Chapter 185: Downwards Spiral Pt.1
Once they were there Lake turned to them and said. "We can't really get inside without them noticing and they're out of my range so I don't know what we'll be walking into." They didn't really have a choice but he still felt like he should let them know that they might be facing a lot of Demon Worshipers inside.
Seeing their faces he could tell they were ready and said. "I'll tell you as soon as I can sense any of them." With that he said to Peter. "I would like to go first. Are you ok with that?" Peter nodded like he had expected him to and backed off so Lake could move to the front of the group.
Leading the six of them towards the door, Lake kicked it down just relying on his pure strength and once inside he saw four doors that lead in different directions. Looking around Lake said. "We'll check them one at a time." He didn't want them splitting up because he was afraid some of them would run into some kind of trap and end up dead.
Starting from the left, Lake found the first rooms were just private rooms for people to sleep but the next two of them had more doors inside. This meant one of them probably led to the stairs they were looking for so choosing at random, Lake entered one of the rooms and opened the door.
Finding a staircase, Lake said. "It goes down so it's probably where we need to go." The others seemed to agree with him so he started down the spiral stairs with Mana Vision on so he would be able to see when the Demon Worshipers got closer. As they were going down Lake started to wonder just how far this staircase went down because he was still unable to see any evidence of life below them.
"This might lead down to the city below us." Lake looked back at Grendia as she said this and couldn't help but think she was right. It wasn't like he couldn't understand how useful a secret way to get to another part of the city could be if you were trying to be sneaky. He wondered if maybe the staircase had been disguised as a smoke stack bringing any smoke that might have been produced to the surface.
All the cities had them and it was the only thing he could think of that could be a staircase. It also explained why it was a spiral staircase since the smokestacks were cylindrical. With them going to the next floor down Lake said. "Do any of you know if there are any teams on the 22nd tier?"
It wasn't important really, Lake just wanted to know if the tier they were going towards had known Demon Worshiper activity in it or not because if it didn't there was a chance they would be walking past it and going even further down. For all he knew this could just keep going for hours and hours.
They didn't really have that much time left so spending it all on a staircase was kind of a bad use of time. "I think Masters sent three teams to the 22nd tier this morning. You weren't there for the meeting because you were on your solo mission but apparently the tiers in the 20s were pretty infested."
Lake was happy he had asked and said. "In that case this might not take much longer and maybe this staircase leads to all the tiers in the 20s. If so we might be able to cut off their ability to move around without having to use the elevators. We should bring it to the attention of another team when we get to the next tier."
...
Donny couldn't help but think he might have been wrong about this Lake guy being the thief. They had been working together for a while now and Donny had to say Lake seemed like a good guy who actually cared about the Metal Domain.
He guessed it was possible the thief had gotten rid of the gear they had been using during the robbery of his shield and Lake just happened across it but it seemed unlikely that that would happen.
At the same time that was as likely to happen as him actually finding the thief just walking around. It meant he was going to be spending as much time with Lake as possible so he could figure it out with the clues and once he knew Lake for a while Donny would reveal his face to see what Lake's reaction was to seeing his face and learning his name.
Looking back at the archer girl Donny wondered if she was going to just continue to do what he said he was going to do. He was pretty sure they were technically friends at this point, whatever that meant to her. They had also been through a lot of battles together and they had both found they worked well together he just wished she would speak so he could get her to help him get his shield back without her just getting mad he tried to talk to her.
It would happen eventually he guessed it wasn't like he had never seen her say anything, it was just that it only happened during times of danger where she asked for clarification on a detail she found important. "There's people ahead." Donny stopped thinking about her and looked forward to where Lake had just called out to them.
...
As Lake looked down he started to worry about the number of cores he was seeing until he realized they must be people outside on the street and they weren't all Demon Worshipers, or at least he hoped that was what it was. As soon as they got close enough, Lake used Detector to see if he was right.
"There are no Demon Worshipers, just regular people." After he said this Lake sped up and a few more loops around he found a door. "There's a door here but the stairs keep going." This meant he had been right and this was how the Demon Worshipers were getting through multiple tiers secretly.
This was a big find but it wasn't going to save the city just slow down the Demon Worshipers if they wanted to move from tier to tier. "Let's stop here for now and spread the word about this before we go down any further." Lake actually had no plans to return to keep going and instead would leave it to the guild to investigate.
He didn't think the stairs would lead to anything other than empty buildings because he didn't think the Demon Worshipers would put anything important attached to the stairs because if someone found the stairs it would lead to multiple of their bases. Opening the door, Lake led the other out onto the streets and asked. "Do you guys want to wait here while I find other guild members or all go together to find them?"
It would be faster if he went by himself and he knew that Grendia needed the break because of the number of stairs they had just walked down so it was likely they would choose to stay here to wait for him. They could all see Grendia panting so Freed eventually said. "We'll stay here and watch the door to the building. Maybe we'll catch some Demon Worshipers coming or going."
Lake nodded and used a normal speed to get away from the others. Once they couldn't see him anymore he used a higher speed and started looking for guild members using various skills. He had marked a good number of guild members at this point so he ended up being able to just use that to find the first group. Stopping near them, Lake said. "Hey you guys are fighters guild right?"
They reluctantly nodded so he pulled out his badge to show them before saying. We Need some help with something. Do you know where the other teams on this floor are?" They did so Lake told them where to meet them once they had gathered the others and headed back to his team.
"They'll be here in a while." After he said this he sat down and pulled a bit of bread out to eat. He hadn't eaten yet and while he had better stuff in his bag he didn't want to risk the others asking for any of it if they saw he had meat because he had a limited supply of Millie's food and none of them would be interested in bread.
Once he ate his bread he looked and saw a well he could drink from and was about to get some water when he thought better of it. He was being paranoid but if he was the Demon Worshipers he would use the city's water to kill people before raising the bodies as undead so he thought better of drinking anything from a random well Poison Taster or not. There were other things that weren't poison that could kill him if added to water he was sure.
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