77 Explore More Expect Least
‘Hm? Where was this wretched bear heading to?’
Eren reflected on this as he looked at the ground where the Ironskin Bear’s corpse had previously been. He had clearly remembered the bear running in a different direction from where he stood at the time. The fact that it was here without the mammoth on its tail told him something significant.
First, the bear had taken care of the mammoth in some way, either injuring him or shaking him off his track. And second, the direction he had run in was a diversion.
The bear didn’t want the mammoths to chase him in this region which was not too far away from their territory.
‘There’s a lair of this beast somewhere.’
Eren concluded as he pondered while looking down. He then jumped 5 meters in the air and started looking all around him. To see if there was something he could check on.
After a bunch of jumps in different directions, Eren had a few spots in his mind he could check out. However, the closest among them was the stone platform he had climbed on earlier.
‘Let’s check it out.’
Eren thought to himself and retraced his steps. He started walking in a circle around the platform to see if he could see anything.
He then cast his mana sense and found out that the large stone’s unique mana-conducting properties were not letting him scan the area the way it should have been scanned by him.
‘Maybe that’s why that wretched bear chose this place.’
Eren reflected on this as he used his mana sense patiently in the surroundings, ignoring the disturbance the stone platform was causing in his mind. He soon got his reward for perseverance.
‘There it is.’
The stone platform had a length of 100 meters and a breadth of 40 meters with its height measuring around 3 meters on one side and around 1 meter on the other. So it looked like a stone ramp in the middle of the prairie.
There was an underground space under the stone ramp that Eren couldn’t access. The bear must have been using his earth-element spells to get in and out of the underground space. He obviously couldn’t do that since he didn’t have any earth-element spell in his arsenal.
However, there was a way around it.
There was a small entrance to the underground space. It was at the top of the ramp that Eren had previously overlooked. It was serving as the vent for that place, ensuring the bear had breathable air even with all the entrances sealed.
Eren quickly climbed onto the stone platform and looked at the entrance. There was just enough room for him to get down. He only hoped that the vent wouldn’t get narrower towards the end. Otherwise, he’d be stuck in a very awkward situation.
‘Explore more. Expect the least.’
A thought rippled in Eren’s head as he decided to check the place out. Getting into the duct, he slid his way towards the underground area. The vent was large enough to ensure seamless entry into the underground space.
Light!
As Eren was being dropped on the ground from the duct that was 3 meters above the ground, this was the first thing that entered his mind. He found himself to be standing at the corner of the underground space.
The sealing of the underground space was studded with yooperlite stones, which were exuding a faint white and yellow luminescence. They allowed for clear and glare-free visibility.
The space was one giant underground hall with various runes on the three walls making their presence known with faint breathing lights. It was the same size and structure as the stone ramp above it, making one wonder if the stone ramp was carved out from this place before flipping it upside down to be used as the carved-out space’s ceiling and protection.
Eren had come to realize that this was not a naturally occurring underground cave he was in.
This place had been constructed by someone or something with a particular intention in their mind. Nobody would build such a place just so that a bear would live inside it one day with all his stolen merch.
Eren’s eyes shone with greed as he sensed the bear’s stash located on the other side of the corner. This was near the wall that didn’t look as if it was solid. The bear must be using the earth-element spell on that side, allowing him to enter and exit the place at ease.
Eren almost disappeared from his place and appeared at the pile of bear’s stash he had been looting from various places off of everyone he could loot.
The Ironskin Bear had a lot of things in his stash. Some of them looked scrappy and unusable. However, scrap wasn’t the only thing in that pile.
There were skeletons of five adventurers inside it too with one or two of their limbs missing. They didn’t look like they were killed by the bear because some of them still had the weapons that killed them stuck in their respective ribcage and neckbones.
‘Damn. That bear was a scavenger.’
Eren thought to himself as he started looking through the items of fortune he had found for himself. Even the grim sight of the skeletal remains of adventurers did not deter him from claiming these fortunes as his.
There was still a relatively fresh corpse lying in that pile of corpses. It was the corpse of an adventurer that looked to be in his late 40s. He had black hair and a muscular physique. He had worn heavy armor that made him look even bulkier than he already was. Eren could sense that he still had his Identity-Rune intact on him.
This human male was a Meta ranker. As such, his body wouldn’t decay like mortals. There was no deathly stench either. The rotting process would be delayed in Meta rankers’ bodies.
If Eren were to ignore the ranker’s pale skin, no life sign, and residual mana signature, the dead ranker looked like he was taking a nap there with his arm missing. Still, Eren believed that the man must have died a month ago.
Before searching through the bear’s scraps, Eren decided to check out the things the man might have stored in his storage. Eren used his mana sense to remove the mana signature associated with I-Rune.
Since the guy was dead with no consciousness left in his body and no mana signature getting supplied to his I-Rune, it was obvious that it had been a while since the corpse was deteriorating.
I-Rune storage could only remain on the ranker for a limited period after their deaths. The runic imprint over the rankers’ bodies would disperse as the bodies kept on rotting and the spatial space inside it would collapse eventually.
Eren wanted to check the man’s storage space without removing anything, fearing any movement might make the I-Rune tattoo unsteady.
“What do we have here?”