"Who is this?"
"I believe her name was Elaine?"
Elaine could hear distant voices that echoed as if they were in a large open space. Her head was pounding, and her mouth was parched as if she had spent days without water.
"But why is she down here? I thought I was supposed to be making an alchemy lab?"
Elaine opened her eyes to a dark cavern illuminated with glowing mushrooms that grew from the cracks in the ceiling.
In the distance, she could make out two blurry figures conversing at the far end of the cavern. A large man faced away from her, a black cloak obscuring his bulky figure. A tall, blonde-haired woman stood beside him, facing her. The woman wore a black mask similar to that of the mist demon.
She felt her heart sink in her chest. Had she been captured by cultists? They were crazy people in demonic sects that used human sacrifice to fuel their cultivation.
"Apparently, she is a researcher of some kind." The blonde woman informed the man, "Sigh, what a headache. Like I said, we should have just killed her from the start."
Elaine felt a shiver run down her spine, and the cold rock digging into her back felt even more hostile than moments ago. Her eyes darted to locate the source of a breeze she sensed and felt a glimmer of hope by the open passage leading outside. Through the long tunnel, she could see the tops of demonic trees.
Should she run?
Her hands clenched against the cold stone of the cavern. Would she even make it two steps from the tunnel before one of those cultists stabbed a knife in her back?
"Whatever, I have things to do." The blonde woman said, turning to leave through a mineshaft, "Just make something basic to show the Silverspires."
"How long do we have?"
"Till they accept our deal? You should have until tomorrow as Diana is in talks with them right now."
A long sigh escaped the large man as he surveyed the barren cavern, devoid of anything except a slow-moving stream through its center. His swooping gaze, hidden behind a mask, landed on Elaine, and she panicked, fearing he had caught her eavesdropping.
"Oh hey, she is awake—" The man called after the blonde woman, but she was already gone. "...Whatever."
Elaine squirmed up against the rock that cut into her back as the hulking man donning a pitch-black cloak and mask advanced toward her. Her eyes darted between her two escape routes; the mineshaft past the man, which seemingly led deeper into the cultist's lair, and the large tunnel to the outside world.
Deciding to take no chances, she lunged forward, breaking into a staggered sprint toward the tunnel leading outside. Her pathetic cultivation cycled through her spiritual roots as her legs burned with power.
Void fire enshrouded her fists as she prepared to fend off the black-cloaked man, but he seemed entirely unbothered by her escape, simply watching her leave with apparent amusement.
Deciding to ignore his odd behavior for a demonic cultist that likely wanted to consume her flesh to advance his cultivation, Elaine charged on ahead without looking back.
The tunnel blurred around her as she dashed with as much speed as she could muster—her entire view became consumed with sunlight, the cloudless sky, and the tips of demonic trees.
She was so close—something surged up from the floor and blocked the exit. It looked like a translucent slime that distorted the light, but it was also filled with black roots. Unperturbed by this obstacle, Elaine reeled back her fist coated in her soul fire and punched forward alongside all her velocity.
There was a brief moment of triumph as the slime recoiled backward from her force, but her face fell as she felt it resist the rest of her force and then rebounded, pushing her back with such power that she was sent flying and tumbling backward.
"Hey, are you alright?" The man's gruff voice was right behind her. Spitting to the side to get rid of the rock dust plaguing her already parched mouth, Elaine looked over her shoulder and saw the masked man trudging up the tunnel.
Elaine sprung back up and shouted through gritted teeth, "Stay back! My father is the Voidmind Grand Elder! If you lay a single hand on me—"
"Woah, Miss..." The man raised his hands and chuckled, "Where are all these threats coming from? Who said I wanted to lay my hands on you?"
Elaine stood there with her hand raised, the words dying in her throat. What kind of a situation was this? Are these cultists out of their minds? "You kidnapped me!" She shouted again, and the man looked over his shoulder as if she was speaking to someone behind him.
Seeing nobody behind him, the man pointed to himself, "Me?"
"Yes, you!" Elaine slowly walked backward until she felt the weird wall of slime. Then, sensing void Qi from behind, she looked where her hand met the slime and noted it had turned black.
"Never seen you before, Miss." The man shrugged, "Does someone wearing a white mask with black hair sound familiar?"
Elaine's head was cloudy, and she had a terrible headache, but her eyes went wide when she remembered that terrifying demon, "The mist demon?"
The man burst out laughing, "That sounds about right—she does match that name."
Feeling her feeble Soul Core having recovered some Qi, Elaine coated her fist another time and tried to uppercut through the slime blocking her exit, but it resisted her as if it were a brick wall this time, making her stumble back in pain.
