Daylight had barely broken when the Sapphire Star swept past countless mountain ridges still asleep.
She raced along the markings on the Hecao Map. The earth beneath her feet was damp and soft, much like the mountain forests of the Old World, but everything considered "big" here felt strangely scaled down.
"Well, damn..."
With a single leap, she easily cleared a mountain stream, the corner of her mouth twitching despite herself.
"Even a Mushroom Boar is bulkier than the wild boars here!"
The deer drinking beside the stream raised their heads in alarm at the noise. Their delicate antlers reminded her of the toy antlers the exploration team used to tease Palicoes, and they were barely any bigger than Spirit Deer fawns.
The birds startled from the treetops were even more pitifully small. Their fluttering wings made scarcely more noise than gnats. Forget wingdrakes-even a Downy Crake taking flight had more presence.
The place looked as though some mischievous Elder Dragon had swept a shrinking ray over it. It was exquisite, yet frighteningly fragile, forcing a hunter accustomed to wrestling monsters weighing dozens of tons to rein in her movements.
By the time she raced to the ore veins on Sunshine Mountain, the sunlight had heated the exposed golden-red Scarlet Crimson Ore at the summit until it was scorching.
The camp, which should have been bustling with activity, was instead shrouded in an oppressive, deathly silence.
The air smelled of sulfur, rust, and... a lingering scent of fear.
The mine entrance resembled the festering throat of a giant beast, its pitch-black depths radiating menace.
Beneath crude wooden shelters, the miners huddled in narrow patches of shade. Dust and deep exhaustion covered their faces, and their eyes were as empty as dried-up wells.
Several swordsmen in Demon Slayer Corps uniforms guarded the mine entrance, their hands resting on the hilts of their Nichirin Blades. Their faces were taut as though confronting a formidable enemy. Sweat trickled down their temples and soaked their collars as their wary eyes swept over every dark fork in the tunnels.
"You must be the Sapphire Star!"
The logistics officer responsible for the site was a capable-looking young man. He hurried over the moment he spotted the Sapphire Star, his voice tight with nerves and heavy dark circles beneath his eyes. A stocky old mine foreman followed him, his face creased with worry.
"Could you tell me what's happening here?"
The Sapphire Star got straight to the point, her gaze sweeping over the camp beneath its ominous pall as though assessing a contaminated area around an Elder Dragon's nest.
"Wasn't this place supposed to be closest to the sun? Isn't Scarlet Crimson Ore supposed to counter those demons you told me about? How did they still get into your home turf? And..."
She keenly caught the fear in the miners' eyes. "You look pretty badly shaken."
"It's all too damned unnatural!" the old foreman blurted out first, despair filling his voice, which sounded as though it had been scraped raw by gravel.
"The mine's 'eating people'! It really is! Everything's fine during the day, but once the sun goes down, things turn wrong!" His trembling finger pointed into the depths of the mine as he counted off the horrors on his fingers.
"It's been almost a month! Near the richest vein in East Section Three, some of the lads were working when the huge support pillar overhead went boom and crumbled to dust! They didn't even have time to scream before they were gone!"
"Then, over five nights in a row, four good lads on night patrol disappeared, one after another, at the tunnel forks... just like that, without a sound! Not even a hair left behind. We only... only found this on the cold rock wall..." He took a cloth bundle from inside his clothes and unfolded it layer by layer. Inside lay half a finger, twisted out of shape and embedded with filthy gravel and dirt!
The foreman's voice broke with tears, his cloudy old eyes bloodshot.
"Four days ago! Four days ago, it got even stranger! A group of young lads took blasting powder down to collapse the narrow passage linking the places where it happened. But before they even lit the fuse, they... they heard it! Through all that thick rock, something down below was laughing! Like... like a newborn baby wailing in the night, with its teeth grinding! The sound sent chills right into your bones!" He dragged in a ragged breath and looked desperately at the Sapphire Star.
"Please! We're like moths thrown into a giant spiderweb. No matter how we struggle, that damned thing hides in the mountain's 'bone cracks,' picking off anyone alone and biting when there's no sign of it! Even... even the Scarlet Crimson Ore that it should never dare approach seems useless against it!"
The young swordsman leading the team was deathly pale as he added:
"We take turns guarding the place and patrol day and night, but... we can't find any trace of the demon! That thing is far too cunning! It's like black mist in the mountains. We can feel it everywhere, but the moment we get close, it disperses! We guard the entrance and protect the people, but it... it's as though it's vanished without a trace!"
His voice carried profound helplessness and frustration.
"So many people have disappeared... Even during the day, the miners huddle in the shelters and don't dare go underground! And the exposed veins aren't enough..."
The Sapphire Star knitted her brows and cursed in a piece of hunter slang only she understood.
A demon that wasn't afraid of sun-empowered minerals? That was a ridiculous premise! She looked up at the blazing sun overhead, then narrowed her eyes at the mine entrance, that beastlike throat exuding the stench of death.
"It's all right. Just stay here and keep the camp safe."
Reaching behind her, she drew the Fatalis Demolisher. The blue scabbard Velkhana had transformed into seemed to sense its wielder's killing intent. No longer restrained, wisps of cold spilled out, instantly coating even the small circle of dust around her feet in frost crystals.
"I'll go see what foul creature is nesting in this mine and making such a disgusting mess."
Without another glance at the worried people behind her, she carried her blade forward, step by step, its cold gleam freezing the air as she entered the thick darkness that swallowed the light.