Three men walked in the dark. The tunnel there were in wasn't that wide, making them walk in a line. First came Jiun, followed by a stumbling Sif and finally Tong.
Jiun had a vicious smile on his face. To him, this Sif guy was a complete moron. Probably he came from some little clan but even so, a young master like him would have some good item on him.
He didn't even care to maintain a serious expression as he was masked by the darkness and he was also giving his back to the youth.
Sadly for him, Sif was able to perceive everything that was happening around him to the most minute detail.
'What a bunch of bad hunters...'
It was evident that the two guys didn't have much experience in this kind of things. Nor that they dealt frequently with summoners.
'Amateurs'
If they did, they would know that being in the darkness or not having direct visual contact with something wouldn't impede much a summoner. Even the most useless apprentice summoner would be able to form some kind of energy probe to feel the area around him.
Sif pretended to not see a huge chunk of black stone that was sitting on his path. Instead, he let himself hit it and then stumbled to the ground howling loudly.
"Brother Sif, don't you have a way to light up the path?" asked suddenly Tong from the back with a concerned voice. "If you have a Lucent Stone you should take it out, instead of moving around in the darkness".
The man at the front immediately understood what his friend was trying to do and laughed internally. Yes, show us where you keep your goodies!
However, the immediate response of the youth made him disappointed.
"No, I'm sorry." Sif didn't even try to pretend. He immediately admitted that he didn't have a way to navigate the darkness. "I don't have anything like that with me".
"This..." Tong was mindblown. He didn't really care for a Lucent Stone. It wasn't that expensive and Fighters had good vision that allowed them to even see in a dark environment like the one he was in. However, he really wanted to see where the youth kept his valuable things.
"How did you travel until here, then?" kept insisting the middle-aged man, his voice showing that he had some doubts about the bronzed youth's answer.
Sif laughed nervously. "I just moved slowly, following a wall. I even stumbled on some rock formation a couple of times..."
Tong almost wanted to slap him in the face: how could someone be that much careless? This guy was literally begging to be murdered in this Ashen Grotto. Let alone other visitors killing him, even slaves would gang up on him and beat him to death!
'This moron deserves to die!'
The group kept moving for a while in silence. Sif kept pretending that he couldn't see anything, falling down now and then and lamenting how hard it was to go on adventures.
Suddenly, while getting up from one of his fake falls, Sif's eyes lit up. He began to feel an aperture on the right wall of the tunnel. It was at least ninety meters from his current position.
'Oh, we arrived... so strange, I remembered a longer itinerary'
He sent an invisible wave inside that entrance, finding an oblong cave of a dozen meters in width. The wall of the cave was filled with luminescent musk and large mushrooms that illuminated the place very well. On the left side there was a hole on the ground, a large aperture that descended for at least other five meters and led to a larger circular cave.
Sif sent his invisible ripples on the lower cave and the first thing he sensed when he arrived there was a bunch of human corpses. They were three to be precise, all wearing grey uniforms.
'Those must be the companions of their slave... they were thrown in the lower cave, probably to hide them'
Slaves in the Ashen Grotto usually didn't move alone. They were allowed to form groups of four-five people, to help each other in case of a landslide. That "Blue" slave from before should have been part of this group.
'I wonder why they killed them... slaves don't have anything of value here'
It was an interesting question but now the youth was more concerned with the absence of something in that macabre picture.
'Uh, we are incredibly in advance... they didn't even start to feed yet'
A preoccupated expression appeared on the youth's face. 'Maybe I should slow down a bit?' The youth started thinking that maybe he should start falling down a little bit more, to gain time.
However, at the same moment he thought that, a large figure emerged from a dark corner of the cave. It moved slowly, growly in pain, towards the cadavers.
'Oh, lucky me... it's here'
The beast was horrendous. A long tail that was slapping the air was connected to a big body covered in dark fur. Its two long pointy ears encased an incredibly ugly face with long sharp canines. It moved on all fours and its upper libs were significantly longer than the lower one. A black membrane ran across the space between the upper al lower limbs, holding them together.
'Here she is, mama-bat'
Around the large bat, there were five cubs. Four were pitch black, covered in fluffy black hair. The last one was strangely white, looked like it had only half of the other cubs weight and was completely hairless.
A smile appeared on Sif's mouth. The invisible power that he used to sense the cave started to gather around the white bat. It slowly started to take the shape of chain that seemed to run directly from the youth walking in the dark to the small white bat.
Even so, the creature didn't notice anything at all at first, but then a dark glint shined in Sif's eyes. Immediately, the invisible chain that was around the bat barged inside the little creature.
