The Challenge of the Masters

⊱⊰ 45: Haven ⊱⊰

"No sign here as well," said Arisa, looking at her necklace and then at the rough-looking wall.

She attempted to illuminate another side of the wall with her lantern. Still, the view only exhibited dark spiky walls.

"Well then, off to a new ar—whoops." Thelma touched the nearest thing close to her to support herself, almost falling.

Garoh dropped his hand from Thelma's arm. "You should be careful, the ground is slippery in here."

Thelma nodded. As the team resumed their exploration with their lanterns illuminating their path, Arisa checked the bluish pendant with a green spiral as its detail. Despite glowing weakly, it still didn't show them any sign about the Master of Earth. Arisa curled her fingers around it.

"Feeling defeated already?" teased a soothing voice by her side.

Arisa didn't turn around as she recognized the owner of that voice. Instead, she focused her view on her surroundings, which was mostly dark with the white light of their lantern illuminating what they could see.

"Not really," said Arisa, dodging a small boulder that was stuck on their pathway. "But I'm beginning to feel a bit unmotivated. We've been wandering around the caves since early this morning."

Arisa rubbed her eye, remembering how difficult it was for her to wake up after sleeping so late.

"Can't be helped," said Thelma, joining the conversation. "Mammoth Cave is huge. I just hope we won't spend months exploring it only to find out that our theory was wrong."

"That would be so depressing," said Arisa.

Looking around, Arisa hoped they wouldn't spend months in this country. The more they stayed there, the higher were the chances they would cross roads with Taurus. She still believed the probability of them defeating him in a battle was pretty low.

"There's no way we'll spend months in this place." Garoh's voice washed away Arisa's thoughts. "I'll give it a week. If Eklipta doesn't react, then we'll resume our trip to Oceana. We can always come back after Caris joins the team."

"That sounds like a good plan," said Kazuya. "Like this, we may not cross paths with Taurus."

Arisa gulped at the mention of the Bronze Guardian.

"We should take the advantage that his wife is helping us," said Garoh, trying to illuminate the darkness in his left side, "and do our best to explore these ruins."

"Yeah," agreed Kazuya.

As the team walked to yet another cave, filling the silence with their boots echoing in the background, Arisa thought of Garoh's words.

After Ellanie left them in the ranger's office, she only returned half an hour later. She had succeeded in convincing Mr. Edward to set them free and give them an exception to investigate the caves as long as they wanted.

That night, after the Empress found out they had nowhere to spend the night, she drove them to a simple looking house in the woods. She told them when her secret activity took a lot of hours, she usually spent her nights in that house.

Arisa remembered that they had a meal before they went to sleep. Since waking up early in the morning, the team had explored various caves. Some caves had artificial illumination, exhibiting a wide area with smooth dark brown walls. Other caves had narrow passageways, which made it challenging for them to walk and examine.

In the caves that had little to no illumination, Arisa remembered the chill she felt of what she could hear in complete silence. Sometimes she could hear the sound of flowing water. Other times she could hear the voices of the animals resident to these caves.