"Why are you doing that?" The man tilted his head, his expression impossible to read behind the black wooden mask.
"To escape, of course," Elaine replied while nursing her hand. "Why else would I be punching the only obstacle to my escape?"
"Only obstacle?" The man shook his head sadly, "Oh, you poor soul if only you knew."
The man then turned to leave, "The name's Douglas, by the way. Feel free to come speak with me once you have given up. We got an alchemy lab to build before tomorrow, after all!"
His weird cheerful tone and nonchalant attitude to a kidnapped prisoner trying to escape perplexed Elaine on a level she couldn't quite describe. Was her chance at escape really as hopeless as the man believed?
Elaine went to push up her glasses that were sliding down her nose and paused in shock as she noticed her spatial ring missing. "Well, there goes calling for help." She hissed in annoyance and turned to face the slime wall again with a vengeance.
***
Either it was late evening and the sun had long set, basking the outside world in total darkness, or the slime wall had become totally corrupted by the void. Elaine, unfortunately, had no idea as time seemed to blend together.
Her hands hurt, her Soul Core threatened to crack from overuse, and she was fed up. She had tried to punch through the rock instead of the slime with her void Qi, but the slime seemed to move to protect the walls as if it were alive or being controlled by someone.
Or something—those black roots throughout the slime body that wasn't visible anymore reminded her of the demonic trees floating through those portals. It was also very suspicious that the area surrounding this place also had a lot of demonic trees.
What that meant? She had no clue. Did demonic cults usually have a link to demonic trees? Maybe to dispose of the corpses or something?
A long sigh escaped her lips, and she glanced down the tunnel that led back into the cavern. Throughout the hours she had spent pounding away at the slime wall, she had heard that Douglas fellow singing to himself while the whole mountain shook.
"There's no way he will let me walk down that mineshaft tunnel, right?" Elaine grumbled to herself as she trudged down the tunnel, utterly defeated. Her only hope was to last long enough until her brother came for the alchemy tournament and noticed she was missing, or if her father tried to call her jade talisman again and she failed to pick up.
Reaching the cavern, she was surprised to see how different it looked compared to a few hours ago.
Surrounding the river on both sides were dirt banks with a variety of mushrooms and flowers growing. How they had just sprouted up so quickly defied logic. Either they had been brought from outside, or Douglas knew the trick that made the demonic trees sprout mushrooms overnight.
Elaine followed a stone path that led her through the garden and crossed over a newly constructed stone bridge. She then walked past many large stone bowls with steps next to them. Incredibly curious, she walked up the steps and peered over the large bowl, finding a weird black plant that resembled a cauldron.
"Alchemy." She mumbled to herself as Douglas's words replayed in her mind. "The Silverspires... Alchemy..." Her brows furrowed. The Voidmind family didn't have a particularly good or bad relationship with the Silverspires, so they were unlikely to ruin their partnership with this demonic cult to save her.
To be honest, the thought that the Silverspires would conspire with cultists wasn't all that surprising. They had a lot of money and influence, so having some cultists on payroll to conduct the dirty dealings behind the scenes made sense.
"Given up yet?" A sudden voice behind Elaine almost caused her to tumble into the weird cauldron plant from shock.
"D-Douglas..." Elaine stammered, feeling awkward, looking slightly down from her vantage point at the large mask-wearing man.
"That's me." Douglas chuckled while scratching the back of his neck and diverting his gaze from her, "Admiring my handiwork? Please let me know if you have any feedback on how an alchemy lab should be built. I have never even seen one before..."
"Be honest with me, Douglas," Elaine said with the last ounce of strength she had left, disregarding his question about the alchemy lab.
Sensing her tone, Douglas straightened up, "Yeah?"
"Am I a prisoner here?" She said with resolve, and after a brief pause, Douglas shrugged. "I guess so? The others didn't tell me much about you and your situation, as they are busy right now."
Elaine was rather perplexed. Was that blonde woman one of the leaders, then? Clearly, the man was some kind of grunt worker, so he should want to escape from that mist demon, right?
Deciding to shoot her shot, she jumped from the stone steps and grabbed the man's idle hand. "Could you help me escape? W-We could go together!"
Douglas looked down at their intertwined hands and sighed, "Miss, as romantic as that sounds, I don't think either of us would get very far." His spatial ring flashed with golden light, and the black mask vanished, revealing a rather handsome man that seemed a few years her senior, "And who said I wanted to leave? It's rather nice here."
Elaine reeled back her hand, feeling her face getting rather warm. "Please... just open a path out of here for me!"
