Chapter 321: Aura

Chapter 321: Chapter 321: Aura

After resting for a moment and collecting herself, Fayestar asked in a low voice, "So what should we do now?"

"We can only explore this far in this direction." Seraphina Sinclair glanced at the monsters staring intently at them. Although they had fallen back asleep, their hollow eyes were still fixed on the group, creating an extremely eerie sight. "There’s no other way to go but back."

Alaric Hawthorn stood up, looking at the monsters that had nearly killed him moments ago. His fingers unconsciously tightened around his long spear. He glanced at Lyra Lowell and said, "Then let’s not waste any more time."

Lyra Lowell, still seemingly shaken by the fire Seraphina Sinclair had casually thrown earlier, shot her a glance and stood up without a word.

The group set off up the stairs again, but the atmosphere was completely different from when they had come down.

The bickering among Lyra Lowell, Alaric, and Fayestar had stopped, replaced by a somber mood.

And events would soon prove that their apprehension was justified.

Lyra Lowell and Alaric Hawthorn walked in the front, with Seraphina Sinclair and Fayestar following behind.

Just as they stepped off the last stair, Alaric Hawthorn’s brow furrowed. Seraphina Sinclair, entering right after him, also noticed something was wrong.

For some reason, a foul, coppery smell had spread through the corridor.

The group, having just faced resurrected monsters, knew better than anyone what that smell meant.

Alaric Hawthorn stopped dead in his tracks. His wary gaze swept the area, but he found nothing out of the ordinary.

Lyra Lowell, standing beside him, did the same. He even took a step back after Seraphina Sinclair and Fayestar came up, ready to flee at a moment’s notice.

Seraphina Sinclair’s brows were knitted tightly as her gaze swept over the still-dim, flickering corridor.

The coppery stench was undeniable, exactly the same as the one they’d smelled in the passage below.

But the corridor was empty. There were only the sputtering wall lamps, and as far as the eye could see, there were no monsters at all.

But the stench was too strong.

"Something’s wrong," Seraphina Sinclair said quietly. "This smell... it’s too strong. It can’t be a lingering scent that drifted up from below."

Her voice was soft, but the information it carried made the other three tense up instantly.

Fayestar subconsciously shuffled closer to Seraphina Sinclair, looking around nervously. "Could... could those things be here, too?"

"Didn’t we just come from this way?" Alaric Hawthorn frowned deeply. "It looked exactly like this before. I have a good memory; I’m absolutely sure."

Lyra Lowell said coldly, "It didn’t smell like this before."

"No," Alaric Hawthorn retorted, "it did. You all saw what happened down there. Those monsters came back to life."

"Maybe after they came back to life, they started giving off a stronger smell," Alaric Hawthorn licked his lips, his voice trembling slightly, but he stubbornly insisted, "And we haven’t actually seen any monsters, have we?"

"If the smell was coming from those monsters," Lyra Lowell countered, "we should have smelled it while we were still down there, not only after we came up!"

Fayestar interjected weakly, "Besides, we still don’t know who left that hat. It means that in this dungeon, aside from those monsters that don’t move, there could be other kinds."

At the mention of the hat, the two who had been arguing fell silent.

No one knew the exact situation, but they all knew one thing: moving forward could be dangerous.

But going back was a dead end.

The trio’s gazes once again fell upon Seraphina Sinclair. Seraphina knew it was her turn to act as the group’s backbone.

’To her, the path behind was a confirmed dead end, while the path ahead merely held the scent of danger.’

’Before making a decision, there was just one thing she had to recognize.’

’This is a dungeon.’

’And in a dungeon, there was no such thing as a truly safe place.’

Compared to the swarm of D-level monsters below, Seraphina Sinclair was more willing to press forward.

’She knew there would be danger ahead, but she also believed the path to survival lay in that direction.’

Seraphina Sinclair said nothing, simply striding forward.

Her movements were crisp and decisive, without a trace of hesitation, as if the preceding analysis and potential dangers didn’t exist.

This sudden decisiveness stunned the three behind her.

"Hey! You—" Alaric Hawthorn instinctively started to call out to her, but he swallowed his words.

He watched Seraphina Sinclair’s straight back. The heavy mining lamp in her hand didn’t waver as she walked with a steady pace into the depths of the corridor.

Lyra Lowell’s expression was complicated. He admired Seraphina Sinclair’s courage but also thought she was being reckless.

’But right now, there didn’t seem to be a better option.’

He gritted his teeth, muttering, "Keep up!" He tightened his grip on his Short Spear and quickened his pace to follow.

Fayestar glanced back at the pitch-black entrance to the stairs, then at the figures of her teammates gradually being swallowed by the gloom ahead. She hugged Mimi tighter and trotted to catch up.

The corridor seemed even longer than it had on the way in.

The flickering of the wall lamps seemed to speed up. The interplay of light and shadow twisted their four shadows into all sorts of grotesque shapes, elongating and then shortening them.

That acrid, coppery smell was like a maggot boring into bone, constantly lingering in their nostrils. It grew thicker and thicker, until it was almost suffocating.

The air grew viscous, and every breath carried that nauseating stench.

"CLICK."

An extremely faint, yet abnormally clear, crisp sound rang out abruptly in the dead-silent corridor. Like a pebble dropped into a still lake, it instantly shattered the thick, oppressive atmosphere.

All four of them stopped simultaneously, their nerves stretched to the breaking point.

The source of the sound... seemed to be behind them.

Seraphina Sinclair turned her head, and Lyra Lowell immediately shone his flashlight beam in that direction.

It was a door.

Previously, it had been no different from the countless other unopenable doors lining the corridor, but now...

Now, the doorknob was turning, extremely slowly.

"CREEEAK—"

The faint sound of old metal grinding was infinitely amplified in the dead silence.

The door opened a crack. ℴ

Through the crack was a darkness even thicker than that in the corridor; nothing could be seen.

But that acrid odor, a mixture of blood and rot, surged out from the crack like a venomous snake that had found an escape, instantly flooding the entire corridor!

"The monster is inside the door," Seraphina Sinclair stated in a low voice, her eyes quickly scanning the other doors.

The other doors were all normal. Only this one had opened on its own, as if something was wrong with it.

The thought had barely formed when Seraphina Sinclair realized the problem.

’It wasn’t that the door was broken.’

’It opened because all of them had walked past it, putting it behind them.’

’This wasn’t a door that needed a key or a trick to open—it was a mechanism. When explorers moved away and turned their backs on these doors, they would open on their own to release whatever was inside!’

"Nobody move," Seraphina Sinclair barked again, her gaze locked on the door.