Serie opened her interface and found that the "Escape from Death" quest had already been completed by Mad Eater Witch.
"Ah? Mad Eater Witch already escaped the tomb?"
"When?"
Perhaps Serie had been fighting too intensely just now, missing even the quest notification sound.
Serie quickly shifted her consciousness to Mad Eater Witch.
Meanwhile.
In the tropical rainforest of southeastern Mexico, the air was as thick as resin, sticking tightly to Chloe's fair skin, making it hard to breathe.
Her thick, cascading black hair was casually gathered and loosely tied with an elastic band at the back of her head, but a few stubborn strands escaped, sticking damply to the elegant curve of her neck and sweaty temples, adding a touch of alluring wildness.
Chloe seemed to be a young explorer, wearing a dark brown tank top that revealed a section of her perfectly toned waist.
Slightly faded khaki explorer shorts hugged her long legs, with the cuffs neatly rolled up above her knees.
However, this efficient outfit was completely drenched in sweat, soaking through her form-fitting tank top.
The dark brown fabric clung to the curves of her chest, especially the edges of the tank top's round neckline, which were completely saturated and clung damply to her defined collarbones.
Following Chloe was her partner, a dark-skinned man with a physique as sturdy as rock.
They had been trekking arduously through this dark-green, snake- and insect-infested primeval forest for three full days.
Their only support was a myth passed down by word of mouth among the villagers—the "Witch Who Devours the Sun."
"Tarak, look!" Chloe's voice trembled slightly with excitement as she struggled to push aside a giant, fan-like fern.
Beneath the shadow and moss, a jagged-edged opening was hidden.
It gaped silently, like a giant beast that had been dormant for ten thousand years, revealing its throat to them.
"This could very well be one of the entrances to the ancient tomb!" Chloe's eyes shone astonishingly in the dim light, and her voice was filled with a passion and love that ordinary people would find hard to comprehend: "We finally found it!"
Tarak was clearly that "ordinary person" who found it hard to comprehend.
He wiped a bead of sweat trickling down his dark cheek, leaned closer to the ominous-looking opening, and furrowed his brows: "Good heavens… this godforsaken place… Chloe, are you sure you want to go in?"
"Hey, listen," he straightened up, trying to change the subject in a relaxed tone, "I know a small town by the jungle, and their iced coffee is amazing! I know the owner, he even…"
Before he could finish, there was a rustling sound.
Tarak turned his head, and his heart sank.
Chloe hadn't listened to a word he said; she had already neatly secured her rope, put on her headlamp, and bent down to enter the bottomless darkness.
"Ugh ah—!"
Tarak looked up at the sky, fragmented by the tree canopy, and let out a wail of sorrow and indignation, "Tarak, there are pretty girls lining up outside! Why bother with… you still want to keep this life to take care of your old mother!"
"Over my dead body…" He seemed to have made some kind of decision.
"Ta—rak—?" Chloe's clear, echoing call came, tinged with a hint of confusion.
"Ah! Here! Coming now…" Tarak responded loudly, almost reflexively, his body reacting faster than his mind.
As soon as he finished speaking, he slapped his forehead hard, completely speechless at his own lack of backbone this time, muttering resentfully, "Tarak, you're doomed to fall for pretty girls your whole life…" as he resignedly squeezed into the opening.
The passage was so narrow that only one person could pass at a time, and so steep it was almost vertical.
Underfoot were slippery, cold rocks, and a thick layer of black humus, as if accumulated over thousands of years.
The two held tightly to the rope, carefully climbing down a dozen meters deep before finally reaching solid ground.
Chloe shone her flashlight around, and both of them gasped almost simultaneously.
They stood on the edge of an enormous underground cavern.
The cavern ceiling was so high it disappeared into darkness, with stalactites hanging like solidified black waterfalls.
They mirrored the grotesque, jagged stalagmites on the ground, forming an oppressive subterranean wonder.
What nearly froze their blood was the dense, artificial carvings on the cavern walls.
"Gods…" Chloe's voice trembled with disbelief, echoing faintly in the vast, silent cave.
Her flashlight beam slowly swept across the patterns deeply carved into the black rock wall.
Instead of the usual feathered serpents, corn gods, or Mayan rulers, they depicted unseen abstract patterns—dizzyingly large, dark vortices that seemed to absorb light, and roots intertwined like the pulsating blood vessels and organs of a giant beast.
In the center of these carvings, the beam suddenly stopped.
It was a maiden, countless spears menacingly pointed at her, but her face was expressionless, or rather, she had no features other than a monstrous mouth that covered half her face, filled with stark white fangs.
The spears, full of murderous intent, seemed to cower before her.
She was the source of the suffocating terror in this dead silence!
After recording the scene with a camera, the two continued deeper into the ancient tomb.
"Ch-Chloe?" Tarak's voice was a bit shaky, and he kept rubbing his thick arms, his eyes darting nervously into the shadows of the passage, "I swear… something is watching us!"
"It must be that stone girl from the wall just now!"
In stark contrast to his cowardly demeanor was the much more slender Chloe, who stood ramrod straight, her headlamp beam steadily scanning ahead. Far from being scared, she let out a chuckle, her voice full of teasing:
"Oh? Our great Central American archaeology doctor, Mr. Tarak," she deliberately drew out her words, mimicking his usual bragging tone, "now believes a stone carving without even carved eyeballs is staring at you?"
"My intuition is always accurate…" His voice grew softer and softer, finally becoming a mumble, "I just want to go home to my mom now…"
Chloe looked at Tarak's cowardly appearance, chuckled softly, and didn't tease him anymore.
She led the way, her headlamp beam carefully sweeping over a half-human-height black stone tablet beside the passage, covered in twisted ancient symbols.
Chloe frowned slightly, her fingertips gently tracing the cold carvings, and actually began to translate in a low voice:
"Over nine thousand years ago, several priestesses, by secret decree of the Queen… used forbidden arts… to open the Abyss Gate…"
"No way…" Dr. Tarak, the Central American archaeology expert, suddenly leaned closer to the stone tablet, his eyes almost popping out, still unable to understand the gibberish on it: "You… you can understand this thing?!"
"Just a little." Chloe shrugged casually, her nonchalant demeanor making Tarak wish he could crawl into a hole.
This made Tarak even more embarrassed.
She continued to decipher: "The Queen… and the demon summoned from beyond the gate… forged a blood pact… and the tribe thus became immensely powerful…"
"To repay this power…" Her voice paused.
"The Queen… must prepare food for a hundred people as tribute, and even she herself, every night… must personally enter… its lair…"
"Lair?!" Then what? What did she do in there?" Tarak was on pins and needles, stomping his feet in impatience, "Chloe! For goodness sake! In a deadly place like this, hurry up and tell me! You're killing me!"