When the deep passageway completely opened amid the dull rumble of mechanisms, the twisted, mutated villagers covered in filthy feathers abruptly stopped howling.
As though some invisible terror had seized them by the throat, they let out a chorus of shrieks so anguished they became distorted, as if they had witnessed something even more terrifying than death.
The monsters frantically shoved and trampled one another, fleeing backward without a care for anything else. In the blink of an eye, they scattered like startled birds and beasts, vanishing back into the black shadows of the forest, leaving behind only a mess and an unsettling dead silence.
"Look, the Bird-men are retreating!" Liang Chen shouted in a low voice.
"Whew... Looks like we escaped disaster for now. At least we won't get to experience having our skulls cracked open like nuts." Finn let out a long breath and instinctively wiped his forehead.
Yet there was not the slightest hint of relief on Arjun and the others' faces.
The only thing that could frighten those monsters was an even greater monster. Everyone solemnly turned their eyes toward the descending staircase. Like the bottomless throat of some colossal beast, it exuded an ominous aura that made their hearts race.
Their crisis was far from over... Retreating into the forest meant facing the Bird-men's siege once more, while the passage before them led into an utterly unknown abyss.
"Let's go down and take a look." Arjun's voice was calm, his Golden Eyes blazing in the gloom. "We've come this far. We can't back down because of a little danger. Investigating the truth is our duty."
As the Executive Department's ace operative, he had never lacked the daring to venture into the tiger's den.
He briskly checked his weapon and stepped forward first. "I'll take the