Within the empty clearing of earth in the middle of the field a newly dressed and washed Yu was standing with a shovel in hand, Lyra was behind him with a grumpy look on her face dejectedly looking at the dirt in blame

“Haaa that was a great shower, now it’s time to get to work, this treasure aint gonna dig itself out”

Yu started to shovel the soft dirt out while he hummed about, the wolf growled at her master before hesitantly following suite and digging the sludgy ground

They used cross shaped wood to keep the dirt from caving in, nine meters wasn’t that long of a distance when you had a plus sized wolf digging down with resentment, thus it only took Yu about ten hours before they hit a smooth rocky surface

“There was a cave underneath?”

This meant that not all the Spalaxes were dead, they could be staying in the cave

“Well they are rodents so only some of them may have stayed here, plus the treasure could be down there too”

Yu unsummoned Lyra and climbed up using the rope he had set for bringing up the dirt buckets, digging through rock needed quite the effort and some new equipment, so he covered up the hole and gathered some rocks to fill his bag as a decoy before heading to the cities privet baths after dropping his stuff at the hotel

“Haaaa”

Yu let out a breath as he submerged himself in hot water, there was nothing more enjoyable than a hot bath after some hard work

“Hmm?” Yu felt a tugging at his mind, it was a weird feeling as if something wanted to get out but at the same time get in, he felt quite confused at first but then the tugging disappeared while some feelings were transmitted to him

‘Just now, was it Lyra that communicated with me?’

He heard of the strength between a Guardian and the Grimoire holder before but it was the first time he experienced the feelings of his own directly, he didn’t know what caused the sudden spike in his bond but he was happy nonetheless

Thus he summoned Lyra to celebrate but as soon as the hexagram was complete the emerging wolf jumped right into the bath causing no small amount of water to splash about

Yu was surprised to see Lyra scrubbing her paws together in water, she seemed pretty upset as she tenaciously rubbed the dirt out of her paws

‘Oh crap I forgot she had been digging all day’ Remembering Lyra’s hard effort and the fact that she dug three quarters of the hole herself made Yu feel quite ashamed of how insensitive he was

Knowing saying anything would only ignite her held back fury Yu instead grabs a rather large brush from the side of the bath and started brushing the dirt off the fur, at which Lyra paused looking back at him and then continued on with her paws, she rubbed them with a lot less resentment now though

‘Hmm guess I will need some stuff to help her groom her fur in the future’

Lyra was his partner, he had been taking care of himself only all this time and forgot that all his summons were just like him, beings with emotions, they weren’t tools or characters from a game which he could use to his advantage, they were living breathing entities who were entitled to freedom just as much as he was

‘Which reminds me, I haven’t let the fish out yet…’

He felt guilty about having remembered his original guardian only now, but looking at the hot water he didn’t if the fish would be able to survive this heat, nor did he know if it would fit in the bathtub, the page only showed a picture of the creature, he did not know how that picture translated into reality

‘When we get to the spring underground I should let it out, if the treasure is a water element one, which I’m pretty sure it is, I might as well give it to it at the time’

Lyra was soon squeaking clean, after which she got out the bath and shook herself dry, then she looked at Yu who was now dirty again and smirked

“Hehe well guess I deserved that huh, alright sleep well, we will be going through rock tomorrow”

Yu then unsummoned Lyra and proceeded to take another shower, then he went ahead and bought some items from the night market and went to sleep, dreaming of shovels and buckets of dirt

….

The next morning Yu was back with his oversized two bags, went through the farm unhindered, and arrived at the covered hole before making his way down and summoning Lyra

“There should be four or maybe three Spring Spalax down there, there can’t be that many since they mostly live in the tunnels, and since their new teeth can’t even bite through tough ground they sure can’t bite through rock”

Saying so Yu heaved his pickaxe above his head and struck down, the sound of cracking accompanied his strike

“I think my shoulder just dislocated”

Yu squeezed the words out of his mouth, he really didn’t put much thought when he swung the pickaxe, now his shoulders and palms were ringing madly from the recoil

But in order to finish the job he braced himself and started making swing after swing, putting as much force as he could in his arms, but even after tens of swings the ground barely cracked

‘Lyra can’t use tools and she obviously can’t dig through this rock, and I can tell this isn’t going anywhere, I need to crack it open one way or another’

Yu thought hard about his options, he could use the rocks weight combined with dropping them from the top of the hole to try and break it with blunt force, but if it could withstand the combined weight of the whole dirt above with all the rocks he threw in how could the rock make a dent?

