It's been almost 2 days since the outsider went in the mines. Ink had started to believe that he had died. Not like he cared.

  The mines weren't dangerous except for some creatures and the occasional vein collapsing.

  Rainbow crystals were a form of solidified aether and some animals loved to feed on them.

  Almost all of them were weak as rainbow crystal contained a very small amount of aether. It was of no use to stronger ones.

  Many of them were quite afraid of humans and lived in hiding.

  Since the crystals were ample, there were no conflicts with humans for it.

  But sometimes, a few attacked the miners, craving there flesh.

  There were around 40-50 deaths due to them every year.

  While the Mine squad could go inside and get rid of them, the creatures were quick and very good at hiding. It was not worth the effort to hunt them, since their were a lot of them.

  And they personally didn't care for the miners. They were easily replaceable.

  This village cluster was big and had a population of around ten thousand. Among which the females were less than 30%.

  The reason for such low numbers was that families preferred boys over girls. Girls didn't bring any money into the family and were a liability. So they killed them the moment they were born.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  With a large working population, the mines were guaranteed to keep working for years.

  Sometimes heroes do rise up for the people, but they were killed in secret and the people kept moving on.

  Ink in his 13 year duty has only seen a few of these creatures. They looked like centipedes, albeit a bit larger. They were easily as big as a human arm and had claws like crabs. They had a hard exoskeleton that was reddish in color.

  Their claws had the strength to crush rainbow crystals and human bones easily.

  They once experimented how they attacked and sent a miner to a vein where they were often seen.

  After a few hours, they sensed it, crawling on the roof of the cave. The centipede sneaked up to the miner who had no idea of its presence and quickly cut their nape and entered their body.

  What happened next was mind blowing!

  The miner started to jump into towards the end of the vein. He was screaming, but still kept jumping towards what they believed was its nest.

  They suspected that the centipede takes over the nervous system through its spinal cord. Why do the victims jump and not walk was still unexplained.

  As the victim reached the end, he started to claw the wall. The miner, still conscious kept trying to pull his hands back but to no avail.

  After a few hours, they sensed that the miner died. But the body still kept clawing. The tips of the fingers were gone as if someone mashed them after clawing at stones for so long. But the body didn't cared and kept clawing.

  After some time, they saw that the centipede had digged a hole wide enough for the body to fit through. The length of the hole was just a few inches.

  It seems that these centipedes had created a hive right besides the wall of the mines for easier transport of food!

  No wonder these things were so good at hiding. They suspected that their were small holes everywhere in the shadows for them to run and hide into.

  The body then squeezed into the hole as much as it could and was then pulled through by the centipedes into its nest.

  The experiment was successful. They had seen enough and also located a nest.

  The squad then debated should they attack or not.

  They decided to leave it alone. These creatures were all grade 1 and lived socially. Fighting against a lot of them in a narrow cave was a death sentence. No one in the squad would endanger their life for some worthless mortals.

  They had heard a rumor that there was a Grade 3 monster here and they didnt want to verify it.

  Monsters are classified into Grades from 1-9, Grade 1 being the weakest.

  A Grade 3 monster is equal to a Senior in human terms.

  Their Mine Head is a beginner elder, but he was not here with them. When they first heard that their head is an Elder, they were shocked.

  Elders were quite important and sending one to a average village was just stupid. So they fully believed the Grade 3 monster rumor and the reason the Elder was here was incase that monster comes out and destroy the mines.

  How did the government knew there was a Grade 3 monster here? He didn't care. The transcendent world was mysterious and full of strange abilities.