A faint smell of blood still lingered in the strange tunnel beneath the lakeside outpost. Vivian and Lily were cautiously making their way through it.
They had not yet met the four men, Big Beard included, so they did not know that the four ascetics had already told Geldon and Ofra about the tunnel. Still, they could guess that such important information would inevitably be reported to the parish leaders. Thus, when they had just arrived at the outpost, they carefully checked their surroundings, worried that Church investigators might have already arrived and set up camp. Fortunately, it seemed Geldon had postponed the tunnel investigation by a day. When Vivian and Lily arrived, they saw no outsiders, and there were no signs that strangers had entered the tunnel afterward.
When the group first arrived here, they had still been unaware of the many major events that had occurred in the Beinz Region over the past two months. On top of that, they had been in a hurry to return the Holy Church Orb and confirm the situation in Leighton Town, so they had not explored this tunnel in depth. When Lily had dug down a Vertical Shaft, there had actually been two paths to choose from. One was the exit Hao Ren and the others had used to leave the lakeside outpost and return to the surface; the other extended deep underground. Vivian and Lily were now walking through that slightly downward-sloping tunnel.
"It feels like it's getting deeper and deeper... And the air is getting staler, too." As a close-combat warrior, Lily naturally walked in front. She kept wrinkling her nose and sniffing the air, clearly uncomfortable with the atmosphere here. "I'm getting a little creeped out..."
Vivian followed behind Lily, occasionally sending a few small bats ahead to