Brand New Life Online: Rise Of The Goddess Of Harvest

"Angelina are you sure this is the place?"

"Yes, yes, I'm sure this is the place Anikitty, stop asking every ten seconds."

"The place sure looks sus as hell, if there's any evil cult hiding somewhere, this place's definitely a candidate."

"Erdrich, would you shut your mouth for five seconds? We're supposed to come undercover here. Stay quiet!"

"Hmmm, do Players always fight this much? Being alive certainly has benefits, but… the energy and anger that comes with it is something I would rather not have within my rattling bones."

A group of four Players, each one a prestigious Guild Master, and a small Skeleton Merchant that have been accompanying for a couple of days made their way through the dark alleys of the Luminous Kingdom's Capital.

Some minutes ago, Angelina received a message from Planta regarding where she had "sensed" the origin of the Chimeras they fought yesterday. And because the whole group has been trying to find clues about the remnants of the Cult of the Demon King of Miasma without any results so far, they decided to do as Planta asked them to, and check the perimeter, trying to find if there was anything suspicious.

They had already been walking for almost twenty minutes from street to street, and aside from the usual thugs that ran away the moment they saw their levels, there wasn't anything much else…

"Well, aside from that small band of thieves we just found, we haven't really found anything else…" Erdrich said. "I guess Planta might have been wrong."

"But she said the spirits told her that they were around here. If it comes to Spirit Magic, nobody is better than Planta, even I as a Shrine Maiden has to admit it nyah!" Anikitty said.

"Hold on… Stop." Angelina suddenly sensed something, her sharp golden eyes glowing brightly, as she stopped her whole group, who quickly fell into silence.

"What's wrong?" Gandalf asked on a lower voice.

"There's something strange over there. Look." Angelina said, grabbing a small pebble and throwing it into the alleyway to the left.

FLASH!

The pebble suddenly disappeared the moment it reached a certain area, sucked into the empty air… Everyone felt flabbergasted, and then quickly recalled how it felt the same way as when that Chimera and the Miasmic Aberrations trapped them in some sort of Domain.

"Is it a Domain?" Wondered Erdrich.

"Hmmm…" Gandalf activated his Magic Detection abilities, trying to discern. "I can feel a very strong amalgamation of Space-attribute Runes, it is certainly some sort of different space… There's no way some thugs could ever make this, this is the power of a High-Ranking Magic Array Sorcerer."

"Huh, we do have a huge tower over there filled with them." Erdrich squinted his eyes.

"You damn…! Are you implying that the prestigious and honorable magicians of the Magician Guild are members of the Cult?! They're all amazing wizards!" Gandalf suddenly got defensive over his guild. "They would never sell their souls to some dumb Black Magic Cult!"

"Gandalf stop it already, there might be a chance for them to be involved too." Angelina sighed. "Now, let's concentrate. I wish we could be more efficient than Planta and her friends are… So much bickering."

The group slowly started moving towards the alleyway, after throwing a couple more of pebbles and seeing no response, they tried to enter…

And succeed.

FLAAASH!

The moment they stepped in, they found themselves in a dark and lugubrious looking dungeon, with a long, black staircase leading into a lower stratum.

Ding!

[You are the first ones to discover the [Hidden Dungeon: Laboratory Of Madness]!]

[The Hidden Dungeon's depths invite you to step further…]

"A hidden dungeon?!"

Once they calmed down about the sudden surprise, they looked into the stairs depths… Pure darkness was the only thing greeting their eyes.

"Do we go down?" Wondered Gandalf.

"Well, what else would we do? We need to make some results!" Anikitty said.

"Hmmm, I can sense a lot of Nether and Miasma down there, both of them…" The small skeleton pointed out. "Not only cultists, but nefarious beasts might be awaiting you."

"Good, we wanted some EXP anyways." Angelina smiled.

"Then let's go." Erdrich smiled.

The party slowly walked downstairs, until they found themselves on the first floor, a wide area separated by several smaller rooms, connected by a long hall leading directly towards the next stairs.

As they walked across the hall and opened the rooms, they found strange sightings, such as several broken laboratory tools, many alchemy materials laying around, mostly all covered on nasty miasma and nether.

And also, broken tubes where things might have crawled out from…

"A Laboratory of Madness… Alright, I guess I can tell why the dungeon's name is like that." Anikitty commented, as they were about to walk downstairs into the next floor.

Except that something suddenly emerged behind them, lurking amidst the darkness…

"Intru… dersss…"

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(Planta's POV)

We silently and slowly opened the metallic door in front of us, but what we found in the other way wasn't what we expected, just a swirling mass of colors, from purple, pink, and black…

"What is this? There's some sort of wall, an illusion?" Asked Rita.

"It looks like the walls of a domain of sorts…" Mark pointed out. "Perhaps whatever is inside of here has isolated itself from the outside world."

"Maybe that's why the cultists have not noticed our presences yet?" Lily asked curiously.

"Yeah, most likely." I nodded. "Great Spirit, can you help me analyze it?"

"Okay…"

The Great Spirit manifested herself in front of us, as we touched the strange swirling mass of magic, suddenly detecting several runes arranged tightly into a special "isolation domain".

"Whatever they're doing there, they don't want anybody to find out. Well, they left all those mud slimes to fend off intruders too." The Great Spirit said. "However, this arrangement of Runes… It's not something hard to destroy for someone like me. As long as it isn't some sort of Domain made up of Miasma…!"

FLAAASH!

The Great Spirit channeled her powers through me, as we touched the wall of magic power and quickly disrupted its composition, making it fall apart into pieces.

And finally revealing us what was inside…

"Intruders?!"

"Who are you?!"

"They broke through the Isolation Barrier?!"

A bunch of cultists greeted us.