Aura was still holding onto the ring and reading the words that were inscribed on its inner band, while Shava immediately moved to System's side to stand guard.

  "Where is this pce?"

  System sent a mental message to Aura while vigintly scanning the surroundings. He saw that there weren't any windows in the hall, and the only light was coming from the magic candles and mps.

  After a long time, Aura seemed to have figured something out, and he sent System a mental message. "Shadow...Key."

  "Shadow Key? Why does this pce have such a strange name?" System asked in confusion.

  Aura didn't seem to have heard System's question. He just muttered to himself for a while before sending another mental message. "Shadow Key, that's what the words on the ring mean."

  "..."

  System yanked the ring away from Aura and sent the butterfly a very angry mental message.

  "I asked what this pce is called, not what the words on the ring are."

  After his ring was stolen, Aura finally noticed that their location had changed. He saw that he was no longer in his usual chamber back in System's nest, but in an unfamiliar pace instead.

  Aura looked around with a confused expression before saying, "System, where is this? It seems to be a demipne."

  "Demipne? What's that?" System asked.

  Aura had a thoughtful expression on his face again as he tried to recall.

  When System saw Aura's confused look, he wanted to stretch out his tentacles and torture the zy butterfly immediately.

  But he only thought about it. After sighing helplessly, he decided to ignore the thinking butterfly.

  System walked over to the only corridor leading out of the pace hall that the three of them had arrived in and started searching through the pace.

  ...

  Although he'd appeared in an unknown pce, System's [Intuition] didn't give him any sense of danger.

  It seemed that there was nobody else in this pace aside from him, Shava, and Aura, and his antennae didn't pick up any sounds apart from their own footsteps.

  While walking through the corridor, he occasionally saw skeletons lying on the floor. Most of them were the remains of humans or elves. He didn't see as many gnoll or ratman skeletons as he'd expected.

  There was no flesh left on the skeletons, and System also couldn't detect any moldy smell in the pace. It seemed like the skeletons had been processed somehow, and they seemed to have only been pced on the floor as decorations to create an eerie atmosphere.

  He walked over to a skeleton and snapped off a small piece of bone with his tentacles, then tossed it into his mouth to see how it tasted.

  The bone had completely dried out after so much time had passed. It was very crispy and had a nice fvor, but it tasted a little generic, like a sweet, but very mild chocote.

  System estimated that these bones had been sitting there for at least decades, maybe even hundreds of years.

  The presence of so many bones also made System feel a little relieved.

  The bones could be used as a food source, and since Aura's frost power could create ice cubes, they also had a stable water supply. In the short term, at least, they wouldn't have to worry about starvation.

  The corridor that System was walking through was about several dozen meters long, four meters high, and six meters wide. Every few meters on both sides of the corridor, there would be a bone picture frame containing a portrait of a bck shadow, and some of the paintings also featured a strange red eye.

  If System's guess was correct, this was almost certainly a pace or temple dedicated to Rafael, the God of Pgues and Curses.

  In the Warren Pins, Rafael was mainly worshiped by ratmen, but it didn't seem like ratmen had built this pce.

  It wasn't that System questioned the ratmen's ability to build a pace or temple like this, but the many magic light sources and portraits were pced a little higher than he would expect if they were pced by ratmen.

  Since the average height of a ratman was roughly one meter, they probably wouldn't have pced these portraits at their current height of a little under two meters. It seemed more likely that creatures as tall as humans had hung the portraits at that height.

  ...

  After walking through the exit on the other side of the corridor, System appeared in a round hall with a ceiling more than ten meters high. In the center of the hall, there was a seven-meter-tall statue of Rafael.

  The statue was carved to appear lifelike. System felt like Rafael's red eyes seemed to pull him in deeply after only a single gnce.

  There was what looked like a pool with a diameter of nearly twenty meters under Rafael's statue, but instead of water, the pool was filled with a variety of different types of skeletons.

  System also saw a dragon skull in the pool that was nearly two meters long. It was much smaller than Aura's head had been back when he'd still been a dragon. System practically started salivating as soon as he saw the dragon skull, but he chose to turn around and leave instead of attempting to eat it.

  He was somewhat afraid of Rafael's statue. After watching the statue from a distance for a while and not finding anything unusual, he walked over to the corridor on the other side of the round hall.

  The whole pace seemed very empty. In addition to the gray stone walls and bck brick floors, there were only three common items—skeletons, portraits, and lights.

  The structure of the pace was also very simple. A hall more than ten meters high was connected to corridors dozens of meters away on both sides. The end of one corridor was connected to several rooms.

  The rooms also shared a simir structure. There were some work benches covered with bottles and jars like the ones that System had found in the ratman wizard's warren. They seemed to be bottles containing pgue bacteria. However, after unscrewing a few of them, he found that the pgue bacteria in these bottles had lost their vitality and were all dead.

  There was also an underground tunnel in one of the rooms that was connected to a cell.

  There were a variety of torture instruments, iron chains, knives, and some tools that System didn't recognize in the cell.

  He also saw a dead body in the cell. The corpse's flesh was all dried out. Judging by the pointed ears, System specuted that the creature had probably been an elf.

  However, apart from this elf, the only thing of interest that he'd discovered during his search was that the temple didn't seem to have any windows or exits.

  ...

  After searching back and forth in the temple for several hours, System finally stopped. He helplessly looked over at Aura who was fiddling with the ring again.

  It was this ring with its bck gem that had brought the three of them to the pace, so it was very likely that they could also use the ring to leave.

  However, even after Aura pyed around with the ring for a long time, nothing happened. The gray light that had brought them into the pace never appeared again.

  At this point, Aura's behavior finally started showing hints of panic. Although the butterfly pretended to be calm and told System not to worry, System knew that it would be difficult to rely on Aura if they wanted to leave using the ring.

  He believed that there was likely only one way for them to leave the pace now. He was going to have to carve a statue of Rafael by hand and communicate with the evil god.

  Interacting with the evil god was somewhat dangerous, but there was still an excellent chance of escaping the pace by offering some kind of a sacrifice.

  However, as he watched Aura endlessly fiddling with the ring, System suddenly had an idea.

  Why should he communicate with the evil god?

  Couldn't Aura also communicate with the evil god and become one of Rafael's believers?

  Isn't it only fair for one to bear the weight of their own mistakes?