When the Serial Killer Next Door Gained Harem System

Chapter 118: Cavern

We started back toward the hatch, but I stopped before I went down. Something about the room still bothered me, and I could not shake the feeling that we had missed something obvious. Upstairs had been just as useless, full of legal documents, permission papers for opening a stall, and random second-hand junk, which only made the whole place feel more suspicious. Maybe this was not even the right house.

Nah, that did not fit either. The boarded-up door, the locked windows, and the blood all pointed here too clearly for that to make sense.

Then my eyes caught on the table I had searched only minutes earlier.

I raised a hand to stop Ken as he reached for the ladder.

"Wait. Look over here."

He paused and turned toward me with a confused look.

"What is it?"

I walked back to the table and knelt beside it again. A dark stain marked the leg of the table, small enough that it would have been easy to miss unless someone was looking closely. I leaned in and found another mark beneath it, half hidden in the shadow under the wood. It did not take long to understand what I was looking at.

Blood.

"Someone bled here," I said. "Maybe Jelda managed to scratch one of her attackers."

Ken crouched beside me and studied the stains. "The guy who sold her that fake alarm," he said. "Did he have any marks on him?"

"Not on his face," I said. "I would have noticed that."

Ken frowned. "Mm."

I grabbed the table and pushed it back. He helped me move it, and the legs scraped across the floor with a rough sound that made the room feel even emptier. When the space beneath it was exposed, I crouched again and found a few more faint drops on the floorboards.

It was not much, but it was enough to prove that someone had been hurt here.

"What do we do now?" Ken asked. "We are missing something."

"We are missing a lot of things," I said. "None of this adds up."

Ken looked at me. "What part?"

"Jelda pressed the necklace, right? That is what sent her into that trap."

"Yeah."

"But why would she press it in the first place? She was in her room. She should have been safe."

Ken crossed his arms, thinking it over. "She also had shoes on when you saw her."

I nodded. "Exactly."

"Then maybe she was about to go somewhere."

I opened my mouth to answer, but then another detail caught my eye.

A third drop of blood sat farther away from the table, smaller than the others and easy to miss unless you were already looking for a trail. My eyes followed it across the floor, and before I could say anything, a sharp screech rang out somewhere close by.

Ken looked up immediately. "You heard that?"

"Yeah."

Another screech followed, and this one was closer.

Bats.

The sound was too near for it to have come from outside. The rain was pounding hard against the house, and the noise should have swallowed anything beyond the walls. If we could hear them this clearly, then they had to be somewhere inside the building.

"Come on," I said, already turning back toward the room. "We are not done here."

Ken groaned, but he followed me.

"Please tell me those things are not nesting in the walls."

"We are about to find out."

We moved toward the side of the room where we had heard the bats. It was the opposite side from the window overlooking the street below, a section of the attic that looked no different from the rest at first glance.

Ken immediately returned to the bookshelf and began pulling books free with far less patience than before. One after another, they landed on the floor with dull thuds as he searched behind them. Meanwhile, I examined the nearby walls, pressing against the wood and checking for loose panels, hidden buttons, or anything that looked out of place.

For several minutes, neither of us found anything.

The storm outside continued to rage. Rain hammered against the roof overhead while powerful gusts of wind rattled the boarded windows. The constant noise filled the attic, making the entire house creak and groan around us.

Then I heard it again.

A bat screeched somewhere nearby.

I stopped moving and listened carefully.

The sound definitely wasn’t coming from outside. If it had been, the storm would have drowned it out completely. It was coming from somewhere inside the structure, and this time I was certain it sounded lower than our position.

As though there was another level beneath us.

Which made no sense.

We had already searched the floor below.

"Heard it again," Ken said from the bookshelf. "It’s coming from here somehow, but where?"

"Keep looking."

I returned to searching the wall while Ken continued emptying the shelves. More books hit the floor. The sound of rain battered the roof. Every few seconds another creak echoed through the old house.

Then everything suddenly went quiet.

"Wait."

Ken’s voice had dropped to almost a whisper.

"Come here. I found something."

I immediately crossed the room. "What did you find?"

Ken pointed toward the back of the bookshelf.

At first I didn’t see it.

Then I noticed a section of wall that looked slightly different from the rest. The color was off by just enough to stand out once someone knew where to look. Hidden behind the books, a small square panel had been carefully blended into the wall.

Ken cleared away the remaining books and pressed against the suspicious section.

A loud creak echoed through the room.

Both of us stepped back.

The lower half of the bookshelf split apart down the middle, revealing a dark opening beneath it. Dust drifted into the air as the hidden mechanism finished moving.

For a moment neither of us said anything.

Then we looked down into the hole.

"Mm." A small flame appeared above Ken’s palm.

He crouched and lowered his hand toward the opening.

"A secret passage?"

The firelight revealed a narrow staircase descending into darkness. The opening itself wasn’t very large. Anyone wanting to use it would have to crawl through before reaching the stairs below.

I crouched beside him and examined the edges of the entrance.

My eyes immediately narrowed. There were bloody fingerprints smeared across the wood. Not old stains, either. Recent ones. Whoever had been injured beneath the table had come through here.

"Blood," I said. "Damn it. He escaped this way."

"We should tell the District Captain."

I shook my head. "No. We follow the lead."

"Ace." freewebnσvel.cѳm

"If you want to go back, then go back."

"Ace," he repeated, looking up at me. "We can’t just crawl into a hidden tunnel under a murder house. This is exactly the sort of thing people die doing."

I ignored him and lowered myself into the opening.

The space was tight enough that I had to crawl through on my hands and knees before finally reaching the other side. Once I emerged, I stood up and brushed the dust from my palms.

A moment later, Ken crawled through after me.

As soon as he stood, the flame in his hand brightened, casting flickering light across the narrow stairwell.

"Gods, Ace. This is a terrible idea."

"I told you. If you don’t want to be here..."

"No."

He let out a long breath.

"No, I’m not letting you walk into some underground death trap by yourself."

A reluctant smile crossed my face.

"Good."

"Don’t sound happy about it."

I started down the stairs.

"Come on."

The staircase descended sharply into the darkness below.

The deeper we went, the colder the air became. Moisture clung to the stone walls surrounding us, and every step carried us farther from the sounds of the city above. The storm gradually faded until it became little more than a distant rumble overhead.

The stairs seemed endless.

They twisted downward at a steep angle, forcing us to move carefully to avoid slipping. Water dripped from somewhere in the darkness, creating a steady rhythm that echoed through the confined passage.

After several minutes of descending, the staircase finally came to an end.

The narrow stairwell opened into a large underground cavern.

I stopped and looked around.

Rough stone walls stretched outward beyond the reach of Ken’s firelight. The air was damp and carried the smell of wet earth. Above us, hundreds of bats hung upside down from the ceiling, their dark shapes packed tightly together among the jagged rock formations.

Several shifted at the sudden light, their wings rustling softly.

"We’re underground," Ken said quietly. "Ambly’s tits, what is this place?"

"We should hurry."

I stepped forward into the cavern.

The ground beneath our feet was uneven and damp. Small puddles reflected the glow from Ken’s flame while shadows danced across the walls around us. Somewhere deeper within the cave, water flowed through unseen channels, creating a faint rushing sound that echoed through the darkness.

Neither of us spoke again as we began making our way deeper underground.

We continued deeper into the cave.