Hunter x Hunter: Tonight, Germain joins the hunt

Chapter 61 The Second Floor of the Rat in the Wall

"It's rats indeed." Germann raised the flamethrower nozzle and pushed the button. The flames hissed and became more intense. "A bunch of fat, smelly rats."

The first dozen or so mice that pounced on German were quickly engulfed by the flames, as if they had jumped into the fire circle on their own initiative. Their squeaking became sharp due to pain, and a foul smell of smoke filled their noses.

The remaining mice were either squeezed by the later mice and fell onto the dry ground of the cave and fled in panic, or turned their heads and shrank back into the oval black hole and disappeared.

German first aimed the nozzle of the flamethrower at the elliptical black hole and sprayed a burst of flames. When he saw it gradually shrinking, he turned the nozzle and burned the rats that were running around at his feet.

Soon, the ground was covered with burnt fat rats with sparks flashing on them. There were more than thirty of them. The rest all ran away, and the elliptical black hole shrank and disappeared.

"It seems that this group of rats teleported the three of us to different locations in the cave. When they gather together, they can cast the "Teleport Cave" spell, but the threat of a single rat is greatly reduced."

Pressure +6

Germann had already felt the oppression brought by the darkness from the change in pressure value, but he still did not speed up his pace. Instead, he maintained his current pace and rhythm and continued to move forward.

Walking faster does not mean leaving the cave faster. On the contrary, being cautious may be safer and save time.

On the dark road ahead, he was attacked twice by swarms of rats from the Rats in the Wall.

He dealt with them in the same way he had dealt with them, without letting these disgusting little beasts take a bite.

Pressure +6

German silently counted the time intervals between these pressure increases and found that they were all different, perhaps because of the flashlight and flamethrower as light sources.

But in general, in darkness, it is a more reasonable judgment that the pressure value increases once every five minutes on average.

As he walked, he saw from the beams of light from the flashlight and the occasional tongues of fire from the flamethrower that there was a slope in front of him, the bottom of the slope was full of piled rubble.

"Want to go up one floor?"

German stepped on the rubble and climbed up step by step. Suddenly, he heard a rumbling sound and vibration from above, as if something was hitting and rubbing against the stone wall.

He lowered his body and climbed up more carefully and steadily until he reached the end of the slope and saw a cave entrance.

The shaking sound did not stop and was not too far away.

German walked into the new tunnel, first using the flashlight to explore the way, and then observing the changes around him.

Pressure +6

Compared to the cave tunnel on the lower level, this place is obviously more spacious, large enough for a tank to pass through, and the air is not as turbid and stuffy as below.

If the lower floor had a rather rotten, putrid stench of excrement, here it was much fresher, with more of the smell of wild animals.

German looked down and saw huge drag marks at his feet, as if there was really a car pulling an iron pole passing by.

He looked at the wall again and found traces of scratches. The soil exposed in many of the dents was very fresh, which was inconsistent with the surrounding moss-covered soil.

"That is to say, something just passed by here. Judging from the direction of these traces, it was probably from left to right. It was very large. Do you want to go take a look?"

German was not sure whether Biscuit and Xiaodi, who were still missing, were on the next floor, on this floor, or somewhere else.

Suddenly, the shaking that was enough to shake the cave stopped.

After a while, it sounded again, and this time it seemed even more violent, so much so that a lot of gravel and dust fell on German's head.

"After the strange pause, there was a violent reaction." German moved his hunter's black hat, shook off the gravel and dust, and put it back on his head. "We must have encountered some unexpected target." "It is very likely one of Biscuit and Xiaodi, or both of them at the same time. If my guess is correct, I have to go over to support them now."

German was about 70% confident in his guess. He ran quickly to the right with a flashlight and a flamethrower.

As he ran, Germann noticed that new caves appeared from time to time on both sides, containing new tunnels.

"This is a completely different structure from the one-way tunnels below. The tunnels here are interconnected, probably in a grid pattern, right? This should be to facilitate the activities of that large creature."

The closer German got to the source of the sound, the louder the earthquake-like sound became, and the dust rising in front of him could not even be penetrated by the beam of light from the flashlight or the flames from the flamethrower.

Pressure +6

"There's no point in using a flashlight in the dust, and it takes up one of my hands. I guess I can only use the 'circle' to judge."

He pulled up the mask of his hunter's black robe to cover his mouth and nose, then pushed down his hunter's tricorn hat, turned off the flashlight, put it back in his backpack, and walked straight into the darkness.

The vibration in front continued, and German's "circle" soon detected an object not far away that was constantly swaying up and down and left and right, and was roughly cone-shaped.

"It should be the tail."

German replaced the flamethrower with a meat saw. In the blind darkness and flying dust, his "circle" seized the laws and opportunities of that moment.

"It's now."

He deformed the meat saw with a click, took a step forward, and chopped it hard on the swinging, huge tail. There was a clanging sound and sparks flew.

"Scales? They're so hard, I couldn't cut through them at all... If I were a reinforcement type, or had a 'critical hit', maybe I could cut through this layer of scales."

The owner of the tail seemed to sense that there was an enemy behind it, but it could not turn around in the tunnel, so it could only shake its tail randomly, trying to hit the invisible enemy.

Germann had already voluntarily withdrawn from the range where the tail could whip.

It struck the stone walls so hard that many larger stones fell off and accumulated, blocking one-third of the tunnel's cross-section.

Pressure +6

"If it's really scales, there may be a way."

After Germann finished his guess, he stepped forward again, crossed the stone obstacle, nimbly dodged the sweep of the tail, and stretched out the meat saw, accurately inserting it between the scales in an instant.

He exerted force suddenly and pried the scale open at an angle. His left hand materialized a leech dagger that was worn on the palm and wrist, and he suddenly thrust the ejected short blade between the scales.

In a flash, German retreated again, this time hiding in a cave on the side.

And where the leech's sleeve sword had pierced into the scales, blood suddenly spurted out with a "hiss", gushing out like a faucet that could not be turned off.

This is the ability of the leech's hidden blade. As long as the pierced creature has the concept of blood, it can be guaranteed to "bleed profusely", and the rate of loss is extremely fast.

If no method is found to stop the bleeding quickly, just one prick is enough to kill a human from excessive blood loss.

But for a cave beast of this size, it would probably take a long time just to bleed.

However, the penetration of the Leech's hidden blade still had an effect on the beast.

The impact of its tail on the stone wall became more and more intense, and then with a strange hissing sound, it seemed to crawl forward, and its tail followed suit and retracted forward.

(End of this chapter)