565 Secret Lairs Must Have Secret Entrances Too

I shared my hypothesis with the others and all of them had a grim look on their face.

"So we're basically just lab rats…" Gwen muttered.

Thorn made a face, "We should have expected something like this from someone as vile as that…"

Olgar looked around, "So what now? Do we wait here to ambush him or something when he comes back? 'Cause this certainly looks like he stays here."

"We don't know if he's even coming back though… For all we know, that guy already left this place or something," Thorn pointed out.

"How about we look around first? See if there's anything we missed. Maybe there's a hidden passage or something," I suggested.

The others agreed and we split up to search for clues.

I went towards the desk since I was hoping for the standard villain trope where the villain records down all their plans and objectives in a notebook or something that would explain everything about what they were planning to do.

I found a few books but most of them were some kind of reference books talking about Dungeons, monsters and Rejmar biology. Since we already figured out that he was using the Dungeon to hide himself and transforming Rejmars into monsters, there wasn't anything new here.

Moving to the drawers, I first opened the top drawer and found nothing but stationary in it. Nothing substantial here so I moved on to try and open the next drawer, only to realise that it was locked.

Oh? Might this be the place that he is storing his secret notes?

I rubbed my hands together before inspecting the lock, trying to determine what type of lock it was. Seeing that it was a simple cam lock, I took out my Light Sword and activated its enchantment.

The light blade formed and I carefully used it to cut through the part where the latch hindered the drawer from opening.

Hearing the metallic clang of the metal falling off, I pulled open the drawer to inspect its contents.

Oh~ What's this I see? It's a leatherbound notebook that even had its own lock to prevent others from peeking inside? I wonder what its contents could be~ Maybe some secret plans or such? Heh heh heh…

I used my sword to cut open the lock as well and flipped open the book to inspect its contents.

Let's see here…

'He guided his meaty member and pushed it against my unprotected backdoor, I begged him to--'

I snapped the book shut.

…

I picked another part of the book to open instead.

'His chiselled chest was a sight to behold and I felt my own manhood--'

I snapped it shut again.

…

One more time.

'I can feel him reaching deep inside me as my ass--'

Ok, yeah, fuck this. This book is basically his BL fantasies or something. Fuuuuuuuck.

I tossed the book aside, trying my best to put the content I just read out of my mind.

Ugh… I need something to cleanse my mind after this…

I felt a tap on my shoulder and I turned back, wondering who it was.

Eins was standing behind me and I was about to ask what she wanted when she suddenly pulled the top of her dress down, revealing her boobs.

Without warning, her hands reached around the back of my head and pulled my face in to smush me in her bosoms.

…

Ok, I don't mind this.

I even gave them a squeeze before separating myself from her, my Shadow Guard still maintaining an impassive face like she had merely given me a normal hug.

Thankfully, the other three were busy searching the room and none of them noticed what had just happened.

Eins adjusted her clothing back to normal while I searched through the rest of the desk, but nothing else worthy of note came up.

I was about to call it a bust when I noticed bubbles appearing in one of the tanks containing the Liquid Mana.

Even as I watched, the height of the liquid in the tank dropped by a small amount, enough to be noticeable.

I went back to the glass tank to inspect it and it seems my suspicions were right.

At the very bottom of the tank, there was a hole which I assumed fed into a pipe system of some sort. The guy who was responsible for our current situation must have been creating more Shadow Devourers and was making use of the Liquid Mana just a moment ago.

And if there's a pipe here that connects to this tank… There must be a passage from here as well right? Wouldn't make sense for him to create a pipe system from this room and not have a way to access it from here.

I looked around the room again, trying to find where someone might hide a hidden door.

But aside from the crude drawings on the wall, there's nothing else that was close to any of the walls that might hide a secret entrance, nor was there anything on the ground either.

Hmm... Wait a moment…

I know that he's creating Shadow Devourers and those things seem to be quite averse to light… After he creates them, he must be storing them somewhere or maybe even releasing them into the Dungeon…

That means that he would most likely want to keep the places that these monsters go in complete darkness…

Which might also mean…

I turned to the three Rejmars, "Hey… I'm going to stop casting my [Spotlight] for a moment to test something, hope you don't mind?"

The three of them were obviously curious why I decided to do that but none of them protested my decision.

I cancelled the spell and the room was plunged into darkness with only the tanks of liquid mana casting a soft blue light around, though it was not bright enough to light up the entire room.

My eyes quickly adjusted and I started to look around for any changes around the room.

That was when a part of the wall started to glow and I turned to see a doorway appear near the desk where it was not there a moment ago.

At the edges of the doorway was a line of runes that I assume must be some sort of enchantment to hide the door when it detects bright sources of light.

I summoned up another ball of light just to see if the door would remain there but it disappeared almost as soon as the room was lit up.

Going to the door, I tried to wave my hand through the wall where the door had been to see if it was an illusion but all I felt was solid stone.

I turned off the light once more and the entrance appeared again, this time allowing me to push my hand through.

The entrance seemed to be a stairway that led down a floor, which I'm guessing must be the place that this guy was using to create his monsters and where the Liquid Mana was connected to.

"Guess we're going in?" I asked while turning to the others, seeing them gather behind me to peek into the stairs as well.

"I don't like this, but I suppose we have no choice," Olgar grumbled, the Rejmar hefting his maces before stepping towards me.

Thorn and Gwen also joined him, taking the lead to descend down the stairs while Eins took position beside me.

I followed behind them and our progress was slow as my three companions had to rely on their sense of touch to descend down the stairs, since I wasn't sure if the stairs would disappear if I were to use a light spell.

Or worse, the entire stairway turning into a solid wall and the four of us becoming entombed inside it.

It was just a short flight of stairs so at least we did not take that long to reach the bottom.

What greeted us at the bottom of the stairs was another corridor that had rows of cell doors on either side, similar to the dungeon cells that we had been trapped in when we first teleported here.

I used [Spotlight] again to illuminate the area and the stairs behind us disappeared, though the rest of the room did not change.

We went up to the nearest door and Thorn tried to open it, finding it surprisingly unlocked.

Peeking inside the cell, we found a Rejmar lying on the ground in the middle of the cell, unmoving.

Thorn quickly went in and checked on the guy to see if he was still alive. Judging by the rise and fall of the guy's chest, I would say that he was just merely unconscious.

Thorn tried to shake him awake and even slapped his face a few times but the guy remained unconscious no matter what he did.

"Seems like he was put to sleep magically… What should we do?" He asked.

"There's nothing much we can do for now… We can't exactly carry him along, can we? We should be able to save them later after we dealt with the one responsible," Gwen suggested.

I agreed and we left the unconscious Rejmar in the cell.

Just in case, we also checked a few more of the dungeon cells but all of them were the same where a single Rejmar was left on the ground and all of them were unconscious.

I don't know why, but I already have a bad feeling about this place…

Also… Where is the rest of my party?