The passage door was the same color as the cliff walls and was likely made of bluestone as well. It too had been built against the mountain wall, but aside from the door itself, the entire gateway, gatehouse, and other structures differed from all the passage doors they had seen before.
The entire entrance was extremely broad. Its color was the same gaudy local-tyrant gold as the huge door they had encountered upon entering the Spider Cave. The surrounding corridor and even the decorative structures atop the gate were all that same gold color.
Perhaps because, in ancient times, that local-tyrant gold color was the color of gold itself, many of the buildings here had been made in that shade.
The steps before the entrance were made of white stone, as were the corridor railings, stair railings, and the like.
But none of that was the most important thing. The most important thing was that at the very bottom of the steps, on the hall floor near the stairs, there were vaguely visible figures everywhere!
The entrance was over two hundred meters from the gateway, so they could not make out who those people were. The light from the Illumination Flares was insufficient for a clear view at such a distance, leaving their vision blurry.
Tra took out more Illumination Flares and fired two of them over. Using their light, he peered through binoculars, but could only see that the figures seemed to face the entrance steps with their backs toward this side. He could not make out what they looked like.
Moreover, all of them wore clothes in various colors, with glittering golden ornaments on their heads. Yet they stood completely still. No one knew why they were posed like that or what they were doing.
The other mercenaries