A strange look appeared on its red eyes. It began to growl, unhappy. It was feeling strangely hot all of a sudden and it didn't know why. After a few breaths, the creature started to feel a lacerating pain coming from inside its body. The growls became cries of pain that left its siblings greatly shocked. His mother, especially, stopped tearing away the flesh from one of the corpses and looked around with a threatening gaze: who dared touch her cubs?
"Heavens, what's that noise?" said Jiun listening to the painful wail coming from less than a couple dozen meters ahead. Tong on his end didn't speak, trying to get a good sense of what was screaming.
"HAHAHAHA, the heavens smile on me! That's obviously a cub of Bloodshed Bat crying.." said happily Sif, like if it was the most evident thing in the world.
"What?"
Tong jumped on his place at the mention of the Bloodshed Bat. That was a very expensive breed of flying beast! It could be even trained to be a flying War Mount and be used also by Fighters. A cub? Heavens, that was a goldmine!
The man put a hand around Sif's shoulder. The youth found himself completely immobilized by the powerful grip.
"Brother Tong, what-"
"Are you sure? Are you sure it's a Bloodshed Bat cub?" he roared with a ferocious expression. Sif pretended to be terrorized by the sudden change of the man and mumbled that he was sure.
"Of course, Bloodshed Bats have incredibly high pain tolerance... they only cry when they are born or under the most devious torture!" he rapidly explained the black haired youth.
"Hahaha, brother Tong, we are going to be rich!" joyously laughed Jiun.
The two men resumed walking, this time literally pushing Sif to move faster. The latter tried to protest, but he immediately stopped when Tong applied some pressure on his right shoulder.
Soon, the group was right before the entrance to the grotto from where the cries came.
The two men ran towards the hole, looking down in the dark. They couldn't see any bat at all, only some cadavers of that they threw there the day before.
"Look, some of the corpses have been eaten!" exclaimed Juin. Those signs of laceration didn't look like the work of the tiny teeth of a cub. Those were made by a grown beast! "I don't think that there are only cubs down there, brother Tong..." Juin suddenly became insecure about the matter. Facing a grown-up bronze ranked beast alone? That was suicide for a level 3 fighter like him.
Tong slapped his friend on the back. "Of course dummy, if there are bat cubs there will also be an adult one!" He then turned towards the youth that was randomly sitting on the ground of the cave, looking around confused.
"Brother Sif, I heard that Bloodshed Bats fall into a week coma after they give birth. It isn't that dangerous going there. Why don't you go down and get a look for us? In the end, you are the summoner of the group, beasts are your expertise!"
Sif's eyes widened in shock and terror.
"Going down there? M-m-me? I don't know brother Tong. It is true that these bats fall in hibernation after giving birth but it's only for a couple of hours, not an entire week!"
Tong's eyes shined with fury. He pulled out a long black bladed knife from under folds of his robes.
"Are you calling me, your father Tong a liar? Go down, or I will kick you there myself!"
On the side, Jiun laughed holding his belly. A malicious light shined in his small eyes as he pointed to the hole at his feet. Tong was right! They could use this moron as a test to see if the bronze ranked mature beast was awake or not!
"Little brother, you should do what he said, old Tong gets crazy really fast when he's accused of being a liar"
Sif's eyes were wide in shock. He looked at the blade and the two people that were pressuring him to go down the hole. "I guess that maybe the bats in this Grotto have a longer hibernation stage..." he muttered, moving towards the hole while keeping his eyes on the large blade that was pointed at him. "I'll go, I'll go..." he finally meekly caved in.
The youth started climbing down the hole. He went slowly, to make sure he didn't fall down and killed himself. That would be the ultimate joke.
It took a couple of minutes, but in the end he landed safe and sound on the ground, right in the middle of a bunch of bodies in putrefaction. Sif wasn't bothered at all by the smell and simply moved to the side.
His eyes moved towards a dark corner of the cave. 'Oh well, here we are... come here now buddy'. Sif waited for a few seconds, then an annoyed look started to form on his face.
'Still resisting? Bad girl! Let me repeat myself again, come here Luna...' An invisible ripple moved around his body, forming an unseen chain that bound him to something hiding in the darkness.
Immediately after that, a painful wail echoed in the darkness and a small white bat started to throttle towards Sif on all four.
'Good girl, wasn't that hard, see?' a large smile appeared on the youth's face. He knelt, patting the trembling creature on the head.
'Now, it's time to get some work done my dear... '