“Can you still sense that person?” Rog asked Red.

"No.” the boy shook his head. “They’re long gone.”

“What about anyone else?”

“Still nothing.”

“Then we must keep going.” the hunter pointed ahead.

“Wait!” Rimold called to Rog, but the man ignored him and kept walking.

Red and Allen followed suit, and the rogue had no choice but to keep in tow. Still, he wasn’t about to let the matter drop.

“Don’t you see how this is all so strange?” Rimold said. “I mean, it was already unlikely that such a huge tunnel network would go by unnoticed. But now that we know a cultivator is behind it… This is even weirder!”

“Are you still trying to convince us to turn back?” Rog shook his head. “We already gave you our answer.”

“Bah, I already gave up on that!” Rimold said with a scoff. “I’m saying, what is the purpose of these tunnels in the first place? Every natural resource in this region has long since been tapped by the sects and other local powers, so why would a cultivator bother making such a wide tunnel network?”

“Maybe it’s an old network, and it was just hidden very well before.” the hunter shrugged.

“That’s absurd! How could no one have found something like this before?! Even with the formations hiding the entrances, someone was still bound to bump into these tunnels at some point in the past!”

“Couldn’t cultivators have done this in secret?” Allen asked.

“Something this big?” Rimold shook his head. “Impossible!”

“There’s no point in asking these kinds of questions.” Red interjected. “We will only know the answer by exploring this tunnel further.”

“… Fine!” Rimold relented. “But I’m telling you, this is a bad idea!”

‘You don’t need to tell me twice.’

Red also didn’t have a good feeling about the place, but he had no choice other than to continue his exploration. He needed to confirm if this was somehow involved with the Moonstone mines.

The group continued to walk, and the tunnel remained relatively straight.

Five minutes passed, and their path was unchanged.

Ten more minutes passed, and nothing changed.

At this point, even Red was feeling something eerie was going on.

It wasn’t until they had walked for half an hour in the same tunnel that Rog called for them to stop.

“Something doesn’t seem right here…” the hunter frowned.

“Oh, you think?!” Rimold stared daggers at the man. “I haven’t travelled deep into these tunnels before, but even I can tell you that none of them were this long!”

“Well, there’s nothing to it now…” Rog shrugged. “I want to try something.”

“Try what?” the rogue frowned in suspicion.

“Let’s try going back.” the hunter pointed out to the direction they had just come from.

“Now you want to go back?!” Rimold’s eyes almost popped out of his head.

“But what about Narcha and Eiwin?!” Allen looked at the man in concern.

“I didn’t say we were leaving.” Rog shook his head. “I just said I want to try something.”

Allen and Rimold looked confused at the man’s words, but Red felt like he understood where Rog was going with this.

“Let’s do as he says, then.” the youth said.

The young master stopped protesting at Red’s words, and Rimold was all too happy to leave the cave, so they didn’t offer any opposition to Rog’s idea. They turned around and walked back.

Thirty more minutes passed by as the group retraced their steps. At that point, they had been expecting to arrive back at the chamber near the tunnel entrance. However, that didn’t happen.

The tunnel passage continued to stretch in front of them.

At first, they thought they must have gotten their sense of time confused. However, after they continued walking for ten more minutes on the same path, grim realization finally set on the group.

“W-What’s going on?” Allen asked with a trembling voice. “Shouldn’t we be back at that bandit camp by now?”

“This is impossible!” Rimold also had a look of concern on his face. He looked over at Rog. “You! You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?!”

The hunter shook his head. “I didn’t know it, but I thought it might have been possible.”

“Then do you know what is going on?” Red asked. He hadn’t been surprised to find this oddity.

“Me?” Rog shrugged as usual. “I suppose we must be in an illusion of some sort, but there’s no way I could tell you for certain.”

“An illusion?” the boy frowned.

“Yeah, they are techniques that mess with your senses. They can manipulate you to see things that are not really there and make the false feel real.”

Red had limited experience with such phenomenon, but he recalled witnessing illusions too when he was exiting the underground. That, however, wouldn’t be of any help in the situation.

“W-what do we do now then?” Allen asked.

“No idea.” Rog shook his head and looked over at Rimold. “What about you? Do you have any ideas?”

“Me?!” Rimold looked on the verge of exploding. “I didn’t even want to enter these tunnels in the first place!”

“That’s not what I asked you.” the hunter frowned.

