Ren set down one careful step at a time.
The Spore drifted quietly at his side, but Ren's mind was frozen with tension, as though he were walking on thin ice.
On ground that would not have surprised him by giving way at any moment, he could not so much as breathe out carelessly.
Far ahead, a great dead tree would appear.
His father had marked that tree clearly on the map.
An ancient oak, twisted like a hideous fingernail thrust up out of the earth.
That tree was the very marker pointing to the entrance of the secret tunnel.
'If I can just make it that far.......'
In that instant, a blue flash passed at the edge of his vision.
What was that......?
No, he must not look directly.
If it was a Moon Toad, the moment their eyes met it would be over.
Again a blue flash sparked.
This time it was much closer.
Ren hurriedly fixed his eyes on the ground.
His heart hammered as though it would break his ribs.
Moon Toads always hunted in packs of three to five.
Seeing one meant the others were there too.
A low frog-croak sounded from his left.
Soon a damp, eerie cry overlapped it from the right as well.
The encirclement was closing in.
'Don't look at the eyes, don't look at the eyes.'
Ren repeated his father's warning inwardly like an incantation.
Fortunately the Moon Toad was a slow-moving Beast.
If he just moved calmly, he could get away.
He tried desperately to believe that.
But in that very moment, the ground split beneath his feet with a 'CRACK.' Ren's body froze.
This was not a sound an amphibian made.
It was the sickening death-rattle of ground collapsing over a tunnel a Night Digger had dug.
He was caught between two deaths.
Step back and the toads would have him; press forward and he would plunge into the Digger's den.
Nor could he stand still.
The toads had already come right up in front of him.
FLASH—!
A blue flash exploded before his eyes.
It was so close that he could clearly see the texture of the translucent skin and the bioluminescent organs pulsing inside.
For a split second, he met the three eyes head-on.
It was the cold, hypnotizing gaze of a Moon Toad.
At the same time, Ren's whole body began to harden slowly, like stone.
The eerie cries spreading from every side like a chorus set the air trembling, and the damp approach of footsteps and the squelching of acid clung stickily to his ears.
At the very moment the paralysis was about to spread through his whole body, the Spore burrowed into Ren without any warning at all.
'This isn't the time for that! What am I supposed to do with a little more strength?!'
Ren lamented quietly in his despair.
Mushrooms bloomed among his hair and gave off a soft light.
But that light was no signal of salvation.
It was an ominous lantern that would call more predators out of the dark.
The Moon Toads' steps drew closer and closer.
THUD, THUD, damp footfalls ringing out in rhythm.
Sticky acid dripped down, giving off a revolting stench like rotten fruit mixed with hot metal.
But then a strange current ran through the air.
The toad right in front of him, the one that had paralyzed him, cocked its head.
Its three eyes blinked irregularly, and the hypnotic pattern broke apart.
The eerie cries that had formed a harmony twisted into dissonance.
The glowing mushrooms that had bloomed atop Ren's head were mimicking the toads' living light.
They were copying the pulse of light pouring from the creatures' organs exactly, throwing it back like a warped mirror.
Ren's head had become a strange mirror reflecting the shape of the predators.
The lead toad leapt forward.
Its three eyes were fixed now not on Ren, but on the glowing mushrooms pulsing above his head.
As confusion scattered its focus, the chains of paralysis loosened with it.
In that moment, he heard the sound of earth splitting underfoot.
The edge of the Night Digger's tunnel had begun to collapse, slowly but irreversibly.
The toad whose gaze had been stolen by the glowing mushrooms got there before Ren, who was only beginning to feel control return to his body.
It did not even notice that it had landed over the Digger's pit.
As its weight bore down on the earth, the ground gave way as though spitting out an ominous scream.
The three shining eyes went wide with shock, and its croak turned at once into a shriek of terror.
A low, heavy roar echoed from deep within the tunnel, followed by the grisly sound of jaws closing like bone striking bone.
In that instant the other Moon Toads stiffened and could not move at all.
Their bioluminescent patterns flickered irregularly, like hearts seized with terror.
Ren had no time to think.
Dragging legs still half-paralyzed, he threw himself instinctively clear and barely escaped the edge of the tunnel that had just caved in.
"The tunnels...... they form a pattern!"
A voice cracked from breathlessness burst out from between his lips.
The Night Diggers.
They were not simple monsters.
They were systematic predators that dug semicircular traps around a main entrance.
Which meant, if the place the toad had just fallen into was one of them.......
A huge collapsing sound rang out again on the left.
Ren's guess was right.
The two remaining toads had tried to chase him and stepped on another patch of weak ground.
The earth swallowed them like a famished hungry ghost, and from the abyss below a roar and a shriek tangled together, rang out, and then cut off abruptly.
Ren stopped, gasping for breath.
His heart was pounding against his chest as though it would burst.
The mushrooms blooming in his hair pulsed faintly.
The things that had felt like a curse now looked like a token of fortune that had saved him as if by a miracle.
"You're still the weakest Beast in the world...... but all the same, thank you."
