Chapter 58: "Whack-a-Mole" (Part 1 and 2 Combined)

In the deep and vast subterranean world, there exist wonders and dangers beyond ordinary imagination.

The sonic bat is one of them.

These rare predators exist only in ultra-giant underground caverns large enough to contain medium-to-large lakes with soaring domes, a sight the vast majority of surface dwellers never witness in a lifetime.

The Monster Manual, made freely available to registered members by the Adventurers' Guild, is practically one of the very few resources where one can learn about such creatures.

Rui had not delved deeply into that thick tome, which was as wide as four of his fingers. He had been extremely busy while in Golden Wheat Town, only casually flipping through a few pages and barely glancing at the name "sonic bat."

Fortunately, however, [Jay’s Common Language Memories] came into play once again, clearly surfacing the crucial information about this terrifying creature precisely when he needed it.

Judging solely by appearance, they seemed no different from the bats commonly found on the surface—similarly covered in short, dark-gray fur, possessing sharp claws and signature wing membranes, and relying primarily on sonic echolocation to perceive the outside world.

Yet, their size completely upended people's perceptions of ordinary bats.

When those tough wing membranes were fully spread, their wingspan reached a staggering three meters!

Imagine a massive shadow capable of shielding an adult man's body, gliding silently across the vaulted ceiling of a gloomy cavern... The visual oppression alone was enough to suffocate one.

However, size merely made them look intimidating; what truly made sonic bats terrifying were their innate spell-like abilities—[Shattering Scream].

This was no ordinary noise, but an evocation spell judged to be of the 1st ring. Its range of effect was a conical area extending three meters forward from the tip of the sonic bat's snout.

Its destructive power had already been demonstrated before Rui's eyes—that thick, heavy small wooden boat, hollowed out from a single sturdy log, was instantly cut into pieces under the impact of the invisible sonic wave as if sliced by countless invisible blades, shattering into flying wood chips in a split second!

When dealing with flesh-and-blood humans, the effect of [Shattering Scream] was not as visually horrifying as it was against wood, glass, or ceramics, but its effects were far more insidious.

It would not tear the victims' outer skin; instead, it penetrated directly, running rampant through the soft yet resilient interior of the human body, shattering internal organs and causing hot blood to gush from the victims' eyes, ears, mouths, and noses, plunging them into sudden death amidst excruciating agony.

Even if one was fortuitously located beyond three meters, within the range of three to seven meters, that invisible impact would induce intense nausea, violent dizziness, and sharp, ear-splitting tinnitus that felt like tearing eardrums, instantly stripping the victims of their ability to act.

The reason Rui and Millie had not been incapacitated was that they had dived underwater, with a layer of ten-centimeter-thick gel shielding the outside of their heads. Protected by this double defense, they had narrowly escaped unharmed.

The most insidious aspect of the [Shattering Scream] ability was that its core attack sound wave existed in a high-frequency band completely imperceptible to human ears.

There was no deafening roar, no piercing screech; once struck by this spell, there was only the sudden descent of death amid absolute silence.

Kobolds were likewise unable to hear this lethal high-frequency sound wave. In [Kobold Oowu’s Draconic Memories], there were several spine-chilling related fragments.

Companions out foraging or fishing together would be acting normally one second, only to double over retching without warning the next, or even spewing blood from their mouths and dying on the spot.

Within the kobolds' limited understanding, sonic bats were the most irrational and irresistible avatars of the Grim Reaper in this underground lake region.

Although they possessed thermal vision, through that thermal vision they could only see a blur flash across the air, instantly breaking out of the 18-meter limit of thermal vision, whereupon companions nearby would walk towards death in an extremely bizarre manner.

Yet, even though the kobolds feared sonic bats, the whip of hunger drove them to step out of their safe nests and come to this perilous lakeside.

This barren underground lake region provided only three sources of food for the kobolds.

The most abundant and easily obtainable, naturally, was the school of fish swimming in the cold lake water.

Second were the luminous mosses and various oddly shaped mushrooms that grew in dark corners; they filled the stomach but offered zero nutrition, and long-term consumption easily made the body increasingly frail—some of which were even poisonous.

Lastly were various wriggling small bugs, including the blood-sucking lice on companions' backs and plump white grubs inside various giant woody mushrooms... but these bugs were pitifully scarce, and bustling about all day might not even feed a single starving kobold.

