Some appear closer, with less wear on the edges of the steps and deeper footprints on the ground.
That uncertainty makes the entire mine space even more difficult to assess, because there are so many things he doesn't know hidden beyond his sight.
King Ghidorah squatted not far behind him, raising his three heads alternately, exploring the entrance, and then retracting it. He was obviously weighing whether he could squeeze in, and then came to the conclusion: No.
Redd stood there for a while and had no choice to go down.
If King Ghidorah was unable to enter the mine tunnel, he would not have walked into those narrow passages alone and rashly penetrated into an underground space whose scale and layout he did not understand without adequate support and escape routes.
He wrote down the information he saw, then turned around and headed back toward the camp along the way he came.
Douglas followed him, and the light of the torch swept across the rocks and shrubs on both sides as it moved, illuminating the scattered gravel and broken cracks in the ground with a brief halo, and then sank back into darkness as they continued to move forward.
They walked back for a while, but before they completely left the area where the mine was located, the ground in front of them was broken by a vibration from below just outside the range of the edge of the fire.
The source of the vibration was very close, about a few dozen steps ahead and to their left.
The ground arched upward slightly at first, and then a thick dark outline rose from the earth and rocks. Its body outline had obvious characteristics of Sandworm, but it was shorter than any previous Sandworm that broke through the ground.
It did not fully emerge from the ground, only its head and a small section of its trunk were exposed to the air. Its mouthparts opened and closed rapidly, as if to confirm the temperature and direction in the air, and then quickly retracted to the ground the moment King Ghidorah's three heads turned to it at the same time.
After the earth and rocks at the breach disappeared, an open passage was left.
King Ghidorah had accumulated energy the moment it retracted, and golden light rose from the area below the scales to the surface of the neck.
The three rays shot towards the closing ground with a very short delay, cutting off another layer of the edge of the breach that had mostly been filled, but the worm's body was no longer there.
King Ghidorah did not conduct a second round of pursuit after launch because the target was indeed no longer within the range.
Its three heads each turned in different directions, as if they were searching for possible movement paths of the silhouette that disappeared underground.
Redd's eyes moved away from King Ghidorah and returned to the closed gap. Thinking of the timing of the appearance of those footprints, the clear edges and the shape retained at the fracture,
They seemed to have been deliberately left there for people to track. After the orcs retreated on a large scale, these unusual traces still maintained a clearness that could be easily identified.
Lead them all the way to the huge mine entrance, and then disappear just right at the edge of the circular mine tunnel.
Then, at a distance from the entrance of the mine, a Sandworm broke out of the ground with precise timing. It neither launched an attack nor completely exposed its body, and only completed the exploration while they were adjusting their attention.
Redd looked at the ground that was slowly stabilizing, and confirmed that there were no new vibrations coming from the surroundings. Then he turned to Douglas, his eyes showing a sharper focus than before under the light of the torch.
"Go back. No more waiting."
Douglas didn't ask any more questions. He turned sideways and quickened his pace. The light emitted by the torch as he walked caused greater swaying at the faster moving speed.
Redd followed him, King Ghidorah changed from crouching to crawling, and began to turn.
Redd walked a few steps, and just when he was about to ask King Ghidorah to move faster, the sound of horse hooves came from the direction of the mine.
The sound of horse hooves indeed came from the mine, and there was only one horse.
Its rhythm was even and steady, from slow to fast walking to trotting, moving in their direction along the flat ground above the mine.
The sound of the horse's hoofbeats was not masked by any other sounds, and was particularly clear in the empty night sky. Redd stopped, turned his head, and turned his gaze to the direction from which the sound of the horse's hoofbeats came.
The torch did not illuminate that far, and one could only tell from the direction of the sound that it was moving along the ground above the mine in their direction, and was continuing to shorten the distance.
King Ghidorah reacts faster than Redd thinks.
Before Redd stopped, King Ghidorah had already turned in the direction of the sound of horse hooves, and his body changed from a crawling posture to a half-crouch.
The three heads were lowered to a height close to the ground at the same time, and the three neck muscles slowly tightened without making any sound.
The golden energy has begun to flow under the scales, but has not risen to the visible area of the neck, remaining ready to explode at any time but not yet exposed.
Its three pairs of eyes have locked onto the direction of the sound of horse hooves, and that sound is approaching their location step by step, without accelerating or slowing down, and the rhythm is so steady that it doesn't look like it is passing by by chance.
"Let it come." Redd said in a low voice. Douglas stopped beside him and lowered the torch slightly, so that the firelight maintained a fixed range of illumination around him and did not extend forward.
The sound of horse hooves continued to approach until it stopped about thirty steps away from King Ghidorah.
It was a tall black horse, with almost no sound when its four hooves were lifted and dropped on the dark ground. Its back was smooth and even, without shaking due to sudden stops.
Sitting on the horse was a humanoid silhouette, covered in black armor. The armor was polished smooth, with no rust on the surface, and no rivets or belt structures commonly used by ordinary armies.
From the shoulders to the wrists to the waist, the entire set of armor maintains complete coverage, with no exposed skin or gaps in the lining.
The face is also covered by armor, and a black mask covers most of the area from the forehead to the chin, leaving only the mouth exposed.
The exposed teeth were yellow and unevenly arranged, forming a row of slightly staggered bright spots of varying thickness in the weak firelight.
It seems that two different sizes of incisors and canines have been squeezed out on the same row of gums, extruding and misaligning each other, and lacking uniformity in size and orientation. It can be seen that the dentition structure belongs to the orc.
He was riding on a black horse, and his figure looked extremely calm between King Ghidorah's open fangs and three pairs of drooping golden eyes, as if he could not feel the threat of the giant beast in front of him at all.
It was more like he was used to standing in more dangerous situations than this, and the three-headed dragon that was sizing him up in front of him had already predicted its intimidation and possible fighting methods, but he did not show any panic.