Before the elevator doors closed, Hisoka reached out and stopped them.
"I'll stay up here."
Bai Zhu looked at him.
"I thought you loved getting in on the action."
"It doesn't smell very good down there." Hisoka withdrew his fingers. "Maybe someone doesn't want me to smell something. I'll go overland. I might find something interesting."
Bai Zhu thought for a moment, then raised a hand and applied another layer of Kyokkō to him.
"If you run into someone you can't beat, signal us."
"Are you worried about me?"
"I'm worried about losing a fighter."
"Hmm~ I can accept that reason."
The elevator doors slowly closed, and Hisoka disappeared behind them.
The car began to descend.
The floor numbers dropped one by one: basement one, basement two, basement three... At basement six, the elevator's hum suddenly grew faint.
Camilla tightened her grip on her pistol, her thumb resting on the safety.
Milluki stared at his terminal. A faint crackle of static came through his headset.
"Hisoka's connection is still up. Looks like this elevator isn't taking us to another dimension."
Bai Zhu raised a hand and gripped the hilt of the blade on his back.
The elevator kept descending.
The display flickered and jumped to [-9F].
The car stopped.
No one spoke.
Bai Zhu tightened his grip on the hilt, Camilla raised her pistol, and Milluki released three Mechanical Beetles onto the floor.
The elevator doors slid apart.
There was nothing outside.
The attack they had expected never came.
Exposed pipes ran along the walls into the distance, and a thin layer of dust covered the ground. The tunnel entrance stood five meters high, its ceiling still marked by the curve of a tunnel-boring machine's cut. Fresh drill marks remained on the walls.
Camilla kept her pistol raised.
"That's it?"