Chapter 54: First one

"Eren!" Sierra waved at him. Sitting beside her on the log was a man with black, buzz cut hair and a sparkly clean smile as if he was a model for some kind of toothpaste commercial.

His facial features looked mature, though his clean-shaved face and over-all neat countenance made him look younger than he really was.

"Ah, is this our last party member?" the man asked. "Hi. My name is Ormann."

Eren shook his hand and gave him a cordial introduction.

"What are we doing?" he asked them. They looked to be just about ready to move somewhere.

"We’re going on a mission to find more sunspores," answered Sky. She was a perky girl with a ponytail. This was the first time he’d heard her speak.

"Ormann found an undiscovered Burrow that hasn’t been ransacked by the others," Sierra added.

"I’m actually surprised that he was able to find something that Pang Cai’s goons haven’t yet explored," said Abe.

Eren noticed that Sierra and the others tended to look at Ormann with a lot of admiration. It was an... interesting dynamic.

"How did you guys know each other?"

"He’s the one who approached us when we entered the Main Camp and made us feel welcome," Sierra explained. "Without him, we would have been totally clueless about what to do."

"We’re still clueless now," said Abe. "While we’re sitting here and recovering our Psions, he’s out there scouting the Burrows to see any potential tunnels that we could go through. And now, he found a treasure trove of sunspores!"

"You found one? Why haven’t you harvested them yourself?" Eren asked, genuinely curious.

"He was waiting for us so that we could divide it amongst ourselves," answered Sky.

Ormann laughed awkwardly at her flattery. "No, to be honest, the sunspores are guarded by some traps that I’m not confident of traversing by myself. But with a group like this, I’m sure that we can go through it with ease.

We should leave soon. We wouldn’t want someone to get there ahead of us. You all have your Psions recovered, right?"

Paul, Bernadette, Tori, Abe, Sky, and Henry, and Sierra along with Ormann got up off their seats, ready and excited for their upcoming mission. They advanced forwards, with Eren and Celeste behind just a few steps.

"So... what did you talk about with Pang Cai?" Celeste asked him, hands behind her back as she walked with him side by side.

"I bought some Skyward Herbs," he replied truthfully.

She gave him a look. "With what money? We don’t have any sunspores—"

A sudden roar of murmuring around them stopped their conversation short, allowing Eren to avoid the topic about his unexplained acquisition of ’new’ sunspores.

"What’s happening?" Sierra asked.

They couldn’t see anything yet. However, they did see the direction that people’s heads turned towards. And it seemed that the source of all of this commotion was the hundreds of Burrows in the darkness.

Beyond the campfire, there was a sprawling landscape of tiered cliff faces that contained hundreds upon hundreds of caves, each leading to the different tunnels of the Subterranean Burrows.

According to those who ventured through these Burrows, some of those cave entrances diverged into different paths, further deeper into the maze. Some, also converged into a single place.

There were so many Burrows and possible paths that there was still a large portion of the maze that had yet been explored.

Everyone’s attention turned towards one of the cave entrances in the middle of the cliff’s facet.

Or more accurately, everyone turned their heads towards the person emerging from that tunnel.

"Magnus," Ormann muttered with a serious tone. "He’s conquered a Burrow."

Sierra’s mouth opened, shocked. "You mean..."

"Yeah. He broke through a Concrete Block."

"How did you know?" Eren asked.

Ormann pointed at Magnus’ wrist. There was now a red arm band wrapped around it, with its bright color contrasting with the blackness of his body suit.

"Only those who have passed the test will obtain those arm bands," Ormann explained. "He’s the first one to do so."

Magnus walked briskly as he entered the light of the campfire. And it seemed that the flickering fire reflecting off his face attracted some flies. The other examinees approached Magnus, offering him their congratulations. Sycophants.

Currying favor with the leading star of the License Exam was the most sensible thing to do, after all.

Magnus was being shown all kinds of applause and laudations, which he accepted with bright smiles and effortless shrugs of his shoulder.

"We should hurry," Ormann said to the group. "The faster we get those sunspores, the earlier we can challenge the Burrows. Then, it’ll be our chance to pass the test."

His inspiring words imbued encouragement in the group’s eyes.

>>>

>>>

>>>

They ventured towards the massive cliff faces, scaling its walls using the pillar-like protrusions from its face. Ormann led the group into a tunnel obscured from the line of sight of the campfire down below.

"It’s inside here," Ormann said. "This Burrow has been explored before, but I found a secret tunnel that hasn’t been found. That’s where the sunspores will be."

Ormann positioned himself at the front, with Paul, Abe and Henry at the sides, protecting the women at the center. They tried to include Celeste with Sierra and the others, but she declined and stayed at the back with Eren.

The interior of this Burrow was much the same as with the tunnel they walked through before. Rough stone floor, cool suffocating walls, arcing ceiling, and pure darkness enveloping all around them.

But there was one striking difference.

This time, Eren and Celeste saw signs that this place had been explored before. A trail of broken sunspore. They laid there, scattered on the ground like cigarette butts. There must have been twenty of them here just by the entrance.

Eren discreetly bent down and picked them up one by one. It was like seeing gold just laying on the street. His joy and excitement grew as he amassed more and more sunspores as they walked further deeper into the Burrow.