‘No in that scenario the whole rock bed took the brunt force of the fall, now I’m focusing on one point, it’s quite different’

That was the only thing that came to mind right now, but just as he was about to usommen Lyra and climb out he suddenly heard the sound of crunching from under him

‘?? Is it the Spalax? But I thought they couldn’t go thro- ‘

His thoughts were cut short as the ground beneath him caved, he didn’t have enough time to grasp at the rope before both he and Lyra fell down

“Ahhh!” Splash!

Yu’s scream as he fell down was soon drowned, literary, as they fell into water

Yu didn’t know how to swim so he panicked, but when he felt no current he realized it was probably a lake so he started swimming up, he didn’t get far before a huge shadow came up on him, opining its large mouth to eat him whole

Bum

He heard the muffled sound of something being hit hard, then another maw was aimed at him but this time it grabbed him and pulled him out of the water

“Cough cough, cough! Thank you, that was close”

Lyra grunted ins response, gazing at the walls around her

“What’s wrong?....” Yu lifted his head to ask but soon realized the mess the they were in. Looking at the walls he could see close to ten Spalaxes clinging to the rock with their front feet that had three long and sharp nails, while their back feet looked to be some sort of fins, their teeth was sharper than any of its brothers on the surface, and in place of its useless eyes there were actually gills

“These things aren’t even Spring Spalaxes anymore, this is an entire new species”

Yu really wanted to take a closer look at this new species, the fact that he was probably the first to discover this species gave him some weird sort of pride, but his reverie was interrupted by the sound of splashing water, as he turned to the side he saw the huge maw of the creature that had just tried to swallow him, along with the rest of its body come out, it was twice as big as the other ones clinging to the walls, its teeth sharper, only the blood seeping out of its waist toned down its rather dangerous vibe

“WU!” Lyra taunted the huge Spalax, who sharply turned to her, as did all the other on the wall, seeing as she got their attention she gestured to Yu with her eye then sprinted toward the huge beast

‘Get out of here?’ That is what Yu understood from her but when he looked at the hole all the way to the top of the cave, and the slippery round walls he figured he had no way to get out other than summon the spider to make a rope

‘Bet these boys aint letting us go though, they seem to have lost any timidness their original ancestors had’

The new species of Spalaxes looked ferocious if anything, and seeing the water jets that were spurted at high speed toward Lyra, Yu could tell they were more than a few times stronger than their predecessor as well

‘They don’t seem to be attacking me though, come to think of it they only looked toward Lyra when she made a sound, could it be that they completely switched to a vibration sensory system?’

Fish that lived in dark waters could sense the vibration in water and the flow to tell apart their surroundings, but this place was only dimly lit as the lake itself had some light shining the place at the bottom

‘Right, the possibly spent more time in the tunnels around the cave, thus instead of taking a route to fix their useless eyes they embraced the new system with the other changes, but instead of just water it could be that they used sound or air to sense the transmitted signals’

Yu figured he should put the theory to the test, so he slowly took out a bolt and threw it a bit away from him

Peng , Splash!

