Chapter 100: The Lost Expedition

Chapter 100: The Lost Expedition

His expression tightened.

The carving was rough, but deliberate. Whoever did it wanted it to be found.

Looks like this place is called Forest Fall.

Sky said it out loud without realizing it. The name felt strange in his mouth. Forest Fall. It didn’t sound like a dungeon name. It sounded like a place that used to have trees, sky, seasons.

Below it were several other lines, but most had been damaged. Deep gouges crossed through the text, as if someone had tried to scratch it out in a panic, or as if something had scraped against the wall and erased it.

Only fragments remained. Chloe came closer and tilted her headlamp to catch the grooves.

...found the passage...

...deeper than expected...

...the castle...

...don’t trust...

...it listens...

Sky stepped back, his hand instinctively going to his blade. The last two fragments gave him a chill that had nothing to do with the cold.

"A castle?" he repeated. "Down here? There’s supposed to be a castle beneath the labyrinth?"

Chloe looked up from the papers she was still scanning. Her visor reflected the wall text.

"You found something else?"

He pointed toward the wall, at the lower, more damaged lines. "It’s carved here too. They mention a castle. Multiple times."

Chloe approached and scanned the writing directly. Her Forge Visor emitted a thin grid, reconstructing several of the damaged characters by measuring depth and angle.

"The castle is mentioned multiple times," she confirmed, as more letters filled in on her display. "The same word appears in three different sentences. Whoever wrote this was obsessed with it."

Vesper’s eyes narrowed as she looked from the wall to the abandoned campfire to the crates. Her hand never left her weapon.

"Who were these people? Soldiers? Explorers?"

Chloe looked down at the papers in her hand, finally getting a clean enough image to start reading properly.

"I’m about to find out. This looks like a field journal. Personal log."

She projected a small holographic display into the air between them so they could all see. The light was shaky at first, then stabilized.

A rough map appeared, hand-drawn but surprisingly detailed. It showed the labyrinth on the top layer, with its twisting corridors. Then the hidden staircase they had found. Then several underground chambers, marked with small symbols for camps and danger zones.

And finally, at the very bottom, past everything else, a large structure marked with a symbol resembling a castle — towers, walls, a central keep.

Sky stared at it, his eyes tracing the path they had just taken. It matched.

"So they were looking for this," he said quietly. "They weren’t lost. They came here on purpose."

"Yes," Chloe said, zooming in on the castle icon with a flick of her fingers. "Look."

There was a small note beside the drawing, written in hurried but legible handwriting.

She read it aloud, her voice echoing slightly in the chamber.

«"We believe the structure is inhabited."»

Another line appeared beneath it, in a different ink, as if added later.

«"The ruler of the castle may possess knowledge of the way out."»

Sky’s expression changed completely. His casual curiosity sharpened into focus.

"The way out? What way out? The way out of the Dungeon?"

Chloe nodded slowly, reading the line again to be sure she hadn’t mistranslated.

"That’s what it says. ’The way out.’ Not an exit from this chamber. They thought the castle could lead them out of the entire Dungeon Realm."

Vesper crossed her arms, her holy blade dimming slightly as she lowered her guard a fraction to think.

"Then these people weren’t searching for treasure or relics," she said. "They weren’t like the usual scavengers."

"They were searching for an exit," Sky finished for her. He looked around the abandoned camp again, this time with new understanding. The blankets, the crates, the carefully placed fire pit. "They were trapped. Like everyone else who falls too deep. And they thought this castle was their only chance."

He walked back to the fire pit and nudged a piece of wood with his boot.

"Did they find it? Did they make it to the castle?"

Chloe turned another page of the waterproof papers. The paper crackled, fragile despite its coating.

"No," she said after scanning it. "At least not at this point."

The next entry was heavily damaged. Water had gotten in at some point, smearing the ink into black clouds. She spent several seconds reconstructing the remaining words, her visor working hard to fill in gaps.

She read:

«Day 31.

We reached the lower structure.

The Array is behaving strangely.

The deeper we go, the less information it gives us. Our compasses are useless. Our maps keep shifting.»

Sky’s eyes narrowed. A cold feeling settled in his stomach.

