BXBX NOVEL Chapter 31: Guys
"Is he…" Zach looked at the tasker before shifting his gaze to the Mannequin and the others, both inside and outside the cell.
"Is he drunk?" Zach tilted his head as he studied the tasker\'s expression again.
"..."
Zach didn\'t get any answers, so he looked at the cell, where Julius lay curled up in a corner.
"Julius?"
Slowly, the curled-up mess unfurled, and Julius\' fuzzy hair popped up.
"Is that you, Zach?"
"No, this is Jarron. You never arrived at the camp, so you\'re expelled."
"...What the shit, man? Get me out of here."
Zach shrugged and pointed at the lock while looking at Yanael.
"Can you…?"
Yanael nodded and grabbed the lock, tearing it apart and freeing Julius.
\'Is this why the tasker attacked it?\'
Unlike his cell, where the bars disappeared, and there was no lock, Julius\' cell seemed less magical. Without a key, the tasker had been forced to try to break open the cell to get to Julius.
Unfortunately, a second-layer tasker wasn\'t as strong as Yanael. He had still been stronger than Zach, far stronger. But the tasker wasn\'t meant to be strong. He was meant to be useful.
The only question was why he had gotten so drunk he passed out by having the Mannequin on him.
Zach looked at Julius, who needed the Mannequin\'s help to stand since he had broken a leg during his fall.
"Any idea where Dukiel is?"
Julius frowned and looked at Zach like he was stupid.
"How the fuck am I supposed to know that?"
Zach shrugged.
"I was hoping you would have done something while I was busy saving our and our familiars\' asses."
"Piss off. Let\'s just get out of here."
Zach let it go with a shrug and let Julius hop out of the cell and be on his way with the Mannequin\'s help while he hung back with Yanael. He looked at Julius\' back for a moment, and when he was far enough away, he glanced at the tasker and the totem next to his body.
"Great Ugor, I\'m sure you can hear me. I don\'t know what tricks you played to scare me, but it\'s evident you bluffed. I\'m leaving now, but I will come back in the future. And I\'ll give you a lesson when I do.
"I\'ll teach you how to execute a proper threat."
Zach started walking without looking back.
"Kill him and crush the totem."
Yanael obeyed.
Julius didn\'t question why Zach had stayed behind when he finally caught up since he was too busy whining about his broken leg.
And after proceeding further down the prison corridors, they found Dukiel, splayed out on the floor, still unconscious from when he fell into the hole and hit his head. The following drop to the stone floor probably hadn\'t helped.
Well, since he was snoring, it could be that he was just asleep. All of them had been tired from the hike.
Yanael picked Dukiel up and let the Sentinel carry him as they started looking for the way out of the Underworld\'s first layer. They found the canteen, which had been abandoned with plates and stores of food left behind.
It seemed the Giupusta Locale was deserted now that Zach and the others were on the loose and they had taken what was most likely the goal of the Locale. Without that stone orb in the center, there probably wasn\'t much reason for the Locale to exist anymore.
Most importantly, there wasn\'t anyone who could stop Yanael now that all the fighters were dead. It would be better to count their losses and retreat.
They even walked past the collapsed entrance to the second layer. Zach barely recognized it since it had almost become an ordinary stone wall.
If Zach and the others ever got out, they would inevitably tell the Academy, which would send qualified people to investigate or root out the Underworld\'s inhabitants from the Academy\'s turf.
"Guys?" Dukiel raised his head groggily and looked around. He had been mostly out of it since the hole swallowed them up. He had come to once and then promptly fallen asleep again.
"Duke! How\'re you feeling?" Julius excitedly greeted Dukiel.
"...My head hurts, and I\'m hungry. But otherwise, I think I\'m fine. What happened?"
Zach helped Dukiel stand on his own two feet before getting him to sit down as Yanael handed over one of the plates they took from the canteen to give to Dukiel.
"Here it this. It\'s kind of a weird story." Confused, Dukiel slowly started eating as Zach gave him a brief version of everything that had happened when he was out cold.
"...That\'s crazy. There\'s a whole civilization living underground?"
"That\'s what you\'re worried about? Not how we three almost all died?" Julius asked.
Dukiel shrugged.
"I mean, I\'ve been ready to well, maybe not ready to die, but I\'ve started preparing to lose a couple of classmates since Drupesch\'s first lesson. It only makes sense it could happen to us, too," Dukiel said nonchalantly.
Julius pulled back slightly.
"Woah. You\'re…"
"Very smart." Zach interrupted Julius before the latter could say anything too mean.
"I\'m impressed, Dukiel. Though, I think you might have needed to see things for yourself to understand how close it was."
Dukiel nodded but didn\'t say anything as he finished his food. He left the plate where it was and got up.
"So, how do we get out of here?"
Zach and Julius shrugged.
"We\'ve just been wandering around looking for an exit," answered Zach.
Dukiel nodded slightly before freezing. He was silent for a couple of moments until he spoke up.
"Guys…"
"Yeah?"
"Mm?"
"We were brought here through holes in the ground that closed up behind us, right? And this place belongs to a civilization that lives underground without making any contact with the surface, right?"
"Yeah?" Julius asked curiously.
"..." Zach was silent since he realized what Dukiel was getting at.
Why would the Underworld need a path leading to the surface if they never went to the surface?