Chapter 11: Poisonous Mist
Deep in the underground ruins of the King's Campus, in a dark and narrow corridor, Dorothy ran forward quickly, trying to avoid the swarm of bats searching from above.
“Huh…Huh…They were able to generate so many bats at once to conduct a comprehensive search, and they were able to find my small corpse puppet at once, and they were able to rescue that Thorny Floss from the siege of the hunters. This guy…I’m afraid he’s not as simple as the Black Earth Rank…”
Dorothy analyzed and murmured as she ran. It was obvious that the one who was using bats to hunt her down was most likely a Beyonder above the Black Rank, that is, a Being of the Lower Rank.
Although Dorothy was able to rely on extraordinary items, system skills and combat plans to defeat the Black-level who was one level higher than her with her apprentice level, she was definitely not confident enough to jump two levels to challenge the Black-level, especially a Black-level who appeared suddenly, knew nothing about him, and had almost no intelligence preparation.
At this point, Dorothy could only find a way to escape, because the bats were all over the upper floors, and she couldn't run back, so she could only flee to the deeper parts of the ruins.
But she soon discovered that running away like this was not a solution.
"No... Judging from the intervals between the corpses left on the ground being eliminated, the bats' search speed is amazing. They can search a whole floor in one go. If they continue like this, it won't be long before they reach my floor. I can't outrun them. I have to think of some other way. I can't just sit there and wait for death. I have to at least hinder them a little bit!"
Dorothy thought so, and then began to check the surroundings to see if there was anything she could use. After taking a quick look around, she seemed to have noticed something.
"It seems... I haven't encountered any other forks in the road since I came down to this floor. It's just a straight corridor all the way to the bottom. So if those bats want to chase me, they can only come from one direction... that is, from the back!"
Dorothy thought so, and then she stopped at a corner of the corridor in front of her, then took out her magic box, opened it, adjusted the size of the entrance and exit, and then controlled three corpses to come out of it. One of them had a big bottle in his hand, which contained a bottle of strange liquid. This was the lamp oil that Dorothy stored for the ruins exploration.
Dorothy then controlled the three dolls plus the one holding a lantern beside her and walked in the direction they came from in the corridor, while her own body left the firelight and hid in the darkness at the corner.
Under Dorothy's control, four corpses blocked the center of the corridor and stood facing the approaching bats. Three of them stood in front, and the other one lay down at the back holding a lantern and lamp oil.
Just like that, facing the dark corridor, Dorothy and her corpse dolls held their breath, waiting with focused expressions, waiting for the arrival of the group of bloodthirsty bats.
After a while, in the darkness of Dorothy's sight, there was a rustling sound at the other end of the corridor. The sound came from far away, getting louder and more frequent. Dorothy could clearly feel that something was coming.
Finally, after searching all the upper floors, the bloodthirsty bats finally arrived at the floor where Dorothy was. They rushed down the stairs and flew in groups at high speed along the long and winding corridor.
“Here it comes…”
Listening to the dense and noisy noise, Dorothy prepared herself. At the other end of the corridor facing her, countless bats turned several corners along the one-way corridor. Finally, they sensed the presence of strangers in front of them and rushed over at a very fast speed.
Soon, the corpse doll that Dorothy had arranged in the front was surrounded and torn apart by bats in an instant, and was almost killed without any resistance. After noticing the situation of the corpse doll, Dorothy also determined the location of the head of the bat group in the darkness, so she opened her mouth while the bats were biting the corpse doll.
"-Fus·Ro-"
The ancient words came out of Dorothy's mouth, and exploded in the darkness like thunder. The shock wave transformed by the roar rushed forward at a very fast speed, moving all the way along the one-way corridor, rushing towards the bats that were tearing apart the corpses.
Under this impact, Dorothy's corpse and the bats were blown away and crashed into the walls of the corridor, leaving bloodstains. A large group of bats were crashed to the end of the corridor and smashed into the wall by the impact. The wall was also cracked by the impact of the dragon's roar. These cracks extended radially all the way around, and some extended all the way to the ceiling.
Compared to the shock wave, the sound created by Dorothy's dragon roar affected the bats more quickly. Bats are animals that rely on echolocation to move around and have well-developed sound sensory organs. Shocked by the huge sound of the dragon's roar, the bats that had not yet entered the corridor were instantly shocked and lost their functions. They fell to the ground and began to twitch. In an instant, more than half of the attacking bat group were destroyed.
Seeing this scene, Dorothy was delighted, and then she controlled the corpse puppet that was lying not far in front of her and was not affected by the dragon's roar to stand up. Then, the corpse puppet held the lamp and the oil bottle and ran forward at a high speed to clean up the battlefield.
Dorothy was going to kill all the bats that had not entered this section of the corridor, had not been affected by the dragon's roar, and had survived the disaster but were knocked down, all in one go, by burning them.
Dorothy controlled the corpse holding the oil and ran to the end of this corridor. She turned around and saw a group of bats lying on the ground trembling due to the shock. She poured the lamp oil on them without hesitation. Just as Dorothy was controlling the corpse to light the fire, there was a rustling sound from afar. In a blink of an eye, she saw another group of bats flying over from the direction they came from. This was obviously the other group that fell behind.
"Damn... why are there so many more behind? Isn't this the whole group?"
Looking at the new group of bats attacking from afar, Dorothy controlled the corpse puppet and prepared to quickly light a fire to burn as many bats as possible. However, at this time, the new group of bats began to change rapidly.
As the group of bats flew over, they quickly gathered together and turned into a shadow that kept expanding. Eventually, the shadow began to condense into a human form, taking on the appearance of Claudius, but the surface of his skin was covered with large bloody scars.
Relying only on a small part of the bat, Claudio reappeared and flew quickly to the corpse doll that was about to be set on fire. He stretched out his sharp claws with skin as thin as a knife and pierced through them violently, piercing the claws into the corpse doll's body. Then, the corpse doll's body quickly flattened and was sucked into a mummy in just two or three seconds. The bloody wounds on Claudio's body also healed a little.
Claudio's bat transformation allows him to transform into ten bats at once. As long as one of these bats survives, Claudio's life will not be in danger.
Therefore, no matter what Claudio did with his bat incarnation, he would not use too many bats at once. He would always leave enough bats away from the front lines of exploration or battle, in safety to avoid being wiped out. Just like now, the bats that flew over afterwards were his safety backup bats, and the wounds on his body now were the feedback from the bats he lost to the dragon's roar just now on his body.
"Tsk...are these bats actually created from his own flesh? It's ridiculous that he can turn back into a human with only a little bit of flesh left!"
Seeing this scene, Dorothy thought anxiously in her heart. At this moment, Claudius, who had sucked the fire corpse dry, swung his hand and threw the mummy in his hand away. Then he glanced around at the bats lying on the ground. After a thought, these bats got rid of the shock, struggled and howled, and flew up again, turning into shadows and returning to Claudius' body.
As the bats returned, the terrible scars on Claudius' body healed quickly, but they were not completely healed in the end because the vanguard bats were directly hit by the unrestricted force and were smashed into blood foam on the wall, and could no longer be recovered.
"A Beyonder who can manipulate the Voice of Tyranny? Interesting... I originally thought it was just a 'cup', but now it seems that there may be more than that..."
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