Online Game: I Started with Max Charisma and Caught the Goddess's Eye

After advancing through the pitch-black underground tunnel for about an hour, Luca finally found a passage that led even deeper down.

The passage was incredibly steep. Before entering it, he deliberately tossed a small stone inside.

The pebble rolled downward for a long time; the sound it made did not stop abruptly but gradually faded until it disappeared into the pitch-dark depths below.

Luca's expression grew grim.

The sound of the stone meant this steep passage went very, very deep.

"Are we really going in there?"

Sophia's voice suddenly echoed, her tone betraying her anxiety.

Luca nodded without a word.

Then he stepped directly into the steep passage.

Going down such an incline was extremely dangerous.

The tunnel walls were slick with moisture, so Luca had to drive the blade of the [Dragon-Slayer Greatsword] into the walls themselves to keep from sliding straight down.

Progressing through this kind of passage was both time-consuming and exhausting.

It took him a full four hours before he finally reached a place that was somewhat level.

There, he spotted the very stone he had thrown down earlier.

He looked upward; above him was only endless blackness, not a single glimmer of light.

"It should be deep night by now," Luca said with a note of weariness.

Beneath his reflective tone, there was also a trace of unease.

"Even if it isn't night, no light could reach here. We're far from the surface, and the passage we just came down was far too steep for light to travel," Sophia replied.

She didn't quite grasp what Luca had truly meant, so her response sounded somewhat perfunctory.

Luca nodded and continued forward into the darkness.

After walking for roughly another hour, he suddenly stopped.

Something in the darkness seemed to be slithering along the ground.

Without hesitation, he activated the flame magic runes.

A burning fireball shot out from above his head, streaking into the distance. As it flew, Luca and Sophia were finally able to see what lay ahead.

In a vast, open underground space, countless moss-covered humanoid figures writhed across the ground.

These crawling figures seemed to be searching for something, yet they showed no reaction at all to Luca's sudden appearance.

"What on earth are these creatures?!"

Sophia's voice rang out in shock.

"Why aren't these monsters attacking us? And why aren't they attacking each other?" she asked, bewildered. "Don't they want to devour others' power to become stronger?"

Under normal circumstances, whether they were born of chaotic energy, primal power, or some other force, monsters would instinctively consume all other living things around them.

It was the only way for them to grow stronger—this was their primal instinct. Only monsters possessing a certain degree of intelligence could restrain that instinct at all.

But clearly, these humanoid figures crawling endlessly across the ground had no such intelligence.

After watching for a while, Luca spoke coldly.

"They're just nobles who've been cursed. Condemned to remain underground forever, to crawl like this for eternity. It's endless torment. What could they have done to so enrage the gods?"

His words only deepened Sophia's confusion.

She couldn't understand how Luca knew they were cursed nobles.

"How can you tell?" she asked.

"Look more closely," Luca replied. "Some of those writhing figures still wear remnants of their old garments. The fabric of those remnants is of extremely high quality.

And on some of those scraps, I've seen the mark of the Goddess of the Night. That means these crawling figures were once nobles who worshipped her.

A small number of nobles remain in tunnels closer to the surface, but the vast majority have ended up here, suffering eternal torment."

Luca pieced together all the information he had gathered and delivered his conclusion.

Sophia was silent for a while after listening.

"Is this curse from the Goddess of the Night herself? Why would she curse her own followers?"

"I'm not sure," Luca said quietly. "But this curse is definitely tied to the Goddess of the Night. Don't forget—Nyx is said in legend to have followers who crawl endlessly in the dark, praying."

"So you're saying these nobles are cursed to serve the Goddess of the Night Nyx forever? Even though the deity they worshipped has vanished, they're still condemned to torment themselves for eternity. To me, this looks more like a curse set by gods hostile to the Goddess of the Night!"

A divergence of opinion began to form between Sophia and Luca.

They both believed these writhing humanoids were the product of a curse.

But each held a different view of which god had cast it.

Luca didn't rush to argue.

"Let's keep moving. These crawling figures probably won't attack us. I want to see what other strange and terrifying things lie deeper inside."

With that, he stepped through the mass of writhing humanoids and continued forward.

This time, however, his pace slowed noticeably.

The endlessly crawling figures around them posed no tangible threat, but the pressure they exerted was immense.

They were now so deep underground that the air had become suffocatingly heavy.

The entire environment felt crushingly oppressive.

Even without any direct danger, Sophia was becoming more and more anxious.

"I really don't think we need to go any deeper. There probably aren't any important clues further down. Let's just get out of here," she said, her voice trembling.

But Luca had no intention of heeding Sophia's plea.

Since he had already come this far, he was determined to reach the very heart of the darkness.

If the Goddess of the Night truly had left behind a fragment of her divine power or any vital clue, it would be in the deepest darkness—because only there would her power be at its strongest.

The oppressive environment, the stagnant, murky air, and the chilling sound of humanoid bodies writhing together combined into an atmosphere of absurd, nightmarish horror.

Moving through such an environment not only weighed heavily on Luca but also dulled his sense of time.

At moments he almost lost track of how long he had been pressing on through the thick, impenetrable darkness.

All the while he kept activating his flame magic runes, conjuring burning fireballs to light his way.

But the area illuminated by the fireballs conjured by the flame magic runes grew smaller and smaller.

Luca even felt that before long, these blazing fireballs would no longer light up even the faintest patch of ground. When that happened, the dense darkness would completely swallow him.

Even he himself was starting to regret it now.

He thought he should have listened to Sophia's advice and not rushed so recklessly into the heavy darkness.

Yet just as doubt began to creep into his heart, he suddenly noticed that the sound of the writhing humanoids around them had vanished.

"It's gone quiet around us! We must have reached the deepest part of the underground tunnel," Luca murmured, alerting Sophia.

But Sophia gave no reply.

It seemed she had completely fallen into slumber under the influence of the darkness's power.

"Why aren't you answering me? Have you lost consciousness?"

Luca kept calling to her.

But Sophia offered no response at all.

He suddenly realized she had likely lost consciousness, and decided to stop trying to communicate with her.

Then, abruptly, it hit him: the words he'd just exchanged with Sophia hadn't been confined to his mind. He had actually spoken them aloud.

In the thick, suffocating darkness and absolute silence, his voice had carried.

That, he knew, could very well bring a deadly threat.

Cold sweat beaded across his forehead.

He decided to retreat slowly.

But just as he stepped back, a blurred, indistinct voice—neither clearly male nor female—sounded from not far ahead.

"Why did you stop talking? Did your companion stop responding to you?"

Confronted with the sudden voice, Luca of course did not reply.

He could sense the immense power hidden within that disembodied sound.

Until he understood exactly what he was dealing with, he judged it safest not to answer any of its questions.

"So, just as She said, you really are a cautious one. But don't think you can simply back away and leave this place. You must solve the remaining riddle before you have the right to leave."

The blurred, indistinct voice spoke with a tone that was half a smile, half a sneer.

Those words contained a wealth of information.

Luca realized all of this as well, but under such crushing pressure he simply couldn't think clearly enough to analyze everything.

With no other choice, he steeled himself and spoke.

"Who are you, truly? And why have you set a riddle for me?"

From not far away came a burst of laughter—like silver bells, the laughter of a child.

It was so sudden and out of place that Luca actually flinched at the sound.

"When you solve the rest of my riddle, I will answer your questions,"

the blurred, indistinct voice said at last.

Then Luca felt both his mind and body being swallowed at once by the dense darkness.

It was as if he were a man who could not swim, slowly sinking into the depths of a bottomless lake, gradually losing consciousness.