Flame Arrows

"Ugh, where did this girl go? She couldn't have just disappeared, right?" Li Ming Hao had been climbing down the narrow stairway path with no end in sight. He checked the phone signal, obviously there wasn't any. He kept walking and walking, without any food and water. The only sounds were of his footsteps. If she was here, he would have heard her walking too. Then where did she go?

Ultimately, he came across a platform. Further to the platform, there were more stairs but he got excited because he wanted to explore what all was there. The lights were illuminating only the stairs, so Li Ming Hao had to turn his phone's light again. He flashed it around but there were just a few stones lying around. It was not surprising, this place had already gone through human intervention. If they found anything, those artefacts would have been long gone.

As a history and archeology student, Li Ming Hao had a lot of interest in dungeons and tombs and such stuff. He had wanted to go to explore the pyramids in Egypt. But his dad insisted on him coming here. It was not that he did not want to explore here, he had a legit reason behind coming to this place, finding his long lost mentor.

But when he heard his dad wanted him to keep any eye on this girl, rather than actually helping him learn, his motivation went down. He would have been better going to any other unnamed place than babysitting a wretched girl.

But his encounter with that snow fairy in the forest that day and then this interesting girl, it seemed like life was not going to be that boring here. And if this girl was actually an expert as his dad claimed, then he could also try to find who he had been looking for all these years.

He walked towards the platform and found a stone table, very obviously empty. It seemed like it could be a tea party table in ancient times. But what would it be doing here, almost three floors down below the ground surface? Also the table was unusually clean, like someone had been taking care of it.

There were no earthenware, seemed like everything was emptied. Well, given the lights, it was very possible that this was work of his dad himself.

Li Ming Hao sighed. His simple joke scared that girl so much that she just ran away from him. He should have seen some trace of her here till now but nothing was to be found.

He tried tapping on the wall, if there were any mechanisms there, but in vain.

Suddenly the cave shook, scaring the wits out of him. Was it collapsing? Would he be trapped here? The girl would not leave him behind to die, would she? He ducked beneath the stone table only to see the wall in front of him slide and open up, flying dust everywhere.

What the hell? Had he triggered some mechanism to open it? If it was so, how did he not notice before? Was it some place he accidentally stepped on? After a few seconds, the cave stopped shaking, so he decided to step out and check if he indeed did trigger any mechanism.

Oh wait, he didn't have time for that. He just opened up some room! He needed to go explore it. That girl had said this was a beginner's dungeon, so there should not have been anything like this anywhere. Did he do a new discovery on his first day itself?

He got up, all excited and dusted his clothes a bit. Damn, he was going to take this task over from that girl and get exclusive rights to this thing. As soon as the dust cleared up, he ran towards the door. He had just stepped over the entrance when he heard a shrill voice.

"Stop!"

He looked around and found a flash light walking towards him in the darkness. Was… was this a ghost? How come though, the voice was similar to that of that lass?

He paused on her instruction and she increased her walking speed. It was too late.

"Shit! Duck down!"

At this moment, the room got lit by light as flame lamps on the wall came to life. It wasn't a room, it was an endless darkness on both the sides, far and wide. It looked like another parallel tunnel to the one he was in. This was dirtier and didn't seem to have had much human intervention. The flame lamps were also old school. But how did they light up by themselves?

Suddenly an arrow flew past Li Ming Hao's ear and he froze at the place. When Su Xin Yu told him to duck down, all he could hear was the buzzing sound in his ear. The arrow was not ordinary, Its mouth was lit by flame. If he had been even one inch here or there, he would have lost his life.

Su Xin Yu ran towards the guy whose face was pale and he looked like he had lost a few years of his life just by being there. The flamed arrows had started raining now and the guy refused to budge.

Su Xin Yu ran and ran, then she jumped over Li Ming Hao, making him fall on his back and Su Xin Yu on the top of him.

An arrow slid past Su Xin Yu's back and she screamed in pain. Li Ming Hao was horrified at the scene but the rain wasn't stopping.

"I will cover you, just crawl into the tunnel you came from," Su Xin Yu instructed him. Her cold clear eyes were reflecting his horrified face. Now he remembered! These were the same eyes as the girl in the forest!