Chương 142: Where is the Dungeon?

The stair sealed with a long, grinding scrape that rolled down through the dark like it didn't want to end; stone sliding back into place somewhere far above us, cutting off the only way out we'd seen. The sound kept going for a while until it finally gave up and left us standing in silence. Nobody spoke for a few seconds. No jokes were said, no snarky comments aimed toward each other, or just in general. We had all felt the weight of the entrance closing. Alice found her voice first.

"We should figure out a formation," she said.

"This is not a field boss fight, and it's not a simple dungeon, either."

"The numbers are somewhere in-between," I nodded.

"But I have a feeling it will be unlike anything we'd experienced before." I looked at the three parties.

"Let's form a raid group first. Team A will be Cyrus, Team B: Verdugo, and Team C is going to be us."

"It's not three parties fighting," Cyrus chimed in.

"We all have to work together."

"Indeed. But the setup will be clear enough this way," I said.

"Each party has its healer, and that priority should keep being like that. Talion will be responsible for Corral, Carmen will heal Rafael, and Desirae is with Denxy." The clerics nodded in unison.

"All three tanks should form a unified front," I continued.

"Alice and Redcap next, watching for flankers and protecting the backline. Adaptive, you watch our backs. Verdugo, you support the frontline."

"That's what I like to hear, amigo," he grinned, caressing his axe-blade.

"Frontline for the winners!"

"Scale and Mano Roja," Cyrus continued.

"You go wide on each side, keep your eyes open. Diego, you stay with the casters." The melee fighters all got into position without a single question.

"Clerics next, then Cyrus, Somnus, Leona, Alysanna, and me." As I talked, I was already moving, positioning myself between the healers and Adaptive. Lune followed in my footsteps, although I'd noticed that she's been getting increasingly restless ever since we'd entered Xibalba. This is the most underground place she'd seen so far, I thought, but I couldn't really convince myself about the case. While the statement was true, she didn't look scared, rattled, or irritated.

It was almost like she was intrigued by the place. Her little sun drifted above her head, bobbing forward and back lazily. The Clerics had cast Candlelight, each positioned a tactical distance away from one another, and Rafael had pulled out his newfound weapon, lighting it in holy fire, adding to the ambience. Still, the light was barely enough to show us our immediate vicinity. I would have felt more uncomfortable without Twilight Hunter.

Under normal circumstances, I was confident relying on my hearing, and even my smell felt like it had improved drastically ever since I started playing Godsrealm, but both of them were iffy at best in a gigantic underground cavern-city. All the scents of undisturbed earth, and the echo of every single noise had made it much harder. Most dungeons at least pretend to help you see: torches, glowing mushrooms, crystals, something. Xibalba didn't bother. No fires in the walls, no lamps, no glowing magic.

Just black stone and earth, and dust that settled because nothing has moved here in a very, very long time. Our boots left footprints in the thick layer, while Lune's paws imprinted smaller ones beside mine. Nineteen trails in total, carving lines on ground that wasn't walked on for who knows how long.

"This place is too clean," Cyrus said after a while. Scale glanced at him.

"That a problem?"

"Just saying. Abandoned cities usually fall apart, get overgrown, something moves in. This one looks like it just… stopped. Apart from the dust." He was right. The avenue stayed straight and whole. Walls were worn in places, some edges chipped, but nothing had collapsed. There was no moss, no roots cracking the stone, no remains. And absolutely no trace of anything living between these walls. We passed under a freestanding arch and into the first real avenue.

It was wide enough for a procession, made of smooth black stone underfoot, with channels cut along both sides. The buildings on either side were flat-roofed, windowless except for narrow square openings higher up — too small for doors, too dark to see through. Patterns repeated across the walls: wings, circles, hooked lines, angular marks that didn't match anything I'd seen in the over-world. The first large mural stretched across the side of a long building. Alice lifted a hand, and we slowed.

I stepped closer with Lune so the light could reach it. It depicted green-skinned figures, about half our size, under an open sky. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Goblins? They didn't exactly match the kind we usually fought on the surface. These stood straight, wore layered clothes, some even carried banners, but they were definitely goblins. They had long noses and sharp ears, and the form of their skulls was distinct enough to tell.

The next section showed some of them running, while others chased them with spears and hooked blades. These had different banners and wore different colors; some of them even had different skin — more turquoise than plain green — but their features were the same. The fleeing goblins reached a cave mouth. The mural was actually incredibly clever; the cave itself was the simple window on the house wall. Quite artistic, if you ask me. As we walked forward, the rest of the tale took shape on the walls.

The next mural picked up underground. There were fewer goblins now; some carried bundles of wood or stone. A couple of them carried bodies. At the center, one figure stood taller than the rest, wearing a mask or a headdress, staff in hand. The same masked goblin showed up again and again. Raising the staff while others knelt. It must have been their leader, a king or a warlord. Although most murals depicted him as a spiritual figure. He very well could have been a goblin shaman of sorts.

