Chapter 431: The Dark Staircase

"Well, if you put it that way," Delaford said, taking advantage of his short stature to squeeze to the front. He reached over the edge of the pod and poked the shell of the desiccated corpse inside. "It does feel a bit like wood."

The sound of the goblin tapping on the corpse’s shell rippled in echoes through the gloomy space, making the atmosphere a little creepy. But the bodies here were well and truly dead; there was no shocking scene of them rising from their caskets.

"’Guess he’s a true ’Plant Person,’’ Ron cracked a pun that worked in several languages, repeating it in both Common and the Elf Language, which made Aive laugh. ’Looks like his cultivation pod malfunctioned and cut off his nutrient supply.’"

Ron carefully observed the space around the desiccated corpse. He soon summoned a Mage’s Hand and pulled several tubes from the body’s clenched fist. "I’m not the one who yanked these out," he added.

Ron hadn’t been the one to disconnect these devices, which resembled thick IV tubes. No fluid had likely passed through them in ten centuries; they were now completely filled with mold. If the occupant had still been alive, an injection of that would not have been pleasant.

So he must have pulled them out himself. But without its source of nutrition, the creature couldn’t have survived for long, ultimately dying inside the very device meant to sustain its life.

Ron and the others proceeded to open several more of the pods. The fate of the bodies inside was largely the same, and even their death poses were similar: each one clutched the life-sustaining tubes in their hands. As they examined more specimens, Ron noticed a few exceptions. Some had apparently decided to risk plugging the tubes back in at the very end, but this only served to make their deaths look even more gruesome.

"Their entire bodies were devoured from the inside out," Jilannis said softly, looking down at the creatures who had gambled on a desperate hope. "The fungal strain in these pipes has no interest in flesh and blood, but it has a particular fondness for them, being plants themselves."

"An incident on this scale suggests a problem with the storage units, or perhaps a leak in the delivery pipes that allowed this fungus to contaminate their lifelines."

"But why didn’t they just climb out?" Anastina asked, curious. "They’re plants, right? Can’t they fend for themselves?"

The Spore People, for example, enjoy fresh meat, bones, and blood, but they can also absorb nutrients from soil and various organic matter. Starving to death is hardly an option for them.

The Elf Mercenary scanned the fragile ecosystem within the cavern. It was delicate, but surviving in it seemed perfectly possible.

At the very least, they should have died out there, not lined up in these metal coffins.

"Anna, this environment only formed in the centuries after they were gone, remember?" the Half-Elf Warrior reminded her. "Back then, they were probably facing bare metal walls, floors, and ceilings. Assuming they couldn’t resort to cannibalism, it might have actually been more comfortable inside."

"But..." Anastina looked up toward the cellar door above. Her meaning was clear: if this whole place was just a larger metal coffin, why didn’t they leave?

The cave is just outside. Surely there was something to eat out there.

"You’ve forgotten how we got in. This entrance can only be opened by a ’Lord’—understand?" the Vampire explained to the one who was once his kin.

"I don’t," the Elf refused to accept such a simple explanation. "So what was the point of this whole setup? Was it some kind of mass ritual suicide? Is the so-called Revival Fortress actually a giant tomb?"

"You can question me, but you can’t question nature!" the Goblin Hunter retorted. "I’m not the one who named it! I’m sure there’s a reason behind it!"

"Alright, that’s enough," Ron interrupted with a wave of his hand. He walked back to the first pod they had opened, hands on his hips, and took stock of all the units they had dug out of the dirt—both opened and unopened. "As a faction—I won’t go so far as to call them a civilization—don’t you think this number is a little... small?"

There were two hundred pods here at most, which is small even for a village. Given their limited numbers, could these Plant People really have had a system sophisticated enough to build these pods?

These weren’t simple wooden coffins. Even to Ron’s eyes, they had a futuristic feel to them!

"You mean..." As a fellow intellectual, in a way, Jilannis was always on the same wavelength as Ron. "...they have more of their kind elsewhere?"

"Spread out and search!" Victoria immediately sprang into action. "And there’s no storage unit for their required nutrients here, either. There has to be another chamber nearby!"

"Should I try asking again?" A viridescent glow began to emanate from Delaford, but it quickly faded. It seemed this environment wasn’t suitable for the goblin to Commune with Nature again.

Fortunately, with a clear objective, the group had more methods at their disposal. Under the gaze of Victoria’s twilight-filled eyes, a large door, perfectly blended with its surroundings, revealed itself. Ron heaved it open, exposing a spiral staircase in the darkness beyond. It was wide enough for at least five grown men to walk abreast, and it snaked down into the unknown.

"There’s a Secret Door about forty meters down," Victoria said. Her Magic was fading, but she had already seen everything she needed. "And another one sixty or seventy meters below that."

"Forty meters, then another sixty... We’re already deep underground. That’s getting close to the Dark Territory, isn’t it?" Sera frowned. She took a piece of equipment enchanted with Light Magic from Ron and led the way down. "Everyone, stay close and watch what’s above you. This is no place to be careless."

Creatures like bats love to hang from the ceilings of dark places like this. Bats would be one thing, but if some other monster were lurking in the shadows above, it could deliver a fatal blow.

"Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on things up here for you," the Sword-Singing Lion Armor chimed in. "And don’t you worry about the Dark Territory. While we say the upper layers are close to the surface, even the shallowest parts are still measured in kilometers. You want to get to the Dark Territory? We’ve barely scratched the surface!"