‘Now then …’ Alex observed the situation around him, ‘This is interesting. Although I don’t recognize the layout, there must be some hidden mechanism here, since … the flat stone below me that’s shaped like a door is, in fact, a door. Or an entrance.’

He jumped down from the rock formation and began pacing around again, ‘It’s impossible that this is some kind of a secret tomb full of treasures no one from the school had noticed throughout the years. That means, this might be a part of the competition the kids are having … or maybe it’s just a sealed … no, not sealed – this thing here is a pressure plate! Ok, kiddo! Let’s open this thing!’

Alex grew excited and even Reino noticed it, but unfortunately stepping on the stone did nothing.

‘I’m absolutely positive this is not a regular rock, but a processed stone slate. But why … right, there must be more of these! I’m getting rusty – there is no excuse for missing out the obvious.’ Alex thought and began to pace around the area again.

He ignored Reino’s shouts some of which sounded like threats and soon found another stone slate hidden between few other rocks, similar to the first one.

‘F*ck!’ Alex cursed when stepping on the second slate didn’t do anything, ‘I can’t be in two places at the same time and I can’t do anything with these paws either … ok, owner! Time for you to shine!’

He went over to Reino who thought they finally were going to leave this place, grabbed corner of his trousers and pulled towards one of the pressure plates.

Luckily his owner, even though he was a child, has been curious enough about spiritbeasts to understand they had highly developed intellect, especially the higher ranked ones, and had reason for their actions. Thus, even though his pet was only a rank two blackrock wolf, he immediately got curios. It even looked funny how the wolf pulled him to a spot where it was standing just a moment ago, then ran over to another place, jumped up and down, and howled in dissatisfaction.

Indeed, Alex was not amused at all.

‘Why the hell it doesn’t work?’ He cursed to himself, ‘Ok. If I was an old man living in a medieval world full of weird beasts and wanted to torture my descendants, what would I do? … right! Two pressure plates are not enough! And since this is a formation somewhat similar to Feng shui, the plates would be positioned according to the cardinal directions!’

The two plates they were currently standing on were located in axis east-west with the rock slate that should be a door in the middle. Obviously there were not many options where the rest of the pressure plates were located.

After barking at Reino for him to stay put, Alex searched southern and northern side and quickly found two more.

‘Since people and animals can run here around freely, it is unlikely one must step on the plates in particular order. Probably they needed to be activated at the same time.’ Alex thought.

But here it got tricky. While he could make his owner to stand on a particular spot, he couldn’t activate the other spots. No, wait! He could! He even had the brute workforce for that!

Reino was not a rocket scientist, but was not stupid either. He quickly realized there was something with the spots his wolf was sniffing around and soon discovered that the rock he was standing on was peculiarly loose. It took some time for Alex to explain Reino he needed to move a larger rock and put it on that particular spot, but after several minutes of pulling him by trousers and even biting a couple of times, the kid finally got the idea.

After the first rock was positioned, things went much smoother. Reino, covered in perspiration, obediently carried larger rocks to the spots Alex pointed at and right after the fourth rock was put down, both of them heard a light cracking sound somewhere in the middle of the rock formation.

Alex was not too surprised when the entrance didn’t immediately appear, ‘Alright, now that the lock is open, we need to find the door handle.’

Since after the cracking sound nothing happened, Reino’s excitement quickly cooled down, but seeing his wolf not giving up, he continued to observe it.

Of course, Alex realized that the ‘door handle’ had to be another mechanism, but since this was some kind of a test for students, it had to be somehow different from the first part. After carefully observing surroundings, he came closer to the rock he guessed was the entrance.

Already earlier he thought he smelled something there and now, after concentrating on that scent, he found that it kept coming from four different sides of that rock.

‘So that’s how it is! I must say, having a dog’s nose is quite convenient and extremely humiliating at the same time.’ He thought and began to dig with his paws.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Unfortunately he was still too small and the effect was minuscule, therefore he barked towards his little owner and made him dig in his stead. Soon they found a rolled up leather strap, maybe half a meter long. By lightly pulling it one could feel some kind of mechanism activating somewhere below surface, but nothing happened after that.

When Reino saw his pet starting to dig on another side of the rock, he guessed its intention and with joint effort they quickly dug up four such leather straps.

‘Let me guess – we have to pull them all at the same time. But we need four people once more since these things are too short.’ Alex was about to curse again, but forced himself to calm down. This was not the first time in his lives he had to improvise, it’s just that the thirst he felt made him extremely irritable.

Under the tired, but curios eyes of his owner, Alex pondered a bit and then began exploring the surroundings once again. Soon he found what he was looking for and Reino saw the wolf pulling towards him a thin, long branch, tall as a grown man.

