Reality was just that cruel.
Every direction seemed to lead to a dead end.
It was the kind of despair that could drive anyone weak-willed completely insane.
"God damn it!"
Kag finally snapped. He slammed his fist into a nearby black boulder, leaving a thin crack across its hard surface. The force of the blow showed just how furious and helpless he felt.
"So what do we do now?" he demanded. "Which way are we supposed to go? We've been wandering around this hell outside the city forever, and it's nothing but rocks everywhere!"
His voice couldn't hide his growing despair.
"As for what we should do..."
Saruman turned his eyes back toward the silent, ominous city of R'lyeh. His gaze was filled with both conflict and resolve.
"We're going into the city."
He practically forced the words through gritted teeth.
"What? Into the city?" Kag stared at him in disbelief. "Didn't you just say it's even more dangerous in there? And that Legendary…"
"We don't have any choice!" Saruman cut him off firmly. "Outside the city, all that's waiting for us is a slow death. We can only watch ourselves, and Lina, turn into monsters."
"But inside..." He fixed his eyes on the city again. "At least that Legendary was active in there just now. If he could fight inside the city, then maybe there's a way out that we don't know about."
"We have to trust the judgment of a Legendary. This is our only chance... our last chance. We can't just sit here and wait to die."
Saruman understood the situation perfectly.
If even a Legendary had struggled that much to break through, there was no way the three of them could escape on their own. The moment he accepted that reality, panic had started creeping into his own heart as well.
He took a deep breath and forced himself to stay calm.
"I know it's a gamble. But we have to take it. We'll stay away from the fighting as much as possible and try to find that Legendary. We'll keep our distance and follow him. It's dangerous, but it's the only plan we've got. Or..."
He paused.
"...We'll look for anything that might be an exit."
As for Ian...
Saruman knew almost nothing about him, but one thing was certain, someone that unknown wasn't likely to be harmless.
Still... what other choice did they have?
Kag looked into Saruman's unwavering eyes, then glanced at Lina, whose breathing had grown weaker and weaker.
Finally, he gave a heavy nod.
As a warrior, he would rather die gloriously in battle than slowly lose himself and turn into a monster through this silent corruption.
"Fine! We'll do it your way. We're going into the city!"
His voice rang across the lifeless wasteland with the determination of a true warrior.
He stopped looking at the heartbreaking mutations spreading across Lina's body. He stopped thinking about the writhing patterns crawling up his own arm. He buried every trace of fear and anxiety deep inside, leaving only the focus needed to complete the mission.
Just as Kag hoisted Lina onto his back and prepared to head toward the cursed city, Saruman suddenly raised a hand to stop him.
"Wait, Kag."
His voice was unusually calm. The urgency from before had been replaced by cold, careful reasoning, reflected in his silver eyes.
"We can't just rush in unprepared. This city is too strange. Its spatial structure is probably even more chaotic than we imagined. If we wander in blindly, we could end up trapped forever, or walk straight into something even worse."
His gaze returned to the broken stone tablet. His eyes swept across it like a surgeon's scalpel.
"This tablet... since it records the name R'lyeh and all those warnings, it might contain more than just that."
He pointed at the carved surface.
"It might even hold a map of the city."
Saruman only said this because he'd already uncovered that possibility.
"A map?" Kag blinked and looked at the tablet, which was covered in twisted symbols that looked nothing like any map he'd ever seen. "There's a map on that thing?"
"Not necessarily a flat map like the ones we're used to," Saruman explained as he stepped closer, tracing the intricate lines and symbols with a finger.
"Look at these patterns. The way they flow... the way they connect with each other. They look distorted, but if you carefully feel the paths of the energy running through them..."
"They could be outlining the framework of the city's spatial structure."
"Especially after mentioning that the Sleeping God lies within the city, and that 'the position of the stars is the key,' I suspect these patterns may hide the location of the city's core area, or certain critical nodes."
Saruman spoke with complete confidence.
The discovery immediately lifted Kag's spirits. If it really was a map, even an abstract one, it would be a hundred times better than stumbling around in the dark.
