Watching Angel enter the basement and her spirit body threads abruptly vanish, Klein heaved a deep sigh. Before the historical image of the lantern in his hand reached its time limit, he summoned a fresh one. Surrounded by its dim yellow light, he strode out of the giants' village, chose a direction at random, and stepped into the profound darkness.
Aside from some level ground around the village, this abandoned world had no "roads" in the true sense. There was only endless wilderness, occasional ravines or hills, and scattered plants of bizarre shapes. Even with his extensive knowledge as a Scholar of Yore, he could not identify their species.
"These ravines must have been rivers once. But as the vegetation vanished and the weather grew dry, with little rain, the rivers gradually dried up, becoming cracks that scarred the land..."
After studying a dry riverbed for a while and reaching that conclusion, he cautiously attempted to cross to the other side using Flaming Jump. A burst of flame, glaringly bright in the night, flashed past, and Klein successfully reached his destination. He neither vanished under the power of the darkness nor suffered an attack from the monsters within it.
But through his vision of spirit body threads, he could see fine, illusory strands writhing in the darkness beyond the lamplight. They represented monsters lurking around him, watching and waiting for the flames to go out, for their prey to expose a weakness.
"The moment Angel left, they swarmed over. Looks like even the monsters in the Forsaken Land of the Gods know who they can mess with and who they can't... except they misjudged their target today."
Klein gave a self-deprecating chuckle. Instead of gazing into the unlit regions, he continued carrying his lantern, using the occasional flashes of lightning