Old man Henry was sitting on his bench after throwing a mad fit at his workers, he was mad with the attitude of the mercenary that came here and he had to vent some way or the other, he figured his useless workers who couldn’t get rid of the beasts were to blame

“If that bastard couldn’t kill them I’ll give him a piece of my mind”

Just as he was thinking to himself how to berate him if he suddenly quite he saw Yu walking back into the city

Stunned the old man rubbed his eyes to check again but the person was indeed the mercenary that had just been back talking him

“He already gave up?” His surprise soon turned to anger, how dare this mercenary talk back to him when he couldn’t even handle a few rats? so he practically ran to Yu screaming in rage

“You imbecile! How dare you act all high and mighty when you- “Again Yu raised his hands to silence the old man, then he said with a dead cold tone

“I’m going to get my equipment; you don’t expect me to dig with my nails do you? I was merely scouting the situation”

This made the old man swallow all his words back, and his face turned red from embarrassment, in his anger he forgot Yu had come here with nothing on him, he must have looked stupid to the farmer’s now

“By the way this is going to take a few days, those moles aren’t coming out so I’ll have to go in, tell your farmers to let me to do my job when I come here” The old man nodded at Yu’s words in silence, any other time he would have made things harder for Yu but now he wanted nothing more than to get out of this embarrassing situation

Thus Yu got the right to come in and out as he wished

‘Great, part one of the plan finished itself on its own, never thought the old man would make things this easy for me’

Yu had actually needed to make sure nobody was watching when he acted, and now that he gained easy access he could pull of his ridicules plan with no one the wiser

He went to the city and shopped for an hour and came back with two large bags and a shovel, the farmers thought he brought digging equipment so they let him in without problem, but once Yu was at the place he emptied the bags content on the ground without care, after all they were just rocks

“Now they think I carry equipment, this would make transporting the treasures out easy, hopefully there is a lot though, I don’t want to carry this many rocks every day”

He summoned Lyra and told her to start rolling or carrying rocks onto the land, and watch out not to get near the holes for they may hide the rats, which she diligently did

Tak tak tak

Not long after they started working they heard the sound of rocks being crunched

“They’re here” “Wu Wu”

Tak tak tak Baam

A blue colored large blind rodent suddenly blasted out of the ground beneath Lyra, but as she was well prepared she instantly leaped off while a bolt headed straight toward the rat, hitting him in his shoulder, the rodent screamed and buried back into the ground

“I’m pretty sure that thing just now was half a meter long, is it really just a Spring Spalax?”

As far as Yu knew they usually thirty centimeters long, the fact that they are larger by two thirds their original size meant something was very wrong

“Better keep our distance, Lyra throw the rocks instead of rolling them there, if they come out I’ll shoot them”

So she did, and merely minutes later a Spalax blasted out again and screamed at them

‘Isn’t this the same one? That bolt was poisoned just now how could it still be alive?’

Noting the wound on the shoulder Yu gets suspicious, so he shot the rodent again, this time in the chest, forcing it back into the ground again

But merely minutes later the same Spalax popped its ugly head out, provoking Yu who was out of reach

“Hmm seems like they have poison immunity, well no matter, they can’t get t me anyway”

The reason Yu was so sure of himself was because the Spalax’s teeth looked weird, they were a lot less jagged like he read, instead they looked sharper, which was indeed more deadly but it also meant it couldn’t dig through tough ground like the one beneath him, only the soft and moist earth above the spring

So he ignored the screeching rodent and helped Lyra throw rocks on to the soft earth, he wanted to finish this as fast as he could

Spooooooooo

A sudden pillar of water shot toward t=Yu as he was bending to carry another rock, it caught him off guard for a moment so he didn’t have time to dodge

Splash!