The next picture depicted a cavern, maybe this one, and above the goblins, wings stretched across three panels, a bat. It covered the carved ceiling like the whole space belonged to it. Below, the goblins knelt in rows. Lune stopped, the light source halting with her, forcing all of us to react. She looked at the mural, ears forward, and I couldn't get her away from it.

"What is it, girl?" I asked. She looked at me, then back at the wall, clawing into the dirt. She looked back at me again and realized I had no idea what she wanted to tell me, causing her to lower her tail in disappointment.

"Camazotz," Verdugo said quietly, and Lune's gaze shot right at him. That was surprising on three different levels: Verdugo capable of saying anything in a low voice, Lune reacting to knowledge that was presumably not from Godsrealm, and the berserker being the first one to connect the dots. Alice looked at him.

"You know the name?"

"I know enough mythology to recognize a giant bat in a Mayan dungeon, hermana."

"Uh," Denxy looked up.

"What's a Camazotz?"

"A bat god in Mayan mythology," Verdugo answered, still looking at the mural.

"Camazotz lived underground, in the dark. Bats, caves, sacrifice, all of it his. In a tale I know, two hero brothers go down into the land of the dead and have to spend a night in his house, and he takes one of their heads off while they sleep." He reached up and laid the flat of his hand against the carved wing spread over us.

"And the land of the dead in that story had a name."

"Xibalba?" Cyrus asked.

"Xibalba. It means the place of fear. The underworld. We did not walk into a dungeon that happens to have a bat in it, hermanos. We walked into the house of the dead. We're in for a deadly ride."

"That's your scholarly interpretation?" Alice asked.

"That is my survival interpretation," the Berserker grinned. Cyrus stepped closer to the wall.

"He's probably right. The entire cave system already had Mayan or Aztec aesthetics, and it fits the theme. Godsrealm changes things all the time, though, so knowing the myth probably only gives us a direction, not answers."

"Giant death-bat is enough direction for me," Denxy said. I kept my attention on Lune throughout the entire conversation. She didn't growl at the mural, and she definitely wasn't surprised or afraid, either. Her little sun bobbed above her head, steady and warm, and while she clearly didn't want to leave the mural, she wasn't reacting as if the carved bat was a threat that needed to be dealt with. It was more like she was trying to understand something.

"Do you recognize it?" I asked her quietly. She looked at me, then at the wall, then let out a soft huff that could have meant anything. Helpful. Still, it told me enough to keep watching her. If something down here mattered to her, it mattered to me, too. The avenue opened into a broad plaza of stepped platforms, empty stone seats, a dry basin in the center with channels feeding into it from four directions. I crouched by one of the runnels.

The stone inside was smoother than the road, polished by use, and it was darker at the bottom.

"Drainage?" Denxy asked.

"Maybe," I said.

"Can't imagine this place has much rain, though." Cyrus crouched by another channel, staff across his knees, then looked around.

"These were built into the city. They seem to run through all the houses, connecting here."

"It's going to be blood magic again," Alysanna sighed.

"I hate blood rituals. Gives me PTSD of the Ravenmere Catacombs." I understood the sentiment. We crossed carefully. There were no enemies as far as we could see, no traps waiting for us, but still, none of us trusted the place. Scale and Mano Roja checked the platform edges constantly, Adaptive watched the side streets without saying a word, and I kept my bow at the ready, eyes on the rooftops and the gaps between buildings.

Another mural waited on the far side of the plaza, and it was about the goblins building the city we were walking in. They were hauling stone up ramps, carving terraces into the cavern walls. Shamans or priests were standing at the base of a pyramid with bowls in their hands. And above them all, the bat spread its wings over the structure.

"They made it work," Leona said quietly.

"Fled down here, found that thing, and built all of this, anyway."

"It seems like they built it because they found that thing," Carmen pointed out.

"Yeah," Rafael said.

"It looks like they are worshipping it."

"Question is," Somnus looked up at a pyramid in the distance.

"whether they wanted to, or they had to." We moved deeper into the city, checking the buildings occasionally, finding what looked like living areas: windowless stone rooms with carved benches, raised platforms that might've been beds or work surfaces, grinding stones, storage pits, empty alcoves. Nothing organic, nothing giving the feeling that these places were actually used by living things, though.

The next road sloped downward, bordered by carvings cut straight into the walls: goblin priests in bat-faced masks, bowls in their hands, channels running from the bowls down their arms to their feet.

"It is blood sacrifice," Alysanna laughed cynically.

"Of course it is, isn't it?" The carvings changed as the road curved. The bat stayed, but the masked shaman, the one that supposedly led them into the cave, started appearing more often. Closer to the center each time. Kneeling under Camazotz in one panel. Standing in front of the priests in the next. Then the priests kneeling to him while the bat remained above.

The story clearly wasn't finished, and as we followed the road deeper, I had the uncomfortable feeling that understanding the ending would matter just as much as surviving the enemies waiting for us.