The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 68

After what seemed like hours of falling while being knocked between various rocks that fell along with me from the explosion, I spread my arms and legs, desperately trying to find anything to grab to stop myself from becoming a splatter mark on the ground. The speed at which I was dropping kept me from stabilizing myself on my own, but fortunately, my right hand was able to latch onto a jutted tree root. Unfortunately, that was also the arm that had been dislocated not too long ago so the sudden jolt sent a sharp pain up my arm that made me wish I’d just fallen flat on the ground instead.

Dangling helplessly by my right arm that felt as if it were going to rip off at any moment, I desperately sent Sylvie a mental transmission.

Sylv. Are you there? I fell quite a bit aways but I’m still okay. Do you sense where I am?

I waited for a minute but there was no response—I couldn’t even sense my bond. I immediately began worrying that something had happened to her, but with the queen snarler dead and the rest trapped inside the dungeon, it was unlikely. It was more reasonable to conclude that I was either too far down, or that this area was warded off and sealed from the outside, or more accurately, the surface.

By the extent of my drop, I doubted I was on any of the immediate floors below it, causing me to wonder if the explosion had unveiled a hidden passage to some room somewhere inside the dungeon.

Thinking back on the explosion caused by the mutated queen snarler, I couldn’t help but think how odd it had been. The blast was large, but I got the feeling that the explosion wasn’t meant to kill whoever was near it. If that were the case, my body, along with Professor Glory’s, would be in a much worse state than it was now.

"Ugh," I groaned as I continued hanging off my limp arm, feeling myself lose grip. I let out a couple quick breaths to ready myself before I used the remaining strength in my right arm to pull myself up just enough for my left arm to take its place.

Through gritted teeth, I resisted the temptation to just let go and leave it up to God or the gods or any gods, whatever they worshiped in this world, if any.

After a quick assessment of my body’s condition, which was in fairly good shape besides my right shoulder, I tried to survey my surroundings, except all I could see was darkness. It wasn’t as simple as it simply being dark; it was pitch black. That feeling of when you shut your eyes so hard that it seems like different lights were oozing around in your vision or that feeling where no matter how hard you squinted, your eyes couldn’t adjust—that was what I was feeling right now.

As I activated my mana rotation, I dispersed the mana I had covering my body to only my left arm. I had to use this "break time" to gather as much mana I could. Augmenting what little mana I had into my eyes in hopes to see something, I was rewarded with only darkness.

I’m not blind... am I? I couldn’t help but think to myself as I augmented my eyes again.

Just to comfort my needless worry, I break one of the most basic rules in situations like this. I produced a small fire on the tip of my right index finger.

Looking at the warm red and orange flicker of fire on my fingertip, I breathed in relief before extinguishing the flame.

While vision was an important thing, the last thing I wanted to do in a dark place like this was draw attention to myself. Now that the enemies here, if any, knew of my location, I needed to move.

Since I couldn’t see, I used wind to sense the type of space I was in right now. I had no idea how narrow or wide this hole that I was in was, but I assumed it wasn’t too wide since I hit quite a few objects along the way while falling.

Sending out short, soft bursts of wind, equidistant, around me, I figure out that this ditch, for a lack of better words, had a diameter of about 10 meters. The scary part, however, was that I couldn’t even sense how far down I was and how much further I had to go down until I had a floor to walk on.

What I had to decide now was whether to try and climb back up or make my way down. By how much I fell and all of the other debris that fell down along with me, chances were that the opening at the top would already be covered. With Sylvie not answering from outside, I had no way of knowing if she could open up an exit for me.

That only leaves me with going down.

I sighed.

No matter how rational and level headed I was, I couldn’t help but feel a bit anxious in this situation. More so than the immediate dangers in front of me, a situation like this, where I couldn’t see anything or even sense any life forms, made me more edgy. In the case where the army of snarlers was in front of us, I knew what I had to do and I could think of how to deal with it. Right now, I could neither imagine nor predict what might happen in the next couple of seconds, making me all the more tense.

