Early the next morning, we ate a quick breakfast and made our way to the Dragon Wonder while the sun was still low behind the Furyu Mountains. The eastern sky was an uneven blend of night and day behind the silhouetted peaks.
Down below, morning mist flowed across the treetops. It looked almost like a river running along the canyon floor, completely obscuring the blanket of green foliage I’d seen the previous day. Occasional updrafts that rippled through the mist’s surface provided only brief unobstructed glimpses of the forest below.
Practically clinging to the precipice walls, we made our way into the canyon along a rock-strewn path just wide enough for one person. Due to my armor’s massive pauldrons, I had to turn sideways and face the wall, crab-walking. Worried that the wind might blow Ponta away, Ariane held the fox tight against her chest.
After painstakingly hugging the wall the whole way down, while also trying to keep my Twilight Cloak from fluttering in the breeze, we finally made it to the cave entrance—about fifty meters from the clifftop. I peeked inside the large opening and was met with darkness so absolute that it seemed to pull me in.
Now standing on a slightly larger outcropping, I pulled back and exhaled deeply.
The cave was about five meters in diameter. Moss-covered stone shelves—what looked like stairs—led deeper inside, toward the canyon floor.
“All sorts of monsters live in here, so keep your guard up.” Ariane pulled a crystal lamp from her rucksack and turned it on, its glow filling the cave.
Chiyome and I retrieved our own crystal lamps and lit them. The light grew brighter, illuminating the cave interior. Even then, it still wasn’t enough to reach the cavern depths. The way forward was nothing but darkness.
With such limited visibility, Dimensional Step would be useless.
Ariane led the way into the cave, holding out her crystal lamp. Chiyome and I followed.
Aside from the occasional chilly breeze blowing from the cave floor, and ominous echoes deep within the cavern, the only sounds that broke the silence were our own footsteps.
In addition to the main path leading down into the cave, multiple smaller paths branched in various directions. Ariane ignored these and continued marching deeper into the darkness.
Looking backward, I could no longer see the entrance.
I raised my crystal lamp, glancing around. “You mentioned something about monsters living here, but I haven’t seen any.”
Just then, Ponta cried out worriedly from where it sat on Ariane’s shoulder. Ariane instantly drew her sword.
“Bats!”
I followed Ariane’s gaze and spotted a meter-tall bat hanging from the ceiling, stretching out its wings to an impressive two-meter span. The creature’s ears resembled gills. Large fangs jutted from its mouth. It let out an eerie cry, and a dozen more bats dropped from the ceiling and flew toward us. They circled in lazy, irregular orbits, occasionally swooping as a group toward Ariane in front or Chiyome behind. I was stuck in the middle as my two companions faced off against the swarm.
“There are so many of them!”
“Kyuuukiiii!”
One bat got too close, and Ariane struck it down with a single blow. Ponta, in a rare show of courage, summoned a blast of wind around Ariane, protecting her by obstructing the bats’ flight paths. Ariane made quick work of any creature caught by the wind, chopping them cleanly in two. I wasn’t sure what inspired Ponta to dive into the fray, but perhaps it had something to do with just how unintimidating the bats were.
“Body to water, liquid shuriken!”
At the back of the party, Chiyome hurled a shuriken of water into an oncoming bat, knocking it to the ground.
Completely ignored by the monsters, I chopped down several bats as they continued their assault on Ariane and Chiyome.
Given how randomly the bats moved, I wasn’t completely confident in my ability to hit them with a magical attack. With my superior reflexes and eyesight, I should have been able to wipe out all of them. Large as my sword was, though, it wasn’t quite long enough to reach the bats as they raced through the air.
Then I recalled a skill I’d used previously to put down a bandit.
“Wyvern Slash!”
I aimed at the bats flying above us and let loose an invisible attack. A second later, severed wings fell to the ground. It was a pretty effective mid-range attack skill, but it was also incredibly risky, since my allies couldn’t see it. One wrong move, and they’d be doomed.
I continued to launch Wyvern Slash attacks one after another at the bats above, slowly reducing their numbers until the survivors decided to escape.
“Were those monsters? For some reason, they didn’t really seem interested in me.”
I put my sword away and looked around. A dozen or so bat corpses were piled in a mound on the floor.
Ariane wiped her sword with a cloth. “No, they weren’t monsters. Just normal animals. Those bats suck blood from their prey, which explains why they weren’t interested in you, Arc. You probably didn’t look too appetizing.”
She shot me a mischievous grin.
Being a bone-dry skeleton covered in metal armor, I likely didn’t come across as a food source to the bats. I wondered if they were able to tell that there was nothing inside me simply by using ultrasound.
I looked back at Chiyome, who crouched in front of a fallen bat, pulling its wing.
“You seem to have fared all right, Miss Chiyome.”
“Yeah, I’m okay. Hey, do you think we can eat these things? I’ve eaten smaller ones before.” Chiyome picked up a severed bat head and showed it to me, her head tilted to the side inquisitively.
I was pretty sure there were quite a few regions back on Earth where people ate bats. It seemed unlikely that the mountain people, who were constantly persecuted and enslaved, could carry out any large-scale farming or ranching. I imagined that they subsisted on a diet of whatever they could find.
With their long fangs, gill-like ears, and porcine faces, the bats could hardly be considered beautiful. I glanced at Ariane, who seemed to be thinking the same thing.
“I’ve never eaten one. They don’t look like they’d taste very good.” She shook her head. “Anyway, we better hurry up, or we won’t make it out of here today.”
Ariane lifted her crystal lamp and aimed it ahead.
“Right. Sorry about that.” Chiyome set the bat’s head back on the ground with a look of disappointment. Then she jogged after us.