But Aisha wasn’t worried about this. She had survived a world run by mutated creatures without supernatural powers. She had outlived many other humans and mutated creatures for several years. There was no need for her to feel intimidated here.
The Spatial Map showed a huge underground tunnel that led to different rooms below the ground, with labels on them. The contaminated zone looked completely different from what she had shown in her class. The moment she entered through the door, instead of a huge and different dimension, it looked more like a deep underground facility.
From where she stood, the entrance to the contamination zone was actually not the door she had just gone through. Instead, she had to climb down countless steps. Except for the first dozen or so floors, which were still visible, the lower floors were pitch-black, like an endless abyss, exuding a palpable chill.
As Aisha took her first step downward, the oppressive atmosphere became even more intense. The first and second floors were treated as a temporary abode for the people working there. The rooms and beds were empty, but the cupboards that Aisha opened held some signs of people having lived there.
The third to the fifth floors were where weapons, gear, and cleaning tools were placed. Each item was arranged in a cabinet or hanging on the wall, ready to be grabbed in an emergency.
After that, the floors became dimmer and slightly harder to walk through. Fortunately, it was still bearable and Aisha’s eyesight adjusted to the dark quickly. Some rooms were unexpectedly empty, not even a single item was inside. And whenever Aisha felt that someone could be there, the rooms would end up being just a useless place for her to search.
Occasionally, she would hear scratching noises deep in the pit below. And the closer she got to the lower floors, the more the fiendish aura rising below intensified. She even felt a tremor under her feet and her heart ram against her chest.
It wasn’t that she was scared. Her body was just reacting to the threat of extreme danger. And even without the senses of Sentinels, she knew that something was hiding underground. It felt as though a behemoth was struggling down there.
As the feeling of danger kept pushing against her in wave after wave as she descended to another floor, Aisha finally saw the first signs of activity in one of the rooms.
"Damn it! This one is feisty!"
"Grab it and tie it down. Be careful, it might end up escaping!"
Aisha slowly pushed the door open slightly, leaving a gap for her to look into the room. Inside, she saw two men wearing suits of gear, standing there with their backs toward the door, facing the opposite direction and looking quite entertained.
She thought that they were talking about a corrupted monster they had captured from the contaminated zone, playing with it before they killed it. But she soon realized her mistake.
The thing they were taunting and mocking spoke. It wasn’t a monster as she thought it was. Rather, it was a human being.
"P—please, spare...spare me!"
A woman sat on the floor, begging the two men with tears filling her eyes. Her clothes were like rags with tears and holes everywhere. Her hair was heavily matted and every exposed patch of skin was stained with dirt and unknown things.
"Haha! Look at this thing begging. Do you think we should spare it?" said the man on the left.
"No," the man on the right snickered. "But we can make use of it for the last time."
Ziiip...

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