His skin prickled as he felt the cold and damp ground against his skin. Adaloun opened his eyes to total darkness. His ears ringing violently as he felt the knocking pain in his head. The blinding explosion was more damaging than what he thought. He tried moving his eyes, but a surge of pain crept into his head, protesting his action.

Adaloun decided to stay still for awhile as his mind tried to cope up with the current barrage of sensations he was experiencing. It took a while for the ringing to stop. He gnashed his teeth as the pain became more unbearable as time passed by.

The ringing finally stopped after a long agonizing wait. His aching head finally felt some relief. He tried moving his body to check if his headache might worsen, thankfully, there wasn't. He slowly opened his eyes and welcomed the darkness in front of him.

The jet-black veil made everything seemed invisible. He hesitantly reached out his hand and tried tapping everything around his surrounding just so he could make sense of it. Strangely, his vision wasn't able to cope up with the darkness as fast it did earlier when they first made their descent.

He felt something sticky on the ground. It felt warm, wet and grainy. The liquid seemed to have mixed itself with the ground. His heart raced as his mind tried to make sense of his discovery. He tried running it once more on his fingers. The grainy and sticky texture all pointed to something he hoped wasn't it.

He debated within himself if he should try and sniff it just to check what it was. He shouldn't have done that, but it was already too late. He sniffed the mysterious substance on his fingers and gagged.

"Fuck! It's shit!" He said to himself as he tried to find a way to wash it away. He fumbled on his waist to locate his satchel. As he felt through the carved rune symbols, he suddenly heard something unusual. He paused and felt the vibrations on the ground.

Could it be a giant centipede? It's highly unlikely especially without the rumbling on the ground. Adaloun felt a gust of air from above. He ducked his head lower on the ground and listened closely to the sound of flapping wings passing over him.

He held his breath as he felt the wings hover just a few footlings above him.

"Could it be a kind of bat?" He thought. He never dared to move just one bit nor breath for his convenience. He held everything in until sometime, the creature seemingly flew away from him. The weird ringing noise came back once more.

Another surge of pain came rushing into his head once more. The pain felt like his head was slowly being stepped on by a behemoth—a painful crushing pressure.

His vision began to fog. He closed his eyes and tried blinking to remove the hazy discomfort he felt with the flashes of light appearing before him instantaneously. It took a few moments for his eyesight to adjust until he was able to see in the dark once again. The dark vision came back after the unsettling pain and visual discomfort he had with those orbs of light.

He squinted his eyes as he tried to get us of his new vision. It was a crude vision with only big shapes on grey outlines seemingly visible. It was vexing to see the world in such a dull color. Out of all his reincarnations, he never had a problem with his vision in the dark. The gods made sure that he could see everything in the dark in their color as if light had shone on them.

He slowly looked around, still cautious of whatever was hovering above him earlier. He looked to the right and saw nothing more but stone and debris. His powerful sword was out of sight. He did recall unsheathing it as he ran towards Tristam, who triggered the explosion. Everything else was blurry to him especually before the explosion happened.

Luckily, the dwarven sword was still around his waist in case he might encounter a monster at that time. He took a deep breath and prepared himself for the worse. He slowly drew his sword and turned himself up, looking at the stony ceiling up high.

He saw nothing but an empty canvas of creases and protruding rocks in grey outline. He sighed in relief. The last thing he wanted was a monster attacking him in his vulnerable state or at any state at that matter.

He tried standing up but saw something slither at the corner of his eye. He jumped away from it and pointed his sword at it. His skin prickled at the gruesome sight and the realization of where the sticky substance came from.

In front of him was a torn torso, its upper half missing, and its entrails splattered on the ground. He looked at the direction of the torso and saw more grisly scenes. Human body parts were scattered everywhere. Singed leather and other fabric came attached with some of the disembodied parts. Heads were partially missing a feature or its half.

Adaloun realized the explosion apparently wiped out most of the squads and possibly, he could be the only one left. He looked around to survey for a way out of that dark cavern. He saw one in front of him, across the sea of disembodied human parts. He tried looking for some other opening, but it was the only thing he saw.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, "Fuck." He whispered under his breath as he passed along the scattered remains of what was once a squad. He tiptoed slowly from the scattered body parts, making sure not to step on them or go over them.

Go over them? He couldn't help himself but smirk. It was a superstitious belief from his old world, before he became Arellin. Children were discouraged to go over a dead body in fear of the dead's retribution. It was one of those superstitions that he carried along with him for the longest time of being reincarnated.

As he slowly swerved through the grisly scene, he saw a shield lodged on the ground with an arm attached on it. It took him a while to decide what to do with what he saw. He finally decided to take the shield with him incase he encounter something later.

He loosened the hand from the shieled's tightly fitted strap and thank whose ever hand it was for its generosity towards him. The cave ahead had an eerie atmosphere. If given the chance, he could've chosen to just stay in his position. However, that would simply a slow and agonizing wait for death to come.

Adaloun wanted to stay positive despite the situation. He had to, he made a promise to his comrades that they would come out alive of this mission and he's keeping that end of the bargain. He stealthily walked along the dark opening, looking around for any signs of life either friend or foe.

He gripped the dwarven sword hard on his right hand as he went in deeper into the dark tunnel. He felt a cold gush of putrid wind up ahead of him. He looked around to find another way out, but there was only one way into that damned tunnel. He moved forward, cautiously looking around him for any surprise attacks.

Suddenly he could hear flapping wings from the distance, along with the vomit-inducing smell of something rotten. As he advanced into the tunnel the sound of the flapping wings became louder and louder.

All of the sudden, he felt a rush of pain in his. His vision was shifting between the darkness and grey outlines. The assault of visions became more nauseating as it continued. What seemed to be a moment felt like days of writhing pain. Adaloun began to vomit from the chaotic visions before completely passing out in the middle of the dark cave.

Later on, he woke up in the darkness once again. Not knowing where he was, he tried standing up, but something seemed to be tied to his ankles. He tried to unravel it, but it was tightly bound. He patted the ground for his blade, but it wasn't there. Luckily, his shield was tightly strapped on his left arm. Using the tip of his shield, he smashed it against the thing binding his feet.

It took him a few tries until finally it tore apart. He sighed in relief, but now another thing came to his mind; Who tied him up like that? Where is he now? The questions plagued his chaotically confused mind.

It was dark again. His vision was again back to his normal human self. He wasn't going to wait for that vision to come back, thus he decided to pull out a light rune and activate it. The light shone bright over the place, even Adaloun squinted to adjust to the brightness of the light.

As his vision finally adjusted to the light, he realized his mistake. He shouldn't have activated that light rune. Adaloun slowly raised his shield as eyeless bat-like humanoids stood in front of him with a grim smile on their faces.

"Bright light Oyue." He whispered as the bat-like humanoids began to lunge at him.