Augmenting both my hands with earth attribute mana, I’m able to bury my hand into the side of the giant abyss-like hole, creating a handhold for myself. I positioned myself flat against the side with both my hands dug into the wall to keep myself from falling.

In a steady motion, I pulled my augmented hands out of the side of the wall and allow myself to fall before I clawed my hands into the wall again to stop. The amount of stress it put on my arms made me cringe every time but this would be the fastest way to make my way down.

Gripping, letting go, gripping, letting go, gripping, letting go. I had to keep my body flat so I don’t start falling away from the wall. I also couldn’t wait too long before I had to grip the wall again because it would be a lot more dangerous to try and slow down after picking up too much speed.

I let out pulses of wind every now and then to try and see how much farther I had to go down. Even after around 3 hours of gripping and letting go, according to my internal clock, I had yet to sense a floor anywhere close beneath me.

How deep is this fucking hole? Without even the luxury to vent my frustration aloud, I was left to rant inside my head using words even the most vulgar of adults would find inappropriate.

I knew that everyone warned adventurers about the dangers and unpredictability of dungeons but both the Dire Tombs and even this supposedly low-level dungeon had proven to cause me more trouble than the times I adventured with Jasmine without the use of magic.

I mean, what were the chances that the one time I go to a D class dungeon supposedly filled with E class monsters, a freaking army decides to welcome us on the first floor?

The minion snarlers hadn’t even been that bad, to be honest. We were stupid for using so much fire magic when we had no ventilation but I had handled most of them without even using mana.

That mutated queen had been the problem. How the hell did she get so strong? Was it because she ate the other queen? Was it even possible to just get instant power-ups like that?

As I continued debriefing to myself the events that occurred earlier, I kept gripping and letting go of the stone wall, falling down further into who knows where I was now.

I let go of the wall and fell down, timing myself before burying my augmented hands into the wall again. However, unlike before, my hand wouldn’t go inside.

"What the..."

I desperately tried clawing at the wall but even with the augmentation in my hand, I wasn’t able to make even a scratch into the wall.

The surface of the wall was different now. It was smooth—too smooth to be natural.

I was picking up speed as I persistently tried to bury my fingers into the wall, hopelessly.

This isn’t working.

Careful to make as little noise as possible while I continued falling, I rhythmically let out pulses of wind around me, as a sort of makeshift echolocation. Through sending out faint pulses and measuring how long it took before it hit a surface, I could locate, in my head, potential footholds and handholds to make my way down.

Easier said than done. The theory worked great in my head but trying it without practice proved harder than I imagined. There were few handholds I could try and hang myself from but my makeshift echolocation technique wasn’t as accurate as I wished it would be.

I ended up narrowly missing a lot of the potential supports and it just became harder as I picked up speed.

Fortunately, I still didn’t sense the floor anywhere close to me so I had time, but if I fell down any faster, even if I could grab onto a support, I wasn’t sure if my arms would be able to take the stress from the abrupt stop.

As I continue fumbling my arms against the wall to search for anything that may slow down or stop my fall, I was finally able to sense the ground.

Damn it... This isn’t good. _{freewёbnoνel.com}

I had about 200 meters before my body became a puddle on the ground. That left me with about... six seconds?

Damn it all.

Turning around so that the wall was to my back, I gathered all the mana I saved up ’til now. It would take about 4 seconds to focus enough mana into the spell.

Wind Bullet. Stretching my arms out in front of me, I unleash a barrage of fist-sized bullets of compressed air to the other side of this giant hole I was in.

If I could create enough force to push myself back against the wall, I would be able to slow down enough to survive the fall. I no longer cared about keeping noise to a minimum.

The air bullets boomed as they collided into the wall about 10 meters away from me, My body pressed harder and harder against the wall behind me from the recoil of the spell, and I couldn’t do anything besides grit my teeth as I felt the back of my uniform and my skin burning off due to the friction.

I could feel myself approaching the backlash stage but I just desperately let out all of the mana I could muster up while using mana rotation. As the air bullets continued colliding against the other side, pushing me back harder and harder into the smooth wall, I approached the ground.