"How long will it take?" Kag asked.
He was worried about Lina's condition, and equally worried that staying here too long would only accelerate their own transformation.
Saruman nodded. "Not long. Just give me a little time."
Without another word, he got to work.
Instead of staring directly at the maddening carvings, he sat cross-legged before the stone tablet, closed his eyes, and slowly extended his mental force like countless strands of spider silk, carefully brushing against the tablet's surface.
He was using an extremely demanding technique known as 'Psychic Imprint'.
Rather than copying the carvings with his eyes, he had to use his mental force to sense and record the faint energy signatures and spatial information hidden within every groove.
At the same time, he had to resist the mental corruption radiating from the symbols themselves.
An ordinary wizard would never survive the process.
Fortunately, Saruman stood among the strongest below the Legendary rank.
It wasn't impossible for him. Just difficult.
Veins bulged across his forehead as beads of sweat rolled down his face. His mental force threaded its way through the twisted markings like an explorer navigating an endless labyrinth.
Sometimes the lines writhed as though alive, trying to lure his consciousness down false paths.
Other times they radiated icy malice, battering his mind.
"I'm counting on you, my friend," Kag muttered as he stood guard nearby.
He could feel the violent fluctuations in Saruman's magic power and knew this was anything but easy.
All he could do was tighten his grip on his sword and watch their surroundings even more carefully, especially the silent city, afraid that something might interrupt Saruman at the worst possible moment.
Time crawled by.
Every so often, Saruman's body trembled as another wave of corruption crashed against his mind.
Still, he clenched his teeth and maintained the steady flow of his mental force.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, though neither of them knew how much time had actually passed, Saruman's eyes snapped open.
Exhaustion flickered in his silver eyes, but it was overshadowed by the sharp gleam of success.
He immediately reached into his storage pouch and pulled out a specially enchanted sheet of parchment along with a quill glowing with arcane light.
Without looking at the stone tablet again, he guided his mental force into the quill.
The feather quill came alive, dancing rapidly across the parchment. It left behind an intricate web of warped lines, impossible angles, and spiraling patterns, a bizarre spatial diagram that defied all common sense.
It looked nothing like an ordinary map. There was no north or south, no scale, no recognizable layout.
Instead, it resembled the projection of a multidimensional space, or an abstract painting ripped straight from a madman's dream.
Scattered throughout were equally twisted symbols that Saruman had only managed to decipher with great effort.
They likely represented places like the 'Gate', 'Well', 'Tower', and the 'Garden of Slumber', but exactly what they meant, or how those locations connected to one another, remained frustratingly obscure.
The drawing process lasted nearly half an hour.
When the quill finally stopped moving, Saruman let out a long breath.
His face had gone pale. The drain on his mental force had been enormous.
But in his hands was something priceless: a map copied from the stone tablet of R'lyeh.
"Finished?" Kag stepped over to look.
The instant his eyes landed on the parchment, dizziness hit him. The lines seemed to writhe on the page, as though trying to pull him inside.
"So... this is the map?" he asked, forcing himself to look away.
"Yes." Saruman's voice was weak but certain. "It's extremely abstract, but combined with the energy patterns I sensed, this should represent R'lyeh's internal spatial structure."
He pointed to a symbol shaped like an eye, surrounded by layers of spiraling lines.
"The energy here is the oldest and most concentrated. This is probably the core area where the 'Sleeping God' mentioned on the tablet resides."
"We absolutely must avoid it."
He then pointed to several relatively straighter lines connecting the city's outskirts with a handful of key nodes.
"These are probably the more stable routes, or perhaps the main channels through which the city's energy flows. If we follow them, we should have a better chance of avoiding spatial traps or wandering straight into the most dangerous areas."
The map had already yielded a great deal of useful information.
Yet there wasn't the slightest hint of relief on Saruman's face. Instead, he looked even more cautious.
Carefully rolling up the parchment, he turned to Kag with a grave expression.
"But remember this, Kag. This map is only a reference."
"We must never trust it completely."
"Why not?" Kag frowned. "Didn't you decode it directly from the stone tablet?"
