Chapter 362: Treaure of Grumak.

When they entered the portal, they were in a straight line. But coming out of it was an entirely different story, as everyone seemed to stumble or fall. Some pushed, some shoved, and the clever ones used their boots to hover and gain balance quickly.

It was easy to mistake the place where they were for another world though. Thick, milky white clouds swirled around their knees, obscuring everything below their shins. It was the main reason for all the trembling; they thought they were plunge into some abyss, to their death.

But slowly, they came to realize there was hard ground beneath the clouds.

"Am I seeing this right?" Bullet asked. His voiced echoed through the air, bouncing a few times, like it had a distance to travel.

Bianca looked down. "If you mean clouds on the ground instead of the sky, then yes."

"I hate dungeons." Koji muttered.

Bullet scowled at Koji. "Didn’t you say this is your first dungeon?"

"Doesn’t change how I feel about it." Koji answered.

Zyra inhaled deeply, listening to the weirdly crisp air, and looked around in confusion.

"Beauty, where the heck are we?" she asked in her mind.

[Host, you are currently standing on one of the floating sky islands created by an alien race.]

Zyra’s brows narrowed under her visor. "The Somnivores! Of course they created floating sky islands! They can create anything."

A smooth, slightly pretentious voice echoed in her head as her spirit-beast, Beauty, hummed lazily. [Host, there is no actual alien species called a ’Somnivore.’ That is just a silly, uncultured name given to them by the humans. By the way, Humans were not the first race to occupy this realm. There were many supreme races before you. But alas, my memory is faint. I would need to scan more of this place to tell you more.]

"Great, super helpful as always," Zyra muttered under her breath. Her heart was thudding wildly. Other races lived o earth before them! What races? What happened to them?

She looked up, but the fog here was unnaturally dense. Even with their high-tech helmets set to maximum thermal vision, they couldn’t see more than five feet ahead.

Worse than the fog, though, was the silence.

It wasn’t just quiet; it was uncomfortably quiet. There was no wind blowing. No rustle of leaves. No distant roar of beasts. The air felt heavy, almost suffocating, as if the land itself was holding its breath, watching them.

"This place gives me the creeps," Nero whispered, drawing his twin daggers. "It’s so quiet I can hear Koji sweating."

"Already scared muscle man?" Koji swung his gun as he laughed.

"Keep it down, everyone," Zyra commanded, waving a hand. "Follow me closely. Don’t lose sight of the person in front of you. Tie ropes to your waists if you must."

Hardly had she finished the suggestion when some people got right on it. Zyra waited patiently until they were finished before moving.

Guided by Beauty who was following the map to the dungeon, Zyra led the group forward. The clouds became thinner as they got ahead, until they finally saw strange, dry black soil that crunched like charcoal under their boots. After thirty minutes of walking, the black dirt gave way to rough, uneven, rocky ground.

But the fog in the air did not show signs of dissipating. Looming out of it like giant gray tombstones, giant stone pillars appeared. They were bigger than normal house pillars and covered in intricate, twisting symbols that practically screamed ancient bad news.

"Oh, this cannot be good." Arrow raised his dagger. It was in this moment that he had second thoughts of coming on this trip. "I have seen shit like this before, and such places are always bad news."

Zyra raised her voice. "Relax people, panic is the first step to a quick death. If anyone is too scared to continue forward, tell me and I will teleport you back." Her system had leveled up. It could send those people back to the shelter within a second.

There was a chime in her head.

[Host, you have arrived at the dungeon according to the map on your arm.]

Zyra raised a hand, stopping the line. "Alright, halt. We’ve arrived at the dungeon."

The fog was lighter. They were standing in an open place that had only pillars--six in total. But in the distance, there were trees, and steps which led somewhere. Not one direction, but six different directions.

Nero walked up to one of the giant pillars, squinting at the carved markings. "Whoa. Look at these squiggles. What do they say?"

"Welcome to your doom?" Etania whispered, her fingers were twitching ready to open a portal back to the valley when Zyra said so.

Bianca rolled her eyes.

"The real question isn’t what they say," Bullet said, stepping up right beside Nero. "It’s who had the patience to carve all this stuff out here?"

Bianca hummed, "It seems that we are not the first to visit, this place may have had settlers at some point. Somnivores, perhaps."

Bullet reached out his gloved hand and slapped it flat against the smooth stone to take a closer look.

"Bullet, be careful with that man" Koji said.

Bullet scoffed. "It’s a rock, not metal. Perhaps used by scholars or something."

Zyra’s heart jumped into her throat. "Beauty what am I looking at here?"

[Host, these are ancient sealing monoliths. They were placed here to hide the entrance to the dungeon that you are looking for. But clues were left behind, for those who understand the language.]

"I don’t." Zyra said, rather quickly.

[Scanning...]

Before the System could finish its sentence, Hunter strolled over to the other side of the stone. "Bullet, you have been looking at it for a while did you figure something out?"

Hunter removed his glove and reached out, placing his palm on the pillar as if he knew just what to do.

It clicked.

The silence in the room shattered.

Suddenly, the carved symbols on the stone lit up with a blinding, violent purple light. A hum vibrated through the ground, so deep it rattled everyone’s teeth.

"Oh, marvelous," Zyra said, her voice dropping into a deadpan groan as she stared at the glowing pillar.

"Can we go back now?" Etania asked.

Achilles shook his head and pointed at the monolith. "Look!"

The jagged letters carved into the pillar were shifting, sliding across the stone like liquid mercury. They scrambled, collided, and locked into place with a heavy, resonance-deep click.

Silence rushed back into the cavern, thick and suffocating.

Achilles turned on Hunter, his broad chest heaving. "Cousin, what did you do?"

"I didn’t do anything," Hunter said, taking a step back, hands raised.

"The rock moved because you touched it!" Achilles accused, pointing a finger at the pillar.

Zyra looked at Hunter, her chest tightening. The way he stood, the sudden coldness in his posture_ it was like looking at a complete stranger.

Hunter ignored them both. His eyes narrowed, reflecting a faint, rhythmic glow. He took a slow step toward the monolith, tracking the newly aligned characters.

"Treasure of Grumak," Hunter read aloud, his voice steady, carrying a subtle resonance that didn’t sound entirely his own.

Achilles snapped his head back toward Hunter. Everyone froze, staring at him in disbelief. The ancient runes were supposed to be untranslatable_ at least to them.

Zyra stared at the stone, then back at Hunter. In her mind’s eye, her interface overlay flickered to life. Golden glyphs expanded across her mental screen, translating the dialect line by line in real-time.

She could read it because the system had translated it... but Hunter didn’t have a system. How had he read them? She asked herself.