Gourmet Hunter (HxH Fanfic)

The five Scale Lizards were Dove's last remaining flying-type creatures. With their help, transporting magical beasts underground wouldn't be difficult. However, he had no intention of wasting any more time on Law.

Choosing not to send any of them down to check, Dove instead left behind ten artificial creatures to guard the collapsed hole, then took the rest and led the team away to resume their sweeping search.

Law was the biggest obstacle to locating Sanbica. For Dove, whether he was dead or alive now didn't matter. If he is dead, that would be the best. But if he is still alive, he'd be lying low for a while regardless.

From Dove's perspective, even if Law had survived, taking a direct hit from that kind of explosion would've left him seriously injured at best. So leaving ten artificial creatures to guard the collapse site was more than enough.

…

In the underground cave, Law had waited patiently for quite some time, but there was still no movement.

'They're not coming down?'

After thinking about it, Law lit his torch again, closed his Aura Nodes and entered Zetsu state, then began slowly walking toward the space directly beneath the cave opening.

Just before reaching it, Law stopped and did not move forward because he sensed the Aura fluctuations of ten creatures coming from above the hole.

Law narrowed his eyes and took another look at the situation around the cave opening. Though a little moonlight filtered down, the place was shrouded in near-total darkness.

He couldn't tell how high up the surface was, so climbing back up wasn't happening anytime soon.

The enemy was clearly after Sanbica. Maybe they assumed that if Law had survived the explosion, he'd be gravely injured and out of commission anyway. They didn't think it was worth the effort to come down, so they simply left ten artificial creatures on guard in case.

Since there was no getting back to the surface any time soon, Law figured he'd have to wait until sunrise for enough light to make a move.

Still, he wasn't too worried about Sanbica being found.

After all, he had gone through a lot of trouble to create that place.

In a game of hide-and-seek, it was easily one of the most impossible places to find.

However, without his help, it would be difficult for Sanbica to get out on her own, and if it weren't for Kuro, she'd definitely starve to death in there.

Law didn't believe they'd find her. Still, just to be safe, he had to leave this underground cave as soon as possible and get back to hunting those artificial creatures down.

'There's still some time before dawn… might as well look for another way out.'

With that decision, Law retreated from the area beneath the opening and began exploring.

He weaved through the maze of stone pillars, searching for a potential exit. Along the way, he found three more pillars etched with the same kind of graffiti depicting scenes of daily life.

After wandering for quite some time, he finally found a passage… However, he didn't rush in. Instead, he circled around the surrounding rock wall to confirm there were no other routes.

Once he's certain it was the only one, he stepped inside.

Before entering the passage, Law swapped out his torch for a fresh one to ensure it would burn long enough.

The passage was about five meters wide and seven meters tall by his estimate, and the signs of it being manmade were unmistakable.

Law reached out and ran his fingers along the clear tool marks in the wall. What he felt at his fingertips felt like the erosion of time itself.

'This place had likely been sealed away for who knows how many years. And perhaps, I was the first soul to set foot here in all that time.'

However, given the current situation, he did not have the time to explore further. His main goal was to find other exits. And if there were none, he would have to go to the collapsed opening and find a solution.

Law withdrew his hand and proceeded deeper into the passage, his eyes no longer lingering on the rock walls on both sides.

Every step he took would stir up a lot of dust. After walking less than a hundred meters, the entire passage was already filled with dust.

Seeing this, he used his Domain to push the dust aside and quickened his pace.

The passage twisted and turned, and slopes downward, forming a long descending ramp. But it's just one path, all the way to the end.

After walking briskly for about thirty minutes, Law finally reached the end of the tunnel… only to find it blocked by a massive, unidentifiable boulder.

Law pressed his hand against the surface of the massive boulder. At first, he considered simply using brute strength to push it aside.

But just before doing so, he hesitated and dropped the idea, feeling that approach was too reckless.

Instead, he changed his approach and used God Hand to start carving into the rock. He dug persistently through over thirty meters of solid stone before finally breaking through to the other side.

The moment he pierced the boulder, a deep blue glow surged in like a flood of seawater, instantly bathing his entire body in its eerie luminescence.

The sudden flood of light startled Law slightly. He cleared the last bit of stone blocking his view and tossed it aside. Then, he walked forward a few steps towards the faint blue glow and looked at the scene under the blue glow with an incredible look on his face.

What appeared before Law's eyes was a huge underground space. A row of dilapidated stone houses stood silently under the blue glow, scattered in no discernible pattern. Crumbled walls and broken foundations littered the ground.

Above his head, countless crystalline columns of unknown origin glowed with that same blue hue. Each crystal was as thick as a human arm, clustered in bunches and suspended from the cavern ceiling like stalactites.

The light illuminating the entire space came from these strange crystals.

However, what stunned Law was not these huge amounts of crystals that looked extremely valuable, but the countless intact corpses that lay strewn across the ground.

Law felt that he had seen plenty in his life, but looking at the countless corpses on the ground, he couldn't help but feel a chill down his spine.

The deep blue glow covering the corpse only made the atmosphere more eerie.

It is impossible to count how many corpses there are here, but even at a glance, it was clear they numbered in the tens of thousands.

What puzzled him more was, even the stone houses had become dilapidated, so how had the corpses remained so well-preserved?

Also, did all of them die at the same time?

A surge of questions crashed into his mind, leaving Law frozen where he stood.

'If it hadn't been for that explosion, who knows how much longer this place would've remained sealed? I wouldn't have been able to come here, and certainly wouldn't have been able to see such a horrifying scene.'

Law looked at the tens of thousands of corpses in front of him, hesitating whether to go down the slope to investigate.

It wasn't the corpses that unnerved him. It was what had caused so many people to die here in perfect condition.

Dead bodies were often silent warnings to those who came after, but this grotesque tableau… this one screamed danger louder than anything he'd encountered.

The lighting was more than sufficient. From where he stood, Law could see the nearest corpses clearly, men and women, old and young, all dressed in minimal clothing made from animal hide.

Every corpse, no matter old or young, had an unknown paint on the exposed parts of the body.

Each corpse had its eyes closed and looked peaceful, as if they were simply asleep.

If not for the suffocating smell of death, at first glance, one might think these people had simply lain down for a communal nap.

However, there is no guarantee that him coming down would be like gasoline dropped into a flame, shocking the people on the ground and causing them to suddenly stand up.

Advance… or retreat?