Life Dungeon Game

Heo carried Kaja's body step by step, slowly crossing the camp gate.

The little boy followed behind him.

creak-

With a crisp sound, the massive hinges pulled the camp gate shut, closing it little by little.

The moment the door was finally closed, He Ao's body could no longer support him. He stumbled and fell straight forward, face down on the ground.

The Andavi family members rushed over and caught his body, taking Kaja's corpse off his back. At the same time, another group of people pressed the little boy who had been following Heo to the ground.

"Don't hurt him."

He Ao raised his hand with difficulty and spoke slowly.

"dad!"

At that moment, Annie rushed up and grabbed his blood-stained hand.

The little girl's round eyes were filled with glistening tears.

"It's okay, it's okay," He Ao said with a forced smile. "Don't cry, I'm just a little tired."

He felt his consciousness gradually becoming hazy. He closed his eyes, conserved his last bit of energy, and kept himself in a state between wakefulness and unconsciousness.

He felt himself being lifted onto a stretcher and then into a vehicle.

"Dad! It's okay, we'll get to the hospital right away."

Throughout the entire process, Aini held her father's hand tightly, not even letting go when getting into the car.

He Ao could only use a little force to hold his daughter's hand, so that she could feel his strength.

The vehicle came to a stop quickly after speeding along, and He Ao felt himself being lifted up to some place.

"Your father is fine. He's just a little overworked. We'll take him to the operating room for emergency treatment right away."

The old patriarch's voice rang in He'ao's ears; he seemed to be advising Aini.

······

He Ao could clearly sense that the old clan chief had not gotten into the ambulance with him.

What kind of vehicle is this old clan chief using? It's moving quite fast, almost in sync with an ambulance.

At the old clan chief's urging, Aini slowly released her grip on He'ao's hand.

Immediately afterwards, He Ao felt his stretcher being pushed into a certain area.

The surrounding air gradually grew colder.

After passing through a certain door, the surrounding space fell into complete silence.

He stood quietly in the silence. The air around him was cold, but it carried a hint of warmth within the chill.

These warm, moist substances seeped into He Ao's body through his skin, gradually repairing the damage caused by the overuse of his supernatural powers.

This feeling was exceptionally comfortable, like floating on clouds. He Ao felt his muscles tense up slightly and then relax slightly, and his body involuntarily wanted to groan.

But he suppressed the feeling and simply lay calmly on the stretcher.

He heard the soft sound of the door closing, as if it were letting him in.

The people left this place.

The surroundings were so quiet that He Ao fell into a kind of half-awake sleep.

In his dream, he seemed to fall into some kind of warm liquid, and his body floated like a falling leaf as the liquid flowed.

······

After an unknown amount of time, the sound of the door opening rang out again.

He Ao slowly opened his eyes from his deep sleep.

The first thing he saw was a silver metal ceiling. He struggled to sit up and looked around. It seemed to be a silver square space made entirely of metal.

The space had no windows, only an open door that seemed to connect to some passageway.

An elderly man with a face full of wrinkles and age spots is driving a wheelchair across the doorway.

The old man looked at He Ao, who had woken up, and pressed a button on the door. The silver metal door slowly closed.

He sat up from the stretcher and looked at the very center of the metal space, where there was a silver 'metal tree' about half a waist thick.

The tree's upper part was attached to the ceiling of the metal house, with some branches extending out and disappearing into the ceiling. Some branches even reached over the ceiling lights. Those branches had no leaves; they were just a few bare, curved metal rods.

The lower part of the tree connects to the silver floor, with thick aerial roots extending from the base of the tree and embedding themselves in the silver metal ground.

The tree appears to be entirely metallic, gleaming with a metallic sheen under the overhead light. Yet, its shape is so lifelike, it looks as if it were a real tree striving to grow, a truly exquisite depiction.

If it was created by a sculptor, then that sculptor already has the potential to be recorded in history.

Right in the center of that tree, a transparent container, partially encased in the trunk and emitting a faint milky-white glow, stood quietly.

