"Whoa, are you telling me there's a passage underwater?"
Unlike the original story, where Luo Feng had dug his way underground,
Babata pointed the capybara toward another route.
It was the deep pool where the tentacle monster had been.
There seemed to be a huge, funnel-shaped tunnel below it.
It was probably the course of an underground river, modified by these aliens using their powers.
The capybara's other scientific name was the water pig.
As the name suggested, he was even more agile in the water than on land.
On top of that, he had just devoured the tentacle monster's special genes.
Now, he could hold his breath underwater for days and nights without any trouble.
And after successfully advancing to Emperor-Level Monster, his need for oxygen had become negligible.
"Since you want to meet me so badly, I suppose I'll come take a look!"
The capybara gazed at the deep, dark pool.
Feeling the surging Emperor-Level power within him, along with the newly acquired [Super Regeneration] and [Water Affinity], he felt full of confidence.
Without another moment's hesitation, his round body darted forward like a nimble torpedo.
With a splash, he plunged into the icy pool.
Visibility underwater was extremely poor, but for the capybara, with his powerful mental strength and Water Affinity, that wasn't a problem at all.
He clearly sensed a huge tunnel entrance deep at the bottom of the pool, with obvious signs of artificial excavation.
It was dark and deep, and he had no idea where it led.
"This is the place!"
The capybara paddled with all four limbs, quickly diving down to the tunnel entrance.
Quite a bit of silt and rubble had piled up around the entrance. Clearly, no "one" had maintained it for a long time.
"Perfect. Let's test out my new Black Hole!"
At a thought from the capybara, the terrifying Black Hole behind him, now thirty meters in diameter, instantly unfolded!
This time, however, he didn't unleash its devouring power indiscriminately. Instead, he controlled it with precision.
He focused the devouring range mainly on the blocked section of the tunnel ahead.
"Vmmm—!"
The pitch-black vortex advanced slowly, like the head of a giant underwater excavator.
Wherever it passed, the thick silt, hard rocks, and even the metal debris embedded within them
were mercilessly broken down and compressed the moment they touched the Black Hole's field, then devoured as streams of the most basic matter!
[ Ding! Devoured basalt. Energy +1 ]
[ Ding! Devoured sedimentary silt. Energy +0.1 ]
[ Ding! Devoured G-grade metal fragment. Energy +5 ]
System notifications rang out one after another. Each item provided only a negligible amount of energy, but there was a huge quantity of them!
Besides, the capybara wasn't doing this for the energy. He was here to clear a path!
With the terrifying efficiency of a Black Hole thirty meters in diameter, the blocked tunnel ahead was cleared and widened at a visible pace.
The silt and rocks vanished, revealing the smooth metal walls behind them, marked with distinct energy patterns.
The capybara was like a supercharged groundhog, except that his idea of "digging" was making the matter ahead of him "disappear"!
He maintained the Black Hole as he steadily moved forward.
Whenever he encountered an especially hard layer of rock or an alloy gate, he only needed to slightly increase its devouring power to pierce right through!
The whole process was quiet and efficient. There was no tremendous noise, only a faint sizzling sound as matter was annihilated.
The way he did it seemed crude.
And it wasn't particularly efficient, either.
But seeing this, Babata was once again utterly shocked.
"How could this be? Have the monsters on this planet evolved to be smarter than humans?"
On the surface, this looked like a process of digging a tunnel.
But the direction sense this mammal displayed, along with his logic in digging downward,
all pointed to one fact.
He had chosen a specific direction.
And yet, the Inky Starship had been concealed using cloaking technology.
There was no way any human technology could detect it.
The only way to locate it was by following the secret signals Babata had left behind.
In other words, the creature digging its way here could actually understand those signals.
And was treating them like highway signs!
It was unbelievable.
Could a capybara really be that intelligent?
When the capybara used his Black Hole to "devour" the last thick alloy gate separating the interior from the outside, the view before him suddenly opened up.
He had entered an enormous underground space.
There was no water here. The air was dry and clean, filled with the ancient, frigid scent of metal.
At the center of the space floated a huge, battered, dark-colored spaceship that still emanated a heart-stopping aura—the Inky Starship!
Below the ship, on a strange metal platform shaped like a throne,
sat a little "girl" about one and a half meters tall, dressed in a black robe and with fair skin.
She had a pair of huge red eyes and two pointed horns on her head.
She was sitting with her legs crossed, her chin resting on one hand.
A mixture of intense curiosity, scrutiny, and a trace of disbelief filled her gaze as she stared at the capybara who had just "burst through the wall."
She was Babata, the intelligent life-form!
"Did this guy really just show up like that?"
The capybara was stunned, too.
He looked at Babata, who looked exactly as described in the original story, then at the enormous spaceship looming over him.
For a moment, man and beast simply stared at each other from a distance.
An extremely strange and awkward silence hung in the air.
Babata's red eyes, like the most precise scanners, examined the capybara from head to toe.
His round, furry body, short limbs, and harmless, almost goofy-looking face—and...
the pitch-black Black Hole behind him, which had quietly closed but still left behind traces of spatial fluctuations.
Babata simply couldn't connect the creature before him, who looked like some kind of high-level pet,
with the "monster" who had been slaughtering his way through everything outside, devouring Wood Bud Crystals like candy,
and had even used that bizarre Black Hole to force his way through the rock and find this place.
"Ahem."
In the end, Babata was the first to break the silence. He cleared his throat,
trying to make himself sound inscrutable, though his childish voice couldn't hide his astonishment.
"You... really are just a capybara?"
The capybara tilted his head and blinked his bright black eyes, then sent a clear thought with his mental power.
"As genuine as they come. A local specialty."
Babata's mouth twitched slightly.
"...Local specialties don't dig with Black Holes, let alone understand the spatial markers I left behind."
"Oh, you mean those energy symbols that looked like road signs?"
The capybara replied with his mental power, sounding perfectly "innocent."
"I had a feeling there'd be something good if I followed them, so I came. Looks like I was right?"
Before you continue