Douglas shook his head and turned to leave toward the area he had been working on. "Elaine, was it? I admire your courage, but attempting to escape from this place is a waste of time. I need to have this place looking presentable by morning—"
Elaine wasn't listening. With his back turned to her, she took the chance and ran across the cavern toward the mineshaft the blonde woman had left through. Clearly, that man was under some mind control technique and was about as useful as the rocks he was moving about.
Sitting around idly might be the best choice for her survival, but the memory of that dagger being pressed into her neck was all she needed to know she had to escape from this prison before that demon returned.
The mineshaft was thinner than the tunnel, with a rusting metal track with rotting wood running through it. Mushrooms lined the walls with a pale blue glow, and black roots were everywhere, threatening to trip her up. Also, there was a bizarre amount of spatial Qi in the air.
The stale air of the mineshaft did little to help her burning lungs as she ran on pure hopes and dreams, with her Soul Core beyond exhausted. Eventually, she reached a fork in the path and decided on the one that seemed to head upwards a bit.
Elaine stumbled to a stop as she glanced up at something that had caught her eye, "Is that a hollowed-out root?" There was a very slight draft of fresh air, meaning it was certainly a way out.
With no other choice, she leaped up, trying to find a footing. But, weirdly, the inside of the root wasn't as sticky with sap as she had expected. Instead, this weird black viscous blood coated her fingers.
Burning it off with a bit of soul fire, she tried to scale the hollowed root, but her feet and hands kept slipping. Eventually, she tumbled down, falling on her back and looking up at the completely dark tunnel.
"Fuck sake." She felt tears brimming at the edge of her eyes as she felt the despair of the situation fully set in. She was likely far from home, in a weird prison, and they even taunted her with impossible ways of escape.
Soon the tears came, and she began to sob. If only her father had dedicated those resources to her, maybe she wouldn't be so pathetic, and she could have learned a technique like void step that would have let her teleport past that slime.
Her glasses began to cloud up through her tears, and she felt completely miserable. Why had this happened to her? All she had done was answer a stupid call from her father, and then a demon had attacked her? "I never made trouble with nobody, and this is what I get?" She muttered and gulped back the mucus that was gathering in the back of her throat.
She was just a researcher. What had she done to deserve imprisonment?
After sobbing for a good ten minutes, she wiped it all away on her sleeve as she didn't have access to the supplies in her missing spatial ring. Then, getting herself together, she wandered the mineshafts for a long time, never finding anything else of interest.
"Oh, you’re back?" A voice she was now familiar with echoed through the cavern.
Elaine hadn't even intended on finding her way back here, too lost in her doomed thoughts to care about where she was going. "Guess I am." She replied with a sigh.
Wandering over, she sat on a rock and watched Douglas hard at work for a while. Then, to her surprise, he came over after pouring some soil from a spatial ring into a hole he had made and handed her some cloth to wipe her tears.
"Don't sit here all night sniffling behind me." He said somewhat endearingly, "Although you might have been kidnapped, they are good people. Stop stressing so much."
That was a lie. Had this man never met the mist demon? And hadn't the blonde woman literally threatened her life earlier?
Elaine reluctantly accepted the cloth, wiped her face, and then almost choked in shock when Douglas moved to the side and showed the previously barren soil now sprouting all sorts of foliage.
"How is that possible?" She couldn't resist asking, the curiosity getting the better of her.
"The plants?" Douglas shrugged as he always seemed to, "They come from the immortal that rules this place."
Elaine pouted, unsure if Douglas was messing with her. "Seriously?"
"Yeah, he has total control over this place. That's why I told you fleeing isn't worth the effort."
"If you are so sure of this supposed immortal's power, why can't you let me try and escape?"
Douglas leaned on the shovel he was holding and stared at her for a few seconds, and then a cheeky grin appeared, "Alright, Elaine, how about we make a bet?"
"A bet?"
Nodding, Douglas gestured to the far wall with the shovel, and Elaine felt the cavern shake as the rock crumbled away. "I will give you a chance to escape. If you succeed, you earn your freedom. But if you lose and are brought back here, you have to help me with this project—no more sitting around and feeling sorry for yourself. Deal?"
Was that even a question? "Deal," Elaine said as she brushed herself off and ran toward the opening. It took a while, but eventually, the rocks fell away to reveal the dead of night.
The twinkling stars overhead illuminated many miles of demonic trees, the cool night air rustled her hair and clothes, and she breathed in with relief. Then, glancing back, she saw Douglas leaning on his shovel with an amused expression.
"Good luck Elaine!" He shouted after her with a grin, "And if you meet Larry out there, tell him I said hi!"
Elaine furrowed her brows. Was Larry a guard for this demonic cult or something else? Either way, she had been given a chance at freedom and planned to grasp it.
Without another thought, she dashed out into the night.
