Affinity: Chaos

Chapter 159: Searching For The Hidden Passage

When the thought of finding something good came to Grey’s mind, he was instantly rejuvenated and the thought of leaving this place early was immediately thrown out of his head, and he started searching through the rooms with more zeal.

After ten minutes.

“Well, there’s nothing in any of the rooms, that means there’s a secret passageway either in the hallway or in one of the rooms.” Grey said.

He was currently walking out of the room at the end of the hallway, he had searched through the other rooms and didn’t find anything. Normally, he would’ve found a box or something by now.

“Can you try to at least estimate which area the treasure might be?” He asked.

Since he couldn’t find anything in the rooms, that means the treasure was either hidden somewhere in the rooms or the hallway, or there was a secret passageway in either of them.

If he had to scrutinize each room, it might take days before he might find the treasure or passageway since he had to go as far as analyzing the smallest detail in the room, and there was also the possibility of not finding anything in the rooms.

Even though Void sensed it while they were in the hallway, it wasn’t precise enough, so there was a chance the treasure was hidden in the hallway or the rooms.

‘I don’t think so, but I could try, maybe I might be able to get an accurate position.’ Void replied after some deliberation.

Grey nodded and kept silent so as not to distract Void, this was the first lucky break he was about to have in a long while now, and he didn’t want to miss it.

Void closed his eyes and sent out his spiritual sense trying to find where the feeling was coming from.

Three minutes went by with the duo not making any movements.

‘I have nothing.’ Void shook his head slowly.

He tried to get the rough location of where the treasure might be, but unfortunately, he couldn’t.

‘Hmm, how about this, take me to each room once again, then I’ll try to feel it. I should be able to know if it’s not there.’ He suggested.

Grey could only nod and accept his suggestion, assuming that Void can sense if the treasure or passageway was not in any of the rooms he entered, it would save him the precious time of searching that place.

He went back to the room he just came out of.

“Here?” He asked.

‘No.’ answered Void after he used his spiritual sense to check the room.

They left the room and went to the next one.

“Here?”

‘No.’

They continued like this until they went through all the rooms, and surprisingly, Void didn’t sense it in any of the rooms.

‘This means it’s in the hallway.’ Void said confidently.

Since he couldn’t sense it in any of the rooms, that leaves only the hallway.

“Yeah. What do you think the treasure might be?” Grey asked in enthusiasm while slowly studying the hallway.

‘I have no idea.’ Void replied.

They continued talking about what they might find while Grey was studying the hallway.

Rumble! Screech!

Grey was currently standing in front of the statue of a dragon, which first pushed itself forward from the wall and dragged along the ground causing a grating sound while also opening a passageway.

“This should be it.” Grey glanced at the statue once again.

Most of the statues in the hallway were that of animals, but what Grey found odd was that over eighty percent of the animal statues were of reptiles, there was that of snakes, lizards, frogs, and most important of all, dragons. He felt maybe the owner of this building had a thing for reptiles.

Grey stood outside the passageway for a while trying to sense if there were any hidden dangers inside before he would make any advances. After waiting for some time and not sensing anything, he took a step forward.

When he stepped inside, his nose was assaulted by a foul stench, and he couldn’t see anything. He quickly created a fireball that floated in front of him, lighting up the way for him.

Crack!

When he took the first step downward, he stepped on something hard that made a cracking sound, he looked at his feet and found out he stepped on the skeleton of a human.

Looking further, he realized almost half of the skeleton’s ribs were missing. He guessed this would probably be the cause of his death.

Grey increased his vigilance and slowly continued walking further. Before taking another fifty steps, he saw another skeleton, this time, the skeleton was missing its entire head.

Void’s expression slowly started turning serious the further they advanced. From what they were seeing, there was something in here that was killing all the people who entered this place.

By the time they passed the hundredth step, they had seen twelve skeletons.

“Can you see the pattern?” Grey suddenly asked.

‘Of what?’ Void looked around trying to figure out what Grey was talking about.

“From how all the skeletons are positioned, it looked like the people were all killed while they were ascending the stairs.” Grey pointed at the most recent skeleton that had one hand on the step ahead of it, it seemed to be trying to crawl upwards.

‘Oh!’ Void exclaimed slightly.

He truly didn’t take note of how the skeletons were, all he knew was that people died, and nothing else.

“There’s also a possibility that I’m wrong though, but we should be extra careful since what killed them might still be here.” Grey added.

‘Uh! Whatever it is, it should be dead by now. There’s no way all these people were killed during one of the times the trial land opened because finding this passageway is very hard.’ Void said.

He didn’t think what killed the people was still alive.

“You remember you stayed in an egg for hundreds of years, right?” Grey asked looking at Void weirdly.

Void smiled awkwardly in reply.

While they were speaking, they soon got to the last step. There was a total of one hundred and fifty steps, and on those steps, they saw twenty-three skeletons in total.

Ahead of them was a tunnel that led further underground.

😉