A rock was thrown into the water disrupting its momentum thus when it reached Yu it only threw him back, barely doing any damage

“WUU”

“No don’t engage, lets retreat a bit”

Lyra seemed like she wanted to give the rat a piece of her mind, but after considering its friends might pop out anytime form under her she decided against it and regrouped with Yu further back

“These guys… I think their variants”

The soaked Yu shared his opinion with Lyra, he didn’t mind the sudden attack, after getting hit by the weaker version he could tell he would only have a bruise if he had been hit by the real one at this distance

“These guys shouldn’t have such sharp teeth, nor a water spurt of this power, if this was at close range it would actually do quite the damage, whatever is under this earth had enough energy to actually cause a variation in these creatures, it can’t be that simple”

A variant beast was one that branched out the evolutionary tree of its species, the new route it took could be better or worse than its original evolution, or it could happen to adapt in order to survive, Lyra, as an example was a variant even before Yu used sacrifice, as a Wailing Wolf should never have fire elements in its blood

“Let’s judge the furthest distance they could shoot strong water form, once we can bare the attack easily or dodge it then you will continue to throw rocks while I shoot them, even if they are immune to poison I don’t think they can actually survive it if I fill them up with it”

Yu got closer to them while lifting a rather large rock, when a water beam came at him he defended with the rock but was again pushed back to the ground, so he got up and took a few steps back, he repeated this action until he judged the right distance at which he could take it head on then Lyra started throwing rocks form that distance while he shot the buggy mole

“How come he’s dodging? I thought he’s blind? No how can he even see me to shoot”

Although Yu couldn’t see that good from this distance he could still make out a layer of skin over the rodent’s eyes, just like the original Spalax, which meant that the rodent was indeed blind

“Oh! I got it, when you lose one thing another gets stronger, Lyra make some noise”

Lyra looked at Yu weirdly for a few moments before complying and howling to the sky

PShhhh thunk!

A rather large bold flew straight toward the Spalax, hitting it right in the chest, filling its lungs with poison deadlier than the previous one, this was the drones poison that Yu used with his new larger cross bolt

“As I thought, these guys use sound to discern their surroundings, it seemed though he was surprised rather than confused, they could probably operate even under such high frequency

It was a lucky shot but the Spalax was dead nonetheless, now they could have some freedom when throwing the rocks

Such happy thoughts didn’t last though as another head popped out of the dirt, then another, and another, more and more heads popping out until almost twenty Spring Spalaxes could be seen screeching toward their comrade’s killer, with some of the shooting beams of water out

“Whack a mole advanced addition?” Yu dodged whiles cracking a joke, he wouldn’t get hurt but he didn’t wanna be soaked wet with rat water, though it couldn’t be helped that he got splashed a few times

Lyra on the other hand hadn’t gotten a drop on her as she gracefully danced about

“Show off” Lyra smirked at Yu’s comment and changed her trajectory to him thus even more water came in his direction coloring poor Yu’s body with some stinky water

“Oh god I think I’ma hurl”

He really wanted to run away now but he instead threw more rocks while he was soaked wet while Lyra started seriously distracting the rodents as she zig zagged to them and back aggroing them further

‘Soon, anytime now it should happen’ Yu stared at the dirt patiently, he was waiting for his sacrifice to bear fruit, and sure enough physics didn’t disappoint as the ground housing the rodents suddenly quaked and fell in, dragging not only the rodents and rocks indie, but even some of the surrounding plants and earth, making it look like a sink hole had appeared

“Hehe bet you guys didn’t think you would die by your own doing did you? You’ve been digging around here for the past three years, while you guys know how to make the tunnels not collapse on themselves you sure made use of every possible space you could to house more tunnels, but this makes it very brittle to any strong pressure, every Spalax in their right now was probably crushed by the earth caving in on them”

The surviving Spalax could only respond by thrashing around, if they weren’t dead or crippled they would at least be injured for they had half their body inside the dirt and the sudden collapse struck them unprepared, no even if they were they would still be buried

Lyra didn’t dally much like Yu who was spiting the stinky rodents for soaking him wet, she went ahead and dispatched whatever remaining functional Spalax, making short work of them

“Great job, now their probably all dead, we just need to dig and get that treasure, hopefully it’s still in one piece though”

Yu knew he would risk causing a cave in but he knew no other way to get them out or go in himself, he thought about smoking them out but they probably had a lot of ventilation systems underground, if he tried washing them out he would need too much water that he couldn’t get in without making it look obvious

“Guess it’s time to find the truth” Said Yu as he stepped into the moist earth ready to unreath- “Wuu Wuuu Wuuuu”

“Hmm, what is it?” “Wuu Wuu” The wolf started waving its paw in front of its nose as it backed away from Yu

“…...The truth can wait I guess, the shower cannot”