushed the door open and walked into the room behind it.

Books.

So many books that he couldn’t count them all. They couldn’t have been brought over from the human world. Storage Holes didn’t exist at this time.

These were hundreds of books written during the span of time that this human society existed for. Their covers were made of metal and there were thin pieces of translucent material protecting their pages from the outside world.

Nobody had touched them in ages, yet they looked brand new.

Gio had a clear frown on his face. It was hard to feel excitement when he was secretly hoping to be led to vengeance.

Despite that, he walked up to the shelves and picked up a random book, removing the translucent piece and opening the metal cover to see the text within.

’It’s the same language...but different.’

Gio remembered the text on the Bloodless Crypt sign.

’These two characters are the same letters, but they’ve been altered. Did the humans here merge their language with the monsters’ tongue?’

His comrades arrived while he was looking through the book.

"Woah, this stuff is preserved way better than I thought it would be?"

"Be careful with that, Shiro. If you damage anything, I’ll kill you."

"Hey, hey, calm down. If anything, Neriah’s the problem here. You know I’m allergic to reading."

As they spoke their minds, they spread around the room and looked over the things Gio hadn’t seen yet.

He was doing his best to decipher the language he saw so he could make up for his loss, but it wasn’t working well.

Neriah said there was something awaiting him in both directions. Maybe if he just followed his gut...

"Hey."

Neriah’s voice caught his attention. He looked at the book she nudged him with before grabbing it with a raised eyebrow.

"It looks like a dictionary. It might help you," she said.

"I see...thank you."

It would indeed help him. He just needed a little bit of time to decipher the language if he had a collection of all of its words and characters on his hands.

The answers to his questions were reflected in the books all around him. Of that, he was certain.

Only, if time was his requirement...

Gio never stopped to think that perhaps his enemies had the same goals as him.

The secrets of the world and strength. Those two things were present in this crypt, and VNGRD had come to take both of them.

They were already leaving the room on the right that they’d entered some time ago.

Which meant there was only one place where they could be going.

Gio would have the encounter he so desperately wanted soon enough.