Roy, Seth, and Noah entered the cave, its entrance closed behind their backs as they reached the bed where Sarah and Bruce were laying.
"You must be the new member of our faction, thank you for bringing me to Bruce and for defending me from his recklessness."
Sarah thanked Noah, her voice was soft and weak but her condition seemed somewhat stable at least.
Noah performed a slight bow, he didn't feel like he had done anything special.
"What happened under the Great whirlpool? Where are the other members of your team?"
Roy asked, Sarah's expression turned sour when her team was mentioned.
"They are dead, I was the only one able to survive in that mess."
Seth sighed while Bruce softly caressed her hair, they knew how many disciples her team had, they couldn't help but feel bad about their losses.
"Tell us everything, I'll directly report the matter to my mother afterward."
Roy spoke again, his status as the son of an elder in the heroic ranks was the highest in the cave.
Also, many rank 2 cultivators had been lost, that matter concerned the entirety of the Chasing demon sect, it wasn't the time to care about the different factions.
"Yes, give me one moment to sort my thoughts."
Sarah answered before falling deep in thought, Noah took out one jar of Ivor's wine and handed it to her.
She smiled when she saw that and her smile only increased after she took a slight sip.
Ivor's wine had great numbing proprieties, it helped Sarah in calming her messy mind.
"Thank you."
She thanked Noah again after handing back the jar, Noah carefully stored it back in his space-ring as he waited for her report.
"We reached the Great whirlpool two weeks ago, it was nighttime but we still decided to traverse its currents. The route we followed was the safest one, many of the cultivators in my team had a water aptitude so it was quite easy to reach its depth."
Sarah began to explain the events in the whirlpool, everyone in the cave was silent, focused on her story.
"The information about the direction of the currents is renown, I even had a map that depicted their behavior according to the time, it was impossible for us to lose ourselves inside them."
Sarah took out a small scroll as proof of her words, Seth picked it and nodded when he saw its contents.
The scroll was then passed to the other in the cave, Noah could see that the intricate patterns of the marine currents were clearly reported on the map when the scroll arrived at him.
'This map even states the strength of each current, it is as I suspected, the archipelago has been investigated deeply throughout the years.'
The scroll only confirmed Noah's suspicion, too many experts had explored the contents of the archipelago, something unexpected couldn't happen.
Yet, something unexpected had happened which made him even more confused.
"The depths of the whirlpool are often its calmest part, we had expected to find a large number of magical beasts there but we only found another marine current."
"That's impossible, the behavior of the whirlpool has been studied for generations, those that hunt magical beasts in that area have never reported of a marine current there."
Roy spoke but Sarah could only reveal a bitter expression before continuing to speak.
"That's what I thought too, I've informed myself before going inside it and that sight surprised me. Yet, this marine current was soft, it wasn't dangerous at all so I chose to explore it."
Sarah's speech was reaching its crucial point, no one dared to speak at that moment.
"The water in the current was warm, we even thought about dispersing the protective layer around our team and swim through it, we would have never expected for the situation to become so dangerous."
Sarah gave voice to her memories, her expression could only become more bitter when she remembered the thoughts that she had back then.
"We continued to walk on the warm current, the water was so dense that we didn't even need additional spells to help us in the process. However, at some random point, we began to fall."
She stopped speaking to cough a few times, Bruce promptly gave her some water so that she could continue her story.
"There wasn't any indication nor change in the "Breath" around us, we simply lost our foothold when we reached a certain depth. The water disappeared as we fell and a large underwater structure appeared in our sight, it seemed a maze of some sort but I can't say more because we never entered it."
'Is she telling us that the water suddenly disappeared as they went deeper? This is impossible, unless…'
Noah's mind sorted Sarah's words at full speed, there seemed to be only one explanation to those events.
'Separate dimension!'
That thought hit all the cultivators in the room, their eyes widened when they reached that conclusion but they didn't dare to give voice to their surprise since Sarah's story wasn't over.
"We found ourselves on a dark-brown passage, it was forty meters large and it was connected directly the structure at its end. There was only the dark sea on the other side and even the ceiling depicted the current that we were traversing before. At once, I knew that I was in a separate dimension."
Sarah raised her hand when she saw that Roy was going to ask something.
"I have no idea why no one was able to find it before, it is as if it has appeared out of nowhere."
Roy suppressed his question after hearing Sarah's words, he knew that she wasn't aware of the reason behind the changes in the whirlpool but he found himself unable to contain his curiosity.
"There didn't seem to be a way out of that place so we decided to walk toward the structure at the end of the passage. Everything seemed quite ordinary for a while, with the exception that the space seemed stretched. It took us one week to near the structure but it was at that moment that we were attacked."
"Attacked by who?"
Bruce couldn't suppress himself anymore when he heard of an attacker and asked the woman in his embrace that question.
"By dragons."