Deep in the Forest, No One in Sight

Heading north along the old cableway, the woods grew denser, and the mountain path was littered with branches and vines snapped loose by the wind. Ryan did not turn on his field-of-view light or activate Eye's illumination, relying only on the faint daylight filtering through the canopy to find his way. He wore his usual weighted boots, yet his movements showed no heaviness. His rhythm was steady, his steps soundless among the fallen leaves.

This road had long been abandoned. Aside from occasional remnants of rail tracks, there was no sign of human maintenance. Vines coiled around the support pillars, moss crept across the rock walls, and old metal structures had rusted through and collapsed, becoming part of the mountain itself.

A ventilation shaft on the southern side of the mountain lay half-hidden among bushes. From the outside, it was difficult to tell that it was the entrance to an old man-made mine tunnel. All access records for this area had long been removed from the maps, but Ryan remembered clearly—this place had once been a temporary site for one of the Association's subordinate projects.

He crouched, used a short knife to sweep aside the vines blocking the entrance, turned sideways, and slipped into the passage close to the shaft wall.

Inside was a gently sloping mine tunnel. Exposed metal braces and broken lengths of wiring lined the walls, while leftover cables and shattered floor tiles lay underfoot. There were no heat sources, nor was there any living Aura pressure in the air, but many sections of the walls had been slashed open, like marks left by leaking Aura energy. Chaotic and dense, they showed that brief violence had once erupted here.

Several hundred meters later, the tunnel suddenly opened up.

It was an underground testing area after a collapse.