Legends: The Emerald World

The cave spanned deep into the earth like a long well, steep and hard to traverse with wide, dark caverns reeking of a pungent, gaseous smell. Char, who had just woken up, looked around with a confused face. It's not cold anymore. "Where are we?"

"This smell." Mary gasped, and Shin smiled back at her. "There should be a hot spring around here. Let's look for it."

The four of them walked deep into the cave, careful about where they stepped. The ground was filled with sharp stalactite growing from the ground and walls, the smallest of them was but a fingernail tall while some were taller than Shin, reaching toward the ceiling.

They finally reached the bottom of their well-like cave, finding it to be nothing more than several stalactites that grew together forming what looked like a net. The hole still reached deep into the ground beneath them and any wrong step would lead to them sinking into the core of the earth.

At the side of the walls, they found a relatively leveled cave that they could walk on. Upon closer inspection, Shin noticed that there was a massive crack in the stones which led to more caves. The more he saw of this cave the happier he became.

"The ground cracked around here." He touched the hard walls and looked back at the girls, "Let's go deeper. The water is a bit warm, we should be close to the spring." He walked in the front as the two girls silently followed him checking their footing with the torch that Mary carried.

After a while, they reached the source of the hot spring, a geyser bursting forth from the core of the earth, filling a large underwater lake illuminated by glowing pale white mushrooms and fluorescent algae and moss.

That hole they entered was most likely made by the world's spider's limb, the force of her punching through the ground had cracked the solid stones and opened a path to the underground hot spring. Through decades and centuries, the hot water slowly eroded the walls of the crack leading to the cave they just walked through.

Shin didn't know what part of this world was destroyed after seeing this underground heaven. He thought that after the world's end, everything would either disappear into nothing or erupt into a chaotic inferno.

He explained his theory to the girls as he slowly sat inside the hot lake, warming his frozen bones. It's been a while since he felt that cold, all he had felt since coming to this world was cold and hard, the cell at the Blackwood Fort, the frigid river they swam through, and now the snow they are forced to survive naked in.

"Come in, take a dip. We can look for the egg after we relax a bit, it shouldn't be far away from here." He waved his hand to the girls. He expects the egg to be buried just around this very spring. Those fluorescent fungi and algae have a faint demonic aura to them, they must've been infected by the world's spider aura when she passed by this place.

Mary took her shoes off and slowly walked into the hot water, taking a seat at Shin's side. "Ahhh…this feels good…it's healing my soul." The moaning relaxed Mary looked toward Ase, waving at her to come in, "Come, don't be shy. It's warm and nice."

Ase wasn't shy, she was scared, of the water. "I'm good, I'll stay here." She shook her head.

Mary giggled, "Look who's getting shy all of a sudden, we've been naked together for a while now. You're basically naked, so why get all wiggly now?"

She knew that Ase was afraid of the water, but she also didn't want her to stay afraid of it.

"It'll be for the better if you jump in. Staying in the cold for long would drain you quickly." Shin said but didn't urge her to jump in.

"She's too shy to jump in with us." Mary waved her hand, stealing a glance at Ase. "We've been walking naked together for a while. How does jumping into a hot spring change things?"

"I'm not shy." Ase sighed, took the thin underwear she was wearing off, and threw it at Mary's face. "Are you happy now? Leave me alone." She sat at the edge of the water, only dipping her legs in.

"Ase…" Shin looked at her, "I know you're afraid of the water. Don't worry, it's not that deep. Just go in for a while so you'll warm up. We don't know when we'll get to warm up like this next time."

She looked at Shin for a while, thinking about it.

"Jump in whenever you feel right. I'll just sit here and try to find the egg." Shin closed his eyes as he focused on the aura of the place around him. It was the same way he used to absorb energy from living things; now, he isn't absorbing it, just feeling it.

He could feel his aura clearly, as well as sense Ase and Char. Shin also noticed that Mary was using some kind of ability to look at him. For a moment he wanted to ask, but it didn't seem harmless so he decided to ask later, this probably wasn't the time.

At that time, Mary was looking at his and her wealth, noticing it slowly climbing up. She couldn't be happier. They were stuck in a horrible and deadly place, but even with all of that, this was a trial by the overgod himself. She can't believe that she went from the boring trips of a merchant to sell her goods to setting off on a divine adventure.

Her eyes glanced at Shin, even if she couldn't tell wealth, she would've stuck close to him if she had known the overgod was testing him. The being who rarely interacts with anything, the existence that the gods worship and even they rarely get to hear his voice.

Shin's sense quickly expanded into the hot spring and spread through the walls and the cracks. The demonic aura in this place was old, at least five hundred years old. The demon's aura was known to linger longer than anything else, like stains, it's extremely hard to clean and had plagued Shin's past, it was the hardest filth to get rid of. He had never expected that a day would come when he'll be grateful for that filth being so damn sticky.

Following that Aura, Shin found himself reaching deep into the caves behind the geyser. He couldn't locate the egg but clearly sensed that the demonic aura grew stronger the deeper he looked. The egg should be buried in this cave.

As he was sensing the aura he sensed something else, soft and plump, he couldn't tell where that feeling came from. He's too focused on the aura and for a moment thought that something was trying to jam his senses.