Medel Mine

"Ow!"

The brief sting caught Raily's attention. She had been in a good mood, and only came to her senses when the stone bounced off her and fell down the cliff.

She immediately turned around, on guard, but everything behind her was just as before. There was nothing there.

Feeling a faint breeze carry away some stone dust, Raily said hesitantly, "Could it have simply broken off the rock face?"

"Otherwise, with my current perception, how could I have failed to notice it immediately? Surely there isn't some transcendent being right above my head, watching me?"

It should have been nothing, yet Raily's brow creased almost imperceptibly.

Her first reaction to being hit by the stone had not been to dodge, nor had it been surprise. It had been humiliation and anger, as though someone had offended her.

How long had I even had this power?

This little incident made Raily realize that arrogance had taken root in her heart.

Though fleeting, she had indeed entertained the notion that possessing the spark made her superior to other living beings.

It hasn't even been a day since I gained this power, and I've already become the kind of bug I used to hate most. Oh, heavens.

A shiver of belated fear swept through Raily. Now she understood why those old fellows in the council refused to change, even when the reasoning was so simple.

She could not go on like this. Raily realized she had to do something.

"That direction-is that Medel Mine?"

Looking in the direction the stone had fallen, Raily sensed something, as though something unseen was guiding her.

She closed her eyes and felt the power within her, hoping for some revelation, or anything at all.

She truly needed guidance now.

The old man in her dream had said she carried a special bloodline, and this power had chosen her. There had to be a reason for it.

At first, nothing happened. Having emptied her mind, Raily felt as though she stood in darkness, but gradually, she sensed a direction.

Within the darkness of her perception, faint clusters of light appeared in that direction. No, that was not right. They had not appeared.

She had discovered them. She had to concentrate intensely to sense them, because those lights were so very, very small.

Opening her eyes, Raily found that the direction she had sensed led to a short stretch of ore vein between the Pitch-Black Hollow and the area above the Fungal Wastes.

"It's actually the same place I sensed earlier. So that really is it."

Medel Mine was where most bugs from the Royal Airfield currently chose to work. Those at the bottom, whom the council deemed to have little value as laborers, would go there to perform grueling, dangerous work.

Cave-ins could happen at any moment, and in those dreadful working conditions, even the most basic safety measures were a luxury. Once a bug went there, they could almost be said to have lost all hope.

Raily was silent for a while, then gritted her teeth and pressed onward. Whatever awaited her there, she had to go now.

Medel Mine

The smell of sulfur and rust clamped around every miner's throat like invisible shackles.

In the low mine tunnels, damp drafts tugged the oil lamps' flames askew.

Tolkien swung his pickaxe into the hard mineral seam for the third time. The web of his hand went numb from the impact, and flying fragments sliced his already scarred carapace.

To suit his work, all four of his limbs had long since been replaced with prosthetics.

Even so, the long hours of labor still placed an enormous burden on his body.

"When will this damned life ever end?" Unable to bear it any longer, he spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva. His voice echoed dully through the tunnel.

"I heard the overseers up above were drinking clean water in their big room last night, while we have to dig in this rotten place for the rest of our lives. We might not see any hope even after we die."

Beside him, the old miner Abel hurriedly tugged his sleeve, his bloodshot eyes full of fear. "Shut up! Have you forgotten what happened to the bugs who complained?"

"Last month, one of them only said a few extra words, and the foreman used that as an excuse to throw him to the shadows deep in the tunnels."

"Th-then... that would still be better than working ourselves to death here."

Their words betrayed both miners' weariness with their grueling work, as well as their fear of the darkness farther below.

But before the miner had even finished speaking, a series of fine tremors suddenly passed through the rock beneath their feet.

It was neither the rumble of a passing mine cart nor the sound of a cave-in. It sounded more like countless things writhing underground.

They surged in from every direction in swarms, accompanied by a sticky rustling.

The oil lamps abruptly went out. Countless eerie green points lit up in the darkness-the light reflected by the compound eyes of bugs that had yet to leave savagery behind.

Their slender bodies were encased in glossy black shells, and rock-corroding slime dripped from their mouthparts.

They poured densely from cracks in the tunnel. The one at the front had already lunged at a miner's feet, its sharp limbs instantly slashing through his carapace, which had long since lost its hardness.

