I reopened the cavity, which I had closed without too much difficulty, but I didn't go out imdiately. I waited a while first. I looked around, made sure there was no threat around us, and so I took my first step outside.
Sword in hand, Sith behind , eyes everywhere an enemy could hide, I was alert.
"It's clear, I think..."
Even though I didn't let my guard down, I relaxed my stance a little. Still, I didn't want to take any chances.
'Sith, let's be careful just in case. You and both.'
'I was going to say the sa thing.'
"The spiders have probably stopped looking for us, but this is their territory, so if we run into any of them, they're sure to call their friends. Let's be careful and try to get out of the area quickly."
I took one last look around and then turned back into the forest.
"Let's move."
Alex nodded at , and we entered the forest again.
We took every step carefully, trying our best to avoid dealing with those stupid spiders again, and we actually succeeded. Being suspicious of the slightest sound we heard along the way and moving away from them worked better than I thought it would. We only saw two groups of spiders and none of them noticed us.
Of course, it was not easy to be so stealthy, and we were extrely slow. But after a few hours, we noticed that the trees were getting thinner. We were crossing the forest and slowly erging from it. When I thought that this cursed forest full of spiders was behind us, I was never so happy to be out of there.
I'm not afraid of spiders or insects but... they are annoying. Especially the cat-sized ones and the ones that try especially hard to eat ... Alex must have felt the sa way.
I turned to him and looked at his face, and I saw more surprise than happiness. He was looking beyond where we had co out of the forest.
"We survived the forest, but this place..."
I looked ahead with him.
The trees in front of us were much sparser than in the forest. I would even say they were almost non-existent. It was as if we were on a plain in the middle of an ice age, with a flat landscape in front of us and a high mountain not far ahead. There seed to be a valley in the middle, but that was not the important thing.
Toward the end of our field of vision, a few buildings stood out. These were the stones with strange patterns on them that we had seen when we first entered the dungeon. Ahead of us was a plain of ruins.
"We have no choice but to move forward, and since the level of the dungeon isn't very high, I don't think we'll encounter anyone tougher than those spiders, unless we encounter extre creatures..."
Alex didn't seem to relax after what I had said, but he continued on with . As we got closer to the ruins that we could only see in the distance and began to see them and the ruins beyond them, I couldn't help but hold my breath, even though I knew this place.
It had a wonderful feeling as if we were passing through the ruins of an ancient civilization that had been destroyed long ago. Archaeologists would go crazy with happiness if they saw this place. The motifs on the stones, the structures that looked like they used to belong to a building, the weapons and creature bones that could be seen even though they were covered with snow...
"They're quite beautiful, aren't they?"
I couldn't find the expression on Alex's face that I expected.
"I think they're tragic."
His face was quite straight even though he said that. He saw that I noticed that and replied.
"They have nothing to do with , so I don't care about them. I don't even know if they're real because we're in a dungeon, but still, to think that this might be the end of a civilization... is tragic."
I opened my mouth but didn't say anything. I turned away and sighed. There really wasn't the slightest sadness on his face, but he was right.
Whether it was true or not, it was tragic that a city could be alive and active… but then fall into this state... to be erased and forgotten from history.
"Let's move on. We mustn't let our guard down."
Alex nodded without saying anything. We continued walking through the ruins.
The ruins just kept moving forward and eventually opened up into the plain that we could see ahead. And as we moved further into this plain, we were approaching the mountain with a huge valley in the middle.
Our surroundings changed more and more every minute. The most obvious change was that the ruins beca more frequent, but that was not the most important thing. The important thing was... the corpses of creatures began to appear around us. Not ancient bones, but fresh corpses.
As we continued to move forward, particularly alert, we suddenly paused. As quickly as we could, we moved behind a ruin and looked at what lay in our path.
Before us was a very primitive apin settlent.
I don't know how accurate it is to call it a settlent though... There are only three of what look like tents and not many apins. The rest are probably out hunting.
"They're right in the middle of our path, but I don't think we need to fight, we've wasted enough ti after what happened with the spiders."
Besides, I don't want to get into group battles for a little while after them, and Alex seems to agree with .
"Okay."
We carefully walked past them, avoiding the apins. Fortunately, none of them noticed us and we successfully evaded them.
So we continued to approach the mountain, which seed to be literally split in two by the valley, while the amount of ruins around us continued to increase.
Of course, the ruins were not the only thing that increased in number, the creatures also increased from this point on as if we had entered their habitat. But we did our best to avoid them.
A few tis we had to fight the creatures, a few tis we ran further into the valley, a few tis we destroyed them like assassins before they even realized what was happening, a few tis we passed by them without even their souls hearing us...
Now there was another obstacle in front of us. An obstacle that we could not cross or fight our way through... a cliff.
"How do we get across?"
Alex looked around for a long ti. There used to be a bridge over this cliff, but now it was at the bottom of it. It was so deep and foggy that I couldn't even see the remains of the bridge.
The sa was true on the other side of the cliff.
"I can't even see the other end, I would have used the wind to get us across, but I'm not sure if my mana is enough."
I had to use my mana a few tis before I ca here and I didn't drink the potions because I didn't want to waste them. I'll need them later and flying using the wind really consus a lot of mana...
I turned my head to the right. There were about forty ters between us and the wall of the valley we were in, which was covered with a thick layer of ice. It looked just as I rembered it.
I walked toward the wall and Alex followed behind . When we reached the wall and he saw what was there, his eyes widened with fear.
"No way..."
There was a road at the point where the cliff intersected the rocky wall of the valley, but it was so narrow that at most one person could barely pass over it at a ti. Moreover, unlike modern roads, there was no guardrail. So, one wrong step would send us to our death.
"We have to cross here?!"
"Do you see another way?"
Alex swallowed, not even trying to hide his almost pale face from .
I know, of course, the reason for such a reaction: he has a fear of heights. And a pretty bad one at that.
"Don't worry, this is one of the reasons I bought the mountaineering equipnt. We're not going to walk straight up. I'm not that stupid."
I slid my pack off my back, pulled out a couple of dinsional buttons, and opened them, revealing four picks for stabbing into the ice, a spiked sole for our shoes, and so on.
Alex swallowed once more when he saw them.
"I an, it's obvious that you're afraid of heights, but even if it's not a cliff, we'll have to climb another mountain in the near future. So you'd better prepare yourself, and I'll catch you if you fall. Don't worry."
Well... I can catch him, I hope.
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