Myst, Might, Mayhem (Novel) - Chapter 272 - Underground Forbidden Prison (3)

Chapter 272 – Underground Forbidden Prison (3)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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‘This worked out properly.’

Mok Gyeong-un, having peeled off Cadet An Jong-hu’s face and made it into a new human skin mask, nodded as he looked down at the Forbidden Prison Battle Map.

This was the map carried by the Embroidered Uniform Guard guardsman who had died in the mechanism trap.

This Forbidden Prison Battle Map was identical to the other proper one Mok Gyeong-un had already seen.

So there seemed to be no need to worry about the accuracy of the map he had memorized.

More importantly,

“Hmm.”

Mok Gyeong-un stroked his chin as he looked at the face of the Embroidered Uniform Guard guardsman.

Because the rain of arrows had been set not to strike the face, this one too could be used as a human skin mask.

But soon Mok Gyeong-un lightly shook his head.

He did not have much time, and because he had to hurry, there was no real point in changing faces again.

Before long, they too would notice that something was wrong anyway.

‘I should just move the guardsman’s corpse to another place where there is a different trap.’

That seemed more likely to delay time and increase confusion as well.

* * *

Somewhere below, in the Avici Prison.

-Rrrk!

Cadet Yeom Gyeong of Mount Hua, while pushing the meal cart, stopped and unfolded the Forbidden Prison Battle Map.

After inspecting the map, Yeom Gyeong soon frowned.

‘This is strange.’

He was clearly moving according to the map, yet he had arrived at a place he did not recognize at all.

Originally there should have been a corridor to the right, but that place was blocked, while the left side was open.

What was strange was that the path to the left sloped downward and was even more damp.

For some reason, it made his spine crawl.

‘Damn it. For a place calling itself the Embroidered Uniform Guard, can they not even draw a map properly?’

It seemed he had gotten lost.

Yeom Gyeong hesitated over whether to go back the way he had come.

But he had only just finished one meal delivery, so if he went back like this, the Embroidered Uniform Guard guardsman acting as escort might scold him.

‘Would he give me demerit points?’

That would be a problem.

In the end, after some hesitation, Yeom Gyeong pushed the meal cart into the corridor on the left.

If the map had been drawn incorrectly, then in any case there was only this one path.

As he pushed it inward for a while like that,

-Whoosh!

‘What? There is wind blowing from deeper inside.’

The torch he carried flickered.

There was no reason for wind to blow in a deep underground cave like this.

Perhaps because of that, he felt vaguely uneasy.

Could it be that he had truly taken the wrong path?

As he wondered that, a strange sound reached his ear.

-Kiirik!

‘Hm?’

-Kiirik!

It sounded like something scratching.

It came from farther inside the cave, but what in the world was it?

Could it be a prisoner inside a prison cell scratching at the wall?

Puzzled, Cadet Yeom Gyeong pushed the cart and kept walking straight ahead.

As he continued, he saw a red line painted across the cave floor.

‘What is this?’

Of all colors, it had been drawn in red, so it looked exactly like blood and needlessly chilled his spine.

At that moment, the scraping sound came again from deeper inside.

Judging by how much louder it sounded, it seemed to be quite close now.

-Flare!

Yeom Gyeong raised the torch and shone it forward.

Then, some twelve paces away, he saw thick iron bars and, inside them, something that looked like a human silhouette.

‘Ah! Did I come the right way?’

It seemed he had not been lost after all.

So Cadet Yeom Gyeong pushed the meal cart forward.

It was as he crossed beyond the red line.

-Kiirik!

The scratching sound rang beside his ear.

At that very instant, Cadet Yeom Gyeong’s eyes went vacant and his pupils unfocused.

-Thunk!

His eyes glazed over, and he let go of the handle of the cart.

Then, with empty eyes, he walked toward the prison cell carrying the torch.

As the torch drew nearer, the figure inside the prison gradually became visible as well.

The figure had both eyes covered with a blindfold, and a thick leather gag had been strapped into its mouth as well.

Both wrists and both ankles were fastened with restraints carrying heavy weights, fixing the body in place so that it could not move.

And yet, in that state,

-Kiirik!

When the bound prisoner moved his fingers and scratched at the floor,

-Tap! Tap!

Yeom Gyeong, eyes unfocused, began touching various places on the bars as though searching for something.

It looked as though he were trying to open the bars.

Above those bars that Yeom Gyeong was touching, there were characters engraved.

[126]

* * *

Somewhere else in the Avici Prison.

-Drip!

Blood flowed from Ju Un-hyang’s hand as he gripped the sharp iron spike.

Though he had guarded himself with innate true qi, the force of the fall had torn open his palm on the spike.

If anyone other than him had fallen, they would have been impaled directly and met disaster.

‘It is fortunate the torch fell first.’

It was only because he had seen beforehand the spikes set below.

