Chapter 19: Going down again really takes courage!

“Is this the place you were talking about?”

Ankira’s low, raspy voice snapped Rosie out of her thoughts.

They had stopped in front of a massive, heavy metal door. Through the narrow gap between door and frame leaked an icy chill—and a nauseating stench, thick with the reek of stagnant water mixed with rotting chunks of flesh.

The smell made every tiny scale on Rosie’s body stand on end. A frigid shiver raced straight from her spine to the crown of her head.

“…Yes. This is it.”

Rosie forced down the churning in her stomach. Her voice came out dry and rough.

Stepping back into this place, the memories of her imprisonment flooded over her like an ice-cold tide, drowning her in an instant.

Ankira easily pried open the heavy lock with one sharp tarsal claw. Beyond the door lay a long, spiraling staircase sloping steeply downward into pure, bottomless darkness.

The stench of decay and dampness grew even stronger. His huge compound eyes swept warily over the abyss below. Only after noticing movement in the water did he finally realize what this place was.

“Isn’t this just where Lester keeps his little pets? What are we doing here?”

“There’s a teleportation array under the water. Did you know that?” Rosie said quickly, eyes fixed on the depths below. She absolutely could not admit she had come through here herself—that would ignite Ankira’s insatiable gossip instinct.

“A teleportation array?”

Ankira’s massive head tilted, chitin plates grinding with a series of clicking sounds.

“Lester never mentioned anything about a teleportation array hidden in the water.”

But in the next instant, he understood her intention and finished the thought for her:

“You want to activate that array and get us out of here through it.”

“Exactly!”

Rosie responded firmly.

Using Lester’s teleportation array, they could be sent far away—far enough that Satan wouldn’t be able to track them down anytime soon.

“That really could work,” Ankira agreed.

If he tried to break out the front gate of Demon King City carrying two living passengers, Satan’s minions would tear them to pieces in seconds.

Better to entrust their survival to the “wife” Lester had spoken of.

She might still be in her rebellious phase, but this juvenile dragon had already shown astonishing decisiveness. Those silver eyes held no trace of retreat—only fierce will to live and a clear, sober awareness of their desperate situation. She refused to die here. She would fight with everything she had to survive.

Add to that the fact that adventure and gambling ran thick in demon blood, and Ankira decided to stake this chance of life on the little dragon.

He could indeed sense a faint trace of mana beneath the water’s surface. Turning to Rosie, he added:

“But if it’s a teleportation array made by Lester, I’m afraid only dragon bloodline can activate it.”

Lester was still unconscious.

Ankira’s words pointed unmistakably at the only juvenile dragon present.

Those deep purple compound eyes locked onto Rosie’s young yet utterly determined face—her mind already made up.

Rosie pressed her lips tightly together and stared nervously downward.

Going back down there—plunging into water teeming with countless writhing tentacles—this really required unimaginable courage!

BOOM!!!

Without warning, the entire underground space shook violently.

Huge chunks of stone and dust rained down from the spiral vaulted ceiling overhead. A massive, ice-cold wave of destructive demonic power surged down from the entrance they had just fled through.

“Satan’s caught up!” Ankira’s voice trembled slightly. His enormous compound eyes fixed on the spreading shadow and suffocating pressure pouring from the stairwell above.

Carrying both passengers, he rapidly descended the spiral stairs until they reached the water.

And then the water underwent a horrifying change.

The once dead-still, foul-smelling surface suddenly boiled with turbid foam.

Beneath it, countless scarlet, greedy, ravenous gazes snapped awake. Low, sticky, yearning hisses and the sound of massive bodies scraping against the well walls echoed from far to near—like the reverberation of a nightmare.

Rosie gripped the bone spikes on Ankira’s carapace with white-knuckled force.

She felt the destroyer closing in from above and the abyssal predators stirring hungrily below. An icy wave of despair threatened to swallow her whole.

The violent spatial tremors caused by Satan’s pursuit, combined with the tantalizing scent of fresh, living flesh and blood, had fully awakened the lurking horrors.

Under the murky water, countless scarlet greedy stares lit up. Sticky hissing merged with the dull booming of enormous tentacles churning the current—a hair-raising, hunger-crazed symphony of death.

They were awake. They were ecstatic. And they were swarming in from every direction.

No time to hesitate.

Above, Satan’s ruinous mana sent burning black-flame boulders crashing down like meteors—too wide, too fast to fully evade.

Below, the tentacles were already breaking the surface.

Survival instinct crushed every shred of fear. Dragon blood surged in her veins at the critical moment, granting her decisive courage.

Rosie clenched her silver teeth. A flash of absolute resolve lit her silver eyes.

