He began to climb the sloping, rocky floor. What he saw was a small tunnel in the ground; the hole was about one meter in diameter.

  “Hmm, I … found a hole.”

  He looked closer and saw that he couldn’t see the bottom.

  ‘Did someone dig this?’ he thought.

  The others approached and looked at the tunnel in the ground.

  “This doesn’t look natural,” Tristan said with some concern in his mind.

  ***

  They continued walking, and after another week, they hadn’t found anything strange until Tristan spotted another hole. As the days passed, they started appearing more frequently.

  Then, one day, Yue said something.

  “Wait!”

  Everyone stopped and looked at her.

  Zhou Lan was the first to ask.

  “What is it?"

  “Be quiet!” she replied.

  She approached a nearby hole and pced her ear near the entrance. After a few seconds of silence, she said, “I hear something coming from here!”

  The group members brought their heads close to the hole, but no one except Zhou Yue could hear anything.

  Tristan approached the hole and started entering.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I want to see what’s making the noise Yue is hearing. It might be responsible for the holes we’ve seen.”

  “Are you sure you need to go in there?” Zhou Lan asked.

  Tristan said:

  “Yes, I’m sure. These holes are everywhere; if it’s a creature making them, it could appear beside us while we sleep at any moment. I won’t be able to sleep at night with such a high risk.”

  ‘If it’s a creature, it’s better to find it before it finds me.’

  The others thought Tristan’s logic was sound, and given the size of the hole, only he and Yue could fit inside.

  Yue opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Tristan turned to her and said:

  “Oh, and you can’t see in the dark, so don’t even think about coming with me.”

  Without wasting more time, Tristan crawled into the small tunnel. At a certain point, the tunnel became very steep, and he had to press his legs against the tunnel wall to avoid falling. He kept moving forward until he could hear a noise.

  ‘That must be what Yue heard.’

  He continued down the tunnel, and the noise grew louder. Then his eyes detected movement.

  ‘What is that?’

  Approaching slowly with [Shadow Aura], Tristan focused his eyes on what was moving.

  Something was digging the tunnel.

  He saw a small creature, about the size of a dog. It had six legs, pincer-like jaws, and two things that looked like antennae on its head.

  His eyes widened.

  “An ant?”

  But Tristan noticed something else strange. Besides its obviously unusual size, the creature also had something else that made it different from ordinary animals.

  ‘What is that? Stones? Gss?… No, that … that’s a crystal?!’

  ‘A CRYSTAL ANT!’

  ‘Damn, another damn magical beast.’

  Suddenly, the creature stopped its digging.

  And its head turned towards Tristan!