In the stone grotto,
Ludwig Regan stared at the black bones scattered across the ground. Although the skeleton had been temporarily formed by Little Grape, the bones themselves had the texture of something over a century old.
With his extraordinary perception and his profession as a prototyper, he could conjure the image of an utterly evil Black Wizard in his mind.
When he reached out to touch the fading black bones, the image in his mind became even more vivid. Even eyeballs trailing wisps of black smoke seemed to be trying to crawl up Regan's arm and corrode his flesh.
Zzt! A surge of electromagnetic energy swept through his arm, and the eyeballs shriveled and fell away.
"William, your pet has incredible potential."
"Little Grape was originally an important product of Seven-Day Graveyard. Without him, I would've died in the Cemetery long ago.
Let's keep moving! We shouldn't be far from the real passage now."
The team emerged from the grotto and continued upward along the jagged mountain path.
At their current altitude, they could clearly sense the change in Gray Sand concentration. The higher they went, the denser it became... They could basically conclude that the passage was at the summit.
When there was no mountain path ahead, they chose to climb the rocks instead.
For Jin, whose physical skills were astonishing, this was child's play. He was even considerably faster than when walking along the mountain path.
With plants assisting him, Yi Chen found climbing just as easy.
They had assumed the slightly overweight Regan would have difficulty, but whoosh! Six soft metal appendages sprouted from his Exoskeleton Spine, each tipped with a drill-like structure. They carried his body rapidly upward.
Regan also pulled out some Happy Water from his backpack and gulped it down. Part of the