Chapter 47
As soon as Edwin jumped, the other five waited for a few seconds to see if anything happened with the portal.
"Are you coming or will I have to do everything by myself? " Edwin asked while poking his head through the portal.
Seeing that their companion was fine, Cyrus was the second to cross it, followed by the others seconds after.
What they found inside was a tunnel made of pure blue energy that occupied almost all of their field of vision, with the only exception being the entrances on both sides of it.
After a few seconds of inspecting the tunnel and its characteristics, and seeing that nothing was coming from the other side, the group decided to continue walking slowly towards the exit without letting their guard down, as they didn't know if there could be an ambush ahead.
In no time, they reached the other side of the tunnel, and what they found was a door.
A metallic green door stood in their way. It didn't look very sturdy. If anything, it looked like any one of them wouldn't have any problem opening it by force, as there were a few rusted areas.
"I guess we have to open it," Arthur suggested as the group stopped in front of the door.
Then, he stretched his hand to the door's handle and gently opened the door, which squeaked a bit due to its bad condition.
Behind the door, the group found what looked like a dark storage room that was only illuminated by the blue-dim light that came from the tunnel. Inside the room, there were a few cardboard boxes and shelves filled with what looked like cleaning tools and products.
Before entering the room, the group looked from inside the tunnel, trying to see if there was any kind of ambush in the room.
"Light," Arthur whispered, as a ball made of pure light appeared in his hand before floating toward the center of the room.
Thanks to the new source of light, the group could see that there was nothing dangerous inside the room, so they decided to enter it. There, they found that everything looked old, with mold on the cardboard boxes and the shelves filled with rust and dust.
"These things are pretty weird," Edwin said as he examined a box filled with sponges.
"We are in another world. It only makes sense for things to not look similar to our world. " Denise replied.
"It seems like it's been a long time since someone stepped into this room," Arthur said as he inspected the room.
"There is another door there; let's see where it gets us," Cyrus suggested as he pointed to the opposite side of the room.
With a nod from his companions, Cyrus walked to the door and opened it. What he found was a corridor with white tiles on the floor, and filled with doors on both sides. When he looked at the doors, he noticed that each door had a number on it and that the room from where they came had the number 32 on it, while there were two doors without a number, which were the rooms at the ends of the corridor.
"More rooms and more doors, where should we go?" Cyrus asked.
"We have to go up," Raziel said.
"What? How do you know that? " Gar asked his daughter.
"Can't you feel it? There is something above that is calling for us. " Raziel said while looking up.
After saying that, the rest of the group stayed still, with some of them closing their eyes to concentrate, trying to feel what Raziel was feeling.
"She is right, I feel it too," Denise said, supporting Raziel's words.
After a few seconds, all of them managed to sense the same.
It was weird, almost as if a voice was constantly whispering in their minds that they should, no, that they needed to go up.
"We should check all these rooms to see if we can find the way up to them," Edwin suggested.
"Don't you worry, my friend. The Great Arthur is here to make things easier for everyone. " He said as the light began to concentrate in his hands.
The light gained intensity with every second until it suddenly took the shape of various spheres, which separated themselves and passed through the different doors. At the same time, Arthur's eyes were shining with the same light as the spheres.
"Nothing. Nothing. Empty. Trash. Nothing. Here it is. " Arthur said as he stayed still, before pointing at a door. "That door leads us to some stairs that lead up, while the rest appear to be storage rooms with nothing interesting on them, so I believe we can simply go above."
"Works for me," Edwin said as he neared the door, and opened it, and as Arthur had said, he found some stairs that went upstairs.
"Let me go first. We don't know what kind of dangers are ahead, and I'm more durable than you, so I will have more possibilities of surviving an ambush. " Gar suggested Edwin.
"As you wish," Edwin replied, making a reverence and letting Gar get to the front of the team.
With that, Arthur made his light ball float above the group so they could see what was happening around them, and they began to go upstairs.
The stairs were not very long, and when they reached the top, they found another door pretty similar to the first one that they had found, with the main difference being that this one was closed.
"Anyone knows how to open this thing without making any noise?" Gar asked the group.
The rest of the group looked back at Gar, as it was obvious that none of them had ever before encountered that kind of door, so they didn't know how to open them.
"That's what I supposed," Gar replied while laughing.
Without thinking about it twice, Gar stepped back a few steps before kicking the door with all his strength, which caused the door to be ripped from the door frame and sent flying a few meters ahead.
"I mean, I didn't know how to open it, but I definitely could make it without that much noise," Denise said while laughing.
"Too bad, it is already open. You can try it with the next one. " Gar said laughing as he stepped into the room that he had just opened.
As he did that, he found himself in a gigantic area. It looked like a small town, but at the same time, it was inside a bigger building. He saw a few signs with words such as "clothing store" or "discounts of 50% if you get three."
They had yet to realize it, but the group had just stepped into a mall.