Chapter 114 Threat 1
After one skeleton approached the door, the metal bar wouldn’t budge.
Jay placed his hand on it to move it to help, but it started heating up. Jay had to remove his hand before it started burning.
“Hm, I guess no humans can enter?”
Thankfully, the inscribed metal bar didn’t react to Jay’s skeletons, so he stood back and had his other three come to help lift it.
The bar was enormous, enough to keep a giant out; even the four skeletons could barely lift it.
*Clong~*
The bar thudded as it hit the ground and the heavy metal door could be opened.
Two skeletons were now required to pull it open, and it groaned lightly due to its immense weight; the thickness of door itself was as wide as Jay’s sword.
Their element of surprise was now gone..
Jay pursed his lips as he cautiously walked past the door; on the other side of the door were numerous lacerations and deep cuts over the metal.
Jay had his skeletons wait a moment at the entrance, forming a wall. He knew there was something out there in the darkness as he saw something moving below the door.
Unfortunately, after waiting for a few minutes – nothing.
With a quiet sigh, he began to move in.
Entering the next room, he found himself on the upper level with some stairs leading down to the right.
“Careful, there’s no railing.” he whispered to Anya who was slightly behind him.
Looking around he found the source of the purple light. Twelve large glass cylinders were filled with a glowing purple liquid.
Each cylinder was huge, like massive industrial storage tanks each of them were two stories high.
The purple fluid didn’t glow too brightly, only illuminating the floor around their bases; the rest of the room was still pitch-black.
The small party of six cautiously creeped down the stairs, slowly so that they could watch out for any threat and retreat in a moment’s notice – but still, nothing attacked.
Jay put his skeletons into a box formation as they got to the ground level, his shield raised to peer out into the darkness. Their shade vision didn’t care about the lack of light.
Jay first approached one of the cylinders, at the bottom was what seemed like a small mound, but he had to take a second look. Stepping closer, he peered inside.
Inside was some unnatural, sickly pure-white flesh at the bottom of the tank; a few soul stones meshed in with it.
It was hard to tell what it was originally, but it seemed that the outside was preserved by the fluid even though the inside had long since rotted.
Different bones and soul stones poked out of the decayed flesh as it turned to a gelatinous blob over time.
“Perhaps the soul stones were implanted into it while it was alive?” he guessed, moving to the next tank to find something similar.
“What the hell is this place?” Anya quickly whispered, sounding scared.
“Some sort of experimental chamber by the looks of it.” Jay said, trying not to sound rude as it was obvious.
On nearby walls were a series of empty sockets, though some had empty soul stones in them.
Jay quickly stashed the soul stones from the wall sockets, adding them to his inventory while Anya remained cautious as she looked around, hoping to see something in the quiet darkness around them. She was still tense from whatever sound they heard.
As they walked deeper into the chamber, they found some large perfectly flat stone tables around the room; some between the glass tanks and others pushed up against the walls.
Some tables were covered with strangely shaped glassware, while others had carved inscriptions and engravings.
Tools of various kinds were on the tables too, and to Jay, some of them looked like they might be spell channels.
Jay analysed some of them, but it seemed that they were cursed with [Helvetia’s Revenge] – they either crumbled to rubble or turned to ashes at his touch.
He was a little defeated as he wanted another spell channel; surely the ones used for these hidden experiments would be of the highest quality.
Some small luminous orbs were on the tables which Jay quickly grabbed, unfortunately after adding mana he found that they were not as bright as his own budget-friendly orb so he simply stored them in his inventory.
[Faded Orb] x 3
The stench was getting worse as they walked, but they could almost see the far the end of the room as there were two more large glowing glass vats – however these were much larger than the previous twelve, each being about the size of Jay’s house.
Jay squinted, seeing something different about them – a large and spiral-shaped life form was inside each of them, tempting Jay to come and look.
Unlike the smaller glass tubes, whatever was inside had at least remained intact, though this didn’t mean it was alive.
Jay stopped himself from rushing, as he still kept his guard up while he moved closer to these massive glass tanks.
After getting closer, he found that there were actually three of these tanks – the third one wasn’t glowing at all however, since the luminous fluid had drained out through a large shattered hole.
It must have shattered a long time ago, as the fluid had all dried up and disappeared.
As they walked closer to the three huge tanks, the smell was getting worse.
They walked by a broken-down sliding wall; one of the ones that the statues would hide behind to ambush; clearly, something was not patient enough for it to open.
Inside were the remains of two dual-dagger statues, and behind them another passage. Jay instantly realised this was where the smell was coming from as a wave of stench assaulted his nose as he passed by; both Jay and Anya’s faces were scrunched up in disgust.
Unfortunately, neither of them could hold their nose as they had their weapons drawn.
*EIIIIIIICH!~*
Suddenly a loud deathly screeching sound rang out from behind them.
Jay turned around to see a massive dark-brown creature with leathery skin climbing up the side of the stairs that they just walked down, easily walking up the side of the wall.