Novel Full Chapter 2111 Deeper Rot
Chapter 2111: Chapter 2111 Deeper Rot
— Kat —
As they were exploring Kat nocked over some of the piles of stones. She didn’t think anything of it, she’d displaced quite a few at this point, but for Lily, the intensified smell was a clue. Moving her way over and glancing inside the small pile of stones Kat had opened up she could see what was causing the smell, or at least, one of them. Inside of the pile of stones was a chunk of rotting meat. Lily quickly looked away, but even at a glance she was able to tell it wasn’t just one lump that had been left around. It was the a densely packed ball of scraps. The fact it was hidden under rocks meant that it wasn’t some randomly discarded bit of meat that was inedible for the monster. It had been placed there…
Still, it didn’t tell them where the monster had come from, only that it had soaked its lair with the smell of rot, and perhaps its body as well, to ensure that it was nearly impossible to track while in its lair. *So… is it further up or further down?* Kat asked as she glanced into the cracks running through the room. It was hard to tell how much space was down there. You could fit sure, but the cracked and jagged pathways of rocks didn’t help you see down far. Rocks blocked your vision swiftly and venturing into such a tight space might be dangerous.
[I think it’s probably further down? Let’s check the other exit just in case though.] Kat nodded and the pair moved over to the other door and found that it had fallen down, as they already knew. What was now clear, was that the wall had sort of fallen away and then crashed back down. So you had to squeeze through the door out to one of the sides and then head back upwards. There was a small gap that Kat could get through in her water form… but nobody else, not even Lily was likely to make it through.
Perhaps whatever the group was looking for WAS through that door, but there simply wasn’t enough space for them to have gone this way. *What does that mean though? Surely they wouldn’t just go looking in some random caves for stuff. Even if we can accept that they were dragged down or something… there’s no sign of a fight. That seems to imply they went down into what’s probably its lair. Unless it’s a slime of some kind?*
[From what Hunter told us about slimes I don’t think they’d care to leave any part of their prey behind. It would involve spitting out the meat. Not even the bones, just the meat. It… well I suppose it could be theoretically possible if it was like… trained or something but it isn’t a natural behaviour. I wouldn’t count on it is my point.]
Kat examined the gap for any sign of passage, slime or otherwise but if she had to guess the answer was no. It lacked a lot of the dust buildup you might expect for something that hadn’t seen much traffic, but there was a small airflow through the area that likely held some responsibility for the smaller than average dirt coating around it. Then again, Kat didn’t know if that made any true sense, it just felt right to her.
Moving back to the rest of the room, Kat glanced down at the cracks. Plenty of them had spaces you could crawl down, but none held signs of being well travelled. Kat also wasn’t sure which of them would go where they wanted and which were actually dead ends that were hidden around a single corner, or perhaps worse, a few dozen corners. Kat glanced at Lily as the obvious idea come to her.
Lily was about to think something, the idea was half formed, when one of Kat’s own barrelled its way into existence. I can be the one to split up! Before Lily could even comment Kat burst into water and split off small bubbles to go down the various tunnels. Kat quickly found that most of them had dead ends where other bits and pieces of rock showed up, but a few had small gaps leading elsewhere and a few more had something approaching a proper path.
Many of these met up and a few more led to their own dead ends not long afterwards. From what Kat could now tell, there was really only four true pathways that continued for any length of time… though that fourth one was questionable. It was in between two others and from what her water could make out, barely large enough for Lily to squeeze through let alone anything else so it was unclear if it was actually used for anything or if it just happened to form between the rocks.
As for the directions everything was going in? If you took the way they came in as the south, then there was one travelling almost due east, while the other tree travelled some variation of West, with one pretty close to perfect South West, the small crack travelling fairly close to due West, and the third just barely North-West.
*Which way are we going?*
[Which one is the largest?]
*Well all but the smallest look like someone could crawl through it. As for the largest? I think I’d have to say… the one to the North-West? Maybe? The one off to the East is about the same size. The water I’ve split off isn’t able to capture a perfect picture of what it all looks like, especially not when I’m splitting my attention like this. They’re similar enough in size.*
[Let’s head down the North-West one then.]
Kat nodded and allowed her control to lapse over the more distant bits of water that were no longer important. They weren’t completely out of her control, she still had an awareness of them, but she’d need to account for it when transforming back. Her main body lead Lily through the tunnel and it was easily large enough for Lily to make her way through.
Kat continued to lead the way as just water even once they’d met up with her water droplet form. The place simply wasn’t that large and it would be a pain to crawl. There was also the fact that she could spot several signs of recent passage here. Now that she was here ’in full’ and Lily was paying attention they could see a few spots were the rock looked recently chipped and their was a fairly clear sign that someone had dragged themselves through the dirt here.
Kat examined in closely, and Lily followed her soon afterwards. What was notable, was that based on how the dirt seemed to be arranged… it seemed like the last person to come here was crawling IN instead of something more reasonable like trying not to be dragged. There were clear marks from where their arms had grasped at the walls to push themselves forward.
Kat pondered it for a few moments. *What do you think this means? Do you think the monster is already dead and someone is using this as a shortcut? Why couldn’t we tell before?*
[Well before it was too hard for us to notice. We’re not expert trackers. This here… well its pretty clear. A mostly straight shot in an area where nobody can do anything but crawl or pull themselves along… well its easy to match the dirt up with what we expect to see.]
*Do you think I’m wrong?*
[No, there’s some pretty obvious points they’d have grabbed onto and you can see like here…] Lily’s shadows pointed at one of the rocks. It jutted out a bit. [Is a place they’d clearly grabbed and here…]
Lily pointed at the dirt. [you can see that they aren’t quite as on the ground on this side because they were pulling themselves forward and slightly upward.]
*Hmm… so do you think someone tried to follow in afterwards? Or they ignored the fact that the room was practically rotting?*
[I’m wondering if they could smell it…]
*But the people we grabbed in the greenhouse didn’t have suits on. They probably should’ve… and looking back they might have had some they dumped somewhere… no wait. One of them still had the pants on so they DID have the suits still… and you think the main group kept them on?*
[Hard to say. I mean, we just assumed there was a monster.]
*Are you telling me a human left that ball of rotting meat around?*
[Fuck.]
*Exactly. We might just be dealing with idiots. Though… yeah I’m really not sure what to think. If they had suits on why go this way instead of continuing on. Surely they could break through to the next room instead of going through this mess. And if they knew about the monster why go after it?*
[My best guess at this point is that one of them was grabbed and then the rest went after them to try and ensure that they didn’t get killed… or that there was a corpse or something?]
*Hmmm… I guess we’ll see.*