This time, no bats emerged to attack me, which worried me. Before pressing on, I retrieved a tool from my inventory that had come with my premium camping set. It was basically an orb the size of a cue ball that I could make shed adjustable amounts of light. It was a "Mortal Grade Treasure," a mass-producible item that even non-cultivators would be able to buy, if they were rich by that standard. It wasn't considered a proper treasure, it was just named that.
I reached a point in the passage where it opened up to a large cavern. I immediately turned the orb's light as high as I could without it blinding me to look directly at it. Quickly, I assessed the situation. There were nine enemies: the five Stage 3s who escaped before, four Stage 4s...and a single one twice the size of the 4s. That one stayed in the rear of the cavern, not moving to attack like the others.
Once again, I prioritized grounding the Stage 4s in the first 5 seconds. I managed to nail 2 of them, but I wasn't able to prevent the Stage 3s from coordinating like I had in the tunnel. Grouped together, their sonic attacks were at least as threatening as a Stage 4's. By the time I'd dealt with them all, I was starting to feel dazed again. Not good news, since I still had the Stage 5 to deal with. Too, I doubted I'd be able to retreat out of the valley by now. If my arrows weren't able to damage its wings, I'd use the totem, but for now, I lined up my next shot, racing to get underneath the massive bat, and took it.
It hit, and stuck, in the monster's right wing, but it stayed aloft. In the next moment, its sonic shriek blasted at me. I wasn't going to be able to evade. They were a big target, so even though I started to be impaired again I didn't dare slow down in taking my next shot. That one nearly missed, sticking in its other wing mid-flap at the last moment. I shot again--I was no longer confident in hitting a wing, just trying to damage it more, though it pulled a bit to the left, hitting near the base of the right wing. Its continued sonic shrieks seemed to lose some intensity with that hit.
Desperately, I tried to aim for the other wing—and my aim pulled further to the left this time, by some freak chance hitting it in between its eyes. The shrieking stopped, but I couldn't trust that it would for long. If it was making pained noises, my ears were ringing too hard for me to tell. This time I took my time to line up the shot, aiming to get a second hit on the right wing's base. This time, my shot flew true, and it hit very near the previous shot indeed—ripping through enough of the wing that the arrow from that shot dislodged and tumbled to the cavern floor.
Now the monster fell so fast that I had to hurry for it not to land on me. For a few seconds, I caught my breath, only to get my bow back out as fast as I could when I realized it was trying to struggle to its feet. I shot it again, then when I still wasn't sure it was fully dead, I kept shooting it a half dozen more times. After that, it wasn't even twitching.
As much as I wanted to just set up camp and sleep—and maybe I even should have, since I noticed my ears were actually bleeding after a while—but I had work to do. The fur and hides of Giant Bats were almost worthless; what you wanted with them was the blood. The shopkeep had given me a set of jugs for free when I mentioned I'd obtained the core I was using the pill on in Luoxuan Canyon. Apparently, the Academy needed to restock the stuff, which apparently didn't tend to differ in whatever alchemical quality it was used for between Stages. The shopkeep even said they'd award me 3 Academy Contribution Points if I filled every jug, on top of the Academy Credits--which would be converted to Contribution Points at summer's end at a rate of 50,000 to 1 anyway.
Even from the massive Stage 5, I only got enough to fill a few of the jugs. I wasted a fair amount in astonishment when I spotted the intact core in its chest cavity. In the Academy lessons, they'd said that in general, the higher the Stage of the magical beast, the lower the odds that its core would remain intact on death. This was some real luck, even considering, as I shortly discovered after finishing with the big one, there wasn't even one other core among the Giant Bat bodies that hadn't been consumed by the others.
After that, I had to do something a bit distasteful—I had to deal with the nest's young. They didn't stand a chance, but I was hardly about to go to sleep there with them around.
Once I finally had set up camp, I chuckled as I laid on the small cot. "I just took a trip back to the main camp and now I'll need another one, for a Tier 5 Earth Absorbing Pill. Eh, I still have over 100 usable arrows...I'll wait until I'm running more low. One tier 5 core won't get me another breakthrough just yet..."