Beast Taming: I'm Really Just a Forest Ranger - Chapter 75: Eyes in the Cave

Chapter 75: Chapter 75: Eyes in the Cave

“You mean, when you were catching fish at the bottom of the lake, you accidentally discovered a pitch-black cave with some strange glowing stuff inside?”

“The brave and fearless you were ready to go inside and take a look, but considering that Cola and I were still waiting for you outside, you decided to bring back the Spirit Fish first and ask for my opinion?”

Chen Yuan propped his chin with one hand, staring at Run Run Duck.

“Quack quack!”

Run Run Duck’s face was serious, nodding solemnly.

That’s right, quack~

Chen Yuan gave the unusually behaving Run Run Duck a suspicious glance but didn’t dwell too much on it; instead, he murmured to himself, “A mysterious cave connected by an underwater passage beneath Mingyu Lake, how peculiar.”

He had lived here for over twenty years and had never heard of such a thing.

“Was it always there, merely discovered by accident or a result of the landforms changing due to the Spiritual Energy Revival?” he mused to himself.

“Oh well, these questions can be left for geologists to fret over,” Chen Yuan shook his head, then muttered, “Could the glowing thing be some sort of Spirit Plant?”

Unfortunately, Run Run Duck’s description wasn’t detailed, leaving him with no more information.

Suddenly,

Chen Yuan’s eyes lit up, “Oh right, don’t I have an action camera? Let Duck take it into the cave to investigate.”

With this in mind, Chen Yuan looked at Run Run Duck, who was boasting to Cola about its bravery in the mysterious cave, and said, “Duck, do you want to go again?”

“Quack?”

Run Run Duck’s voice stopped abruptly, it turned its head stiffly to look at Chen Yuan, its expression wooden, with a somewhat forced smile.

But when it saw both Cola and Chen Yuan looking at it full of expectation, a weird wave of courage surged from deep within its heart, making Run Run Duck pat its chest instantly, eyes bright: “Quack quack!”

Leave it to Duck!

However, when Chen Yuan turned to ask Spark to return to the farm to retrieve the action camera, Run Run Duck’s legs involuntarily trembled slightly.

“Chirp~”

Spark nodded gently, then spread its wings and flew towards the farm.

Then, Chen Yuan looked at Run Run Duck, who was doing deep breaths repeatedly, and laughed, “You don’t need to go into that dark land passage, you just need to expose your head on the water surface and use the camera to film that glowing thing.”

“You don’t even need to come out of the water.”

“Quack.”

Run Run Duck continued patting its chest, the legs that had been trembling now stood firmly on the ground, the eyes showing a determination to complete the mission.

Before long,

Spark returned with the action camera in its beak, handing it to Chen Yuan.

This action camera came with a neck-mounted bracket and a waterproof case. Chen Yuan hung it around Duck’s neck. Duck didn’t need to operate anything for it to record from Duck’s immersive first-person perspective.

Staring at Run Run Duck adorned with the action camera, Chen Yuan rubbed his chin, suddenly having a thought: “If I posted Duck’s underwater first-person view online, it might go viral, right?”

But he was only thinking about it; Chen Yuan was currently not willing to do such time-consuming and labor-intensive things.

“Duck, I leave this matter to you.”

“But if you encounter an emergency, don’t think about anything else. Safety first, Cola, and I will wait for you on the shore,” Chen Yuan said seriously.

“Howl howl~”

Cola also barked a few times, reminding its good friend to be safe.

A warm feeling surged within Run Run Duck’s heart, but it just played with its hair, showing a calm expression: “Quack quack~”

It’s a piece of cake.

Plop~

Run Run Duck jumped into the water, its silhouette quickly vanishing.

As it dived underwater again, Run Run Duck wasn’t distracted by the fish; instead, it directly swam into the patch of aquatic plants from before, the deep underwater tunnel appearing in its sight.

Following the underwater tunnel forward, it wasn’t long before Run Run Duck reached the previous mysterious cave, but it merely stayed beneath the surface and didn’t poke its head out.

“Quack quack…”

Run Run Duck recalled the chilly breeze from before and this eerie dark cave, constantly feeling like a pair of eyes were watching it from the darkness, its legs trembling slightly again.

I’m so scared quack.

But remembering the promise it made to Chen Yuan, Run Run Duck shook its head vigorously, trying hard to shake off these messy thoughts.

I’m the brave and fearless Duck.

Run Run Duck regained its composure, mustered up the courage to surface, and poked its little head out to cautiously look around. Seeing nothing unusual, it finally breathed a sigh of relief.

After that,

Run Run Duck crawled onto the ground, its wet webbed feet leaving triangular water marks, turning its body to direct the camera hanging around its neck towards the glowing object.

It waited for quite a while, ensuring that the action camera had captured the glowing object before it peeked towards the dark tunnel leading to who knows where.

Run Run Duck was undeniably scared, but curiosity drove it to unconsciously head in that direction.

“Ribbit!”

Suddenly, a peculiar sound rang out like thunder in its ears, promptly followed by a pair of fluorescent orange eyes quietly appearing in the darkness.

Run Run Duck snapped back to reality, its eyes bulging wide, letting out a startled cry: “Quack quack quack!”

Duck’s gonna get eaten!

The next moment, Run Run Duck turned around and fled, diving into the water with an extremely practiced posture, splashing waves of water.

“Ribbit?”

…

“What happened?”

Chen Yuan looked at the panic-stricken Run Run Duck that returned to shore, asking with concern, “Did you encounter something in the cave?”

“Quack quack.”

Run Run Duck patted its chest repeatedly until its frightened heart gradually calmed down, only then realizing that its carefully crafted brave and fearless image had completely collapsed.

Duck almost cried but still took off the action camera from its neck, handing it to Chen Yuan.

Then, it solemnly stared at Chen Yuan: “Quack quack quack!”

You must be careful, there’s something very scary inside.

Chen Yuan nodded, opened the video, and began watching, the three little ones crowding their heads closer.

The underwater scene at the beginning wasn’t surprising, but once Run Run Duck swam into the underwater passageway and reached the mysterious cave, Chen Yuan’s expression changed.

When the glowing thing appeared in the footage, Chen Yuan squinted his eyes, scrutinizing closely: “It looks a bit like a mushroom, so it really could be a Spirit Plant?”

After that,

Accompanied by a “Ribbit” sound, a pair of eyes appeared.

And towards the end of the video, the footage began to shake violently, allowing Chen Yuan to vividly imagine Run Run Duck’s panicked escape.

“The sound should be from a frog.”

“Clearly, this cave not only has what appears to be Spirit Plant mushrooms but also a frog that might be a Pet Beast.”

Chen Yuan analyzed briefly, then decisively sent the video to Chen Wenhao: “Bro, help me identify what the mushrooms and the source of the sound in there could be?”

As a first-term research student at the Donghuang Beast Taming Academy Headquarters, Chen Yuan was confident that with his brother’s skills, analyzing this video wouldn’t be a problem.