Suddenly, Ren stopped. His mushrooms pulsed briefly.
"What's wrong?" Taro halted the excavation upon noticing his expression.
"I can feel it more clearly now," Ren closed his eyes, concentrating. "One of the entrances. It's close."
Min and Taro exchanged looks while Ren pressed his hand against the tunnel wall, his fingers tracing patterns only he could sense.
"There's energy leaking," he murmured. "Through the enormous crystallized mana wall. It's... different. More intense than anything I've felt before."
"Should we continue in this direction?" Taro asked, his Living Tunnel awaiting instructions.
"No," Ren opened his eyes. "We need to adjust course. About twenty degrees to the left and..." he calculated for a moment, "five degrees upward."
"Are you sure we want to go toward that?" Min asked nervously, his snake coiling tighter around his arm.
"I can feel the entrance more and more clearly. It's like... a whisper calling to me."
Min felt ignored again... but didn't argue against Ren.
Taro nodded and directed his beast to begin excavating in the new direction. Ren's hydra joined the effort, its crystalline claws tearing through hard earth with renewed purpose.
"Well... At least, whatever's there," Min murmured while collecting the last tooth, "must be important if it's protected behind a mana wall."
Ren smiled while feeling the strange energy growing stronger. "We'll find out soon."
Luna's cousin frowned when she saw Liu enter the food storage for iron rank students.
The place was barely used, most students uninterested in its existence.
Maybe the occasional couple of lovebirds...
'Why would someone come here alone?' she thought while sliding silently after him.
The air grew colder as they descended. Liu constantly looked over his shoulder, as if afraid of being followed.
The cousin maintained her distance, using the shadows of old containers as cover. There was something very strange about all this, and she was determined to discover what it was.
The other cousin had reached the mines and registered.
"Lucky mushroom's group?" the guard checked his registry to remember the time. "Arrived about ten minutes ago."
Luna's cousin nodded, maintaining a casual expression while signing her entry. Ten minutes wasn't much time, in theory, they should be easy to catch up to if they were limited to the first hundred meters like all first-year students.
But after searching all the main tunnels of the first level, she had to admit she was wrong. There was no sign of them anywhere.
She stopped at an intersection, considering her options. The tunnels were quiet this early in the morning.
'Where could they have gone?' she thought while observing the rock walls. And then an idea crossed her mind.
Her beast specialized in minerals.
If Taro's Living Tunnel had been using its special ability to create living crystal, it would have left a distinctive mineral energy signature. And since that type of crystal was only found naturally after three hundred meters down...
A smile formed on her lips while she manifested her beast, making sure no one saw. Any use of that crystal at lesser depths would be like a bright signal pointing directly to them.
In the iron rank students' food storage...
The sound of footsteps on the storage stairs made the spy curse internally. His fist hit the ground in a specific pattern: three quick hits, pause, two slow ones.
Through the rock, the vibrations traveled to where Harold was digging. His mole caught them first, instantly alerting him. His long-antennaed centipede confirmed the pattern, unplanned intrusion.
Harold stopped excavating immediately, cursing his luck. His beasts tensed, sensing his frustration.
Just when they had decided to act...
He climbed the 50 meters of tunnel he'd made, approached the soft, elastic cover of the tunnel that the other spy had made, and pressed his hand against it.
Liu had reached one of the less dusty boxes, muttering to himself while his bat separated from him, venturing into the storage's darkness.
"You love this, don't you?" Liu talked to his beast while opening the box. "You can never enjoy darkness in the room because Ren always has those glowing mushrooms... At least here you can relax a bit before class."
The spy covering the entrance tensed when the bat passed nearby. The beast was rather large, almost a meter in height. If it decided to use its sonar...
'Shit,' he thought while remaining completely still.
Harold waited for information inside the tunnel on the other side of the entrance.
From the other side, his companion responded with a series of soft taps. His fingers moved in Yino's silent language, transmitting vital information in Harold's palm.
"Student... unknown... flying beast..."
Harold's fingers responded quickly: "Threat?"
The response came immediately: "Bat... large... sonar..."
A single echo-location pulse and all would be lost. Its ears moved constantly, catching every small sound.
The spy's fingers transmitted quickly: "Mentions Ren... roommate..."
Harold felt his blood freeze. A roommate of the mushroom boy? The same one who had been causing such a stir lately?
The fingers transmitted another urgent message: "Beast... too close..."
Harold gritted his teeth. If the bat discovered them, they would have to silence the boy. Not something they wanted, a missing student would draw too much attention.
The student kept talking, apparently oblivious to the danger he was in.
Luna's cousin watched curiously while Liu searched through the new boxes.
After so much mystery and suspicious behavior, what he pulled out was...
"Ah, here they are," Liu smiled holding a dried leaf filled with preserves. "They haven't restocked these since last semester."
"It's a funny acquired taste that left me without friends," he muttered while opening the preserve. "Haven't had these since I was little. Last semester reminded me of them and I suffered because they stopped serving them... But the other day, when I passed by one of the carts bringing provisions to the punishment storage and smelled them..."
The smell emanating from the opened box made the cousin have to contain a retch. It was a mixture between fermented vegetables and something that definitely shouldn't be fermented.
"I don't understand why everyone hates it," Liu smiled, apparently immune to the stench. "Though they don't seem to like the smell..." his smile faltered. "Maybe I should worry about my breath now..."
The cousin had to contain an incredulous laugh. All this stealth and suspicious behavior was for... smelly food no one likes? She had worried for nothing.
"Ah!" Liu snapped his fingers. "The dried herbs! There are some boxes in the back, next to the oil barrels. They're not tasty at all, but they're perfect for killing smells if you chew them."
Liu began walking toward the back of the storage, directly toward the old barrel furniture that no one had moved in months.