The Cave in the Cliff

As an elite team, they had merchants they knew for supplies, so the preparations went much faster than Rain had expected.

Just over an hour later, the group boarded a hired carriage.

It was another covered wagon, with good ventilation.

But as they traveled due north, the ground gradually rose, and Rain could clearly feel the temperature changing.

"Look, Lancot Snow Mountain." Chris pointed toward the forbidding, snow-capped mountain towering in the distance, his face full of longing.

"I wonder when we'll be able to take a job on the Snowfield."

Rain looked up.

Unlike the view from Mill Town, they were much closer now. With the clear weather and deep blue sky, the snow blanketing the peaks was plainly visible.

Many powerful monsters lived on Lancot Snowfield, and the weakest among them was the Winter Wolf, with a Challenge Rating of three.

That was the Challenge Rating of a single Winter Wolf, not a pack.

As Adventurers often said, if your team wasn't made up entirely of Professionals, you shouldn't set foot on Lancot Snowfield lightly.

"Chris, if you improve as fast as Rain, I'd say we could go within the next couple of years." Fabian twirled a dagger between his fingers as he teased him.

"Fair enough." Chris shrugged and glanced at Rain, the "Apprentice Mage" who was even sturdier than he was, looking a little resigned.

"We're not far from Lancot Snowfield, so the temperature's dropping pretty fast."

"But we're almost there. Fernsprout Village is up ahead." Leia pointed into the distance.

Rain followed her gaze. A village somewhat like Oak Village sat beneath a steep cliff, surrounded by dense woods.

"According to the villagers who saw them, the Giant Vampire Bats flew toward the cliff after feeding on the livestock."

"In that case, there's no need to go to Fernsprout Village. Let's head straight to the cliff and take a look."

"What do you think?"

"Sounds good!"

Everyone on the team immediately agreed with Leia's suggestion.

It was not yet noon. If things went smoothly, they might finish the job before nightfall.

Distances were deceiving in the mountains.

From afar, their destination had looked close.

In reality, even with two horses pulling the covered wagon, it took them at least another two hours to reach the cliff.

"It could be this crevice."

"Or that one."

"And there's another over there."

Fabian returned after circling the meadow below the cliff and pointed out three openings in the rock at different spots.

Rain and the others looked up.

Two of the openings were a little over a meter above the ground, while the third was at least three meters up.

"Giant Vampire Bats behave much like ordinary bats. They won't come out until dusk at the earliest, and I can't tell from the openings alone right now." Fabian shrugged.

Everyone understood what he meant. To be sure, they would have to explore each opening.

"Let's start with this one," Leia decided without much hesitation.

She disliked wasting time. Dusk was still half a day away, and waiting around would be a waste.

"Wait. Let me try," Rain offered after a moment's thought.

"Hm? Rain, have you learned a new spell?"

"No. I have a good sense of smell. If it's a bat cave, I should be able to tell." Rain thought for a moment before answering.

It was not that he did not want a better explanation. The problem was that Rain had no idea whether any spell in this world could greatly sharpen a person's sense of smell.

Rather than make up a spell that might give him away, he told the truth.

"Uh..."

Leia wanted to say something, but swallowed the words before they came out.

If Fabian or Chris had said that, she would have teased them.

The others were just as puzzled. They said nothing and watched Rain, waiting to see how he would tell.

Rain went to the first opening, bent down, and squeezed into the rocky crevice, which was about a meter and a half high. His nostrils flared as he focused and took a careful sniff.

"Not this one. There's a faint stink, but only two of them."

"You can even tell that?" Fabian's eyes widened in surprise.

As a Rogue apprentice, he had finally met someone even better at scouting than he was.

"Mm." Rain nodded.

He soon reached the second opening and walked a few steps inside.

"Not this one either. This cave probably belonged to a black bear once."

"Then it must be up there." Rain looked up and pointed to the rocky fissure more than three meters above them.

The others followed his finger, their expressions shifting as they looked up.

"At that height... I'm not sure the smoke tactic we prepared will work," Chris said with a frown.

He had killed a Giant Vampire Bat once before, but that bat cave had been only half a meter above the ground.

That had made it easy to secure a net across the entrance and keep adding firewood.

This time, the bat cave was in a fissure halfway up the cliff. That made things tricky.

"I'll cut down some trees and put together a simple ladder," Grand said after a moment's thought.

"Mm. Let's get ready. We need to go up and take a look," Leia decided.

Grand, Rain, and Chris were all strong men. In less than fifteen minutes, they dragged over two cypress trees stripped down to their trunks.

They laid them side by side on the ground, half a meter apart, with their upper ends positioned at the opening.

Before long, they had a crude ramp slanting upward at nearly forty-five degrees.

As the one who had initiated the job, Rain took the lead without hesitation.

He first examined the opening. It did not look very large from outside, but there was considerably more room within. Then his nostrils twitched as he sniffed again.

Sure enough, wisps of a similar, foul, bloody smell entered his nose.

"Fresh. I can smell cattle and sheep blood, too."

"Fifteen..."

"No, closer to eighteen or nineteen. A few smell like young ones."

With Keen Scent, Rain discovered that, if he concentrated, he could distinguish individual scents mixed into the smell of the Giant Vampire Bats.

It was like body odor: everyone's was subtly different, but human noses generally were not sensitive enough to tell them apart.

If someone had particularly strong body odor, though, the difference was much easier to notice.

With Keen Scent, it was as though each Giant Vampire Bat had its own distinctive, pungent body odor. That let Rain estimate their numbers in the cave with reasonable accuracy.

Rain turned to the others below the cliff. "This is it."