The Villain Who Invests in a Witch to Survive

Chapter 173: The End, or the Beginning?

A scorched smell.

It was faint, barely there, like something burning far away. Ryan stopped and turned his head slightly, testing the air with his nose. Rex and Lillian stopped too and copied him, sniffing the air.

“Do you smell that?” Rex asked in a low voice.

“Yeah,” Ryan said.

He glanced down at the lamp in his hand. The light from the Light-Element Magic Core was still as soft as ever. It did not reach very far, but it was enough to let them see the path beneath their feet.

“Light the torches,” he said.

Rex blinked. “You’re not worried about swamp gas anymore?”

“We’ve come this far down. If there were swamp gas, we would have smelled it by now.” Ryan put the lamp away and pulled a torch from his pack. “And the air is circulating. It won’t build up.”

Flint struck steel. Sparks landed on the oil-soaked cloth, and the flame burst to life at once. The torchlight was much brighter than the lamp, illuminating over a dozen paces around them and revealing finer details in the carvings on the stone walls. Those patterns were denser and deeper than before, as though someone had carved over them again and again with a blade.

Rex and Lillian lit their torches as well.

Three torches turned the passage bright. In the firelight, those carvings seemed to writhe as if they were alive.

They continued onward.

This time, they moved much faster. The torchlight reached dozens of paces ahead, so they no longer had to feel their way forward as they had before. Even Rex’s steps grew lighter, and he stopped grumbling.

After about a quarter of an hour, something changed ahead.

It was not the end of the stairs.

It was a door.

A wooden door was set into the end of the passage. The planks were grayish brown, faced with a layer of iron and studded all over with nails the size of fists. The frame was stone, blending seamlessly into the walls on either side.

The handle was an iron ring, rusted so badly its original color was impossible to tell.

Ryan stopped before it.

He pressed his ear toward it and listened. The other side was utterly silent. Not a sound.

Rex edged closer and lowered his voice. “Should we push it open?”

Ryan did not answer. He only turned and glanced at Lillian.

Lillian understood at once. She took the torch from his hand, stepped back two paces, and raised it higher so the door was clearly lit.

Ryan and Rex took their places, one on each side of the door.

“I’ll count to three,” Ryan said.

Rex nodded.

“One.”

Ryan placed his hand against the door. The wood was cold. He could feel the chill even through his sleeve.

“Two.”

Rex set his hand against it too.

“Three.”

They pushed at the same time.

The hinges let out a sharp groan, like some rusted thing being torn open by force. The crack widened, and light spilled through from inside.

Not torchlight.

A dim gray glow, like dusk on an overcast day.

The door swung all the way open.

The space beyond opened wide.

Behind it lay an enormous chamber.

A circular hall so vast it was impossible to see the end of it at a glance. The floor was paved with massive gray stone slabs, and vines grew thick in every seam between them.

Dark green vines, some as thick as wrists, some as fine as hair, crept over everything within sight—across the ground, up the walls, and into the unseen heights above. Some hung down from far overhead like frozen waterfalls.

The walls were made of gray-black stone, though most of them were hidden beneath the vines. Looking up, there was no ceiling to be seen, only a dim gray light high above. There was no telling where that light came from or how high it was. It simply fell from above, onto the vines, onto the stone slabs, and onto—

The people.

Ryan stopped in the doorway.

More than a dozen people stood in the center of the hall.

Parker Hewitt. Hayden.

Vincent. Gray.

Vera.

Eleanor.

And seven or eight other explorers whose names he did not know. Some leaned against the walls. Some sat on the floor. Some paced back and forth. All of them were wounded. Their clothes were in tatters, and their faces were heavy with exhaustion. Torches had been wedged into the cracks between the stone slabs, their flames flickering and casting shifting light over their faces.

Everyone had heard the door open.

Everyone turned to look at Ryan and the others.

Parker Hewitt leaned against a stone pillar, his sword planted in the ground by his feet. The blade was covered in nicks from end to end. In some places, the edge had even curled, as if something had chewed on it.

His clothes were ripped in several places, exposing scabbed wounds underneath. Some of the cuts were still seeping blood, staining the cloth dark red. Fresh blood and dried blood layered over one another, as though he had gone through several battles in a row without ever getting the chance to treat himself.

Hayden stood beside him. The notebook in his hand was so filthy its original color was impossible to tell. Dark brown stains covered the cover—perhaps blood, perhaps mud, perhaps both mixed together.

His left hand was wrapped in bandages, but the wrappings had already been soaked through with blood. The fingertips protruding between the strips of cloth were swollen and bruised purple-blue, as though something heavy had crushed them.

Vincent leaned against the opposite wall, his trademark gentle smile still on his face. But he had worn it for too long. It had stiffened there, like a mask he had forgotten to take off.

The hand hanging at his side trembled slightly. It was only a slight tremor, but visible on close inspection. His fingertips twitched with the spasms of overuse. Several tears in his clothes had blackened edges, curled from burns, revealing reddened flesh beneath. A cluster of glossy blisters had risen there.

Gray stood behind him, his short sword still at his waist, but the way he stood was wrong. He was barely letting his left foot touch the floor, not daring to put any weight on it. The fabric over his knee had been torn open in a great hole, and the flesh beneath was mangled, as though something had bitten into it. His face was expressionless, but sweat beaded at his brow and ran down the sides of his face.

Eleanor stood at the very center, gripping her sword with the tip lowered toward the floor. Her red hair hung in a tangled mess against her cheeks, some strands stuck together by blood. Her dark red combat outfit was caked with mud and gore, some of it already dried into hard crusts that had stained the cloth a deep brown.

She looked to be in slightly better shape than the others. At least there were no obvious wounds still bleeding openly. But the hand gripping her sword was a mess. Several splits had opened across her knuckles, flesh peeled back as though something sharp had sliced through them. The skin around the wounds had gone pale from being soaked in blood for too long.

And then there were the nameless explorers, seven or eight of them scattered about the hall. Some leaned against the walls, gasping for breath, their chests heaving as though they had just finished a marathon. Some sat on the floor in a daze, staring blankly at one section of the wall without moving for ages. Some hugged their knees and curled into themselves, burying their faces in their arms while their shoulders trembled slightly.

Their clothes were all in tatters.

Their bodies were all covered in injuries.

Some wounds were still bleeding. Others had already sealed over into dark brown scabs and stuck to the fabric.

The entire hall was thick with the smell of blood, mixed with sweat, mud, and that same indefinable scorched scent.

Vera sat on a raised slab of stone with all the elegance of someone seated on a bench in her own garden. But in her hand she held a cloth pressed tightly against her calf. It had already been soaked through. Blood seeped between her fingers, drop by drop, staining the pale gray stone beneath her dark red.

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