SSS Awakening: I Can Class Change at will

Rowan’s fingers had stopped shaking, his hearing had partially recovered and his breathing had leveled out.

Moon’s eyes stayed on the ground for another full minute before he lifted his head and let his gaze drift across the clearing.

He was no longer as alert as he had been during the initial engagement.

His posture stayed loose. His stance stayed casual. But his eyes were tracking something.

The branches. The pinecones. The pebbles. The small pieces of bark. All of them were scattered across the region he had almost dismissed on the walk in.

’So that’s how it is...’

The realization made a small smirk tug at his lips.

The bat had been listening to the sounds their footsteps produced when they stepped on the specific objects it had scattered across the region. Every branch, every pinecone, every carefully placed pebble was a listening marker.

The bat’s oversized ears could catch the specific acoustic signature of each object being disturbed, and it could triangulate their positions across the entire clearing without needing any visual confirmation.

The bat didn’t need to see them.

Moon looked down at his own feet.

A small, broken branch lay just to his right. Another two meters ahead. A pinecone within an arm’s reach. A pebble arrangement three steps behind him.

He stepped carefully over the broken branch and gestured for Rowan to come closer.

His voice dropped to a whisper.

"Rowan. I want you to do this."

He began explaining the plan.

◇◇◇◇

Underneath the ground, twenty meters below the surface, the Underground Bat waited in absolute stillness.

Its wings were folded tight against its body. Its claws gripped the compacted soil that formed its resting chamber. Its golden brown eyes stayed open, unblinking, staring into the darkness of its personal burrow.

Its ears twitched constantly.

Each twitch recorded the specific sounds happening above the surface. The soft crunch of grass. The faint patter of small stones moving in the wind. Every sound was mapped against the markers it had placed across the region.

It waited.

It knew the two intruders were still above. Their positions had gone quiet after its retreat, but that meant nothing. Prey that stopped moving was still prey.

~Crack~

Its ears twitched sharply as the sound of a branch breaking came loud and clear from the northeast quadrant. Twelve meters from its resting chamber. One of the markers it had placed near the outer edge of the region.

It waited.

Another sound came from the same direction. A pinecone being moved under the weight of something heavy.

Its confidence rose.

The prey was moving through its listening field. Traveling northeast, along a predictable path, at a walking pace that suggested the injured archer trying to reposition to a safer area.

Then a pebble arrangement moved closer this time. The prey was accelerating slightly.

The bat’s decision made itself.

It launched upward through the soil.

Its wings unfurled the moment it broke the surface. Its body shot into the air above the marker it had triangulated.

Its eyes stayed open despite not seeing anything.

Its ears did the seeing. Every remaining sensory input pointed toward the specific location where the sounds had come from, and the bat unleashed a barrage of earth spikes at the same instant it emerged.

Dozens of spikes erupted from the ground beneath the marker’s location.

They tore through the empty air.

The bat’s ears twitched, listening for the sound of flesh tearing or the anguished cry of its prey.

Unfortunately, there was none of that. The bat immediately grew worried as silence took over.

The bat’s mind processed the discrepancy in a single instant. Feeling the hidden danger, it flipped in mid-air, wings folding for the immediate emergency dive back into the ground. Its body twisted toward the safety of the soil beneath it. Its claws extended forward for the digging strike that would carry it back to safety.

It never reached the ground.

A crackling wave of purple lightning tore across the space above it. The strike came from directly above its previous hovering altitude, at the specific point where the bat had assumed no one could possibly be waiting. The current caught its wing membrane and locked its muscles instantly.

Its dive collapsed as its body lost control.

An arrow followed the lightning strike a fraction of a second later, the shaft striking its side and penetrating a few inches, but causing no serious injury.

The bat convulsed as pain flooded its senses. It had never experienced such a powerful attack before.

It opened its mouth to release its strongest cry. The sound wave began to form at the base of its throat, pressurizing outward through its lungs, ready to detonate across the clearing and destroy every eardrum within range.

"Not today..." Moon smirked, sending a powerful gust of wind crashing directly into the bat’s face.

The wind interrupted the sound wave attack at the exact moment it was forming. The cry died in the bat’s throat, coming out as a thin, choked whistle rather than the killing strike it had intended.

Its eyes finally opened.

Its golden brown gaze swept upward, past the position where it had assumed the prey was standing, past the ground it had targeted with its spikes.

Moon did not make a sound, watching its eyes move around along its ears.

’Just as I expected... It can’t see.’

Moon did not disappoint, gently tapping against his floating slab of wind to create a subtle sound that the bat caught. The bat’s eyes shifted toward his position, and their gazes locked, despite the bat’s inability to see, or at least not see clearly.

At that moment, the bat realized that its greatest strength had become its greatest weakness, the very thing that would ultimately lead to its downfall.

The bat’s mind processed the loss.

Its wings flailed against the lightning paralysis, trying to right itself in the air.

Before it could do so, another bolt of lightning struck its falling body, sending it into another convulsive tremor.

"This should be enough... Time to make it mine."

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