"Stone-Eroding Bugs! They eat anything! Run!"

Someone shouted, and the tunnel instantly descended into chaos.

Pickaxes and mine carts were abandoned where they stood. The miners crowded into the narrow passage. Some were knocked down and swallowed by the swarming bugs a moment later, with only a brief scream.

The Stone-Eroding Bugs had originally emerged from their nest at regular intervals to fight the Black Shell beasts on the Black Shell Plains for food.

Once the Black Shell beasts had been completely exterminated, however, they lost their food source and could only expand in other directions.

Gron and Mortas, of course, would not allow these monsters to encroach on their land.

But their extermination campaigns did not wipe out every Stone-Eroding Bug. Containing them was enough. And when both left and right were tightly blockaded, leaving no way through, the bugs turned their attention upward.

The chain reaction caused by that unwitting disruption of the balance continued.

Gnawing through stone, breaking rock walls, and widening passages, the Stone-Eroding Bugs kept digging until they finally breached the layer separating their nest from the mine tunnels.

The weak, pitiful miners before them were the perfect reward for all their toil along the way.

Tolkien dragged Abel toward the tunnel exit as fast as he could. Screams rang out around them, but the sounds of slime behind them kept drawing closer.

He could even feel the beasts' foul breath and dripping saliva against the back of his neck.

Just then, a burst of orange-red flame suddenly erupted from the tunnel ceiling.

Without any warning, the flames wound down the rock walls like living ribbons of light. Wherever they passed, the Stone-Eroding Bugs' black shells were instantly scorched brittle, and their slime evaporated into acrid white smoke.

The miners looked back in astonishment and saw a mysterious being standing at the tunnel entrance, someone they could never have imagined in their entire lives.

A mask, a hood, a cloak-a thoroughly classic appearance. From her silhouette, the miners could just make out that she was female.

She wore a dark brown cloak, its hood concealing most of her face and leaving only a sharply contoured section of her mask exposed.

What stood out was her exposed black carapace. Completely unlike their short, round bodies, it looked like an exquisitely sculpted work of art.

Seeing that her first strike had not killed all the Stone-Eroding Bugs, the being attacked again.

She raised her hand slightly. Three dancing clusters of flame hovered at her fingertips, and walls of fire rose among the swarm, burning the beasts into curled ashes.

In less than ten breaths, every beast in the tunnel had been wiped out.

The mysterious woman stood amid the lingering warmth of the flames. She looked at none of the bugs and vanished as soon as she confirmed there was no more danger.

The miners stared, utterly dumbfounded. From the very beginning, they had understood nothing of what had just happened.

The surviving miners approached the spot where the mysterious being had stood before leaving.

There lay three objects the mysterious bug had left behind.

A round copper badge engraved with a flame pattern.

An orange-red crystal that gave off a faint warmth.

And a scroll of unknown material bearing the words "Blazing Sun's Protection."

The danger was completely over, yet only now did the overseers from the Upper Layer receive word and arrive belatedly.

Their specially made weapons gave the overseers considerable offensive and defensive capabilities. This showed that the Gear Council was not made up entirely of cowards; it still had some redeeming qualities.

But the incident had made it clear that their ability to handle emergencies and the speed of their response were an utter mess.

"What happened here?"

The overseer loudly questioned the miners, hoping to learn what had caused this.

Yet there was that mysterious being, the flames that had appeared out of nowhere, and that so-called scroll.

The miners knew perfectly well that the Upper Layer would never believe them. Rather than tell the truth, be disbelieved, and invite punishment, all the bugs tacitly chose to fabricate an account.

Quite a few of them were deeply nervous. This was the first time they had stopped obeying the rules and instead chosen to make a decision for themselves.

"The Stone-Eroding Bugs chewed through the tunnels. They accidentally hit some explosives and blew themselves up."

"Explosives?"

The overseer was suspicious, but looking at the charred remains before him, there seemed to be no other reasonable explanation.

In the end, with every bug tacitly agreeing on the account, he could only leave.

But he failed to notice what lay at the very back of the tightly packed circle of miners.

One miner clutched the three objects left behind, which were now giving off a faint, fiery glow.