She leaped down from Ankira’s broad—but now terrifyingly dangerous—spider back.

Splash!

The bone-chilling, reeking sewage instantly engulfed her slender body.

Even more horrifying: countless slick, icy sensations wrapped around her ankles and calves at once.

Lester’s “little pets” hidden beneath the murk excitedly rubbed and scraped against her scales, probing this prey that had suddenly come within reach.

They were unusually active—restless with the urge to tear her apart—yet something seemed to hold them back, perhaps an invisible barrier or the innate aura of her dragon bloodline. For now, they didn’t dare drag her under with full force.

Not long ago she had confidently declared she would escape back here and use the teleportation array.

And that bastard Lester had even teased her viciously—“you actually prefer intimate contact with tentacles.”

Rosie forcibly swallowed the surging nausea and the tidal wave of traumatic memories. She shoved all distractions aside.

Gathering her courage, she plunged her slender, silver-scaled arms deep into the freezing, filthy water—ignoring the slimy touches coiling around them—and desperately reached downward through the sludge toward something colder, deeper.

Found it!

Her fingertips brushed the cold, hard outline of a cornerstone etched with ancient runes.

This was it—the core of the teleportation array.

Rosie’s brows knitted into a tight knot.

Ignoring the lingering prickling numbness in her arms—like faint electric currents—she forcibly summoned the faint yet pure draconic origin mana within her body and poured it ruthlessly into the cornerstone.

Bzzz——!

A deep, viscous blackness that seemed capable of devouring all light erupted from beneath her pressing palm.

In an instant it enveloped Rosie, then spread to Ankira in the water and to the unconscious Lester strapped to his back.

How… bitterly ironic.

Rosie stared at her own hands, now radiating dark mana.

Not long ago she had been the lofty priestess Perse—serving the light, scorning the darkness.

And now here she was, personally activating the most wicked creation of demonkind. For the sake of survival, she was embracing the very power she had once despised most.

She desperately wished she could return to that camp, to that quiet little chapel—sitting calmly in the tent with Priest Makar, discussing the threats at the empire’s border…

If only that were possible, none of this absurd, nightmarish disaster would have happened.

She would still be Perse—not some juvenile dragon named Rosie.

The black light wrapped around them like gentle shackles, swiftly swallowing, enveloping, and lifting all three figures.

A weightless floating sensation overtook their bodies. The texture of space began to warp and blur.

In this eerie silence, Rosie’s heart suddenly sank.

A cold, crystal-clear realization struck her like a hammer:

She could never go back.

Not her body, not her soul—both had already been deeply branded by the魔域.

The life of Priestess Perse had vanished into this dark light like well water swallowed by the abyss—gone forever!

Right at the critical moment before teleportation completed—

Zzzzt!

Ankira, standing in the water and guarding Lester, suddenly felt one of his submerged legs explode with sharp, paralyzing agony—like being struck by high-voltage electricity!

The pain was excruciating; it nearly threw his massive body off balance!

Electricity?! What the hell?!

His huge compound eyes darted around in shock and suspicion, scanning the murky water surface.

Since when did Lord Lester start raising electric eels in this terrifying well?!

No—that current carried a strange magical fluctuation, and an inexplicable, faintly familiar sensation!

It felt almost like…

Before he could puzzle out the source of the bizarre current—

BOOM!!! CRACK——!

Deafening explosions and the shattering of rock roared from above.

Satan had clearly forced his way through the spiral staircase’s obstructions.

Huge boulders wreathed in black flames and brimming with destructive energy plummeted toward the well mouth like falling meteors—too wide an area, too fast to completely dodge.

“Watch out!”

Ankira roared instinctively. He tried to raise his agonized leg and spray the most corrosive venomous web from his abdominal glands, hoping to intercept or dissolve the deadly falling stones midair.

But the instant his mana gathered, the intense paralysis surged through his entire body—like an invisible gate slamming shut on his power flow.

The toxic slime barely reached the edge of his mouthparts before it burst and dissipated with a wet pop.

His mana was completely sealed; his body locked rigid in paralysis.

He could only watch helplessly as the giant boulders hurtled straight toward him.

Ankira’s scarlet compound eyes contracted to pinpricks.

This sensation—this exact feeling of power cutoff and backlash—was eerily identical to what he had sensed earlier when Lester’s mana had abruptly failed!

He jerked his head down.

His stunned gaze passed through the enveloping black teleportation light and locked onto the silver-haired juvenile dragon below—Rosie—who was still eyes-closed, pouring everything into maintaining the array.

An unbelievable suspicion detonated in his mind:

Could it be… the real reason Lester lost so bizarrely… was because of her?!