Chapter 121: The Strange Man
“You're awake! You're awake!”
An unfamiliar voice kept ringing in my ears.
The first thing I noticed was the damp smell stabbing at my nose.
Wet stone.
Musty mold.
Everything mixed together in the humid air.
Beneath my back, I could feel a cold, damp floor.
The moment I tried to raise my upper body, pain exploded through my shoulder and back at the same time.
“Kugh...!”
The damage from crashing into the plunge pool, getting sucked through the waterway between the rocks, and being scraped against the cliff was still there.
A dull ache continued running down my back.
Still...
nothing seemed broken badly enough to be a serious injury.
This much is fine.
I forced my heavy eyelids open.
And the moment I did...
a face suddenly appeared right in front of mine.
I instinctively pulled back.
“Hahaha! You really opened your eyes! You're alive! You're actually alive!”
A figure burst into laughter at my startled reaction.
An old man.
But not an ordinary one.
His hair and beard were tangled together as though they hadn't been groomed in decades.
The clothes hanging from his body were little more than rags.
His face and neck were caked with grime.
Anyone looking at him might have thought he'd just crawled out of a grave.
And yet...
his eyes were strangely clear.
They weren't dull or unfocused.
As he looked at me, his eyes sparkled with the strange brightness of a child.
“Good! Good! You're finally awake!”
The old man even clapped his hands in delight.
I didn't answer him.
Instead, I slowly looked around.
It was a strange place.
It had probably started as a natural cave, but someone had widened and shaped the interior by hand until it resembled a secret stone chamber.
The ceiling was fairly high.
The walls were still rough stone, as though whoever had worked on them had stopped halfway.
And beneath one section of the rocky wall...
a narrow waterway stretched deep into the darkness.
That was probably where I'd been swept in.
In one corner...
sacks and jars were piled high.
When I looked closer, they were all filled with fasting pills.
Not just one or two sacks.
There were enough supplies here for several people to survive for months.
This place....
A memory from before my regression surfaced.
The people who had fallen beneath the waterfall in Falling Death Valley and somehow survived.
They had left behind testimony.
They said that if you were sucked into the waterway beneath the cracks in the cliff...
you eventually reached some hidden place deep inside the Demonic Cult's headquarters.
And that there were fasting pills stored there, allowing them to stay alive.
Those survivors had personally told the story after the Righteous Alliance pushed deep into the Demonic Cult's headquarters and eventually rescued them.
I looked around the cave again.
A space wide enough for dozens of people to live in.
Sacks of fasting pills piled in one corner.
It matched the place described by the survivors.
This is definitely it.
But there was one clear difference.
They had said there was only a corpse here.
A skeleton.
But what stood in front of me now was—
an insane old man grinning at me as though he'd lost his mind.
Don't tell me...
Was that skeleton they talked about actually this old man?
The Righteous Alliance wouldn't invade the Demonic Cult's headquarters until decades from now.
And even if this old man really was that corpse...
it had little to do with me.
I looked at him.
“Old man.”
“Were you the one who saved me?”
His face lit up instantly.
“Waaah! You can talk too! Hahaha! Good! Good! I have a friend now! My friend!”
He laughed like a child while vigorously messing up his already tangled hair.
I frowned without realizing it.
He's definitely not sane.
For now...
I checked my condition again.
There was barely a healthy spot left on my shoulders or back.
Half of my upper robe had been torn away.
Scratches from passing through the waterway covered my skin.
Still...
I could move without too much difficulty.
Fortunately, the sword at my waist was still there as well.
First, I need to get out of here.
If this really was somewhere inside the heart of the Demonic Cult...
I couldn't stay long.
If members of the Demonic Cult came here...
I'd be in serious danger.
I got to my feet and thoroughly searched the stone chamber.
The walls.
The ceiling.
The floor.
I examined every visible surface.
But there was no sign of an exit leading outside.
That's strange.
According to my memories from before regression...
the survivors who had been trapped here were eventually rescued by the Righteous Alliance.
That meant an entrance had to exist somewhere.
I kept searching.
But the result was the same.
This place seemed completely sealed from the outside.
“Damn it.”
A curse slipped from my mouth in frustration.
Then...
the old man entered my field of vision again.
He was squatting on the floor, still grinning stupidly while watching only me.
He seemed to find my frantic searching endlessly amusing.
Then a thought suddenly occurred to me.
Wait.
If this really is a completely sealed chamber... then how the hell is that old man here?
He didn't look like someone who had been swept in by the current like me.
Judging by his condition...
he had clearly been living here for a long time.
And considering the piles of fasting pills...
someone from outside had to be taking care of him.
I walked toward him.
“Old man.”
“What exactly is this place?”
“How are you here?”
“Do you know how to get outside?”
He listened to me...
then spent a long while doing nothing but laughing foolishly.
“Hehehe. My friend is talking to me.”
“Good. I'm not lonely anymore.”
I shook my head.
Completely insane.
What was I expecting?
But then—
unexpected words came from his mouth.
“My friend wants to leave.”
He grinned.
“If you want to leave, then leave.”
“There is a way.”
I immediately asked,
“There is?”
“What is it?”
The old man flashed me a crooked grin.
“I won't tell you for free.”
I blinked.
“W-What?”
“A bet.”
“A bet?”
He clapped his hands once.
“Beat me in a fight and I'll tell you!”
"...?"
I could only stare at him in disbelief.
I looked over the old man standing before me.
A body as thin and frail as a dead branch.
He barely looked strong enough to lift his fingers...
yet he was asking me to fight him.
Haa....
All I could do was sigh.
But my own situation wasn't exactly normal.
If there was even the smallest clue...
I had no choice but to grab onto it.
Even a straw is better than nothing.
I slowly approached him.
“Fine, old man.”
“Let's have this bet of yours.”
His face brightened instantly.
“Waaah! My friend wants to bet with me! Good! So good!”
He practically bounced with excitement.
I spoke to him.