Ren whispered low to the Spore, still fused with him.
A horrible crunching sound came from far off.
Somewhere beneath his feet, a Night Digger was plainly enjoying an unexpected feast.
He had not the slightest intention of going onto that table as dessert.
The dead tree, he had to hurry and find the place on his father's map.
A deep roar shook the earth once more.
"It's all right....... It's just a Digger. It won't come up to the surface."
Ren murmured as though soothing himself.
But that roar was soon buried under an unfamiliar sound.
A sharp, metallic grinding, like a blade scraping rock.
The roar underground died away in an instant.
As though even a huge predator were holding its breath.
The new sound was coming from deep in the forest, from the direction of the Bronze Ring where the darkness was thickest.
Ren hurriedly hid himself behind a tree.
And then...... it revealed itself.
A Mirror Mantis.
A monster covered in a mirror-like carapace that shattered the moonlight into pieces and threw it back.
Its body was the size of a horse, but its shape was deformed.
The carapace, which should have formed a perfect symmetry, was cracked and twisted in places.
Deep scars split the exoskeleton, and one of its scythe-curved forelegs was broken at the tip.
Ren's blood froze.
A demon beast like this had no business appearing within a twenty-kilometer radius.
The Mirror Mantis was a Bronze-grade Beast that dwelled only deep in the forest.
They absorbed and reflected the dense mana of their territory to create illusions that confused their prey.
They were a species that never set foot on land as mana-poor as this.
Which meant this one had to be an individual that had lost a territorial fight and been driven out.
An abandoned monster, weakened by its wounds until it could not survive even in its own habitat.
And such Beasts all had one thing in common.
A monster that was wounded and starving and had been driven into barren land...... was a thousand times more dangerous than any native predator.
The mantis turned its triangular head toward him.
Its compound eyes, which should normally have flashed with rainbow colors, were clouded and dead, steeped in hunger.
The carapace tried to reflect the moonlight, but its patterns were irregular and sickly.
Normally it would have cast dreamlike illusions, but now it only scattered desperate flashes.
'Don't look at me. Please, don't look at me.......'
Ren prayed desperately inside, recalling the basic Beast knowledge every child learned.
The Mirror Mantis normally lured its prey with illusions.
But this one, now...... was a demon beast gone mad with hunger.
A single beam of light scattered and cast a small afterimage beside a tree, and in it Ren's figure was reflected.
And in that instant, the demon beast moved.
Wounded body or not, it was still fast.
The broken scythe split the air and spat out a shrieking rush of wind.
That alone was lethal.
All that was left to it was instinctive hunger.
Ren ran.
Had his father not told him?
The dead tree had to be nearby.
Its twisted roots pointed north, and its trunk bore a mark like an arrow, left by an ancient bolt of lightning.
Behind him, the metallic grinding bored in urgently.
The Mirror Mantis could not hold that speed for long in this mana-thin land.
But it did not need to.
Catching him just once would end everything.
The mantis's scythe drove into the ground beside him.
It was so close that the wind of its passing alone made his cheek sting as if cut.
The mantis's broken carapace rang out eerily like a cracked bell, and its breathing was an agonized howl of hunger and despair mixed together.
And at last Ren saw it.
The black silhouette of the twisted dead tree, towering against the night sky.
But the Mirror Mantis was drawing closer and closer, and the sound of its broken carapace was already tolling like a bell announcing death.
Less than fifty meters remained to the dead tree.
In that moment, the ground gave way beneath his feet.
It was the price of letting hope distract him for a moment.
A terrible fall began.
Ren dropped into the darkness like prey caught by a predator named gravity.
When his father's kitchen knife sprang loose from his waist, he reached out instinctively and seized it.
The blade bit into the earthen wall, and with a strength he had not known he had, Ren forced his fall to slow.
But the earthen wall only crumbled like sand.
Pebbles and dust struck his face.
At the edge of the hole, the Mirror Mantis had come to a stop.
Its broken carapace cut the moonlight into shards and made a sickly kaleidoscope, and it tilted its head and looked coldly down at him with starving eyes.
'No, no, no.......'
Ren kicked at the wall to find a foothold, but the blade was already slipping.
The earthen wall gave way and Ren fell again.
The mantis did not miss the opening and leapt down after him.
Its scythe flashed in the darkness and split the air, and its shattered exoskeleton rang out a song of death.
Ren felt his short ten years of life flash before his eyes.
A wretched end, here in this darkness away from his parents, finished without a single chance.
Just then an ear-splitting roar shook the tunnel.
As the image of being caught by the Digger flashed through his mind, Ren desperately drove the knife into the wall again.
Then a small burrow to the side caught his eye.
A narrow parallel tunnel, just wide enough for him to force his body into.
There was no time even to think.
Ren shoved himself inside.
But the mantis lunged at the same moment, trying to catch hold of him.
In the instant Ren was crawling into the tunnel, at the very moment the mantis was about to bring its scythe down...... the wall beneath its feet opened, and the monstrous head of a Night Digger surged up as though starving.