Chapter 46: Transported Underground

“A Random Teleportation Scroll... This is going to be troublesome.”

The Grand Elder carefully examined the magical fluctuations left at the scene. After extending his spiritual perception and sensing the surrounding area for some time, he finally sighed and muttered bitterly to himself.

“What is a Random Teleportation Scroll?”

After hearing the Grand Elder briefly explain what had happened, Delis asked in confusion.

Seeing that Delis clearly did not understand, Kweilin quickly explained,

“A Random Teleportation Scroll is a type of spatial teleportation scroll. It’s normally used as a last resort to save someone’s life. But it has a serious drawback. Although it can randomly teleport the user anywhere within fifty kilometers, the destination is completely unpredictable.”

“You might appear in the sky... or underground.”

“There have even been people who were teleported directly into magma, while others appeared right beside magical beasts. That’s why these scrolls are extremely rare. In fact, no one has been able to make them for several hundred years.”

The moment Delis heard Kweilin’s explanation, she fainted.

With the Grand Elder’s spiritual power, searching for someone within a radius of fifty kilometers should have been an effortless task.

Yet the expression on his face made one thing painfully obvious—

he had been unable to find Kent.

Despair immediately overwhelmed Delis.

Although she had not known Kent for very long, she had already realized that she had fallen deeply in love with that boy who was so much younger than herself.

The Grand Elder looked at Delis.

Even his heart, which had remained calm and unmoved for countless years, was touched slightly by the sight.

“It’s not necessarily impossible for him to survive.”

“There are intelligent races living beneath the surface as well. With that boy’s talent, I believe he’ll find his way back eventually.”

After leaving those words behind, a glowing six-pointed magical formation appeared beneath the Grand Elder.

A moment later, Kweilin, Delis, Olis, and the Grand Elder all vanished together.

“Kweilin, what did the Grand Elder mean by that?”

By the time Delis woke up, she was already inside the Mages’ Guild.

After Olis repeated what the Grand Elder had said, Delis immediately turned to Kweilin and asked anxiously.

Kweilin gave a bitter smile.

“That place is an exiled world. It is also known as the Dark Netherworld...”

“He won’t die. I’m still here, aren’t I?”

A voice suddenly came from somewhere nearby.

Niu Niu appeared from seemingly nowhere and curled her lips disdainfully.

And what was she holding in her hand?

None other than Big Nose.

As it turned out, Niu Niu had sensed the Grand Elder’s spiritual power from far away.

Afraid that the Grand Elder might discover her true identity, she had gone off to search for Kent.

Instead, she had run into Big Nose.

After the Grand Elder and Delis disappeared, Niu Niu hurriedly followed after them.

Big Nose and Delis had signed an equal soul contract, and such a contract would stop functioning once the distance between the two became too great.

That was why Niu Niu had no choice but to hurry after Delis with Big Nose.

Even so, she still returned several hours later than Delis.

“Ow... Why is it so dark?”

Kent slowly regained consciousness.

Everything around him was completely black.

His entire body also ached.

Kent carefully pushed himself up and moved his arms and legs.

After checking himself, he discovered that he had suffered only a few minor scrapes.

Nothing serious.

But the darkness around him was absolute.

Kent suspected that he was inside some kind of cave.

The ground beneath him was damp.

There were stone walls nearby, and the moisture in the air was obviously much heavier than before.

Kent began trying to remember how he had ended up here.

The last thing he could recall was that the thief seemed to have activated some kind of scroll.

Then Kent had suddenly experienced a powerful sensation of weightlessness.

After that—

nothing.

When he opened his eyes again, he was already here.

Kent instantly cast a Fireball spell.

The bright flame illuminated his surroundings, allowing him to clearly see the wet stone walls around him.

The space inside this place was enormous.

The ceiling was more than ten meters high.

The ground was covered with uneven rocks, and various plants grew along the surrounding stone walls.

With Kent’s limited knowledge, he could only barely identify some of them.

They were mostly ferns and fungi.

“Looks like I’m really lucky.”

“Landing here is actually pretty fortunate.”

Although Kent had no idea how he had ended up in this place, he could still see what had happened.

The ground where he had been lying was soft, leaving a clear human-shaped depression.

And on a raised rock not far away, the thief’s head had been completely smashed.

It was obvious that the thief had crashed into the stone during the teleportation.

Kent could only sigh at how fortunate he had been.

Kent licked his finger and held it up, trying to determine the direction of the airflow.

However, to his frustration, he could not feel anything.

He looked toward both ends of the cave passage.

For a moment, Kent nearly lost his mind.

He deeply understood the principle that one wrong step could lead to countless mistakes.

If he chose the wrong direction here, it would be like getting lost in a desert.

He might die without even knowing how.

“Forget it... should I just flip a coin?”

With no other option, Kent took out a gold coin and threw it into the air.

Whichever direction the coin landed—

that would be the direction he would go.

Fortunately, Kent possessed a large amount of magical power.

Maintaining a small fireball consumed very little mana.

After throwing the coin three times, Kent finally got a usable result.

The first two times, the coin had landed directly on his own head.

Feeling helpless, Kent quickly began moving in the chosen direction.

After walking a few steps, he suddenly turned back.

