Chapter 41: A Lone Man

"Aw, crap, I got lost." A lone man in a brown cloak cursed as he scratched the back of his head.

Then he stopped to think for a quick moment.

"...Or was it just that young guard who got lost, not me?" He thought aloud.

"Yeah...that has to be the case." He nodded in affirmation.

There's no way it could have been him, the man thought with a confident grin.

"Sigh... Where does he get off getting lost? It's the middle of the night, and we're deep in the woods, shouldn't he know how dangerous the current time and place is? And he was meant to be the one leading. Jeez, the young lads of nowadays, huh." The man shook his head in detached pity.

Then he remained still for a minute, his head lowered In a silent thought.

"Should I go after him or... Nah, he should be fine. He's a local guard, I'm sure he's had some training drills on how to safely traverse a dark midnight forest prowling with active beasts and monsters waiting for the right moment to pounce on you at every corner." With that self convincing thought, the hooded man continued his path forward.

One step.

Two steps.

A few more steps, then he stopped again.

"Hmmm... But still..." No matter how he thought of it, something was wrong.

Very wrong.

How wouldn't it be?

He raised his head, pushing his hood back, the man looked up.

It was strange.

The man took in a deep breath, accompanied by a heavy exhale, and lingered silently for a few seconds.

"How the hell did I get here, though?!!" He screamed at the enclosed ceiling he stood under of.

He was in a dark enclosed cave, the ground made of wet mud, and the ceiling dripping with nitric acid. The air was humid and wet; the walls were close and cramp, threatening to close in on him at any minute.

At one point he was walking through the forest at night, with the lush greenery and climbing trees, then at another, he was here.

All of a sudden.

Just like that.

How?

The man rubbed his head and clicked his tongue in annoyance. His gaze darted around the walls and ceilings of the cave with a glare. Coming to terms with it, the man let out a sigh and rubbed the back of his head again.

It doesn't really matter how he ended up down a random cave, or how the guard escorting him simply vanished and got lost. Despite all of that which happened, the man remained composure and was calm.

There were only a number of things that could truly throw him off. And getting lost or separated from the larger group wasn't one of them.

If, by some chance...any chance he was lost... though he definitely... definitely wasn't...but even if by some rare, small, bizarre chance he did get lost, then all he had to do was simply regroup.

That easy.

How hard could it be.

Unfortunately... ridiculously difficult.

It just so happened, this person had his own perverse way of thinking in most cases.

Say for example, excluding the fact that he somehow ended up down a random cave with no apparent knowledge how, one would think the right way back out was to simply turn around and head back. That easy and straight forward.

The cave so far was a straight path. No twist, no turns, no forked roads. A single straight path leading forward and then back.

"I guess I'll just keep going forward then." And so, the man continued his path down the cave, heading further deeper, and further away from the entrance, leaving it behind.

Like this, he continued.

The cave went in deep. It was dark and wet, but the man had a flame crystal large enough to illuminate a path forward for him.

A flame crystal was one of a peculiar type of mana crystal which was cable of accumulating and absorbing certain types of elemental particles from the atmospheres' mana. There were all sorts of elemental mana crystals, each absorbing a single elemental particle from the air.

And as such, such crystals possessed an incredible amount of accumulated a d absorbed elemental mana which could offer a versatile option of uses.

And at the same time, such crystals were somewhat rare and expensive to purchase.

The man held the flame crystal in his hand. It was as small as a piece of pebble, the glow however, rivalling that of a full blown torch.

The larger the flame crystal, the more mana within. The more mana within, the longer and more effective the crystal is.

An elemental crystal the size of a pebble was relatively cheaper than the real deal, but would only last for so long, as the stored manna is quickly used up like fuel. And the crystals were a one use only.

The man's flame crystal, however, didn't seem like it'll burn out anytime soon. So he advanced at an average pace through the cave.

A few times he made a few turns, a few times, the path sloped deeper downwards and forked into different paths. The man made his choice based purely on his guts and traversed the dark wet cave for a while more.

The further in he went, the more the cave structure took a more refined appearance like a tunnel. Against the walls and ceilings were scaffoldings. Rusted, broken metal rails lined the floors.

The cave became a tunnel, then a mine path, a tunnel once more, then finally, a passage.

"A ruin?" The man squinted his eyes as his gaze slid off the walls of the passageways. Slowly, cautiousness made its way into his steps.

He slowly placed a hand of the pummel of his sword hanging down his waist under the cloak. He had his own fair experience with ruins and knew just how dangerous and suprising they could be.

It was said, the older the ruin, the much more chances of danger.

But from the looks of it, the passageways weren't too ancient. A little above eighty years at most. Not up to a full century.

Soon the passages became corridors lit with flame torches hanging off the wall. The man was fortunate enough to come across something like this as the glow from his crystal was reaching it's end.

Placing the dwindled crystal away, he picked a torch off the wall and proceeded further with even more caution.

'There are people down here." The torches couldn't be lit and hung up by themselves after all.

But the question was, what were people doing deep underground in a ruin such as this?

Chances of it being something bad greatly outweighed the chances of it being good.

Along the way, the further in he travelled, the man came across various rooms, caverns, and even in one section of the ruin, there were cells.

In one of the caverns, he came across the corpse of a bald man with a brutally broken neck and cracked skull.

Coming across a dead body, the man's senses were on high alert.

'The wound was obviously caused by a human. There are even signs of battle.'

He slowly lowered his body and observed the corpse. It was at that moment a slight tremor ran through the walls of the carven.

The man pulled his sword tightly and jerked his head. The tremor, like a passing storm, rolled passed and subsided.

Curious at the cause of that, he decided to explore deeper. And he did. He checked out every single room and cells he came across the rest of the way. He wasn't sure how big the ruin structure was and how wide it spread, and just continued.

Minutes later, he heard a scream.