Chapter 141: The Cave at the Bottom of the Lake
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The fire in the village caused quite a commotion in this area.
At first, the source was from the toppled oil lamp in Dick’s room. At that time, the servants were gathered at the storage room and were drinking in secret, so they could not provide aid in time. By the time they made it there, the flames had already swallowed the room door. Someone panicked, mistook a barrel of malt beer for water, and used it to put out the flames. The results could be as imagined.
After two hours of frantic firefighting, the fire finally swallowed the whole of Fulner family’s house. The light from the flames shone so brightly over the whole village that it seemed almost like day. The fire only gradually subsided after midnight.
After the incident, the Imperial Capital sent people over to investigate.
As the witness of the entire incident and owner of the house, Dick Fulner swore that it was Grant, that bastard! He said that after Grant plunged into darkness and became a mage, Grant broke into his room, inflicted inhumane torture on him, robbed all of his gold coins and even set fire to the whole house.
And so, the Fulner family strongly condemned Grant and expressed that they will definitely cooperate with the Church to capture Grant for investigations.
And now, during investigations.
"Did you see which direction he escaped to?" the Priest sympathetically asked Dick.
"I saw it clearly, it was towards the north." Dick answered through gritted teeth, "He headed north the whole way, and ran so fast I couldn’t see him after a while."
Thus, on the day of the incident, the Church sent out Holy Knights to investigate the road north of the village thoroughly. However, the odd thing was, they chased all the way to the Skyfall Mountains but still could not spot a shadow of "Grant" in the end.
So this incident was left unsolved. As for the fire in the village, it could only become the topic of after-meal conversations, slowly forgotten by people.
As for the other main character of this incident, the undiscovered and pursued person under the name "Grant", who is really Benjamin.
---------- Where did he hide away to?
Actually, on that night, he did not run far.
Along the road to the North, after running out of Dick’s sight, he immediately pulled down a cloth, used it as a headscarf by wrapping it around his head, went around a curve and then returned to where he was before.
At that time the fire still had not spread widely yet, but there were already quite many spectators surrounding the house. Just like this, Benjamin took a bucket from the nearby well, acted as if he was in a hurry and ran into the house.
The servants standing by the door even assumed that he was a caring citizen who was fighting the fire and displayed looks of gratefulness. They had no intention of obstructing him.
So Benjamin took advantage of the chaos and snuck into the store room, poured the water out of the bucket. Taking advantage of the situation where everyone’s attention was attracted by the fire, he randomly grabbed all the food in there.
He kept the food in the bucket, carried the bucket, and ran out of the house.
Then he shouted towards the surrounding crowd, "You all, go get water from the well and put out the fire! One well isn’t enough at all, so I’ll also head to Perseus Lake for water!"
The members of surrounding crowd were all touched; someone even gave Benjamin a thumbs up.
"This fellow’s really spirited, Perseus Lake is so far away and he is still willing to go get water there. If I gave birth to a daughter, I will definitely marry her to him next time!"
No one noticed that his bucket was actually full of bread.
Until much later, the fire could not be controlled and engulfed the whole house. The crowd also panicked, and clumsily tried to save the fire in a rush, so no one remembered this "Good Samaritan" who said he was going to Perseus Lake for water.
You could not blame them for their bad memory. They could not help it; too many people had entered the village these days. In this mixture of the good and bad, nobody remembered anybody.
As for Benjamin, at that time and moment, he already brought his bucket of food and according to the methods Michelle told him, entered the spot where the "Soul’s Fire" was located at the bottom of Perseus Lake.
The process to enter was quite cumbersome. He threw a few rocks into the bucket first to cover the food. Then, he took a deep breath and jumped into the lake while carrying the bucket, allowing the heavy weight of the stones to bring him all the way down.
After speedily sinking to the bottom of the lake, he found the cluster of rocks Michelle mentioned. He exerted energy into plucking away the rocks and a hole appeared at the bottom of the lake. An eddy immediately formed from the suction force which emerged, pulling him and the water surrounding him in.
The surrounding rocks were also moved by the eddy and rolled back to the sides of the hole, gradually resealing the hole.
As for Benjamin, he was rushed into an underground cave by the stream of water, along with some pieces of rock, a few jumping fish and his big bucket of food.
Because the whole process was so sudden, Benjamin was dizzy from being spun in the water stream. After he was dashed into the cave, he was caught off guard, and fell to the ground.
"Ssss, hurts like a bitch…"
After recovering, he crawled up from the ground, threw off his wet clothes and massaged his aching left wrist.
Then he lifted his head and began to observe the place around him.
This was a very dimly lit cave. Due to it being at the bottom of Perseus Lake, there was no light source, so one was close to not being able to see one’s five fingers when one stretched their hands in here. However, in the darkness, the walls of the cave glowed faintly, allowing Benjamin to not experience blindness with his eyes wide open.
If observed closely, the wall was crawling with densely grown moss. Some of the mosses’ color were on the green spectrum while some were blue. The whole cave’s walls and ceiling were like an abstract camouflage painting with intertwining blues and greens. Psychedelic patches of light crossed one another, stretching into the mysterious and deep darkness ahead.
Benjamin felt as if he had entered outer space or some deep sea-type of strange territory.
Hesitating, he relied on the faint glow and found the wooden bucket that was rolled to the side by feeling his way about the surroundings. He threw away the rocks in the bucket, filtered water out of the bucket and inspected closely.
….. It’s still fine, the bread was a little bloated but still edible.
After making sure of this, Benjamin was relieved. Then he took a deep breath, picked up the bucket and began walking along the stretch of blue-green glow towards the inside of the cave.
Honestly speaking, this cave was so mysterious, even Benjamin was a little concerned if some weird living thing would pop out at some corner. And so, he took out his handgun, loaded it and held it with the other hand, ready to fire at any moment.
Luckily, before jumping into the lake, he had wrapped the handgun and bullets using wolf skin thoroughly. He also spent quite a short amount of time in the water. Taking it out to look now, the gun was still dry and useable. Or else, he really would not have even an ounce of power to fight.
For many reasons, Benjamin walked quite cautiously and not very quickly. Just like this, about 15 minutes passed with no particular incident, he arrived at a chamber-like place.
The space here was extraordinarily vast, as if it was a large underground square. The moss on the walls had also lessened but when he lifted his head to look above, those glowing moss filled the rocky walls of the ceiling with a density never seen before.
On the vast rocky walls on top of his head, the blue-green colored patches assembled to become beams of luminous arcs that twinkled in reflection. In a state of daze, he even thought that he saw a starry sky.
After taking a deep breath, Benjamin recovered from the shock and continued looking ahead.
Then, in the middle of this chamber, he saw a rock that radiated a fiery red light.
"That is…"
Benjamin could not help but frown.
To say that it was a rock was inaccurate, it was more like a piece of peculiar gemstone. It had a neat and complete 12-faceted shape, a red light that came from the inside out, making it look extremely transparent. The cave which was initially cool and humid, under the glare of the red light, seemed to also possess a layer of subtle heat.