The sound of metal hitting earth was soon followed by a high speed water jet, precisely hitting the bolt and breaking it

‘Whoa that’s some deadly pressure’ Even Lyra at the side saw the result which made her dodge even more carefully

‘Sound it is, the feathers had generated just enough airflow not to make a sound but they didn’t respond to that, but their speed and accuracy was terribly great, though as long as I don’t make enough vibrations they probably wouldn’t be able to sense me’

Yu tested his dangerous theory by moving his feet across the earth ever so slowly, not lifting them and steeping but rather sliding them forward, sure enough none of the Spalaxes turned to him

‘I must look like a big rock to them or some plant, now I just need to get Lyra out, well unsummoning her would be enough but then I would make a sound’

Though he could try and chant silently, but that was something he didn’t know how to do before

‘I could only try; I really can’t do anything without alarming everyone one’

So he tried to chant within his mind, he found it pretty hard and hardly pronounced the words in his own mind, though he could normally say them within his mind but when he imbued the purpose of the summon into them he found it harder to think than it is to talk

‘Ugh, I feel dizzy’ He couldn’t complete the chant as a wave of pressure rang through his brain, his failed attempt gave him even more pain

“Wu WU!” Lyra was dodging and trying to grab as much attention as she could get, she also seems to have figured out that they responded to sound and made more noise to try and cover for Yu, uncaring if she brought even more pressure to herself

Seeing this Yu gritted his teeth and tried once more, forcing his mind to chant the words in his head as he bore the painful process, as he did a flickering hexagram quietly started taking shape beneath the moving Lyra, its color seemed pale to its original

“A-“ “WUUU”

Yu almost grunted loudly but Lyra noticed it before the Spalax as she loudly shouted to cover for him, her quick response saved his ass before he exposed himself

‘Damn it!’ Yu clasped his hands over his mouth and started chanting in his head again, he forced his mind to bear even more pain as he tried to go quickly through the process, his efforts were not in vain as the hexagram once again manifested beneath Lyra, it was more clear this time, but it seemed to flicker harder than before, with each flicker Yu felt his mind being tugged hard on, but the hexagram was already almost complete, just as it was about to unsummon Lyra it suddenly flickered out of existence, followed by a gut wrenching pain assaulting Yu, making him almost faint from the his overloaded mind

‘…I can’t..do it..’ Yu could feel that he was at his limit, he knew another bout of this would render him unconscious, to the mercy of the beasts

‘She can’t get near them because that huge one keeps shooting at her from the water edge, with its back to the water like this she could only approach its front, and there is no way she could win against those huge teeth, only by taking out this risk factor would she be able to deal with the rest’

Yu knew this was the only choice, his poison blots wouldn’t help, his shield would not help either, he could only depend on Lyra, and to do so he would have to give her a chance

Seeing as he had only this option Yu grit his teeth hard and started chanting again, this time he didn’t rush, nor did he focus on the words too much, he merely chanted just as he would when used his mouth to portray the words, the pain was still as menacing though, it was unbearable, but he grit his teeth through nonetheless, his fingers dug into his palms, eyes turned red from the pressure his brain was going through, every cell in his body was going against him but he only had one goal in mind, to give Lyra one chance, for it was the only thing he could do

A hexagram materialized beneath Lyra, unlike the previous tries this one had a solid structure and did not flicker, it shifted Lyra out of existence within a second

‘Almost, Almost!’ Not satisfied with just unsummoning Lyra after going through all the pain Yu kept chanting, the words he used this time were ones he had never heard of before, his mind seemed to manifest them on its own, like making a poem on the spot, except in a language he didn’t even know

The hexagram that had been about to disappear suddenly paused, then slowly, ever so slowly it made its way to the large Spalax, once it was directly above it its stricter took a rapid reverse, with it a silhouette came down with an open maw, ripping the Spalaxes neck out

‘Lyra…. This is all I could do… its…up …to you…...’

Yu’s mind was soon devoured by darkness as blood seeped through his mouth, he fell onto the ground with a thud, but no sooner did a shield materialize around him, shielding him form the water jets coming toward him

“AWUU” Seeing her master fall down injured Lyra howled to the sky, but didn’t go to help him up, he was safe within the shield for now and she would not waste the chance he had given her, ten minutes, again she was restricted by this time limit, this time though she would not fail, she could not fail, she will not disappoint her master!

“Awuuuuu” Howling again to the sky Lyra burst off the dead body, and started her battle against the odds