Death Wizard Diary.

Chapter 123 Underground Labyrinth

As Thor looked at these strangely synchronized spirits and their bare shoulders, he instantly recalled the countless arms he had seen on the cliff face before entering the crypt.

The arm was outside calling for help, while the body was carefully moving underground, concealed.

If these spirits are the souls of the dead, Thor simply cannot imagine what terrifying scenes they experienced when they died.

When Thor first heard Byron recount the tragedy of Handlevale, he assumed that the wizards and apprentices had either been crushed, squeezed, or suffocated to death, or had died fighting amongst themselves while fleeing.

But the reality is clearly not that simple.

There were many white phantoms, which walked out of the middle passage in rows and mechanically entered the left passage one by one.

There are too many.

If it weren't for the subtle differences in the size and appearance of each phantom, Thor might have thought that these phantoms were copies of one.

The left and middle passages are now crowded with these phantoms, while only the right passage is clean.

Bill, standing at the front, observed for a while and, sensing no danger, whispered, "Byron, are there evil spirits here?"

Bill could tell that the phantom before him was nothing more than the lingering remnant of a broken spirit, not even a fragment of a soul.

But he couldn't be sure if this phenomenon meant that evil spirits were lurking nearby.

Byron called to Thor, "Thor, let's go take a look."

Saul followed Byron through the passage that Bill and Wright had made.

They stopped three meters away from the fork in the road.

Thor was the first to enter a semi-immersive meditation.

In an instant, the armless humanoid phantom vanished, leaving only faint, pale white flames in mid-air.

Those faint flames, seemingly on the verge of being extinguished, were moving in mid-air in a bouncy motion, following the rhythm of the earlier phantoms.

Silent and still, yet trembling.

Even though they had lost their human form, Thor could still feel a suffocating tension from their synchronized movements.

He carefully examined the three caves and then emerged from his meditative state.

"call--"

His chest expanded violently twice, as if he had just recovered from suffocation.

"Any discoveries?" Wright asked in a low voice as Byron and Thor stopped observing.

Thor and Byron exchanged a glance, and in perfect unison, they raised their hands—pointing to the passage on the left.

Bill's lips twitched slightly. "Does this mean we should walk alongside those guys?"

Byron walked straight over and waved his hand among the white phantoms.

The phantoms remained unaffected, still lifting their legs high and landing gently, walking cautiously.

"These lingering regrets may seem strange at the moment, but they don't have the ability to affect us in any way."

Wright touched his arm. "That's why I've never liked dealing with spirits. I never know if attacking them is a waste of my magic."

Bill bluntly stated, "If you had just paid attention to the fluctuations of their spiritual energy, you wouldn't have been so frightened by a bunch of phantoms."

"Ha, it's like you weren't nervous at all."

"This time I'll go first." Byron ignored their bickering, glanced at Thor, and gestured for him to follow closely behind.

“Alright,” Wright followed up, “Now it’s your turn. When we’re dealing with the evil spirits, I’ll have to follow your orders.”

As they spoke, the four of them joined the ranks of the white phantoms one by one.

"Actually, there might not necessarily be evil spirits here," Thor warned his two seniors. "It's possible that evil spirits once lingered here and caused some pollution."

"Understood!" Wright said without any airs. "When I go to catch sandworms, I often only find their dried droppings."

"There's no need to give this example!" Bill wanted to raise his hand and knock Wright on the head.

The group continued on their way.

The white phantoms that were running alongside them turned right at the next intersection and entered another cave.

"Another fork in the road." Wright frowned. "I don't like mazes."

"That's how it is underground in the Valley of the Fallen Hands," Byron replied rather uninterestedly, focusing his attention on discerning the road ahead.

The group passed several more intersections, and the underground world was even larger than Thor had imagined.

And this is only the outer perimeter of Chui Shou Valley.

"There's movement." Byron suddenly stopped.

At this moment, the group had just stepped into a relatively spacious area, where there were eight branching paths in all directions.

"Why are there so many holes? I feel like I'm about to forget the way I came." Wright covered his face with his hands.

His gaunt face looked as pale as a corpse in the dim light of the twilight spell.

Bill was also visibly impatient.

"I don't think it's very reliable to find evil spirits based on pollution. Those are just traces they left behind, and they may not even still be here." He pointed to the passage leading underground, "I think we should keep going down."

After saying that, Bill walked over there, seemingly not intending to discuss it with anyone.

But Thor glanced over and felt something was off. "Wait a minute!"

He had barely finished speaking when Bill jumped down into the tunnel.

Bill's body fell into the air, and the passage on the ground suddenly began to close.

Bill was not alarmed but rather delighted, seeing that the man was about to be cut in half.

Suddenly, a large amount of purple foam appeared on his skin. The foam looked soft, but it was able to hold back the contracting tunnel.

Bill then placed his hands on the edge of the tunnel, jumped up, leaving a pile of foam blocking the entrance, and soared into the air.

Thor also didn't have time to watch others fight.

After the first hole suddenly contracted and bit him, a hole on Thor's left suddenly moved towards him.

The mountain contracted, like a giant suction cup, trying to suck Thor in completely.

Thor immediately felt a strong suction force.

He lifted his leg, placed one foot on the lower edge of the side wall, resisted the suction force, and flung out a stun necromancer.

The opening suddenly contracted twice, but unfortunately the attack was not very effective.

But Thor's attack was just to buy himself time.

He immediately unleashed his arrow-shooting technique.

The arrow gained even more kinetic energy from the suction of the hole and pierced into the hole almost instantly.

This time, the cave entrance suddenly trembled and spewed out a stream of green viscous liquid.

But then it suddenly expanded, instantly growing from a small hole less than a meter in diameter to nearly two meters, and the suction force increased again.

This time, Thor had nowhere to anchor himself, and he was about to fall into the cave, which was larger than his entire body.

Suddenly, a spike protruded from beneath Thor's feet and pierced directly into the mountain above him.

Thor grabbed the spike to avoid being sucked in.

However, due to the immense suction, he could not stand firmly and floated into the air, only able to hold onto the ground spikes with one arm.

Thor's other hand wasn't idle either. After quickly chanting the incantation, translucent worms began to appear on his arm.

With a flick of his wrist, Thor sucked several termites into the cave.

The reason he chose Soul Worm as his first Tier 1 sorcery was because it was a rare low-tier sorcery spell that could attack both the body and the soul simultaneously.

Although it's not an instant-kill spell, it has a very wide range of applications.

A few seconds later, the opening shrank again, and the suction force decreased significantly.

Thor's feet were finally able to touch the ground again.

(End of this chapter)