Chapter 1111: Vera

Chapter 1111: Chapter 898: Vera

The Duke stretched his senses to their limits, slowly moving along the edge of the stone wall, avoiding the three undead demons feeding on a mutated creature, and headed toward the nearest dead end.

Each movement was timed in the gaps when these undead demons turned, slipping behind one undead and into a nook along the stone wall.

His body, elementally transformed with the dark attribute, was almost completely integrated into the gray mist. Only when he brushed past the surface of the stone wall did the ancient runes faintly ripple with a dark sheen from the contact with energy of the same attribute, but the ripples quickly vanished, swallowed by the mist.

The groove of the cul-de-sac was shallower than he remembered, but sufficient for him to curl up inside.

He wedged his body entirely into the crevice of the stone wall, the dark attribute elemental black mist clinging to the rough surface so tightly that not a single contour was exposed.

Moments later, another undead demon drifted past the outside of the groove, its bony fingers brushing by his hiding spot.

That finger paused for a split second less than a meter away from him, and the void within the depths of the hood turned toward the groove as if sensing something.

The Duke suppressed his presence to the minimum, his elementally transformed body remaining completely still, merging with the surrounding gray mist and residual death energy on the stone wall.

The undead demon hovered outside the groove for a while, then slowly withdrew its finger and turned to float in another direction.

The Duke did not move immediately, remaining silently curled inside the groove, listening to the sound of cloaks dragging against the stone as the undead demons drifted by, one after another, like a reaper’s fingers slowly scraping across the ground.

The gray mist persisted, and the activities of these undead demons showed no signs of ceasing.

The Duke dared not move recklessly, forced to wait patiently to see when the gray mist would dissipate.

A few hours later.

Suddenly, an extremely subtle purification energy surged from somewhere deep within the stone corridor, akin to alum cast into dead water, causing the gray-white particles suspended in the air to settle and disintegrate layer by layer.

The ancient runes on the stone wall began to illuminate segment by segment, with pale golden light emerging from the cracks, gradually dispelling the remaining dark attribute energy particles.

The undead demons silently drifting in the gray mist also started to fade with the mist, their tattered black cloaks peeling away like ash blown by the wind, their bony fingers turning into fine dark powder and dissipating into the air, the void within the depths of the hood flickering once before vanishing completely, as if never existing.

The Duke slowly floated out from the groove, his elementally transformed body reconstituting into a solid form.

He leaned against the stone wall, standing for a moment, allowing limbs eroded by death energy for several hours to readjust to the cold, dry air of the maze.

From the onset of the gray mist to its complete dissipation, exactly eight hours.

This number he silently recorded in his mind: the first gray mist lasted for eight hours. But it was not yet clear whether this was a constant rule; any misjudgment in duration could be fatal if next time is longer or shorter.

The Duke found another relatively safe intersection on the stone wall, sat down against a stone pillar, took several sips from his flask from the Space Ring, then opened the densely marked parchment map, drawing a skeletal mark on the area where the gray mist descended, writing down several key pieces of information beside it.

Gray mist duration of eight hours, Level 4 undead demons appear in groups, death energy erosion, regular spiritual power perception compressed to within a few meters, dark attribute elementalization can extend perception range to several tens of meters, undead demons attack all living beings and extract life force.

After writing, he leaned against the pillar, drank some water, and started reconsidering the safe house key usage strategy in his mind.

The previous twelve-hour key he had activated soon after acquiring it, prematurely using up most of its time, forcing him to endure in the groove until the time expired during the gray mist’s descent.

Reflecting back, if he hadn’t hurriedly activated the key, waiting instead until the gray mist appeared, he could safely endure the entire mist period within that stone chamber, avoiding several hours of terror.

It seems when obtaining a future key, he must refrain from activating it without thought, saving it for a critical moment.

Days later, the Duke added another entry to the lower right corner of the parchment map.

This was the third gray mist he had experienced since entering the third layer, each lasting exactly eight hours.

Yet three occurrences were not sufficient to conclude a strict pattern, so he temporarily stored this thought in his mind, planning to observe and compare during subsequent gray mist encounters.

He again leaned against the stone wall, gazing upward at the dome perpetually shrouded in dim mist above the corridor, then flipped the parchment map to its reverse, and with the dim golden light from the re-illuminated ancient runes on the stone wall, continued marking.

In the depths of a side corridor on the west side of the main passage lay a suspicious area he had previously marked, its entrance semi-concealed by rubble, not having had time to explore due to the impending gray mist.

This time, he decided to venture in while the mist had just scattered and the undead demons had not yet regrouped.

The corridor was deeper than he anticipated, with sparse distribution of runes and much dimmer light on the stone walls, as if continuously eroded by something.