Maybe of Those Underground

Lee peeked around the corner from the shadows inside the only door to the empty room that he was crouched down in.

The God of Strength was facing away, crouched down doing whatever he was doing.

Lee ducked back into the room to stand up properly, tiptoeing out of the empty room, plastering his body against the wood of the room, creeping out into the rest of the abandoned town.

The room would be Lee's base of operations and as soon as he got hungry, he could return back for lunch.

Lee didn't think that he could really out right now, his stomach rolling and the taste of acid in the back of his mouth.

He ducked down behind the building to get himself firmly out of the God of Strength's view and sighed in relief.

Lee scanned out everything in front of him.

The rest of the town hugged the curve of the lake tightly, with some structures looking almost as if they were dipping their toes into the water, or even half standing within the lake.

Lee spied a rug, the first sentimental item here, innocently waving in the slight breeze.

It unfortunately hung in one of the buildings which overlooked the lake, marking it as a place and an item that Lee couldn't go on to investigate.

He looked down and scowled, before picking out the closest building that he could travel to and explore.

In front of Lee, there was a small shed, hints of straw peeking out from inside, almost beckoning him in.

He supposed that the structure used to be some sort of animal pen, and he tiptoed forwards, glancing down to the floor to make sure that he was not stepping on any sticks, or that there would be rocks for him to fall over on.

Slowly pushing open the door of the presumed shed, Lee refrained from fully entering, hesitant of the insects and spiders that probably had made their home in this mostly warm and abundant environment.

The shed was also one large room with various protruding notches and hooks, where, Lee assumed, animals were tied up, with a large trough in the centre of the room.

There was another hole in the ceiling here, and Lee peered up at the sky through it.

He paused, remembering the hole in the room of the underwater hotel and restaurant, but wrote the similarities off as merely a coincident, as the building that he had set up base in conspicuously had an intact roof.

Lee lightly kicked up some of the straw, expecting a few insects to run out, but was surprised when he saw nothing - not a single sign of life either.

The shed, now that he was properly analysing it, looked immaculate. There was no animal dung, there were no cobwebs, just only a thin layer of dust over everything.

Lee narrowed his eyes and forced himself to think for a reason for it.

He felt almost pained as he strained his mind to process why there was an immaculate town in the middle of nowhere looking as if it had been abandoned and was in the process of marching into the lake.

Lee felt as if he couldn't really think, that there was a hazy cloud of fluff in his brain, blocking parts of himself off from doing what he wanted to do.

What he needed to do.

This was the first opportunity that Lee had to indulge his curiosity, and he was fucking well going to do it.

He needed to do this, even if he was restricted by the condemnation of the God of Strength.

Lee swallowed and left the shed, moving around the building, still making sure that he was out of the God's sight as he spied the next building.

It almost looked like a large mansion, rivalling the size of the Luo residence with its sheer size, and Lee realised that the small shed that he had been messing about in, without a doubt, belonged to the manor.

He walked up the stairs into the building, and found himself looking down three paths he could take, one forwards, one to the right, and one to the left.

He decided to pick the right path, deciding to move clockwise around the house to explore it.

The corridor was long and seemed to loop around the perimeter of the manor with various branches and rooms breaking off from it. Lee opened every single door that he came across, revealing one room stacked with spinning wheels, yarns and fabrics, another with all its walls made into divided shelves with all sorts of various parcels and boxes filled with shrivelled and dry herbs - their names rubbed and worn to leave their names invisible to the human eye.

The rooms down this wing of the manor seemed to be focussed on storage and the servant's works, all in house production for the sake of providing luxury items, luxury care, and luxury living.

One he reached the end of the corridor, finding that it ended with an office filled with scrolls and books littering the desks and all the shelves which lined the room. There was a small table off to the side where two chairs crowded around it. Lee walked up it and spied an unfinished game of Go.

He looked over the board and deciphered that whoever was sat closest to the desk was winning the game, the pieces which he had arranged on the right side of the game quickly closing on the other player's army.

He left the board and walked over to the desk, content at seeing that the writing here was intact at least, even if a little messy.

Lee sat himself down in the chair and began to sift through the documents in front of him, revelling in the calm quiet of the room, the small dust particles falling through the golden light shafts which poured in through the window and illuminating the desk.

Despite the fear that had thrummed through his body before, Lee felt content here, sitting in this old, abandoned office, sifting through the notices left behind by the ghosts of this place.