The rogue gritted his teeth, but held his temper back. “I don’t know either! It’s not like I have dealt with any illusions before!”

At these words, the entire group went silent. As it turned out, no one here had any sort of experience with the matter.

“What exactly is causing this illusion?” Red asked, breaking the silence.

“Hard to tell.” Rimold shook his head. “If I had to guess, it must be a formation of some sort. It was probably hidden within this tunnel and we wandered right into it.”

“Is there a way to find this formation?”

“There is, but you’d need to be at the Lesser Ring Realm at least to do it.”

‘So it all comes back to that, huh?’

Red closed his eyes in thought. A few seconds later, he looked over at the rest of the group. “I have an idea.”

“What is it?” Allen looked over at him in eagerness.

“Stay where you are. I’m going to walk ahead by myself and try something.”

“What do you mean by that?” Rimold eyed him with suspicion.

“Just do as he says, Rimold.” Rog said with a smile. “The boy can be full of surprises.”

The rogue looked unwilling, but still nodded in the end.

“Then I’ll be going.” Red said.

The boy walked ahead into the darkness by himself.

His idea, of course, involved his crimson sense. As Rog explained it, this illusion targeted your five senses. However, Red wanted to verify whether his crimson sense was also being fooled.

The first step of his plan was to examine the fluctuations of his companions, which normally varied in intensity depending on how far the boy was from them. Following this rationale, the signals should get weaker the further ahead Red walked, but since this was an illusion, it might not be the case.

He wasn’t sure of how much help this idea could be, but it was a start.

Red walked ahead, and as expected, the fluctuations got weaker a few dozen meters in. His companions could still see the light of his torch from this distance in the straight tunnel, but the boy didn’t pay attention to them. When the boy crossed the 50 meter distance from the group, something unexpected happened.

The fluctuations stopped weakening. Instead, they began to grow stronger once more. Red froze in his tracks and looked back, expecting to see his companions following him. However, this wasn’t the case. They were still there, looking at him in confusion without moving.

‘What is going on?’

Red didn’t know the answer, but he kept walking. The fluctuations continued to grow stronger, until, around the 100 meter mark, they were as strong as when the boy was right beside his companions. However, ahead of him, he could only see the darkness of the unending tunnel, and behind him his companions were still there, where he had left them.

The youth’s confusion hit its peak. His crimson sense was telling him his companions were right in front of him, but his eyes were telling him they were a hundred meters back. Red swung his hand in front of him, expecting to bump into his invisible companions. He only hit air, though.

‘This must be a work of the illusion.’

Red continued to move forward, and his companion’s fluctuations varied in the same manner, with fifty meters being the max distance from them. From this point, the boy guessed they were stuck in a loop, walking back and forth and making no real progress.

At the very least, the boy could confirm his crimson senses were likely unaffected. Still, that didn’t help his situation since, if this illusion could really fool his senses, it meant that no matter what he did, it wouldn’t reflect in real life. Even if he could detect the real position of his companions, he couldn’t act on it in any manner.

An echo came from far behind him. “Red, when are you coming back?!”

It was Allen’s voice. Red had already walked hundreds of meters away from the group, but they could still see each other’s torchlights in this straight tunnel. The boy didn’t respond, still reflecting on his discovery.

‘My only way of interacting with the real world is through the crimson sense…’

Indeed, if there was a way out of this illusion, it was within his crimson sense. The problem, however, was that this power could only detect things and not interact with them, as far as Red knew.

‘Maybe there is a way to stimulate it.’

The boy had clues that the crimson mists mutation within his body wasn’t limited to the crimson power. It had also increased his stamina substantially, so perhaps it could also affect his other senses. The genuine issue was, even if this was possible, how could he accomplish it?

Allen called to him once again. “Red, are you coming back or not?!”

Red continued to ignore him.

‘A way to stimulate the crimson mist within my body…’

He recalled what it had done in the past. It had consumed almost an entire forest’s worth of life force, some way or the other. Perhaps if Red could use a similar energy to stimulate it, then maybe…

‘This is all pointless.’

Red shook his head. Extracting life force and stimulating it with the crimson energy within his body? All these ideas were based on conjecture, and the youth did not know if they were accurate. Even if they were correct, did the boy have any means of actually executing them? That were concepts and things Red had little understanding of, so how could he actually make use of them?

‘Why did my mind even wander in that direction?’

“I’m coming back!” Red said.

He turned around to walk back to the group. Suddenly, however, a new fluctuation entered his crimson sense.