There was only one more building in this place aside from the shed, and it was very small! A nine-square-meter building, to be precise.
Wait, wait, wait, there were fifteen dead people outside, so how did they all manage to fit in there? Maxwell thought in sheer bafflement as he tried to solve the math in his head.
15 dead equals 1 square meter each if they all stand up! And a 9 square meter room divided by 1 was still 9, meaning only nine people could stay in the building at once, and that's assuming they're all standing up! Maxwell thought, feeling that he was approaching the problem entirely wrong.
Hmmm, what if it's actually a portal to another place which is far more hidden and safe? Like a bunker carved inside a mountain? For there to be a wheelbarrow and shovel around, they definitely could pull off something like that.
The more Maxwell pondered it, the more he felt like his guess was correct, or at least close to the truth.
At this moment, Nova had already reached the hut. She pushed the door open, revealing an interior that was simplistic in its design. It was a dark room with a simple table, chair, and a single bed. Nova went straight to the side of the bed, baffling Maxwell.
"What are you doing?" Maxwell asked. This was only the second time he was talking to Nova since they got here; he hadn't brought up any light conversation because he didn't feel like the heavy atmosphere called for it.
"Moving the bed." With an emotionless expression, Nova pushed the bed across the ground, revealing a pitch-black iron trapdoor embedded in the floor.
"So it was just an underground settlement. I ended up overcomplicating something this simple," Maxwell shook his head at himself. Snowy on his shoulder nodded as though it too thought Maxwell's guess was hilarious.
"This settlement is a place that has been existing for centuries. No one is sure of the first person that actually built it or where most of the tools in this place actually came from. All we know is that it holds a lot of secrets with no way for us to unlock them," Nova began explaining as she slowly lifted the heavy trapdoor.
Screech!!
The door screeched loudly, bringing a harsh, grating sound to Maxwell's ears, and a warm wind—completely different from the freezing gale outside—blew past them.
"Though it's been long since I last came here, we have to be careful down here because we don't know if whatever caused the mass death outside is lurking somewhere in here," she paused.
"Not that we could do anything to save ourselves if it is," she added.
Maxwell was not entirely sure, but for a split second there, he felt like he saw a fleeting, self-deprecating smile flash across her face. Did I imagine that just now? Maybe it was not my imagination; who knows if she is slowly recovering? He mused.
"This settlement has four levels," she continued. "The first level is where we used to store food. Don't worry, as long as no one took all the food away, it will never go bad no matter how much time passes. The food room has already been made that way by the previous owner."
And with the way they all died, I doubt anyone had the chance to leave or loot it. All corpses are accounted for except his, she clenched her fist tightly as she added inwardly.
"The second level is the housing area, where most of the day-to-day activities happen. That is where we will be staying until we leave here."
Maxwell nodded, showing he was still following along closely.
"The third level is the research level, where we study things we discovered and record other people's experiences. It includes a small library."
"While the fourth level is where they keep monster hides, where most of the sewing of this place happens. In short, it is the storage for miscellaneous items and monster parts, and just like the first level, things do not go rotten down there."
"The plan: we will pick some food that we are going to eat for the night from the first level, then we will take turns using the bath on the second level. Though there is more than one bathroom available, we will take turns using only one to maximize our safety."
"Then afterwards, we will go straight to sleep. Understand?" Nova asked with a deadpan expression, not even leaving room for objections.
And from Maxwell's point of view, this was indeed the best idea they could come up with that maximized their safety, for all they knew whatever took those people could very well still be hanging around here.
"Alright, no objections on my part," Maxwell agreed.
"This was not negotiable anyway," Nova interjected, "and that's not all. We will be sleeping in the exact same room. Sleeping in separate rooms is not safe," she added, still with that same expression as though she was simply stating the weather. "As both of us together are less than an ant in front of what created that massacre, separating will be complete suicide."
"But—"
"Not negotiable."
Though Maxwell briefly wanted to argue, he definitely felt like this was the smartest path. Personally, he wouldn't want to stay alone in such a creepy setting where there was an entity with unknown intentions and terrifying abilities lurking around. This was infinitely better than dying!
"No objections. Let's go, I am starving."
With that said, they both descended down the stairs, which were still slightly illuminated by the light filtering through the open hut above. After descending a few flights of stairs, they found a huge black iron door at the bottom.
Nova paused in front of the door, frowning slightly. "It's locked," she said.
"Is that a problem?" Maxwell asked, not immediately understanding why a locked door was such a massive concern.
Before long, a nasty, dreadful thought suddenly crept in and refused to leave: If the door is locked, then does that mean all our hard work in coming here will be for naught? We barely have any food left, how will we survive?
"It's not as complicated as you are probably thinking," Nova said calmly.
"But this is definitely abnormal," she explained. "Usually the door is always locked, but it's locked from the inside. Meanwhile, there is usually a guard stationed in front of the door and another behind the door."
"Do you understand? With everybody in the settlement dead outside, how is the door still locked from the inside? They definitely had to open the door to leave. I severely doubt that the entity that killed them was courteous enough to lock the door behind them."
"I understand now, but that now begs the question: how do we get in? If it's really locked tight, then we are essentially dead without food."
Nova did not answer the question directly; instead, she walked straight toward the door. "One should always leave a loophole in all foolproof plans—that was the motto of the First One. The one suspected of building the settlement."