Life Dungeon Game

"Um,"

He Ao nodded slightly, withdrew his hand, and sheathed the bone sword back into the 'scabbard' that secured it on his back. Then he walked toward the half-open gate not far away. "Let's continue down."

Panic won't help now. Maintaining speed and exploring the secrets of this dungeon, as well as the reason why it's 'close' to the main world's Newland city-state, is the only way to resolve this predicament.

Quiet footsteps echoed again in the dark corridor. By the faint light from her flashlight, Fiya glanced at the composed profile of the young man beside her.

Such composure and calmness in times of crisis always gives people a sense of security.

The two quickly reached the end of the corridor and saw the half-open gate.

To be precise, it's a 'half-closed' gate.

The massive gate descended halfway from above and then got stuck there. Dense vines covered the entire gate, making this steel structure, which had stood for countless years, appear somewhat lush and green.

"This is the main vine..."

Fia shone her flashlight on the vines on the gate.

The thick main vine extends from the wall to the gate, then wraps itself around the gate from top to bottom. The branches that spread from the main vine intertwine with each other again, and together with the vines on the left and right walls, they weave a huge 'green net' that covers the entire gate.

"Be careful not to bump your head."

He bent down and quickly moved outwards from below the gate.

Fia bent down and followed behind him. The two quickly passed through the gate and appeared in the elevator lobby leading to the third floor.

He Ao did not look at the interior of the elevator lobby, but

He turned his head and shone his flashlight on the outside of the gate.

Just like the inside, the outer gate was also tightly wrapped and covered by vines, almost becoming one with the wall.

"Are these vines 'encasing' this gate?"

Fia shone her flashlight on the vines with a puzzled look. "Is that main vine extending to stop the gate from falling? But why?"

"Perhaps it's to release something that's been imprisoned here."

He Ao shone his flashlight around and saw that there were seven elevators in the elevator lobby. The ceiling lights in the elevator lobby had been destroyed, all the indicator lights of the elevators had been turned off, and the control screens seemed to have been damaged by some external force. It looked like the elevators were completely unusable.

The walls and floor of the elevator lobby were covered in bloodstains, seemingly telling the 'visitors' that a brutal massacre had taken place here. In some of the cracks in the walls, you could even see bullets that had been driven into the walls and were now rusty.

These killings were not caused by the vines, as He Ao had just witnessed the vines' 'predation' techniques.

The vines would directly suck the blood out of their prey; if the vines were the ones hunting, there wouldn't be so much blood left here.

Judging from the density of the vines on the outside of the corridor, and the strength of the giant python hidden among and coexisting with the vines, most of the strange beasts or monsters that 'went astray' should become their prey.

Moreover, the bloodstains in this elevator are far less than those outside, proving that there are fewer dead people or creatures here than outside.

In other words, there are probably very few other living beings that come to this elevator, since not everyone is like Kalin, who has mastered the 'rules' of vine attacks.

This elevator lobby may have retained, to some extent, its appearance from when the crisis first broke out, undisturbed.

He Ao took a few steps back, shining his flashlight through every corner of the elevator lobby, his gaze sweeping over the bullets and gunshots, and even the marks left by some kind of blade.

A fierce battle once took place here, and the side that fought was likely human.

In this battle, these humans may not be able to defeat their opponents, so those among them who can control the gate chose to close it, trapping their opponents inside and perishing together.

Just then, the vines stretched out and blocked the closed gate.

The final outcome was obvious: the human side lost. The 'thing' they tried to stop left, and their corpses probably became nourishment for the vines.

He Ao walked through the quiet elevator lobby, where there were very few vines left on the ground.

Unlike the stairwells on the first and second floors, these vines did not extend out of the stairwells. They stopped here, as if they had reached the end of this floor.

In the corners of these elevator lobbies, you can still vaguely see some fragments of clothing that haven't completely decomposed.

He Ao continued to back away, searching around the elevator lobby.

Fiya glanced at him blankly, wondering what he was looking for, but she immediately came over with a flashlight to help He Ao illuminate a wider field of vision.

Although this place is relatively well preserved,

However, He Ao found nothing of any useful information, not even the deceased's nameplate.

In the end, he only saw a broken, blood-stained Gauss rifle in the gap between two vines.

After searching every corner and confirming there were no clues, He Ao walked back to the corridor, picked up the snake carcass he had just killed but which hadn't touched the vines, and threw it onto the vines next to the rifle.

Two vines quickly coiled and wrapped around the snake corpse, while Heo used his bone sword to flick the Gauss rifle out from under the vines.

Fiya blinked as she watched He Ao's actions.

She had actually thought of using the snake carcass to lure the vines away, but by the time she thought of it, He Ao had already returned with the snake carcass and thrown it away.

