Scar Trail.
True to its name, this place looked nothing like a nest excavated by insects.
It looked more like scars left by some terrifying being that had torn haphazardly at the land.
There was no logic to it, nothing they could use as a reference. After every effort had proved futile, the Centurion angrily crumpled the rough map in his hand.
The worst situation he had feared had finally come to pass.
They were lost.
On the first day, everything had still been normal at the start.
It had been different just a moment before. The Centurion had intended to retreat after obtaining the records from the first four surveying teams, yet the route back had changed completely.
Beside the hollows dripping with brine, behind the stalactites blocking their view.
It was as though an invisible hand were constantly reshaping the terrain.
Once a place that had been illuminated fell into darkness, even for the briefest instant, it would become different terrain the next moment.
Apparently, the fate of those four teams had been nowhere near as simple as attacks by wild beasts.
The Centurion realized this, but stopping meant suicide. The squad still had to move forward, though... something was strange.
On the third day, as they walked over ground that alternated between soft and hard, the sounds in the darkness never ceased.
Even beasts driven purely by instinct should have realized, after so many attackers had died, that this thing emitting light was difficult to deal with, and left.
But they did not. The attacks along the way seemed almost deliberately intended to obstruct the squad's advance.
In that persistence and agitation, the soldiers could even sense their fear.
The Centurion finally realized something was wrong. As he advanced through the winding tunnels, he warily surveyed the