That sounded painfully familiar. That was exactly what they were experiencing right now. The visor flickering, the Soul Clone finding nothing, the Array going silent the deeper they went.

Chloe continued, her voice quieter now.

«There are sounds beneath the ruins.

Something is moving in the darkness. Not beasts. Not Dungeon spawns. Something else. It follows us when we stop.

We have decided to turn back. The castle is too far.»

She stopped scrolling, her finger hovering over the next page.

The final entry was written in rough, uneven handwriting, completely different from the neat script before. The lines were slanted, pressed so hard the pen had torn the paper in places.

Almost as though whoever wrote it had been in a hurry. Or terrified.

Chloe slowly read the remaining words, and this time she didn’t project them. She just read them herself.

«If anyone finds this camp, don’t follow us. Don’t go to the castle. We were wrong. It is not empty. We woke something up.

We are leaving everything and running. May the Array have mercy.»

Silence filled the chamber. The kind of silence that feels heavier after words like that.

Sky stared at the page in her hands. The ink was smudged at the bottom, as if by a sweaty palm.

"That’s it? That’s where it ends?"

Chloe turned it over, hoping for more on the back.

Nothing. Blank.

She checked the remaining papers in the stack quickly.

Still nothing. Just damaged equipment lists and empty pages.

Sky frowned, looking from the journal to the carved warning on the wall and back.

"Then where did they go? If they turned back, why didn’t anyone ever report this place? This camp should be on record. Forest Fall should be on record."

Vesper walked toward the wall and examined the old writing again, running her gauntlet over the deep scratches. She looked at the floor, at the multiple footprints leading out of the chamber — not back toward the entrance they came from, but deeper in.

"They left the camp," she said.

"Obviously," Sky said.

"But they didn’t return," she added. "Look at the tracks. They go further in, not out. They said they were turning back, but their feet didn’t."

Sky’s expression hardened as he saw it too. Two sets of prints went out and never came back. The larger, clawed prints overlapped them.

Chloe looked down at the map again, her face pale in the blue light.

"There might be another clue. They left a final path."

She enlarged the final section of the map. The earlier part of the map was neat and planned. This last part was drawn hastily, with a shaking hand.

A thin line had been drawn from the camp toward one of the deeper chambers, beyond where they had marked the castle. A line that went around the castle, not toward it.

Sky leaned closer, over her shoulder.

"What’s that? An alternate route?"

Chloe followed the line with her finger, tracing it to a small chamber marked with a single word that was half-erased.

"It looks like a route they took after they decided to turn back. Maybe they got lost. Or maybe something chased them."

"To the castle?" Sky asked.

She nodded slowly.

"Most likely. Or to whatever is behind it. The line stops there."

Sky glanced at the warning written on the wall.

Don’t follow us.

Then he looked at the map. At the thin line disappearing into the unknown.

A faint smile appeared on his face, that familiar, reckless smile that Vesper and Chloe knew too well.

"Well..."

Chloe immediately looked at him, her visor flashing red in warning.

"Don’t."

Sky raised an eyebrow, trying to look innocent.

"I didn’t say anything."

"You were about to," she said, pointing a finger at him. "I know that face. That’s your ’let’s ignore the obvious death warning’ face."

Vesper sighed, closing her eyes for a second.

"He’s going to follow them. He’s going to follow the line."

Sky smiled wider, folding the map carefully and tucking it into his own pack.

"Of course I am. They said they found sounds, movements, something that wasn’t a beast. And they said the Array stops working. That’s exactly what’s happening to us. If we want to understand what’s going on here, we need to see where they went."

Chloe stared at him like he had lost his mind.

"You’re impossible. They literally wrote ’don’t follow us’ in capital letters scratched into stone. What more do you need?"

Sky folded the last of the papers and placed them back into the metal container for safekeeping.

"Maybe they found the way out after all," he said calmly. "Maybe they were just too scared to go through. Maybe the warning is about something else."

He looked toward the passage leading deeper underground, where the blue lights were still flickering awake one by one, inviting them forward.

"And if they did find it... if there really is a way out down there..."

His grip tightened around the Blood Blade, the red glow reflecting in his eyes.

"...we might find it too."