Fear and hunger wrestled here, a struggle that never ceased.

However, even sonic bats, terrifying as grim reapers and wielding the power of silent slaughter, were not entirely without weaknesses.

Their weakness was hidden within those degenerated, nearsighted little eyes.

Despite their poor vision, dancing firelight held an almost instinctive attraction for them, enough to make them linger for a long time at the edge of the flame's glow, and even interfere with their locking onto true prey.

Utilizing this, the kobolds managed to survive with difficulty under the gaze of death.

Every time they went down to the lake to fish, the kobolds strictly followed the rules left by their ancestors: as far away as possible in the opposite direction of the chosen fishing area, they would ignite a blazing bonfire, letting that flickering flame act as bait to temporarily attract the sonic bats' attention and buy a thread of survival for their companions by the lake.

It was precisely this fatal phototactic trait that led Rui and Millie to be attacked by the sonic bats.

At this moment, hiding inside the "gel manta ray," Rui looked through the transparent gel and the rippling water, watching those giant, silent shadows restlessly hovering and diving above the lake surface, scanning the water repeatedly with their invisible sonic net to search for their traces.

"Phew... That was close..."

"Rui? What's wrong?"

Millie, held in his arms, had not yet reacted to what had happened—ever since the kobold with the burning body fell into the water and the lake extinguished the flames, she had been unable to see anything.

Terrified that the sonic bats might capture even underwater sounds, Rui pressed close to Millie's ear and whispered, transmitting the information about the sonic bats into her mind.

Fortunately, he had obtained [Kobold Oowu’s Draconic Memories] a step ahead of time and leaped underwater just before the sonic bats attacked.

Otherwise, even being a few seconds late, their fate would have either been shattered internal organs and blood-stained lake water, or being stunned and drowning in this eternal cold, faring no better than that small wooden boat.

Had they been lighter, akin to goblins or kobolds, they probably wouldn't even have had the chance to sink to the bottom before being dragged back to the nests by these giant bats to be feasted upon.

While speaking with Millie, Rui controlled the "gel manta ray" to quickly move away underwater from the dangerous area surrounded by sonic bats, arriving at the shore from which the kobolds had previously set out.

Dealing with sonic bats in the water placed them at a huge disadvantage, but on the shore, there might just be a turning point.

The shore was a small natural pier formed of several relatively flat rocks, upon which the kobolds' crude living utensils were scattered: a few worn rattan baskets, coiled thick rattan ropes, tattered fishing nets...

It seemed this group of kobolds actually lived quite comfortably here; there shouldn't have been any hostile creatures around, as so many items left out in the open hadn't been scavenged by other beings.

After approaching the small pier, Rui and Millie discussed how to deal with these sonic bats.

Soon, they devised a tactic.

Rui controlled the "gel manta ray" to surface, and just as he had dealt with the kobold earlier, he extended his hand out of the gel layer and the shallow water surface.

'In this lake,' he thought to himself, 'the two traits dropped by the slime are simply too useful.'

Without [Colloidal Fluid] and [Fluid Control], he would have died several times over.

After a brief incantation, with a soft "pop," the orange-red flame formed by [Ignite] appeared in his palm once more.

This suddenly bright flare of light was so unique in the darkness that it instantly attracted all the sonic bats hovering above the lake surface.

The next instant, their highly nearsighted little eyes turned in unison toward the light source, their giant wing membranes flapping violently as if simultaneously pulled by invisible threads, changing direction together. Silent yet swift like arrows released from a bow, they lunged fiercely toward the small pier!

Yet Rui's movements were faster. The moment the flame appeared, he gathered all his strength and hurled the fireball fiercely at the pile of cluttered utensils on the pier.

Although that pile of sundries carried a dampness from being long kept by the water, the magical flame was clearly superior. Upon being struck onto the pile by Rui, the magical fire instantly began to spread across them.

Amidst this rapidly rising, roaring fire and thick smoke, Rui pulled back his hand, manipulated the "gel manta ray" into a deep dive toward the lakebed, and vanished instantly beneath the rippling water.

When the first batch of sonic bats arrived in a dive, their little eyes reflected only the crackling, increasingly blazing pile of sundries, while the target that had sparked the flame had long since vanished without a trace.

Thus, the bewildered bats could only circle the burning fire uselessly and shriek.

