Time rolled back to a short while earlier.
Deep inside the mine, the darkness was like solidified ink, too thick to dissolve.
There was no light, no sound, only the occasional drip of water seeping through gaps in the rubble. Drip, drip, like some ancient timer counting down.
The air was stale, carrying the earthy tang of soil and an indescribable, moldy, rotten smell, as though the mine had been dead for a long time, and the cave-in had merely covered it with one final layer of earth.
Black Owl stood on the rubble, his sealed faceplate turning slightly, dark gold magical patterns giving off a faint glow in the darkness.
King Ghidorah controlled the avatar, looking down at the palm-sized stone in his hand. The stone was dark gray, its rough surface covered in tiny crystalline grains that gave off a ghostly blue fluorescence under the avatar's dim light.
He had picked it up at random from the rubble. It was everywhere here, piled up like trash.
"Magic ore," Black Owl muttered to himself, a faint trace of disdain in his voice.
It has magic, so they call it magic ore. King Ghidorah repeated the name silently, then clicked his tongue. He had read plenty of fantasy novels in his previous life, and their special ores had names fancier than the last-mithril, adamantine, orichalcum, adamantium.
But in this world, they simply called it "magic ore," plain to the extreme, as though whoever named it had been too lazy to think and had grabbed a word off the table and slapped it on.
He casually tossed the ore aside. The stone rolled down the rubble with a few clear clacks and was soon swallowed by the darkness.
This was the collapsed mine. A storm-triggered landslide had poured down from halfway up the mountain, sealing the mine entrance completely. Rubble and soil had flooded the main tunnel, spreading deep inside.
Black Owl had entered through a ventilation opening-the ventilation shaft was narrow enough to keep humans out, but this avatar's frame could just squeeze through.
King Ghidorah had little interest in the mine itself. He was merely curious about what Nuoyaji had "heard" outside the rubble and wanted to come in for a look ahead of time.
He had found nothing. Rubble, soil, broken support timbers, overturned mine carts-they were everywhere. Apart from those, there was not even a rat.
"No, there are a few people, too."
Black Owl took two steps forward, then abruptly stopped.
At the edge of the rubble, a hand protruded from a gap between the rocks. Its fingers were covered in dust and dried blood, black mine sludge packed beneath the nails. A deep wound crossed the back of the hand, its flesh torn open. It had stopped bleeding, exposing the dark red muscle tissue beneath. That
hand lay motionless on the rubble, like a discarded part from a broken doll.
Black Owl crouched down and tilted his head for a look.
A miner lay buried beneath the rubble. Only half his face and one shoulder were visible; the rest was pinned beneath rocks of various sizes and soil, making it impossible to tell whether he was alive or dead.
King Ghidorah scanned him through the avatar's senses-faint body heat, an extremely slow heartbeat, and the barest trace of breathing.
"Huh? Still alive."
There was a trace of the unexpected in Black Owl's voice. It was not surprise, more a faint sense of novelty that someone could still be alive in a place like this.
Just then, the fingers twitched slightly. The movement was so slight it was almost imperceptible, but Black Owl's senses caught it. It was not a nervous spasm. It was deliberate, made with every last ounce of strength, as though signaling to the outside world, "I'm still alive."
"You want to live that badly, huh."
Black Owl's gaze fell on the miner's hand. A badly worn silver ring encircled its ring finger, a line of tiny words engraved on its surface, too indistinct to read clearly.
A small, crumpled photograph was also stuck to the back of the hand. Sweat had blurred the image, but he could vaguely make out a woman holding a child, smiling happily.
People who gave themselves "buffs" like this often died the fastest. In his previous life, he had seen it countless times in movies, novels, and anime-they pulled out a family photo, said they would make it home alive, then got blown away, skewered, or trampled into pulp the very next second.
Still...
"Then you're lucky you ran into me."
Black Owl reached out, his black armored fingers gripping the edge of the largest rock pinning the miner down. This avatar possessed eighth-tier combat strength. Moving a few rocks was no more than lifting a finger.
With a slight exertion, he flipped the rock aside. It tumbled onto the neighboring rubble with a dull crash. Then came the second rock, the third. He dug away the soil and loose stones with his hands, revealing the wounded, dying miner beneath.
Black Owl bent down, seized the back of the miner's collar with one hand, and hauled him out of the rubble like a sack of goods, dragging him to a relatively level spot beside the tunnel. The miner's body left a long, dark red streak across the ground.
"Any more?"
Black Owl stood and swept his gaze over the rubble. The avatar's scanner could penetrate the surface layer of stones and detect the faint vital signs beneath.
He soon found a second, a third, a fourth... thirteen in all. Some were buried beneath rubble, some were wedged between broken support timbers, and some were curled up in corners of the tunnel, covered in blood and utterly still.
One by one, Black Owl dug them out of the rubble and dragged them to the open space near the tunnel entrance. Some were still alive, their breathing weak but present; others had already gone cold, their bodies stiff, their pupils unfocused.
He did not care whether they were alive or dead. He simply pulled these dozen or so people out from beneath the rubble, piled them together, then stepped back and tilted his head to look.
There were thirteen still alive in total.
Black Owl crouched down and pressed his ear close to a gap in the rubble. King Ghidorah knew the mine entrance lay on the other side, where people were clearing rubble and conducting search and rescue.
He could sense the presences of a dozen or so humans on the other side. One was particularly familiar-Nuoyaji.
What could you possibly hear from so far away?
King Ghidorah grumbled inwardly. He stood and paced back and forth in front of the rubble.
His boots crunched against the loose stones, the sound echoing through the sealed tunnel, bouncing and refracting off the stone walls before reaching the other side of the rubble.
He walked a few steps, then stopped. Walked a few more, then stopped again. Then he suddenly quickened his steps, alternating left and right, as though imitating some kind of dance move-the Jackson kind, though wearing this black construct armor, he did not look the part at all.
"Clack, crunch-crunch, clack-"
The footsteps echoed through the tunnel, intermittent, now soft, now loud.
Then he heard it.
On the other side of the rubble came Nuoyaji's voice, edged with urgency: "Wait, there's someone inside!"
King Ghidorah made Black Owl stop walking.
He tilted his head to look at the miners he had dragged aside-all of them were unconscious, not one able to stand up and walk.
So the "footsteps" Nuoyaji had heard had been his from the very beginning.
He had deliberately made them.
As for why he had done it...
King Ghidorah thought it over and decided the question was meaningless. He did whatever he wanted. He needed no reason.
Black Owl turned away, paying no further attention to the people frantically digging through the rocks on the other side of the rubble, and walked deeper into the mine.