"Whew... whew..."
An icy wind laced with snow blew past the entrance. Behind the stone doors they had pushed open, everyone built a campfire to shelter from the blizzard outside.
The weather deep in the mountains was fickle, after all. The sky had been perfectly clear earlier, yet barely half a day later, a blizzard was raging outside. There was no way the airship could return in these conditions. Everyone knew that unless the storm died down soon, they would have to rely on themselves.
Worse still, some kind of monster was lurking here.
Beyond that, the sheer scale of the Monastery left everyone feeling unsafe. As they had noted before, everything here was far too large for ordinary people. Even the corridor beyond the entrance was no exception. Its soaring vaulted ceiling stood four or five stories high, lost in utter darkness, while statues of armored knights holding weapons lined both sides.
The statues themselves were enormous too. Even standing upright, Li Wei only reached their lower legs, including their pedestals.
In fact, the statues' upper bodies and heads were almost entirely hidden in darkness. Even with the campfire and torches lit, the group could illuminate only a tiny area.
This made the guards who remained here extremely nervous. They sat in front of the campfire, forming a rather flimsy defensive line and staring warily ahead-though in truth, it was practically useless. If those monsters really wanted to attack, they could slip along the ceiling and over the statues' heads under cover of darkness, then strike.
Yeah, that would be trouble.
Annie set up an alcohol burner in front of the campfire, took assorted solutions from her bag, and began experimenting on the monster's bones.
Ovelia remained silent, her brow furrowed as she considered how to handle their predicament.