She could only lean over and shine the flashlight on He Ao's Gauss gun, asking, "Is there anything special about this gun?"

"do not know."

He Ao shook his head as he carefully examined the broken Gauss gun. Due to lack of maintenance and poor storage conditions, the metal structure of the gun had rusted.

However, one piece of rust is not regular, but rather has a bumpy, patterned appearance.

He reached out and wiped away the surface rust, revealing two crooked characters engraved on the gun, indicating that the person who engraved them was clearly in a hurry and had limited time, hence the messy handwriting.

"Relic script?"

Fia stared blankly at the two crooked characters on the gun, her eyes revealing her illiteracy.

Although her education level was not bad, she didn't recognize any of the ancient scripts. To be precise, the entire main world was illiterate when it came to ancient scripts.

Deciphering a lost script from scratch without any reference is extremely difficult, especially since the main world doesn't actually have much information on ancient scripts.

"The owner of this gun probably wants to leave something behind?"

She adjusted her glasses with a hint of helplessness, her brows furrowing slightly. "But it seems he didn't anticipate that the person who found the gun would be illiterate. Even a simple sketch would have been helpful."

In a sense, this is also the distress of the 'illiterate'.

In fact, Fiya was somewhat hoping that He Ao would understand the meaning of the two characters, but she also felt that the idea was indeed a bit far-fetched.

After all, no matter how powerful and intelligent He Ao is, it's unlikely that he could figure out something that no one else understands.

This is really outrageous.

"Write this down first, it might come in handy."

He Ao took out the miniature camera that Moonlight had prepared for them before they set off and casually took a picture of the two characters.

He Ao was unaware of Fiya's thoughts, but he did recognize those two words; they meant:

[isolation]

The last message left by the gun's owner was 'isolation,' and coupled with the method of closing the gate to seal off the space, this message may be related to the 'thing' that escaped.

However, knowing the first-division script is within Hao Yi's knowledge range, but it shouldn't be within He Ao's knowledge range.

Properly separating the two identities allows him to leverage cognitive differences to accomplish certain tasks, simplifying complex matters, especially in the main world.

They also constantly face threats from evil gods and their followers.

Finally, he carefully examined the Gauss rifle in his hand again, found no new inscriptions, and then placed the wrecked gun in a corner.

"Are we going down?"

Fiya watched his movements, putting aside her own wandering thoughts, and asked softly.

"Correct."

He Ao nodded. "We'll take the stairwell this time."

The stairwell leading from the second basement level to the third basement level is located at the far end of the elevator lobby, and there are no vines in it.

If there is no danger in the stairwell, walking through the stairwell, a continuous space, definitely provides more escape routes than walking through the enclosed space of an elevator.

"it is good!"

Fia nodded, her high heels clicking on the ground as she walked towards the stairwell door.

The stairwell door had already been damaged by some kind of creature, and there were even impact marks and some hairs on the edge of the wall.

“It does look like the traces left by the 'Sheep Demon'.”

Fia looked at the fur and whispered.

Kalin once said that he saw marks on the door to the third-floor stairwell that looked like it had been broken open by the Sheep Demon.

"Um,"

He Ao also came over. He looked at the hair that still looked somewhat 'fresh', the damaged lock on the stairwell door, and the relatively new impact marks on the wall. "It seems that the Sheep Demon hasn't been 'up' for very long."

Perhaps in the next year or two.

Thinking of this, he glanced back at the dark, secluded corridor covered with vines.

According to Kalin's description, when he first arrived at the second underground level, he was attacked by some ferocious beasts. After realizing that the second underground level was already very dangerous, he did not explore the third underground level further, but retreated back to the first underground level.

Kalin had explored that corridor and been to this elevator lobby, but he didn't seem to have been attacked by the snake when he came here.

Either the snake hadn't arrived yet, or some 'special circumstance' prevented the snake from moving.

He Ao vaguely felt that he had grasped an invisible thread among the tangled threads of this complex event, but it seemed that he could not fully grasp it.

He's still missing a few 'hooks' to grab onto this line.

While he was pondering, He Ao didn't stop moving. He and Fiya quickly went down the stairs. The stairs weren't long, with only two turns. The only thing that was a little surprising was that they didn't encounter any monsters in the stairwell.

There was very little blood in the entire stairwell.

Soon, the two of them went down to the third basement level.

The doors to the stairwell on the third basement level were also forced open, but they were forced open from the outside in.

There was no light outside the door, and the elevator lights must have been broken.

He Ao and Fiya stepped out of the stairwell, the beam of their flashlights illuminating the narrow elevator shaft.

"It's so clean here."

Fia said with some surprise.

There were still some bloodstains here, but compared to the areas they had visited before, the bloodstains here were almost negligible.

This elevator lobby was the one that had retained the most original features and was the 'cleanest' of the three elevator lobbys they had passed through.