He picked up Dark Blade’s dagger.

The thief had nothing else useful left on him.

Kent looked at the dagger and complained:

“Sigh... why did you have to throw away your hand crossbow?”

But he did not think about another possibility.

If Dark Blade still had his hand crossbow—

would Kent even still be standing here complaining?

Kent had not walked for long before he encountered a fork in the passage.

He carefully examined both paths.

Then he chose the left one.

As he walked, he happily muttered to himself:

“Luckily, I’m smart.”

“The paths leading in and out of places like this must have been used by animals or magical beasts. The ground should be smoother, and the soil underneath should be more compact.”

Kent was still thinking of this place as some kind of underground cave system.

“Hmm? What’s that sound?”

Kent continued forward while occasionally stopping to rest.

This time, he used a magic core inside his bag as a light source.

The glow was not very bright, but it was enough to see.

However, because the illumination was limited, he could not move too quickly.

Along the way, Kent occasionally spotted various reptiles.

But whenever they sensed the light, they immediately fled into cracks between the rocks.

Although many ferns and fungi grew around him, Kent did not dare to eat them.

Who knew whether they were poisonous?

At this moment, Kent was extremely hungry.

He had woken up late.

Then he had spent a long time escaping.

Finally, he had fought Dark Blade in a desperate battle.

He had almost no strength left.

Fortunately, Kent possessed the mind of an adult.

Otherwise, an ordinary person would have collapsed long ago.

But Kent understood one thing clearly:

As long as he kept moving, there was still a chance to survive.

If he stopped—

death was waiting.

“Shorty, push harder! I can’t hold on much longer!”

“Wait... let me drink some... just one sip.”

“I said, can you two stop arguing?”

“Exactly. If you keep fighting, we’re all finished.”

From far away, Kent heard several loud voices.

The language sounded different from the common language spoken on the continent.

It was an older and more advanced language—

the Ancient Continental Language.

Fortunately, Kent had studied it before.

He immediately extinguished the fireball and stored away the magic core.

Then he carefully approached the source of the voices.

But when he finally reached a nearby location and looked over...

Kent was completely stunned.

Kent cautiously poked his head out of the cave entrance.

The first thing that came into view was a blazing red glow far off on the horizon, almost like the morning sun rising in the distance. The entire landscape around it was bathed in crimson light.

But when Kent looked more carefully, he realized that the fiery red object was not the sun at all.

It was an enormous volcano.

Around the volcano stretched a vast expanse of shadowy buildings, along with things that resembled towering trees. Yet Kent could still clearly tell that he was underground, because this entire world was nothing more than an unbelievably gigantic cavern.

Below him lay a broad basin, and throughout it stood colossal stone pillars that stretched all the way from the ground to the cavern ceiling.

Kent stared at the scene in fascination.

The view was so breathtaking that, in his opinion, it was easily a hundred times more beautiful than those heavily Photoshopped fantasy pictures he had seen back on Earth.

“Ah!”

A sudden scream snapped Kent out of his daze.

Only then did he notice what was happening nearby, and he immediately hurried toward the source of the cry.

Not far away, on a gentle slope, four humanoid figures were fighting a gigantic spider.

Among the four were three warriors and one archer.

Creatures like spiders were especially vulnerable to fire-element warriors and fire mages. Ordinary warriors and archers, however, had a much harder time dealing with such arthropod-type creatures, particularly because of their sticky spider silk.

The scream Kent had just heard came from one of the warriors.

The man had been caught in the spider’s web and violently flung aside. His body slammed into a rock, forcing a cry of pain from him.

The attack also drove back the other two warriors who had been trying to close in.

The giant spider then began dragging the trapped warrior toward itself.

The warrior could only stare in despair as the creature’s venomous fangs moved closer and closer to him.

But suddenly—

the spider’s head lit up.

A moment later, the creature let out a shrill scream.

Taking advantage of the spider’s recoil, an arrow shot forward and buried itself directly inside the spider’s enormous mouth, right among its venomous fangs.

Then, strangely, the spider’s head simply fell off.

The two warriors who had just rushed forward were both startled.

They stared at the fallen head in confusion.

“Our axes haven’t even hit it yet. How did its head already fall off?”

“Daphne, what the hell were you doing? You almost got me turned into that spider’s snack! ...Huh? A human?”

The warrior who had been wrapped in spider silk struggled back to his feet and immediately began shouting angrily at the archer.

But halfway through his complaint, he noticed Kent.

His face instantly filled with surprise.

“You... you’re dwarves? Or gnomes?”

Kent asked in astonishment.

He had just finished off the spider with a single Wind Blade.

To be honest, the spider was only unusually large. It was not even a magical beast, so for Kent, killing it had been ridiculously easy.

Only afterward did he carefully examine the four figures in front of him.

Three of them were short, with stubby arms and legs, and each carried an axe.

However, neither their voices nor their movements were anything like those of children.

Their armor was also exceptionally well made.

Even in the dim light, Kent could see rings of forged patterns gleaming across the metal—clear signs of high-quality dwarven craftsmanship.

The archer, Daphne, on the other hand, looked much closer to an ordinary human.

That was why Kent could not help asking in surprise,

“You... you really are dwarves? Gnomes?”