Chapter 195: Guess I’m not all that Lucky now am I

The next morning the group got up early and prepared to head out about an hour after they stopped hearing the bats and beetles roaming around outside. It was clearly morning time now and both sides seemed to be preparing to head back into their caves to get some rest. So by the time they came outside it was silent with only the sound of the wind blowing through the canyon reverberating through the area. Just like they had all expected the place was a massive graveyard that they were able to see through the combination of Natalie's mental link and Becca's echolocation since it was still too dark to rely on their own vision.

Before they headed out Joshua made sure to let both Becca and Marcus know that if they spotted a trap of some kind along the way they shouldn't approach it without back up. Joshua wasn't certain if the spiders in the area were only active at night and he didn't want to take the risk of letting them approach such a danger on their own. As they started to leave the cave and look around the area to make sure there wasn't any danger nearby the entire group took notice of the large pile of dried up corpses that the spider had left behind. It was clear that these spiders had a huge appetite by the amount of bats it took to satisfy them and that included the larger bats as well.

After the group had made sure everything was alright they once again started their trek forward into the canyon. It was a start of a cycle that the group got used to over a four day span. They would wake up early and wait for all of the bats to go into their caves for the day and give them plenty of time to make progress through the canyon. This of course meant that their progress was slow since they could only move forward for about six hours every day instead of the usual twelve or so they'd spend exploring anywhere else, but it was the safest way to do things.

Even so the group did come across trouble throughout the four day span of marching through the canyon. For one there were times when some smaller groups of bats would come out early and attack them. Luckily this didn't happen too often because the commotion could have ended up attracting other creatures over. There was even a time where they ended up fighting a rather aggressive ram that tried to take them all on its own. It was one of the bigger rams, but it still wasn't too much of a challenge in comparison to the swarms of bats that they occasionally had to face. In the end they were easily able to take down the ram and Lilly tamed the surprisingly excitable creature.

For the most part the group was able to avoid any true danger especially with Becca and Marcus pointing out the trapdoor location well ahead of time so that the group wouldn't accidentally grab the attention of one of the spiders that seemed to make a home in the canyon. Luckily it seemed like the spiders preferred to hunt when it was darker and it was easier for them to take their prey by surprise, but that wasn't the same when it came to the snakes in the canyon. Joshua and his group had run into several different snakes while moving through the canyon. They were either sneaking up on an unsuspecting ram for a meal or were sunbathing while the light was out. Not a single snake seemed to care about the little humans marching through their territory since they seemed to consider Joshua and the rest of his group too small to be an actual meal.

With this pattern going on for four days the group was able to make some decent progress through the canyon and judging by the map they had from the system on the area they were about halfway through it. It was slow progress, but it was more than they were expecting to do with such little time to move forward throughout the day. It was on such an occasion when the group was using the daylight to move forward that things started to take a sudden shift from the usual in the canyon.

'How much further do you think we'll have to go before we finally reach the dungeon in this place?' Amy asked through the mental link since the group was still trying to be quiet while moving through the canyon during the day. It was clear to Joshua that his sister was board out of her mind when it came to the current state of the expedition. They weren't fighting very often since during the day most creatures either stayed away from them or let Lilly tame them if they were docile enough while at night they would settle in caves and stay away from trouble all together.

'I'd say we're probably getting fairly close to the dungeon since we're reaching the center point of the canyon. It probably is the largest and most spaced out area in the canyon according to the map so it would be perfect for a dungeon.' Joshua responded getting nods of agreement from the others. Amy seemed to brighten up a bit at that, but it was Henry who responded next.

'I wonder what type of challenge a dungeon in a place like this will pose. The canyon itself is already trying to mess with our senses, so I expect the dungeon to be even more challenging.' Henry said with a thoughtful nod.

'Well I should be able to sense it when we get close enough. Either that or we could let Tank out to sense around a bit.' Joshua said with a small smile before he came to a halt as he could sense something happening up ahead. It was still light outside so everyone was able to see just fine as they carefully made their way in the direction of where all of the noise was coming from. After making their way around a pile of large rocks that had fallen from up above and settled at the base of the canyon they were able to get a glimpse of what was making the noise.

