First of all, blinding sunlight fell over his eyes before William got accustomed to the brightness of it. There were many holes in the ceiling, holes that expanded and extended from the surface down to here.
He didn't know how deep this place was, but he was quite sure it was very deep. The last time he was here, there wasn't such a thing present in this place. And that wasn't the only change he spotted here.
The room was narrow before, and couldn't accommodate more than one hundred people. But now? It was massive, enough to accommodate thousands of people.
When he looked closer, he saw lots of rocks filling the ground, as if they fell from the ceiling and walls, as if some sort of a brutal explosion occurred here, changing the entire topography of this place.
Aside from rocks, the entire place was empty of anyone. When he came here for the first time, he met Anjie and lots of strong masters. The opening of the tunnel leading here was covered up by dense numbers of masters. And yet there was no sign of anyone alive here.
"What's going on here?" Berry was the first to speak up, and then Karoline joined by saying her piece.
"I smell blood and death in this place like a deadly fight occurred not long ago…"
She paused when everyone turned to look at her. She might have turned into a human, but her sense of blood was still there.
"Let's explore the place, all together, and don't lower your guard," William strictly said, before turning to his spirit body form. He couldn't smell blood like Karoline, but he was sure something terribly wrong happened here while they were away.
As the team moved on, they noticed the absence of the weird wind and the fog as they never existed before. William threw behind his back the worry of his friends and newly acquired masters and focused on the problem he had in front of him.
As they walked, they started to find dead bodies of masters and monsters in the middle of the rocks. It felt like a monster tide attacked this region, ending up massacring everyone and damaging the entire place.
William was sure a brutal battle occurred, but this didn't explain the great changes that happened in this room. Even if masters used their strongest techniques, they wouldn't be able to damage the rocks that lined this place before.
This place was a home for a portal, and that meant it was strongly supported by an insane amount of space elements. This was enough to safeguard this place from anything and made it more peculiar for the changes that happened here to occur.
"There is nothing here," after an hour of extensive search, they found nothing, "we should go up and see what's going on here."
"Good point," William agreed on Lang's suggestion, leading everyone through the tunnel that brought them here before. As they walked up, they found many holes appearing in the tunnel, making it no different than the room they just visited and searched.
"A huge battle did indeed happen here," as they arrived at the surface, they were welcomed by a grand scene of ruins all over the place. There were huge holes in the ground, with many ending up reaching the deep rooms underground and the tunnels.
William and others started to slowly walk around, but all they found were dead and rotten bodies of both humans and monsters. "Someone came here and collected the rings and gears," William noticed such a thing after going around for hours.
"Why do I feel like someone did this to tease you?" one of the team jokes, and everyone laughed. But William didn't like this. He felt the same as this member of his team joked about, felt like this was done on purpose.
It felt like there was someone who knew about him and his habits and decided to deprive him from gaining anything like rings or gears.
"Or perhaps someone is trying to copy you, that would be hilarious, hahahaha!" Berry joked and William kept his silence.
"I don't like this," he decided to stop looking, "let's go back to the tunnel opening, and wait for Sloth and others to come."
William didn't want to go back toward the capital as he feared the worst. As he could tell, some sort of a big war happened here, and he didn't exclude the possibility of it spreading toward the capital and other regions.
They were brought here to help in solving a big crisis, but it seemed they took much longer to do it. He thought of the worst, thought of the death of the king and the turmoil that would happen in such a case.
He was positive whoever relayed the deadly toxic fog here didn't do it out of coincidence or boredom. And the scenes of damage and destruction everywhere were evidence for this hypothesis.
"Why are they taking this long to come…" The team returned back to the tunnel they came out from, and waited for many hours. After the passage of an entire day without a single sign of Sloth or anyone coming from the room underground, William grew worried about the entire thing.
"Don't worry, they got Sloth and he seems quite a capable master," Karoline noticed William's worry and tried to console him. Yet others thought she was crazy, as Sloth was nothing compared to William in regards to knowledge and wits.
"Let's go," after half a day passed, William decided to leave, "let's go and inspect the capital until they'll arrive."
He didn't know what delayed them and decided to go and scout things at the capital until they'd come here. He didn't know that nothing wrong happened, it was just the effect of the black hole and its effects over time and space.
Sloth and others followed his words to the letter, but the one-hour delay would turn into a few days here.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