The container is long and narrow, about the size of a fist, and about forty centimeters long. It is filled with a milky white liquid.

The glow on the container seemed to emanate from the milky white liquid.

He Ao withdrew his gaze and looked at the old clan chief who had already driven his wheelchair to his side, and asked softly, "What is that?"

He was asking what was in the container.

"Fountain of Youth."

The old clan chief answered, enunciating each word clearly.

"That is... the Fountain of Youth?"

Although He Ao had already anticipated this, he was still somewhat surprised.

"To be precise, it is the water of the Fountain of Youth."

The old patriarch sighed and slowly drove his wheelchair to the container.

He Ao also sat up from the stretcher and walked to the container.

Upon close observation, he discovered that the water in the test tube, supposedly from the Fountain of Youth, was not clear water, but rather a viscous liquid.

As he gazed upon these fountains of youth, the previously still waters began to ripple and boil spontaneously.

Fine cracks quickly appeared on the transparent container, and the water of the Fountain of Youth inside seemed to be about to burst out of the container and devour him.

However, He Ao remained unmoved.

Just as the boiling spring water was about to burst through the transparent container, all the images vanished.

Despite the loss, the transparent container remained intact, and the milky-white water of the Fountain of Youth inside remained calm.

"Your soul and will are very strong,"

The old clan chief remarked with emotion, "When the previous clan chief brought me here to see it, I was startled by it."

He Ao activated his super memory and gazed at the spring.

From the perspective of hypermemory, a thin shadow gradually appeared in his field of vision, enveloping the spring.

The meaning of this shadow is simple: it means that this spring is... soulful, even if its soul is extremely thin, it truly is soulful.

In a sense, this is a living thing.

He Ao deactivated his super memory and felt the strong, warm aura surrounding his body, which seemed to emanate from the spring water.

He Ao then focused his divine sense on the spring.

In the vision of divine sense, this spring was a massive energy pool, with faint white energy constantly spreading from it.

This energy floats in the surrounding air, which should be the source of the warm feeling that He Ao felt.

However, this energy stopped at the edge of the metal space, blocked by the building's metal walls, and could not spread outward.

The whole room also looks like some kind of 'container'.

"Could you tell me about its origin?"

He Ao gazed at the fountain of youth before him and asked slowly.

He knew very well that the other party wouldn't have brought him to see something so important for no reason.

Since the other party brought him along, they must have been prepared for some kind of 'showdown'.

This was the trust he gained from killing Kaja and that armored squad.

"This story begins at least a thousand years ago."

The old patriarch pondered for a moment before slowly speaking.

This year marks the 757th year of the Federation, and even the oldest fortress city, Dawn City, has only been around for over 800 years.

A thousand years ago, there was a cataclysmic era that was even older than the original Federation and the fortress city.

In that era, strange beasts roamed freely, and madness was rampant; humanity didn't even have a clear history or timeline.

“Our ancestors came to this land about a thousand or two thousand years ago.”

The old patriarch maneuvered his wheelchair to the edge of the door and pressed a hidden button.

The entire metal space suddenly trembled, and a series of simple yet intricate carved murals appeared on the metal walls.

In an instant, dense patterns covered all four walls.

Then he slowly maneuvered his wheelchair to a stop in front of the first mural.

He Ao followed and gazed at the murals.

“In those days, we couldn’t record history for long, and our ancestors didn’t even know if their families would survive.”

The old chief pointed to the first mural, which mostly depicted ripples that seemed to represent water. "So the tribespeople carved what had happened on the stone walls, and the history was passed down orally. The earlier murals were lost during the migration. This mural was painted when the tribespeople first arrived in this land."

"It was originally in a collapsed cave, but was later copied by the tribesmen and then engraved here."

He Ao stared

Looking at that mural, the lines lacked any aesthetic appeal, but it depicted a single event with the simplest of lines: 'A group of people arrived at a lake teeming with aquatic plants.'

The lake seems unusually large, so large that its boundaries are not depicted in the painting, as if it were boundless.

"This used to be a lake?"