"That's exactly why I'm suspicious." Saruman's voice grew heavy. "We don't know who erected that tablet. We don't know when it was made. And we don't know why it was left there."
"Was it meant to warn those who came after..."
"...or to lure them in?"
A chill ran down Kag's spine.
"What if the one who erected the tablet was one of this city's own inhabitants..."
"...or one of the corrupted who had already been completely assimilated and lost all sense of self?"
Saruman continued his analysis, his eyes sharp.
"If that's the case, then this stone tablet, and the map carved into it, could be a carefully prepared trap. It could deliberately mark false safe routes to lead intruders into dead ends. It could hide mental suggestions inside the map, slowly driving us insane. Or..."
His expression darkened.
"...The tablet itself could be a beacon. The moment we use it, it might alert certain existences within the city."
Everything they had experienced so far had taught Saruman one thing: never lower your guard.
The intelligent life in this place was simply too cunning... and too twisted.
Kag sucked in a sharp breath.
"If that's true..." He looked at the rolled-up parchment as though it had suddenly become red-hot. "Then... why are we taking it with us at all?"
Even a battle-hardened warrior couldn't help feeling uneasy.
"Because it's still the only guide we have," Saruman answered calmly. "Without any other information, we have no choice but to use it. But we must remain absolutely vigilant."
"We'll trust our own eyes and senses first. Every step, we'll verify whether the map matches reality."
"The moment we notice a contradiction, or anything that feels wrong, we stop immediately and reassess."
After a brief pause, he summed it up:
"Remember this: in this city, don't trust anything except each other."
"Not the stone tablet."
"Not this map."
"And not even..."
He looked Kag in the eye.
"...your own eyes or memories."
Saruman's caution extinguished the small spark of optimism Kag had felt after obtaining the map.
He nodded heavily, engraving every warning into his mind.
Once they had settled on their plan, the two made one final inspection of their equipment.
Saruman reinforced the enchantments sharpening his senses.
Kag adjusted the straps securing Lina to his back, making sure she wouldn't interfere with combat.
Then Saruman cast another series of support spells on Kag, strengthening his stamina, heightening his perception, and increasing his basic resistance to magic.
He also pushed his own magic power to its limit, layering protective barriers and concealment wards around himself one after another.
"Let's go."
Taking a deep breath, Saruman glanced at the parchment map, a mixture of hope and danger, before looking toward the silent mass of R'lyeh, crouching in the distance like a slumbering beast.
He stepped forward first.
"Right."
Even though he'd already checked the straps once, Kag tightened them around Lina all over again, making certain she wouldn't come loose no matter what happened.
Then he adjusted the position of his greatsword so he could draw it at a moment's notice.
This time, they weren't entering blindly. They carried with them a forbidden map that might lead them to safety...
Or invite them to their deaths.
Together, they walked into the terrifying city where even a Legendary had once fought desperately.
R'lyeh. An ancient city beyond all understanding.
"Don't forget a single word I said."
Saruman's heart was so tense it felt ready to burst, but as the leader, he forced himself to remain calm and reminded his only remaining teammate.
Lina... could no longer really be called human.
"Don't worry. I remember every word."
Kag knew this was no time for jokes. The danger ahead was beyond imagination.
With painstaking caution, as though crossing a minefield, they stepped past the stone tablet recording the city's horrifying truth and officially entered the boundaries of R'lyeh.
The moment they crossed the threshold, everything changed.
The smell of sulfur and dust in the air faded, replaced by a much richer, more complex scent, a damp sea breeze carrying the tang of salt.
There was no sea in sight. Not even a lake.
Yet the unmistakable scent of the ocean filled the air.
Then again... nothing about this place made sense.
This sea breeze wasn't like a normal ocean wind, either. It carried the stale odor of a tomb sealed for a thousand years, mixed with something impossible to describe, as though it were the breath of some colossal sleeping creature.
The air itself reeked of mental corruption.
And then the whispers returned, clearer than before.
They crawled across their ears like countless tiny insects, trying to burrow into the mind, filling every second with unbearable discomfort.
(End Of This Chapter)
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