Looking around at the surroundings, which were nothing but a bed of spikes, Ju Un-hyang found a clear patch of floor some three zhang away where no spikes were planted.

“Hoo……hoo……”

Enduring the pain of his torn hand, Ju Un-hyang lowered one hand, grabbed the torch lying alone among the spikes, and lifted it.

Then he held the handle in his mouth.

‘If my master had not taught me Wind and Cloud Steps, this would have been disastrous.’

It was thanks to Wind and Cloud Steps that he could maintain himself in such an unstable upside-down posture.

Otherwise his face would already have been pierced through.

Ju Un-hyang slowly gathered strength in his waist and bent his elbows.

‘Tch.’

His palms tore further and the pain worsened.

But if he could not endure and let go, then he would go straight to the next world.

-Pahk!

Having bent his arms, Ju Un-hyang exerted his strength and pushed his body away.

His body flew toward the patch of floor free of spikes and landed there.

Dropping the torch from his mouth, Ju Un-hyang bit his lip tightly as he looked at his palms, which had been torn and were soaked in blood.

‘It feels as if my hands are burning away.’

It was a spike trap that had been left untouched for a long time.

It would not have been strange at all if he contracted metal poison from it.

‘Damn it.’

Enduring the pain, Ju Un-hyang pulled something from his chest.

It was a small lucky pouch, and inside it was a Poison-Repelling Bead pill he had brought along just in case.

He did not know whether it would help against metal poison, but Ju Un-hyang bit off about a third of it, chewed it thoroughly, then spat it onto his palms mixed with saliva.

“Nnghhh.”

The pain was no joke.

Ju Un-hyang ground his teeth and rubbed it over both his torn palms.

It burned and blazed, but he endured it.

“Haa……haa……damn it.”

The curse came out of him by itself.

While breathing harshly, Ju Un-hyang chewed another third of the Poison-Repelling Bead and swallowed it down his throat.

He kept the remaining third in the pouch just in case.

-Riiip!

Tearing more from his sleeve, Ju Un-hyang wrapped it around both palms like bandages.

The strange thing was that at first it had hurt as though being seared with fire, but at some point the pain disappeared.

It seemed the Poison-Repelling Bead had some degree of effect.

Since the bleeding seemed to have stopped to some extent, Ju Un-hyang came back to reality.

‘Ha……’

It was absurd.

He had never imagined Im Gyu-wol would prepare such a double trap.

No matter how much he resented him, to think he would even give Yeom Gyeong the false map as well.

Thanks to that, he had been properly struck from behind.

‘So hard it leaves me stinging.’

He had not known that this man was so capable in schemes.

It was practically a scheme that had read two moves ahead.

‘That fellow Yeom Gyeong must have come to grief as well.’

If he had moved according to that false map, then he too would be in danger.

But the important thing right now was not that fellow.

It was himself.

‘Can I climb back up?’

Ju Un-hyang lifted the torch and looked upward.

To retrace the route by which he had come back to the original path, he would have to climb all the way up there and break through the ceiling that had closed again.

But it was fairly high.

He would have to remove all those spikes and then cling to the smooth wall and climb for a long while.

‘It will be even worse if there are more mechanisms.’

Just in case, Ju Un-hyang picked up a stone from the ground and threw it into the patch full of spikes.

At once, more spikes shot out from the surrounding walls of that spiked area.

-Pupupupupuk!

‘This is insane.’

Had he not tested it, the moment he clung to the wall he would have been skewered.

The only things he possessed were his own body and this torch.

If only he had even a weapon, he might have been able to try something, but to enter the prison one had to go in bare-handed.

‘What am I supposed to do?’

It was a situation that naturally brought out a sigh.

Because he had no idea when or where another mechanism might emerge, even moving carelessly seemed dangerous.

But at the same time, he could not simply remain here forever.

‘Should I just endure and wait?’

That too was one method.

Im Gyu-wol might have laid the trap, but Mak Myeong-bo was not such a man.

If the apprentice cadets who had gone in failed to return, then as the one in charge he would carry out a search to find them.

‘Until then, I can at least hold out here where there seem to be no mechanisms…’

-Shuuuu!

At that moment, a strange sound was heard.

When Ju Un-hyang looked there, smoke was slowly beginning to seep up from beneath the bed of spikes.

‘He truly leaves no end to it.’

At the sight, Ju Un-hyang clicked his tongue in disgust.

He did not know what kind of smoke it was, but the chances were high that it was poison.

He had the Poison-Repelling Bead, but it would not be good to remain directly exposed to it for long.

‘Damn it!’

After gathering as many of the stones scattered on the floor as he could carry, Ju Un-hyang ran toward the corridor opening before the smoke could reach him.

-Tak! Papapapapak!

Every two or three times he threw a stone, one mechanism would activate.

At the vicious traps that sprang out, Ju Un-hyang could not relax his tension for even a moment.

‘I do not know who built the Avici Prison, but they built it truly well.’

Escaping from here seemed an immensely distant prospect.

