LONE: The Journey Beyond

"So the pathway is finally separating, huh!" Reven mumbled as he looked ahead.

The cave was finally dividing into two parts. The problem here was he couldn't feel anything from either of the routes.

The Ardor was not at all giving any signatures and was acting like dead air without any sentience.

It was simply pitch black without any movement.

"Guys! I think we should stop for a moment and think." It was Aleena who said that.

"You are right. We should stop for an hour and calm our minds and bodies before entering any of the routes." Geena chimed in.

"Okay then! We will stop here and rest."

The group stopped their journey for an hour to rest. They also had some food to satisfy their stomachs.

Finally, after ample rest.

"Now which route shall we choose?" Aimee asked as she looked at Aleena.

"I think let's go with the right one for now.

If we are not able to find anything in the next few hours there then, we will go with the left one."

"Okay then its decided we will move towards the right." Aimee instructed.

Reven looked at the progress bar for the assessment of the area.

= = = = =

[Dungeon Analysis Status]

[Progress- 0.003% >>> 0.008%]

= = = = =

'This is too slow.'

He frowned a bit as the progress of really too low.

He then focused on their journey ahead.

The group then continued their journey towards the right pathway and moved for about 3 hours.

"There is nothing here. Only silence!"

Finally, Ronny couldn't help but curse.

This dungeon run was becoming more and more creepy as time passed.

Hell… after the group entered the right pathway they hadn't met a single monster.

They all were starting to get anxious and frustrated. The silence in the air was stifling to them.

"He is right guys. This is nothing like we imagined. It's getting more and more creepier." Dave said.

"I think we should check the left…"

*HOWL*

Suddenly, a bone chilling howl rang out which sent shivers down the spines of everyone.

Reven tried to say something but was cut off by the howl.

[Alert-!]

[Drastic changes in surrounding Ardor observed.]

As they heard the Alert, everyone swiftly looked towards the direction of the sound and then looked at each other.

"What was that?" Talos asked.

"No idea. But most likely it is coming from the other pathway.

Let's change our route. Maybe we will find something there." Aimee said.

The group swiftly ran backwards and arrived in place where the cave was separating into two within an hour.

"Alright! Be alert from here."

The group then followed the left route and continued.

The second pathway was even more dim than the first one. The eerie feeling it gave them was also more nerve-wracking.

They group still continued on with the journey.

Emma used her [Pyromancy] ability to create a fireball which acted as the light in the dim path.

After about 30 minutes they arrived in front of a 90 degrees right turn.

Chrrr-! Grrr-! Chee-! Chee-!

Shriek-! Shriek-!

As they were about to turn they heard some irregular sounds.

Seeing this Reven signalled the group to stop as he put a finger in front of his mouth and then slowly moved towards the right.

What he saw was a group of trolls.

But…

He frowned as he saw them.

'These guys are a lot stronger than the ones we fought on Africa. Could it be that they become weak if they come to Earth?

Plus, their movements why do they look so irregular. It is as if they are mindless creatures.

This dungeon is getting more and more creepy.'

He swiftly and stealthily arrived in front pf a troll monster and used his arm coated with Ardor as a sword and chopped the head of the troll.

Thud-!

Its head fell down with a thud.

The other trolls saw this and got angry as they started running towards Reven who vanished yet again.

This surprised the trolls.

"Everyone attack. We will kill them all."

Reven announced as the group emerged and attacked the trolls.

There were around 180 trolls that the group was fighting.

Slash-! Slice-! Shinng-!

Twachak-!

The group swiftly cut them down with ease.

It was at this moment…

Wooosh-!

Twachak-!

An arrow came out of nowhere and pierced Parth's back from behind.

*Cough* *Cough*

This shocked all the others.

Then…

HOWLLL-!

They saw the hundreds of monsters suddenly coming from behind their back out of nowhere.

"Shit! Guys Parth is injured and we have hundreds of monster behind us."

"EVERYONE ENGAGE!!!"

The group took out their weapons. And engaged with the incoming monsters.

Ken used his sword and slashed down with [Radiant Sword] ability and his technique and killed the monsters.

Aimee took out her rapier and started killing the monster left and right.

The others also took part in the battle with their weapons.

Meanwhile Parth's [Regeneration] Meta-Human ability kicked in and healed his back.

"Parth use [Meteor Shower]. We will decimate them. I am having a bad feeling here I don't know why." Reven instructed Parth.

"Understood."

Parth then proceeded to use all the corpse they killed as the fuel for his attack and used [Meteor Shower] which fell from the large height of the cave towards the monsters coming towards them.

BOOOM!!!

The attack totally decimated huge numbers of the monsters.

Zoop-!

Suddenly even more monsters came out of nowhere making the group even more confused.

At the same time Reven used a Buddhist Kung-fu palm technique and slapped the new monsters coming to their direction.

BAMMM-!

While he killed the new monsters he noticed something. He saw his own martial art marks on their bodies.

Many of the monsters were the ones that they had killed earlier!!!

This realization made Reven's eyes open wide. He swiftly alerted everyone.

"Guys these monsters are already dead. They are all dead."

"What?" Everyone asked again in shock.

"We are fighting dead monsters." Reven replied back.

They all were stunned for a moment as the number of monsters multiplied out of nowhere again.

Howl-! Howl-! HOWWLLL-!

"Go to hell you motherfu*kers."

Seeing these howls of the dead Reven couldn't hold back anymore as he released his enormous [S-] Rank Ardor and touched the ground and used [Transmutation].

The ground essentially turned into nails and started to come out of the ground and destroyed all the monsters in a single go.

HUFF-! HUFF-!

He then stabilized his breath and moved his back against the wall.

Suddenly…

CLICK-!

Before Reven could put his back against the wall. The entire walls fell leaving the group with another new passage.

= = = = =

[Ding!]

[Dungeon Analysis Status]

[Progress- 0.008% >>> 3%]

= = = = =

.

.

.

A brief period of silent contemplation passed!

"What the heck?" Reven finally muttered in shock.

"This…" The other were also left speechless.

Aleena suddenly started to sweat as her face turned black.

She took a breath and said to everyone else-

"Don't tell me.

This dungeon is a… fu*king…

MAZE!!!"

…..