What they came across was one of the large rams on its own facing off against a group of three of the larger bats that had surprisingly come out during the day time. It was surprising to see such an encounter since the two groups of beast wouldn't usually come across each other. During the day the bats would be sleeping in their caves most of the time while at night the rams would climb back up to the top of the canyon to rest in the prairie instead of the dangerous canyon. So they were usually in different places most of the time even if they both spent most of their active time in the canyon. It was a weird sight to see the creatures facing off against each other.

The ram was bigger than the bats and was probably twice the size of one of the larger bats, but there were three of the bats constantly flying around the ram and trying to take it off guard. Joshua was a bit surprised that the ram was here alone, but then he remembered back to how the horses in the prairie did things and realized this ram was probably trying to gain strength so that it could gather its own little herd in the future. Of course this meant it had to challenge itself so that it would become strong enough for other members of its own kind to decide to follow it.

The ram wasn't able to go on the offensive most of the time during the little skirmish, but it was able to time its strikes perfectly to counter a bat whenever it tried to swoop in and attack it. It would bash its head straight into any bat that would go in for an attack. When such hits landed the bats were usually disoriented and sent crashing into the wall of the canyon. The other bats of the group would take this as an opportunity to attack from the side while the ram was out of position though. This ended up making the fierce battle a long and drawn out fight.

The bats couldn't do much damage to the larger ram since there were only three of them instead of a large swarm. They would bite and injure the ram, but not to the extent where it couldn't fight back or heal up enough to keep going. The ram on the other hand couldn't build enough momentum for its head butt to do enough damage to take out the large bats in one shot. This meant the bats that got injured or disoriented were able to back off and fly up into the air to take a breather before going on the attack once again. This made this fight far longer than it needed to be. The only reason that Joshua decided to wait it out and see how things would end was because he was getting a very bad feeling that something was about to go terribly wrong if they tried to join the fighting. He signaled the rest of his group to wait and see how things went as he searched the area with his aura sense to try to find out what was giving him the bad feeling.

In the meantime the ram was finally able to get in a perfect shot and take down one of the bats. The part of his horn that jutted out after wrapping back around actually speared through the bats body and pierced deep into it. The bat was losing blood to fast and had been knocked out of the air from the attack. The ram took this as an opportunity and trampled it before the other two bats could come over and knock him away from their partner. The battle then continued to rage on until there was only one large bat left and one heavily injured ram. Both creatures were now fighting for their lives at this point, but neither was backing down.

Meanwhile Joshua finally figured out what exactly was giving him such a bad feeling about joining in on the fight. His aura sense had now spread far enough to go past the fighting creatures and sense the giant snake that was slowly creeping up on them. It was then that he knew that it didn't matter which group would have one the fight since the large snake would eat the injured survivor whole and probably even eat the dead bodies of the bats that were strayed out around the ground. That's when Joshua could sense the killing intent pouring off the snake as it was about strike at the goat to get the bigger meal right away, but that then he felt another source of killing intent as well coming from the wall closest to the battle.

It was in the moment where the ram and the bat attacked each other for the final struggle that the snake shot out from behind aiming for the ram while the wall near the creatures opened up with large spidery legs shooting out reaching for the ram as well. The two much larger creatures clashed over their prey causing the entire canyon to shake from the force of the blow. Joshua could see some rocks from above falling down so he made sure his group was out of the way of any danger.

The ram was instantly killed by the force of the two creatures tearing into it and its body was being pulled apart as the creatures fought over it. The bat seemed surprised by this turn of events as it tried to fly back up into the air and get away from what it now knew was an impossible fight. Sadly it didn't get to fly all that high into the air before a tail came whipping around from behind it and knocked it straight out of the sky. It crashed into the wall nearby and seemed to have broken its wings from the impact.

The large tail then slammed down behind Joshua's group blocking their escape from the scene and making it so the only way they could go was forward. It'd be impossible to get around the two large creatures without being noticed so Joshua let out a sigh knowing a tough fight was coming. 'I thought I was supposed to be lucky.' That was his final thought before he pulled out his scale blade preparing for a fight.