On the lake surface, about seventy or eighty meters away from the burning small pier, two heads quietly broke the water's surface.

They were Rui and Millie.

Almost the moment they surfaced, Millie precisely completed the four-step sequence of nocking an arrow, drawing the bow, aiming, and releasing.

"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"

Three specially crafted arrows pierced the air, tracing three faint streaks of light against the reflection of the burning pier ahead.

Her target was extremely clear—the giant wing membranes of the sonic bats!

All three arrows easily pierced the massive targets, but what Millie needed was not the piercing power of the arrows, but rather the small modification made to the arrows following the tactical discussion she and Rui had just shared.

A simple, ordinary roll of fine hemp rope, about seven or eight meters long.

When the arrowheads passed through the wing membranes, the three giant bats showed no reaction at all, as pain receptors did not grow on their wing membranes.

However, when the roll of fine hemp rope, tied at the arrowheads, followed the arrows through the wing membranes, the tail end of the fine hemp rope brought fatal trouble to them.

The section of this fine hemp rope was quite curled, preventing the tail of the rope from passing through the thin barrier driven by the arrow's momentum.

Consequently, as the arrow's inertia continued to pull, the fine hemp rope instantly tightened, slicing through the wing membrane as smoothly as a knife cutting through butter.

The wing membrane, instantly torn with a massive hole, could no longer support the sonic bat's flapping, and tore open even larger holes under its own flapping motion!

"Squeak!"

Accompanied by a shriek akin to a mouse echoing from its mouth, the giant, boat-like figure shook violently in the air, spinning out of control!

Shooting three aimed arrows took merely a few seconds. As soon as Millie finished shooting, Rui immediately took her and dived back into the water.

"Plop!"

"Plop!"

"Plop!"

A dozen seconds later, three sonic bats that could no longer control their flight posture successively plummeted onto the lake surface, creating wave after wave of massive splashes and struggling frantically in the lake water, churning up even more ripples.

Triple kill!

In the battles that followed, the two completely replicated the experience of this triple kill, turning it into an underwater game of Whack-a-Mole that heavily tested patience, timing, and precision.

Rui relied on the broad field of view provided by [Necrotic Vision] to act as an invisible radar, closely monitoring the flock's movements and the coverage area of the firelight.

He and Millie moved like ghosts, coming and going mysteriously in the shadows of the water at the edge of the fire's glow.

Every time they surfaced, it was accompanied by Millie's calm and lethal volley of two to three arrows.

Every shot was accompanied by two or three sonic bats falling wailing into the lake.

Every attack required them to dive back down in time before the sonic assault arrived.

When the ninth, and then the tenth sonic bat had its wing membrane cut by the hemp rope and plummeted into the cold lake water, this group of once-aggressive aerial overlords finally felt a fatal terror.

The successive demise of companions, coupled with the elusive, untraceable attacker, finally made their dim-witted brains realize one thing.

—This time, they had kicked an iron plate!

The remaining few sonic bats emitted panicked screeches, daring not linger any longer, and frantically flapped their wings, fleeing in panicky flight toward the dark caves in all directions, vanishing instantly into the boundless gloom.

Rui maintained high vigilance, scanning the sky within a two-hundred-meter radius to the maximum range of [Necrotic Vision] until confirming no bat-shaped souls remained in his field of view. Only then did he cautiously bring Millie back to the water's surface.

On the lake surface, a few sonic bats that had been shot down but not yet drowned were paddling their injured wings in vain, struggling, sinking, and shrieking in the cold lake water, stirring up massive swells.

Next, it was Rui's turn to harvest kills.

When killing kobolds earlier, because he cherished his crossbow and wished to minimize arrow wear, and additionally to pull kobold corpses closer to collect the arrows stuck in them, Rui had used a halberd to deliver the finishing blows.

Yet sonic bats, even if their consciousness was blurred by drowning, remained terrifying magical beasts capable of using the 1st-ring spell-like ability [Shattering Scream]. Rui dared not approach them easily.

Thus, he raised his light crossbow, utilizing the twenty-meter vision provided by [Low-Light Vision], aimed at them from over a dozen meters away, and harvested the remaining health one arrow after another.

Throughout this process, his cheat served as an additional standard for confirming death—only when a target completely lost its life would the gacha wheel gain an extra draw count.