Ahhh! Ahhh!
Various miserable screams echoed throughout the massive chamber, mixing with the sounds of weapons striking flesh and bones breaking under overwhelming force.
Blood splattered across the walls and stained the cold stone ground as bodies continued to collapse one after another.
Organs were scattered everywhere.
Crushed skulls and shattered bone fragments littered the ground, while severed limbs lay among pools of blood.
The entire chamber had become a scene of brutal, merciless, and bloody slaughter.
Those who had attempted to resist were killed without hesitation, while those who tried to flee were pursued by the undead and dragged back into the massacre.
Within a short period, the once crowded chamber had become almost completely silent.
Standing at the center of the bloody massacre was a single surviving figure.
His entire body trembled violently.
Blood covered him from head to toe, and his knees repeatedly threatened to give way beneath him as he struggled to remain conscious.
"P-Please... d-don’t..."
His voice was barely audible.
Both of his arms had been cleanly severed from his body, leaving blood pouring from the wounds.
A deep gash stretched diagonally across his chest, exposing the ruined flesh beneath and leaving several of his organs partially visible.
His breathing was weak and uneven.
Every breath caused unbearable pain to spread through his battered body, yet he desperately remained conscious because he knew that unconsciousness would mean death.
Thoren stood before him without the slightest change in expression.
"Where are your leaders?" Thoren asked coldly.
The injured man trembled harder.
"I... I don’t know..." he muttered.
Blood dripped from his smashed mouth with every word.
Most of his teeth were missing, while his gums had been violently ruptured and swollen from the earlier attack.
Thoren narrowed his eyes.
"Where did they go?"
The man swallowed painfully, his throat trembling as he struggled to answer.
"I know nothing of what the guild is planning"
His voice shook as he continued.
"But only the directors know what it was."
"And where are the directors?"
"They... They escaped..."
The moment he said those words, his expression twisted with bitterness.
The three directors had abandoned them.
They had knowingly left everyone behind as disposable pawns to face this monster. All those promises had been nothing more than bait.
They had promised them rewards.
They had promised them clues regarding their trials.
But in the end, those promises had only been used to convince them to throw away their lives.
The realization filled his heart with fury.
He remembered everything he had done during his three years inside the Bleeding Desert.
He had crossed moral boundaries he once believed he would never cross.
He had participated in terrible acts simply because he believed the Slave Trade Guild would eventually provide him with the clue necessary to complete his trial.
He had convinced himself that everything was worth it as long as he could eventually return to the surface.
Now, lying helplessly before death, those choices suddenly felt meaningless.
His heart burned with shame and anger.
He was a Level 38 Hunter.
He had survived three years within the Bleeding Desert.
He had endured countless dangerous hunts, survived encounters with powerful beasts, and watched many companions die along the way.
Who would have thought that his decision to join the Slave Trade Guild would ultimately lead him to such a brutal end?
A strange thought suddenly entered his mind.
’Perhaps... this is what we all deserved.’
For some reason, the thought brought him an unexpected sense of calm. He had done terrible things because he was afraid of never returning home.
Yet now, death had finally caught up with him.
Suddenly, his vision began to blur.
The chamber seemed to tilt violently around him.
His remaining strength disappeared from his body, and his knees finally buckled beneath him.
Thud!
His body collapsed onto the blood-soaked ground.
’Am I dead?’
That was his final thought before darkness slowly swallowed his vision until everything disappeared.
For several moments, Thoren simply stood there.
His deep blue eyes swept across the numerous corpses surrounding him as he was lost in thought.
He had performed both physical questioning and soul questioning, yet he had found almost nothing useful.
The result only confirmed something important.
The Slave Trade Guild’s Holy Son and executives were extremely cautious.
They had clearly separated their operations in such a way that their ordinary members knew almost nothing about the guild’s true agenda.
Shaking his head, he took a deep breath.
"I don’t believe I can’t find a clue to how they escaped," he muttered, his voice filled with confidence.
Since they had not escaped through the front tunnel, that meant there had to be another tunnel leading outside.
There was no way the three directors would willingly trap themselves inside their own hideout without preparing an alternative escape route.
Without hesitation, Thoren released his perception to its limit.
The moment his perception fully spread throughout the hideout, every nook and cranny of the underground structure appeared clearly within his mind.
He could sense the various chambers, hidden passages, storage rooms, tunnels, and countless objects scattered throughout the massive underground complex.
Even the smallest disturbance failed to escape his perception.
He ignored the inhuman experiments taking place inside some of the caves.
By now, he had become accustomed to the inhuman actions of the Slave Trade Guild.
After everything he had witnessed since his encounter with the Slave Trade Guild, very little could shock him anymore.
He had even expected to find something worse.
Suddenly, his perception caught something unusual and his eyes narrowed slightly.
Without hesitation, he moved toward the location. A moments later, he entered what appeared to be an ordinary storage room.
Wooden shelves filled the chamber, with countless boxes and containers stacked across them.
At first glance, there was nothing unusual about the room.
However, Thoren’s perception immediately revealed something hidden behind the shelves.
He stepped forward and moved the wooden shelves aside.
Behind them was a narrow tunnel.
The entrance was barely wide enough for a normal person to pass through, and darkness completely swallowed the passage completely.
’Found you.’
A faint smile appeared on Thoren’s face.
Using the same formation as before, the undead Storm Tyrant and the undead Guild Captain moved to the front and entered the dark, narrow tunnel.
Thoren followed closely behind while the remaining undead maintained their positions around him.
The tunnel was cramped and uncomfortable, with rough stone walls pressing closely on both sides.
After traveling several meters, however, the path ahead suddenly came to an end.
The undead stopped.
Looking at the massive pile of stones blocking the tunnel, Thoren narrowed his eyes for a moment.
Then realization dawned upon him.
"So that’s why..."
The Slave Trade Guild members had not been unable to find the escape route. The route itself had been deliberately blocked.
The only escape path available to the directors had been sealed behind them, preventing anyone else from following.
Shaking his head, Thoren commanded the undead Storm Tyrant to create a path. For anyone else, clearing such a massive obstruction might have been impossible.
For him, however, it was nothing more than a minor inconvenience.
At most, it would delay him for a few minutes.
Bang!
The undead Storm Tyrant stepped forward.
Its enormous hammer was raised high above its head before crashing violently into the stone barrier.
Boom!
Massive stones were pulverized into fragments before being reduced further into dust beneath the overwhelming force.
Thoren stood calmly behind it, watching without any trace of impatience.
Five minutes later, a narrow path finally appeared before them. The remaining stones were pushed aside, revealing the continuation of the tunnel.
Looking at the newly opened path, Thoren smiled.
"Move..." His command traveled through the mental link.
The undead immediately advanced.
Quickly, the group moved through the narrow passage, continuing their pursuit of the escaped directors.
If they thought a mere pile of stones could stop him from pursuing them, then they had made a grave mistake.
Ten minutes later, however, a faint light suddenly appeared in the distance.
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