Chapter 116: Guide to the Deep Underground Transit

“Is this the end?” William slammed his hand against the rock blocking the tunnel ahead, disbelief and despair flooding his face.

He ran his fingers over the lumpy, folded bulges of rock—swellings rising from the walls and converging in the center like the imprint of a valve scraped across an ice cream cone. The miners’ path ended here, yet it was clearly not a collapse.

“You needn’t be so shocked.” If you’d grown accustomed to the abnormalities of the deep, a tunnel abruptly severed wasn’t even surprising anymore. Kraft realized he’d adapted well—unexpected events no longer surprised him.

“Whether you believe it or not, you always find things here that make no sense.”

“Is there space above us?”

“No. Solid rock.” Kraft made a brief attempt—the corresponding position in the present world remained intact mountain.

William slumped onto the nearest rock fold, defeated, and reached for his side—only an empty scabbard remained; his blade had likely been lost when he dropped it.

Turning back to fight was impossible now. He pressed his forehead against the cold rock, letting its chill cool his burning skin, hoping for clarity. “You said this place is like the paper underneath?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

As someone who constantly dealt with emergencies, Captain William was no dullard. Beneath his rough exterior lay a sharp, flexible mind that had kept him alive this long.

While his body rested, his mind stirred, helping him grasp the situation. Unlike someone capable of confronting that thing directly, he leaned toward escape.

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“Actually, we don’t necessarily need to return to the upper sheet. If you don’t want to confront those things, just leaving here is enough. Since there are two sheets—could there be a ‘third sheet’ below us?”

Kraft didn’t deny it. He fell silent, drawing his hand back to grip the object hidden in his sleeve. William knew he’d hit upon the right idea.

He closed his mouth and waited quietly.

“You’re right. There’s a cavity below.” After a moment, Kraft gave his answer. People often get trapped by familiarity, fixated on the relationship between the first layer and the present world, ignoring what they refuse to confront.

But what did it mean?

“William, I need you to confirm something—you’ve sensed that thing’s approach one more time than I have.”

“What?”

Kraft summoned his memory, recalling the beginning of that experience filled with horn blasts—the moment he’d felt the burrower approaching.

“That vibration didn’t appear from nothing… it was already strong from the start, wasn’t it? You suddenly sensed a source of trembling far away.”

Before William could answer, the answer was already clear. Yes—it was exactly like that. To someone with acute senses, it was like hearing footsteps suddenly approaching on the third floor of an empty building, without any sound from the first or second.

It simply appeared at some point within the mountain—not gradually approaching from some unreachable depth.

The burrower couldn’t vanish into thin air, leaving behind this dead-end tunnel. In his perception, a slight descent revealed the tunnel still continued—beneath the next layer. The “pen tip” had pierced through this sheet, extending its “ink” onto another.

“This thing doesn’t live on any fixed layer! It can tunnel into another layer—this chaotic passage is just a transition zone.”

Even with William’s capacity for acceptance, processing this took a moment. “So it’s like a giant version of you—a ‘wizard’?”

“I warn you seriously—calling me a wizard is fine, but don’t compare me to things from the deep.” Kraft stepped toward him. His face looked grim—not because of the wording, but something else.

A pallor no orange-red flame could mask. His temple twitched, as if enduring some peculiar discomfort.

“Do you need to rest? You don’t look right.” This state was anything but normal—not the result of physical exhaustion. “Magic” clearly carried a cost, but he couldn’t press further without violating privacy. Who knew what might happen if he lost control mid-process?

“No. I can still hold on for now.”

No chance to refuse—William’s words were swallowed by a flood of sensory chaos. Strange odors flooded his mouth and ears; he was dragged into a prolonged, unsettling sensation of falling upward.

This time, the scenery wasn’t still. The rock folds, already resembling intestinal ridges, underwent indescribable changes.

Like leaving a fish’s opened belly and returning later to find its greasy, unbound internal organs sliding and writhing into amorphous, nauseating masses.

When such changes occurred in substances that should remain rigid, the dissonance between perception and reality hammered at ingrained assumptions. His prior notion of rock subtly drifted, warped by the half-melted imagery.

As the melting peaked, this cognitive dissonance intensified, spreading to the whole—questioning the validity of his entire worldview. Like softening one brick in a wall, it produced a small but real effect on stability.

William lowered his eyelids, blocking out the counterintuitive sight. He suppressed his curiosity. He might regret abandoning this rare chance—but everyone knew only the living could tell stories in taverns. Looking further offered no benefit.

Kraft controlled the oscillation of the prism, descending deeper. He’d last come here by accident, dragged into this layer—and had never probed the second layer since.

The “faded” scenery of the first layer grew even more dull in his spiritual senses, like squeezing all water from a sponge, then discovering it could still be dried by heat and light—each time losing more “color,” becoming drier.

He thought about this effortlessly. After his distorted spirit replaced normal senses, chaos no longer disrupted his thinking. By the time he arrived, he realized he’d developed a habit.

Whether it was the extra senses, the endless fading, or the sensation of falling through layers—it was as automatic as deciding which foot to step forward with. It had nearly become part of his instinct, boundaries blurring.

He traced the origin of this habit but found no answer. Sometimes he thought it began with his first fall into the tide; other times, with his deliberate descent.

Memory hadn’t troubled this man who treated himself like an archive in so long—he’d nearly forgotten what forgetting felt like.

Habit. Again, habit. Kraft couldn’t recall when he’d acquired so many habits. He patted and touched his body, searching for some nonexistent embedded object—as if these habits had physical form.

The tactile feedback, compared against his precise memory, revealed no change in his body. Kraft was still Kraft—only that his habits had adapted to the deep.

“Kraft?”

William opened his eyes as the falling sensation ceased. The torch had gone out during the transfer; they were immersed in darkness. And in this dangerous moment after landing, Kraft was distracted.

“I was thinking about something of my own.” He released his grip on William’s broad shoulder, pulled out his fire-starting materials, and relit the torch. In the circle of light, the rock folds twisted in reverse—their path behind narrowed into a tight passage, while the former dead end opened ahead.

“Can I help with anything?”

“Nothing relevant to our current situation. Keep moving.”

The cave continued its upward slant. As Kraft’s aftereffects eased slightly, a small patch of unusual color on the wall caught his attention.

It was a small, dusty-yellow spot, impossible to rub off. This encouraging discovery briefly made them forget they were in the deep. As more such yellow patches appeared, their mood improved.

They were indeed approaching the surface, moving toward the yellow stratum. William excitedly reached out to touch the dusty yellow dust—even when they hit another dead end, he showed no despair.

“I have good news and bad news.” Kraft lit a new torch. “The bad news is we’ve almost run out of torches.”

“And the good news?”

“The tunnel continues above us in the next layer. We’re going up—in every sense.” He offered a weary smile. A slight turn for the better. Maybe, if they kept going upward, they’d eventually surface back into the present world.