Chapter 290: A Ring

Chapter 290: Chapter 290: A Ring

Though it was hard to believe, Seraphina Sinclair thought of a possibility.

Her gaze shifted back to the monsters. ’Could it be... these things aren’t completely dead?’

With that thought, Seraphina raised her long blade and delivered a finishing blow to each corpse.

As she pulled the long blade from the last monster’s body...

CLICK.

A faint, yet exceptionally clear sound of a mechanism turning came from behind her.

Seraphina froze, then spun around abruptly, the tip of her Blade angled outward, her gaze sharp as lightning.

On the wall, which had been perfectly blended with the surrounding dilapidated brickwork, a crack had suddenly slid open!

The gap was no more than two fingers wide, yet from it seeped an air far colder, more stagnant, and more laden with the stench of decay and blood than anything outside.

A look of astonishment crossed Seraphina’s face. Gripping her long blade, she crept a few steps closer, her eyes fixed on the gap that had just appeared.

She hadn’t noticed it before; there was actually a door here.

Seraphina reached out and gently touched the wall. The door’s edges blended perfectly with the seams of the red bricks; if not for the crack, it would have been impossible to tell a door was even there.

Standing before the gap, she could feel a continuous stream of cold air flowing out from within.

’Are there more terrifying monsters behind this door, or a reward...?’

Seraphina glanced back at the Silver Door. At some point, it too had quietly opened.

This meant Seraphina now had a choice. She could enter the door hidden in the red-brick wall and investigate, or she could leave this area with the rewards she’d already claimed. From there, she could choose to make a sacrifice or exit the special area entirely.

The former offered no guaranteed outcome, while the latter promised absolute safety.

More importantly...

Seraphina’s eyes swept over the five corpses on the floor.

’I’ve already killed five monsters that were practically C-level, and there’s no reward?’

No matter how she thought about it, the situation was bizarre. Plus, the prompt had been perfectly clear!

In an E-level special area, the highest-Level monster is D-level; it’s impossible for C-level monsters to appear here.

If Seraphina were to continue exploring, it would be because this rule gave her all the confidence she needed.

She stood there, lost in thought, while Lucky circled around her.

Apparently sensing the coast was clear, Lucky continued to circle. Auric Young emerged to join in the fun, first flying a few laps around Seraphina before falling in line right behind Lucky.

With its golden trail, Auric Young flashed through Seraphina’s field of vision again and again.

After it flew past her eyes one more time, Seraphina finally raised her hand and caught it.

Effort yields rewards. Hard work pays off.

These were words written into the basic rules of The Black Mist World.

’I’ve killed the monsters, and yes, this room is creepy, but... what if the reward is inside?’

’Five D-level monsters! That should be worth a C-level Supply Box at least!’

Seraphina couldn’t bear to lose that reward just because she was afraid to enter the room.

’Besides... I have Auric Young.’

The chance to die and come back to life once gave her immense confidence!

Seraphina’s body tensed. Ignoring the struggling Auric Young in her hand, she reached out and forcefully pushed the door open.

As she did, a bone-chilling gust of wind rushed to meet her.

The scene behind the door was finally revealed!

This was not the room of monsters or rewards she had anticipated. Instead, it was a narrow, steep stone staircase stretching ever downward.

The sides of the staircase were rough-hewn rock walls, and every few steps, a dimly burning oil lamp was embedded in them. The flames flickered uncertainly in the cold wind, twisting the jagged shadows on the stairs and walls into ghostly shapes.

Carried on the wind was a thick stench of decay, the smell of blood, and an indescribable odor, like formaldehyde mixed with rusted metal, constantly wafting up from the depths of the staircase.

No monsters leaped out. There was no sound at all.

Only dead silence and a chill that seemed to seep into her very bones.

Seraphina stood at the entrance, pressing the struggling Auric Young back onto her arm and gently restraining the equally restless Lucky.

She took a deep breath, activated Water Stopping once, then gripped her long blade and stepped onto the first stone step.

Her footsteps were amplified in the narrow passage, echoing in the silence.

The stone steps were cold and slippery to the touch, whether from moisture or something else, she couldn’t tell.

She moved slowly, her muscles taut and her senses heightened to their peak, trying to catch the slightest anomaly.

After descending about twenty or thirty steps, the staircase ended. The view suddenly opened up to reveal a small stone chamber.

The chamber was circular, slightly larger than the small room above, with a slightly raised stone platform in the center.

The surface of the platform was carved with patterns that looked wrong at a glance. The blood-red lines formed a massive, bizarre design, and Seraphina couldn’t even describe what the patterns depicted.

The only thing she could be sure of was that this was definitely some kind of ominous ritual.

And scattered around the stone platform were...

Bones.

Not monster bones. Human skeletons.

Several nearly complete skeletons were slumped against the walls or lying on the ground in various twisted, agonizing poses.

Their clothes had long since rotted away, with only a few tattered rags clinging to their bones.

All the skeletons had one thing in common: their skulls were missing. The breaks at their cervical vertebrae were unnaturally smooth, as if they had been instantly severed by something incredibly sharp.

Seraphina’s heart sank.

Her eyes quickly swept across the stone chamber, but she saw no sign of the expected Supply Box or any other decent reward.

The chamber was empty, save for the skeletons, the stone platform, and the few equally dim oil lamps on the walls.

’Did I make the wrong call?’

’Is this just a slaughterhouse?’

’Was the reward for killing those five monsters just permission to see this scene?’

’No, that’s not right.’

’The prompts are never pointless, and the basic rules of The Black Mist World should still apply.’

’Effort must be rewarded. It’s just the form of that reward...’

Her gaze refocused on the center of the stone platform, at the intersection of those twisted lines.

Staring intently for a moment, she finally noticed a faint glimmer of light at the intersection, distinct from the lines of the pattern. It was incredibly dim, almost completely obscured by dust and shadow.

Seraphina cautiously approached the stone platform.

As she drew closer, she could see the source of the light—

It was a ring, embedded in a groove on the platform.

The ring’s design was simple, even crude. It looked like a band casually bent from some dark metal, with no patterns on it, only a dull, matte finish as if covered in dust.

Only the bezel held a grain-of-rice-sized, almost completely non-reflective black Stone. The faint glimmer of light was seeping out extremely slowly from within this Stone.

The entire ring looked unremarkable, even somewhat shabby.

But Seraphina knew that for something hidden so secretively and guarded by five D-level Peak monsters, it could be no ordinary object.