Chapter 168 - Stone Bridge

Inside the large room was a total of ten tables which each had a human body chained down to them. The bodies were in horrible shape and were lifeless. Most of them had bruise marks by their ankles and hands. Showing that they had struggled so hard to break free, that it caused them injuries.

Badger and sloth were trying their best to not throw up. The smell coming from the room was foul. Ray and Jack were the only ones that were able to examine the bodies closely.

"It looks like they were trying to perform some type of surgery," Ray said.

"What do you mean?" Gary asked who had now taken off his sash that was tied around his waist and had placed it over his mouth like some type of mask. 

"Well if you look closely, every single one of them has had their hearts taken out."

Jack then started sniffing around the body as if his nose had caught a whiff of something. Badger and Sloth's faces were horrified wondering how Jack was able to put his face so close to something like that.

"The blood," Jack said. "It's fresh."

"Wait, does that mean it wasn't done too long ago?" Badger asked, "What if they come back here?"

They all then started to examine the room to see if they could find anything. They noticed that there were many strange Jars with different body parts of beasts. Some things were unrecognisable to many of them.

Then Suddenly, Jack spotted something in one of the Jars, it was a liquid he had become quite familiar with.

"Hey, Ray come over here," Jack said.

When Ray took a look at the continents inside the Jar, he immediately knew what it was. It was the same liquid that the Dark guild and Pure blood members used. When the members drank it, they obtained extra power form the Shadow plague.

"Perhaps this is all a clue to how the purple liquid is created," Ray mumbled but there was no way for him to confirm if it was true or not.

Ray then opened up the system to send a message to Slyvia and Von.

"What are you doing?" Gary asked.

"I've been making a map of the routes we have taken so far and it isn't good news. The routes from here either all lead to just outside the city or some places inside. It looks like the Red door and the Caves aren't the only entrances into these tunnels but not only that some of these tunnels have been made recently."

"You mean…"

"Yeah, it looks like someone is planning to attack the Academy again soon. So I'm informing Von and Slyvia of our findings, I'll let them deal with the rest."

The group continued to move forward after checking the room and eventually exited out of another tunnel different from the one they had entered. The whole underground system was like a maze and if it wasn't for Ray's dragon eyes, they would have been long lost a long time ago. Eventually, after taking several different routes, the group could hear the sound of running water.

After following the sound of the water the group had eventually come to what looked like a stone bride. On each side of the stone bridge was a waterfall that gushing down water into an endless black hole.

"How far down do you think it goes," Badger said.

"I wouldn't want to find out." Sloth replied.

The stone bridge was quite wide and ran about 100 meters long to the other side.

"Well Jack, you first as always," Gary said with his hand forward.

Jack was the first to step on the stone bridge and as he did, he started to jump up and down to test the bridge's strength.

"It's made out of stone you dingus!" Gary shouted, "It's not going to give."

Once Jack had made sure the bridge was safe, the group walked across the bridge together. After walking slowly, they had eventually reached the centre.

"Halfway, you can do it," Badger said to himself.

"Oh, right you've always been afraid of heights." Sloth said.

"I didn't think deep underground we would experience something like this." Badger smiled.

Then suddenly, from the sides of the bridge, multiple large tentacles started to appear.

"What the heck are they!" Gary shouted.

The tentacles immediately went for the group on the bridge. Gary slashed at the tentacles that came towards him slicing them and causing them to fall to the ground but as soon at the tentacles were cut off new ones would grow in its place.

Ray had managed to grab one of the tentacles and was hoping to pull up whatever the tentacle was attached to. But as he pulled the tentacle managed to snap at the same time.

Then one of the tentacles had managed to wrap around Sloth's legs. It lifted him into the air and slammed him onto the ground. When the tentacle went to lift sloth in the air once more, Badger came running forward and sliced the tentacle just in time causing his brother to fall to the ground.

Jack's body and attacks were strong but his speed was slow. Unable to avoid the tentacles attack, Jack was repeatedly getting whacked in the back by them.

This time when Ray grabbed on to one of the tentacles, he decided to activate his fire attribute hoping to spread the fire on the whole thing. Unfortunate while Ray was holding two tentacles in each hand, another two had grabbed him by the legs and threw him to the side.

Ray grabbed on to the ledge of the bridge just in time, otherwise, he would have fallen to his death. Then when Ray looked off to the side, he could finally see what was attacking them. Underneath the bridge was a slug-like creature who was stuck upside down on the bridge.

It had a single eye and had thousands of tentacles coming out from its sides.

Then when the group thought things couldn't get worse. They could hear the sound of giant heavy footsteps coming from one of the tunnels.