Shadow Slave

The convoy had stopped once again. This time, however, there was one significant difference to the place Sunny had chosen to set camp - it was situated near one of the side passages, which they had avoided at all costs in the past.

Currently, the Irregulars were gathered around the dark entrance, staring at it with gloomy expressions on their faces.

Sunny did not look too enthused, either.

After a while, he sighed and glanced at his subordinates.

"Have any of you noticed it?"

They looked at each other, not sure what to say. After a while, Dorn spoke in a somber voice:

"What exactly were we supposed to notice, Captain?"

Sunny silently shook his head.

In the past few days, he had been observing the side passages attentively as the convoy passed them, trying to see if there was a pattern to when and where they appeared. The tunnel looked to be endless, after all, so it seemed that there was an endless amount of these branching paths, too... which was a bit weird.

in the process of observing the side passages, a sinking sense of suspicion took hold of his heart, and by now, that suspicion was all but confirmed.

He frowned.

"Well, i don't blame you. It's pretty hard to notice."

Then, Sunny pointed at a particular spot on the stone wall of the tunnel, right where it made way for the open chasm of the entrance to the side passage.

"There's a small protrusion there, and on the opposite side, the stone is chipped near the floor. There's also that crack over there."

They stared at the spots he showed, not quite sure of the meaning of these small, barely noticeable features.

"What about them?"

lingered for

in and of itself. But if you watched closely, you would have seen that these exact imperfections are present at each of the entrances we passed in the last couple of days. The first one we saw during the initial scouting had them, too. With how rough the walls of the tunnel are, it is only expected that there would be nothing smooth about the side passages, but still. Exact cracks. at exactly the same spots, at hundreds of entrances... don't you

of the wall, then scratched the back of

Did someone leave these

Sunny shook his head.

to say is that there are no hundreds of entrances. There's just one entrance, and one side passage, repeating over and over across the tunnel. All these entrances we saw were the same, and lead

long stretch of grim silence, Belle finally

we are being

carefree smile,

like being lured somewhere, don't

The swordsman just shrugged.

has to be alluring,

him with a deadpan expression for a few moments, then

what are we

smile, making her eyes

all, the damned tunnel more or less left us no choice but to try and explore the side passage. It's an ingenious food delivery system, if you think about it... the food delivers itself. We are the food in this metaphor, of course, and we

Belle's eyes glinted.

eat it instead

Sunny cleared his throat-

plan... we are going to try to only he eaten a

told hint that his plan did not sound too encouraging to

He coughed.

the hell out of the tunnel as soon as the thing trapping us inside is found and destroyed. So, we will split into two teams. One team will go down, the other will remain with the convoy and make sure that

to which team. Luster was their best pilot, so he would have to remain with the Rhino... Samara's Aspect was less useful in narrow spaces, so there was no point

looked into the darkness,

who is going to accept the invitation,