"Hey! Jimmy, wait for me, what's the rush?"
Rick Jones, a burly man with a full beard, wearing an army-green vest, pulled a leather-bound notebook from his backpack and shouted to his companion, who was holding a torch and eager to enter the tomb: "Let me make a record before we go in."
"Fool, only the first Explorer to enter a tomb is remembered by the world; you must never tamper with this fact in your exploration log."
Rick's companion, Jimmy Fox, a slender man in a canvas jacket, pointed to himself and said, "The first Explorer to enter the Gnome King's tomb is me, Jimmy Fox!"
"Ah-ha... No problem, all I'm interested in is the treasure in the tomb."
After casually placing his backpack by the tomb entrance, Rick Jones waved his hairy, muscular arm, magnanimously yielding the point.
By the time Rick Jones had finished his record and entered the tomb with his torch, his companion, Jimmy, had already gone deeper into the tomb's pit of corpses.
"Huh? Why does the lamp oil on these stone statues look like it was just added recently?"
Rick was curious about the green flames flickering in the statues' eye sockets. He went closer to examine them and noticed something strange.
"Could it be that someone else found this place before we arrived?"
A sense of unease immediately spread through Rick Jones's heart like a mist.
But just at that moment, a sharp scream suddenly echoed from deep within the tomb.
"Ah!!!"
"That's Jimmy's scream! Hey, old pal, what's wrong with you?"
The scream confirmed the unease in Rick Jones's heart. He frowned deeply and quickly turned and ran in the direction of the sound.
"Jimmy? Are you alright?"
He quickly reached the edge of the pit of corpses and noticed Jimmy's torch lying on the ground. Jimmy was lying motionless, face down, as if he had fainted. In the darkness beyond the torchlight, some creature was extending long tentacles, grabbing one of Jimmy's legs, and dragging him deeper into the gloom.
"Damn it, let him go!"
Rick Jones quickly unslung the double-barreled shotgun from his back, jumped down the steps with the gun, and rushed in that direction.
But the tentacle was unmoved; instead, it sped up, dragging Jimmy, and was about to pull him completely into the darkness. Rick quickly raised his shotgun, knelt on one knee, and fired at the part of the tentacle hidden in the darkness.
With a loud bang, the gunshot echoed in the vast pit.
The bullet hit its target, and the monster shrieked in pain. Its long tentacle, as if electrocuted, released Jimmy's ankle and retracted into the darkness.
"Oh, no."
Rick Jones quickly pounced on his motionless companion. But when he turned Jimmy's body over, the two ghastly, bloody holes where Jimmy's eyes had been startled him. These were blood holes left by some sharp, hard object forcibly piercing both eyes, not only shattering the eyeballs but also crushing the bones around the eye sockets. The hard object had forced its way into Jimmy's skull, crushing the brain matter inside as well.
No one could survive such injuries...
"No!" Rick saw the horrific state of his companion's death and let out a heart-wrenching cry.
...
The monster, after being hit by the shotgun, did not leave. It had been hiding in the darkness, biding its time, harboring intentions towards Rick Jones. It slithered its tentacles, making rustling sounds in the darkness.
"Beast, I'll kill you! I will slaughter you!" Rick Jones roared furiously, his eyes bloodshot, and raised his gun, firing in the direction of the sound.
Bang! This shot missed its target.
"Bastard!"
With his double-barreled shotgun empty, Rick Jones cursed and reached into his pocket for ammunition. But the monster hidden in the darkness was very clever. It seized this opening, and before Rick could reload his shotgun, it swiftly shot out a long tentacle from afar, striking furiously at Rick.
Rick Jones had no choice but to dodge first. Next, the monster's tentacles continuously struck at Rick Jones, forcing his opponent to dodge and preventing him from reloading his shotgun. The Explorer had no choice but to abandon his companion's body for now, fleeing from the tomb in a frantic, undignified scramble under the monster's attack.
...
The monster gave up the chase after Rick escaped the tomb, seemingly eager to return to the tomb to feast on Jimmy's body.
Rick Jones fled all the way to the pool at the bottom of the cliff before stopping. He gasped for breath for a moment, then his voice suddenly choked.
"If I had gone in a little earlier, Jimmy wouldn't have been harmed."
The burly man blamed himself for his companion's sudden death and angrily slammed his fist into the muddy ground by the riverbank.
After resting for a while, he pulled himself together, began to reload his shotgun, and placed the extra bullets in the easily accessible pockets of his vest.
"I will avenge you!"
But when he returned to the Gnome King's tomb, filled with a thirst for vengeance, he found his companion Jimmy's body in the pit of corpses. It had been skinned—a bloody, mangled corpse, haphazardly discarded. The killer, however, had vanished without a trace.
Rick frantically searched the pit of corpses for the murderous monster, but he couldn't even find a shadow of it. During his search, he noticed the white stone coffin in the center of the pit. He tried to open the stone coffin, but the lid seemed to weigh a thousand pounds and wouldn't budge. Even shooting the coffin with his shotgun couldn't leave a single bullet hole on its surface.
Rick Jones ultimately had no choice but to give up and first carried Jimmy's bloody corpse back to the wooden cabin they had built on the cliff above.
The next day, Rick took his hunting dog and once again went to the tomb and surrounding areas to search for the monster—he suspected the monster was hiding in the woods. But after a round of searching, there was still no result.
As dusk fell, he could only return to the cliffside cabin in disappointment. He first dug a pit not far from the cabin, and as he was about to return to drag his companion's body for burial, his hunting dog seemed to sense something and began barking towards the cabin.
Rick was alert, but after checking inside the house, he found nothing unusual. Having been hit by the death of his companion and continuously searching for the monster for the past two days, Rick felt physically and mentally exhausted and dejected. He just wanted to rest well. He lay down on the bed and fell asleep not long after.
But he had barely fallen asleep when he was woken by a frantic dog bark. His hunting dog, tied outside the house, seemed to have encountered something.
Rick quickly got up, lit a torch, and went outside. The hunting dog had its leash, tied to the doorframe, pulled taut, and was straining with all its might in one direction. And when he looked in that direction, he saw a dark shadow flash and disappear into the jungle.
"Well, well, I was looking for you, and you came knocking on my door."
Rick assumed it was the monster that killed Jimmy. He spat hatefully, unleashed his hunting dog to track the target, and then hurried back into the house to retrieve his double-barreled shotgun.
The dog's barking guided Rick, and following the sound, he quickly reached the edge of the cliff. He noticed the intruder's figure standing far off at the edge of the cliff. Just as he was about to raise his shotgun to fire, the figure turned to face him and leaned backward off the cliff's edge.
"Oh no, my Bob!"
And Rick's hunting dog—'Big Bob'—lay dying at the edge of the cliff, its eyes filled with a longing for life as it looked at its owner. This hunting dog, which had accompanied Rick and Jimmy for nearly half a year, clearly wouldn't survive either.
"No!"
Overcome with emotion, Rick was now completely convinced that the dog-killer was indeed the tomb monster. He solemnly swore on the cliff that he would not leave this jungle until he had avenged his companions.