Modern World Warlock-Chapter 237: The Miasma Under the Museum

As Dante walked to the center of the main hall, Irina raised an eyebrow with confusion, wondering what he was planning.

After the warlock heard that the underground room was meant to be right under, he thought he could just make their own entrance.

When Dante crouched down and placed his palm on the floor, Irina widened her eyes in realization.

"Wait!" The vampire sentinel exclaimed.

"Do you want to keep searching?" Dante calmly asked.

"No, fuckhead. Look at your teammate," Irina clarified.

As soon as Dante turned around, Alice beckoned everyone in the museum to go towards her, stating she had found the hidden door.

When the ex-detective walked by a moderately large sculpture, she noticed the base seemed slightly out of line, as if it had been moved from its original position.

After asking Zac to help her slide the statue to the side, they found a rug and a metallic trap door under it.

"This works… Although, I would have made it wider," Dante commented, seeing that the trap door could only fit one person at a time. freёwebnoѵel.com

Zac opened the trap door, noticing a ladder leading down below to pure darkness, which made the redhead nervously gulp.

Irina took a step forward, determined to jump down into the secret room, but Dante held her shoulder abruptly and told her to stop, prompting her to glare at the warlock with irritation.

"Do you not feel that miasma? You are going to faint if you jump down there…" Dante commented.

'Miasma?' Irina pondered.

The rest of the group peeked down the trap door, but they couldn't see anything in the absolute darkness that shrouded the underground room.

"I do sense a very unsettling air… What's the cause?" Balthazar asked, being the only one besides Dante who could feel the necrotic energy.

The warlock explained that miasma was a type of vapor that contaminated the environment, and it was mainly produced by the creation of undead.

Depending on the amount of miasma that a person inhaled, it could lead to severe health issues or even death, so Dante urged them not to get too close to the hatch.

When necromancers dedicated themselves to creating more undead subordinates, they would always seclude themselves in closed-off spaces, using the miasma from their experiments as protection.

"Ah, so that's why the ghouls' nest out in the open seemed strange to you…" Zac commented.

"Exactly. A ghoul's nest generates miasma as well, but since it was located out in the open, it simply spread away…" Dante replied.

"So, in other words, there are more undead down there…" Megan muttered.

"How do we protect ourselves from miasma?" Alice pondered.

Dante continued elaborating, saying that since miasma was produced by magical energies, he could disperse it before it entered his body.

"Basically, I make a layer of umbra around my nose and mouth…" he continued.

"Oh, so… Would a gas mask work?" Alice asked.

"Umm… I'm not entirely sure—I could test it out," said the warlock.

As the ex-detective opened the zipper of the small bag she was carrying, she took out a half-mask with two small air tanks attached to it, passing it to Dante.

After putting on the gas mask and cracking his neck, the warlock jumped straight down the hatch without using the ladder, shrouding himself in darkness as he descended.

Still, Dante's demonic vision allowed him to see in the pitch-black underground room, and he found himself in a dusty hallway with metallic plates as flooring.

'The mask seems to work…' Dante thought, noticing the miasma wasn't reaching his lungs.

The air was damp and putrid, but before he could keep exploring, the warlock heard his teammates calling for him from the surface, asking him if the mask had worked.

Dante hastily returned to the surface and gave Alice her mask. However, the woman didn't wear it herself and instead gave it to Irina.

The group of six only had two gas masks, and since Dante wouldn't need one, it meant that only two others could accompany him.

Megan's mask had air-filtering properties, so she was already prepared to go down. However, Alice believed that having one of the vampires with them could be helpful, so she gave her mask to Irina.

The ex-detective's first option was Balthazar, as he was the strongest of the vampire siblings, but the elder vampire thought his sister needed more experience, so he gave the mask to her.

Dante, Megan, and Irina would go down the hatch while Zac, Alice, and Balthazar stayed on the surface, guarding them.

When the trio went down the trap door, Megan pondered aloud if Irina would be okay with the low visibility. However, she wasn't aware that vampires already had an enhanced night vision.

"I guess that makes sense… You are stronger at night," the brunette commented as she slid down the last few meters of the ladder.

After walking down the dark hall for a few minutes, the miasma became thick and pungent enough for Megan and Irina to see, causing the two girls to halt their steps momentarily in apprehension.

By the time they reached the end of the hallway, the space opened up, bringing the trio inside a massive room that had two stories.

They entered through the second floor, and when they peeked down the rail, they spotted large structures, seemingly made out of bones, extruding an eerie energy that made the girls wary of their surroundings.

"A bone golem factory…" Dante commented.

"Those are golems?" Irina asked, trying to detail the structures at the bottom.

"Definitely… They are quite strong, too, so be careful," the warlock replied.

Suddenly, an alarm started blaring as red lights illuminated the room, catching the trio by surprise as the system was supposed to be disconnected.

"Facial recognition failed—Eliminate intruders," the voice of a man with a monotone and robotic voice could be heard.

["What the hell happened!?"] Trinity shouted on their earpieces.

Still, the group didn't know that an android would be guarding the underground room, which ended up reactivating the alarm system.