This time Reino immediately understood the pup’s intention. He grabbed the branch from wolf’s teeth and brought it to the rock. Then he tied two of the leather straps to that branch. Afterwards he helped to find another branch and tied the remaining two straps to that.

“I guess you want both of us to pull these things at the same time, right?” Reino asked the wolf, but the latter only barked back as if cursing him, grabbed one of the branches and pulled.

Reino immediately followed the example and the large flat rock they had between them suddenly sunk in a bit and after few seconds with a loud thud fell into the ground.

A minute later when the dust settled and the two could finally see the fruits of their hard work. To Alex’s deep disappointment the room below was smaller than a public restroom in a gas station and there was only a small stone altar in the far end.

‘Seriously?’ He was in disbelief, ‘Not even a wall painting or scary skeletal remains of a mysterious ancestor. Sigh, at least the kid got something. I hope he learned from the previous experience and won’t show off.’

Reino indeed learned from what happened during the encounter with Bullco. After throwing a quick glance around, he jumped in the hole, grabbed the four beast cores that were on the stone altar, stuffed in his pockets and climbed back out, his eyes shining with excitement.

“It was amazing! You are so smart!” He exclaimed and wanted to pet his wolf only to get immediately bitten back, “Alright, alright! I understand, I won’t do that again. Let’s go back – the sun is setting and we’ll find it hard to find our way back soon.”

But to his surprise the wolf pup refused to follow him and for some reason indicated he wanted to go the west.

“Don’t tell me … there is another spot, just like this one?” Reino’s excitement grew and he immediately followed his little pet.

Even though the left coiling dragon’s eye was not that far, the sky was beginning to turn dark when they got there. Nevertheless they only needed to repeat what they did earlier so it didn’t take long before Reino climbed out from the hole all dirty and tired, but with a blissful smile on his face.

This time Alex didn’t intend to hang around the dark woods and seeing his owner was lost, cursed him a bit for not being able to discern the cardinal directions while the sun was setting right in front of him and led the way back. Soon after they met a student couple, who ‘picked them up’ and conveniently had a legitimate reason for being late.

When they arrived at the academy, Alex saw students gathering around large bonfires erected on the meadow below the hill while their families sat on the slope enjoying the view. Near the pond there were few elders who kept registering the results of the latecomers and since Reino also had few beast cores to turn in, to the big surprise of the students who escorted him, he also joined the queue.

For Alex seeing the pond was the last straw. He ran inside not caring for the rest of the world and while standing neck deep in the water continuously drank. The cute sight caused quite a few laughs from the surrounding students, while Reino got reprimanded to take better care of his pet and could only awkwardly scratch his head.

If he had to be honest with himself, Reino would’ve gladly followed his wolf’s example and jumped into the pond. Unfortunately he had to behave properly because not only his parents were watching from the darkness while sitting somewhere on the hill, there were many academy elders around and he wanted to leave a good impression.

“Next!” The elder responsible for registering results called out.

Finally it was Reino’s turn and he clumsily with trembling hands fished out the eight beast cores with the academy markings from his pockets and put them on the table and the crowd that was curiously watching the proceedings gasped in shock.

‘You see kiddo, this is the embarrassment of an underachiever. You only got eight bubbles! Even the two lovers who escorted us out got each at least trice the amount even though they mostly spend time doing anything but searching. And the old judge dude looks angry – I bet it’s not your first time failing.’ Alex shook his head with a sigh. Even though the bubbles they found were a tad bigger, they still found only eight.

“What the hell is this?” Elder angrily barked, “Where the hell did you get those? And who the hell are you?”

He had been the elder of academy for decades, but saw this child for the first time.

Reino panicked for a split second, but then clenched his fists and bravely said, “I’m Reino Sildren! Elder Jintoro told me to take part in this exercise to gain experience.”

“What? Elder Jintoro is not even in the aca...”Elder’s retort was interrupted when he saw Reino fishing out a stone token from his pocket.

“Alright, we’ll get back to that. Tell me, Reino Sildren, who gave you these beast cores?” Elder became much more polite after seeing the token.

“I … I found them!” Reino stuttered.

“Boy, you want to tell me that while even the best of our students could only find rank three beast cores, you and your wet rank two wolf found eight rank four? Hahaha! This is the joke of the year!” Elder’s loud laughter attracted the attention of the surrounding crowd and even the parents and relatives sitting on the hill began to stretch their necks trying to see what was going on here.

“I …” Reino didn’t know what to say.

While he knew he found rank four beast cores, he didn’t know that was such a big deal and what was even worse, he was not used to being in the center of attention of large crowds.

His head began to spin and vision swam, when a familiar elderly voice brought him back to his senses, “What’s going on here?”