Without the torch, it would be nothing but complete darkness, so by what means could one ever leave this place?

Every twenty paces or so, another mechanism appeared, enough to drive one mad.

‘If one attempted escape, it would mean certain death.’

After running for some time while triggering the mechanisms one by one, Ju Un-hyang finally stopped.

He had already used up all the stones he had picked up.

From here onward, he could not move carelessly.

‘……Hmm.’

Ju Un-hyang took off his outer garment, tore it, twisted the strips together into a cord, and tied them into a longer line.

Then he took off one shoe and wrapped the cord around it before tying it fast.

The length did not even reach two zhang, but it seemed enough.

-Pahk!

Ju Un-hyang threw the shoe wrapped in cord out ahead.

Then he slowly pulled the shoe back.

-Drdrdrdr!

At a certain point, with the distinctive sound of a mechanism activating, hidden weapons like heavy iron caltrops shot from the wall and embedded themselves in the opposite wall.

‘Good.’

Ju Un-hyang drew back the shoe.

A few of the iron spikes had lodged in it, but he could pull them out and use it again.

Using this method, Ju Un-hyang moved little by little, activating the mechanisms and finding safe footholds as he went.

As he struggled onward like this, Ju Un-hyang thought,

‘Haa……If even I, with all my experience, have it this hard, then Yeom Gyeong and Bae Ji-seok… no, even that bastard must be suffering badly after falling into the mechanism formation… Huh?’

He almost stumbled forward.

Right now, worrying about others was not the point. The urgent matter was to get out of here alive somehow.

* * *

At the entrance leading deeper into the Avici Prison.

Mok Gyeong-un, wearing Cadet An Jong-hu’s face, looked around and thought.

For Mok Gyeong-un, who had memorized the map and could reconstruct it in three dimensions inside his head, it was obvious where he had to move.

That was why he had easily descended all the way here while avoiding every mechanism formation trap and all the prison keepers’ outposts on the underground third level.

However, at this branching passage there was a single problem.

To pass through safely without any mechanism formations, he should have gone through the center corridor, but if he passed there, he would have to go by one of the eight prison keeper outposts inside the Avici Prison.

‘Hmm.’

It would not be difficult to get rid of them.

However, he had heard that each prison keeper outpost contained something prepared in case of attack or escape.

So it seemed best not to touch them carelessly.

At that, Mok Gyeong-un shifted his steps toward the corridor on the left.

‘It cannot be helped.’

It seemed he would have to pass through one place where there was a mechanism formation.

Once he got past only this place, he would be closer to Cell One Hundred Thirty, where the Sacred Fire Leader was imprisoned.

It was somewhat annoying, but passing through one mere mechanism formation was hardly impossible.

Thus Mok Gyeong-un entered the left corridor while suppressing his presence.

It happened just after he had taken a few steps inside the corridor.

-Tak!

-Click, click, click!

The floor sank inward, and from within the wall there came the sounds of some sort of mechanism.

At the same time, countless holes opened in the ceiling, and a rain of arrows poured down.

-Swoosh!

At that moment, Mok Gyeong-un kept walking forward and merely flicked his hand upward.

Then all those arrows that had been about to fall stopped in midair and reversed direction, embedding themselves in the ceiling instead.

-Papapapapapapak!

At that, Mok Gyeong-un casually kept walking forward.

-Rrrk!

-Click, click, click!

It did not end there.

Three layers of huge blades shot out one after another from the walls.

The blades aimed to slice Mok Gyeong-un’s body into four pieces in an instant.

However,

-Duduk, duduk!

The blades stopped midway before even striking his body and could not move properly.

Mechanical noises came from inside the walls, loud as though something had jammed.

This was because the blades had been caught by the force of his deep true qi.

In that state, Mok Gyeong-un flicked a finger at the blade above,

-Chang!

The upper blade snapped apart, and in the process cut apart all the blades beneath it as well.

Mok Gyeong-un resumed moving forward.

When he had walked about five steps,

-Shoo! Shoo!

At the sound of projectiles cutting through the air from ahead, Mok Gyeong-un did not stop and merely tilted his head slightly.

Then the two sharp spears that had been flying toward him to pierce his shoulders bent away and embedded themselves into the walls on either side.

-Kwaang!

“Hmm.”

Mok Gyeong-un glanced left and right, then walked forward again.

After he had taken another five steps or so,

Smoke began seeping up from the floor.

The smoke was poison.

‘Since it contains the root of gold-acid grass, it seems to be a paralysis poison.’

-Ssssss!

Before long the poison fog filled the entire corridor, but Mok Gyeong-un walked forward unconcerned.

He was a being who was, to begin with, the highest poison itself, so such poison fog had no effect on him whatsoever.

Mok Gyeong-un, who had been walking slowly just in case, so as to respond to the mechanism formations, opened his mouth and yawned.

‘Is this all?’

It was becoming more disappointing than he had expected.