176 Hell Stone 1
The Voiceless Abyssal looked like a place devoid of any life. Inside the long passage, Hiro couldn’t hear anything. Even Milly, who kept nagging at him, her voice couldn’t be heard when the two of them had entered the place.
No communication. No sound whatsoever. Hiro felt like he was walking in a very quiet world. Not even the slightest sound of the flames of the torches on the wall was heard. When his sense of hearing was no longer working, Hiro had no other choice but to sharpen his eyes with the help of the [Demon’s Eyes]. He had to be more alert than usual because he didn’t know when the monsters would attack and where they would come from.
After exiting a long passage, Hiro and Milly arrived at a T-junction made of rock that was damp and wet. Even so, no moss grew on the rock.
T-junction made Hiro had to choose one of the three. His chance of finding the correct path in one try was only 33%. Before entering one of the paths in front of him, Hiro circled around to look for clues that might be useful.
And he found it. On the path that led to the center or straight of the passage that Hiro had just passed, he found a blood-red gemstone in the shape of a heart. When Hiro approached it to observe the stone closely, suddenly the stone sparkled, then the images of animals appeared one by one in a clockwise direction.
[Toad]
[Snake]
[Lion]
[Sloth]
[Goat]
[Peacock]
Hiro, who often found the content of the seven deadly sins in the MMORPG he had played, knew what the images of the animals meant.
But still, the clues he just got didn’t give him any clarity on what he should do for now.
Hiro decided to continue walking by choosing the middle path. He resigned to what he would find behind it.
He entered a closed room with a very short natural stone ceiling. Its height was less than 2 meters. There was nothing there but a lever on a round stone table. Not even the other path could be seen there.
Hiro approached the lever to see what he could do with it. Still no sound. Milly continued to cling behind him while squeezing the robe worn by Hiro. She looked scared and anxious.
Once again, on the stone table appeared the images of beasts Hiro had seen in a gemstone. Meanwhile, the lever above it seemed to be able to be rotated to select an image. Only one. The shape was like an analog clock with only one hand.
‘Hmmm… I guess dealing with Lucifer means having to choose the peacock, right?’ Hiro didn’t have any clue other than what he just thought.
Without wasting any time, Hiro turned the lever to point at the peacock image. And suddenly, the ground he was standing on shook like an earthquake occurred.
Hiro had no handle other than the stone table in front of him. It took 30 seconds for the ground to stop shaking, and Hiro was able to stand back up normally.
Nothing happened in the room. Hiro decided to head back out through the same entrance. However, when he came out, that place was gone.
Hiro was standing on a rock surrounded by boiling lava that felt scorching hot.
“Damn!”
From a distance, he could see a door at the end of the place that suddenly turned as vast as a crater in a volcanic mountain. To get there, Hiro had no other choice but to jump from rock to rock to the end. However, with the boiling lava, it was really life threatening. Hiro saw some not so big rocks could be crushed into several pieces before they ended up sinking.
Hiro swallowed hard. It couldn’t go wrong.
“If only I could fly, it would be nothing,” Hiro muttered. He couldn’t even hear his own voice.
Not even the sound of lava and rock being crushed could be heard.
Milly seemed to keep talking to him, but he still couldn’t hear her. It seemed the girl didn’t want to jump off the rocks with Hiro.
Hiro told Milly to go back to the place where there was an earthquake before. Right now, he was certain that it was a room that functioned as an elevator within the dungeon.
And finally, Hiro was free from that succubus for a while.
Hiro tried to use Predicio to check the rock he was aiming for as a stepping stone, whether it would shatter or not when he landed on it. However, Predicio couldn’t be used for the movement of inanimate objects.
Hop!
Hop!
Three stones had been successfully jumped over without any problems. He needed five more stones to reach the door. However, the number of large stones was decreasing because of the boiling lava.
Hop!
Hiro managed to jump closer and closer to the door. One more step left. Hiro measured how far the last jump he needed before jumping with a stance like a long jump athlete.
Hop!
He succeeded. Hiro managed to land in front of the black steel door. The shape of the door reminded Hiro of the door that guarded Lucifer during the Closed-Beta Test mode. In front of the door, there was an engraving that formed the same image as the cursed sigil on Hiro’s left hand.
Hiro touched the engraving with his left hand, and in split seconds, the sigil in his hand thickened and blackened even more than before. Then, the door in front of him opened by itself.
Crack!
Hiro pushed the door open completely. But once again, what was waiting for him behind the door never failed to astonish him again.
He saw a very dense forest with giant trees. Even the grass growing in that place was as tall as Hiro’s chest. Besides, Hiro’s ears were able to function properly again. And the first thing he heard was the sound of a monster’s roar.
Roar!
The sound of the monster’s roar was so loud that the door behind Hiro moved and closed by itself due to the changing of the air pressure.
The monster was enormous, about the size of Lucifer’s Absolute Demon mode. And it only had bones in its body. From its skeletal form, the monster looked like a living fossil T-Rex.
The pair of red eyes that were in the eye sockets of the monster stared at Hiro, who had just come uninvited.
Hiro immediately drew his sword and ran over to the monster. But strangely, he couldn’t see the name of the monster as well as its level.