Kanos's shoulder muscles felt like they were going to snap.
He had been hammering those two homemade ice axes into the rock cliff for God knows how many hours. Cold sweat poured heavily from his forehead down to his chin, stinging the scratch on his cheek. His punctured right hand wasn't bleeding anymore, but it was still incredibly stiff and throbbed terribly every time he used it to pull his own body weight.
Kanos looked up. About five meters above him, the blue grid from his eye skill caught a depression.
'A cave,' Kanos thought in relief. 'A foothold.'
He forced his remaining strength to climb. His axe dug into the edge of the cliff, and with one final pull accompanied by a loud groan, Kanos managed to roll his body into the crack of the stone cave.
The floor was hard and dusty. This place was pretty wide, maybe the size of a car garage, enough for him to lie down straight.
Kanos collapsed on his back. He took in greedy breaths, his chest heaving uncontrollably. His exhaustion truly reached his bones.
But he had only closed his eyes for two seconds when his ears caught a strange sound from the darkness above the cliff outside the cave.
Flap. Flap. Flap.
The sound of flapping wings. Not normal bird wings, but heavy and rough wings. The sound kept getting louder and closer to the cave opening where he lay.
Kanos's eyes snapped open. He hurriedly crawled backward until his back hit the end of the cave.
From outside the cave opening, three large shadows dove down. They looked like bats, but their bodies were the size of calves. Their skin wasn't fur, but rough dark gray stone. Their eyes glowed a deep red in the middle of the abyss's darkness.
The system screen blinked in Kanos's eyes.
[ GARGOYLE BAT (LEVEL 42) ]
'Level forty two. Can fly. Has stone skin,' Kanos's brain immediately listed the facts in front of him. 'If I make another iron block, it won't hit them. They are too agile in the air. If I use a sword, I only have a narrow space and they can easily drag me off the cliff.'
The three monsters let out a piercing screech. The sound hurt Kanos's ears. They hovered right outside the cave entrance, getting ready to dive in and tear Kanos's flesh.
Kanos had no choice. If regular blunt and sharp weapons wouldn't work for long range, he had to make a machine. Something that could shoot. Fast. Deadly.
Kanos raised his left index finger. He focused his stare on the empty air near the cave entrance.
He started pulling glowing white lines.
This time he wasn't drawing one simple solid shape. He had to draw a mechanical assembly. His brain was forced to picture a hard wooden frame for the weapon's body. Then he pictured thick curved iron for the bow. The string made of solid steel fiber.
Kanos's sweat instantly turned cold. Only halfway done, his head was already throbbing terribly, totally different from when he made the pike or the wall. Making a machine meant he had to understand how it worked.
One gargoyle bat dove into the cave with its mouth wide open.
'Gears! Ammo box on top! Pull lever!'
Kanos's brain screamed fighting the pain. Fresh blood dripped from his nose. The tip of his finger moved like crazy in the air, pulling detailed lines for a spring system that could shoot arrows multiple times with just one pull of a lever. An automatic crossbow.
The final white line connected right when the bat's claws were only half a meter away from Kanos's face.
The air exploded with a loud humming sound. The white light solidified.
A giant crossbow made of sturdy steel and black wood formed in the air. The bottom of the weapon dug firmly into the stone cave floor as a supporting base. Its ammo box was already loaded with small steel bolts.
Kanos threw his body next to the machine, his left hand immediately gripping the trigger handle.
SLASH!
The bat's claws swiped Kanos's right arm, giving him a new tear that made Kanos scream in pain. But his left hand successfully pulled the crossbow's trigger lever back.
The spring system worked perfectly. The steel string released with insane power.
THWACK!
Three steel bolts shot out as fast as bullets, piercing the chest and stone wings of the bat right in front of the weapon's barrel. The monster shrieked horribly, its body pushed back and falling to hit the cliff outside before finally disappearing swallowed by the abyss.
The remaining two bats were startled, but they only got angrier. Both immediately dove in charging from two different directions.
Kanos didn't waste any time. While fighting a headache that felt like his head was going to split, he pulled the crossbow lever again. Clack. Clack. The spring pulled the steel string, and new bolts automatically dropped from the ammo box.
Kanos aimed the muzzle of his weapon at the bat on the right and pressed the trigger. THWACK! The steel bolts pierced the monster's head until it shattered.
The last bat managed to slip in from the left. The creature slammed into Kanos's crossbow machine until the weapon tilted. Its mouth full of stone teeth was ready to bite Kanos's neck.
Kanos let go of the weapon's handle. He stepped back for a second, then kicked the trigger lever at the bottom of the weapon as hard as he could.
The machine sounded loudly. The final steel bolts fired from super close range, instantly piercing the third bat's chest all the way through its back. The monster convulsed briefly on top of Kanos's crossbow, then went completely still.
Golden screens popped up blinking in Kanos's eyes.
[ ENEMY DEFEATED: GARGOYLE BAT (x3) ]
[ ACCUMULATED EXP REACHED LIMIT. LEVEL UP! ]
[ LEVEL: 14 -> 15 ]
[ HP & MANA RESTORED ]
Kanos slumped down sitting on the cave floor. The torn wound on his right arm closed up instantly thanks to the level up effect, and his breathing returned to normal.
But the blood from his nose wouldn't stop dripping. The dizziness in his head was incredible, to the point his vision was spinning and his stomach was terribly nauseous.
He checked his mana panel. The number indeed returned to full, but his brain felt like it had been fried in a pan.
'Making a mechanical object with complex functions isn't just about draining mana,' Kanos thought while massaging his temples hard. 'This brutally drains my brain capacity. Even if my mana is full, there's no way I can draw a machine this complex twice in a row without passing out or bursting a blood vessel in my brain.'
Kanos leaned his head against the cold stone wall, trying to normalize the inside of his head. The combined exp from the hyenas down below and these three gargoyles finally pushed his level limit quite far.
Next to him, the carcass of the third gargoyle bat was still stuck on his homemade crossbow. Kanos glanced at the monster's corpse. He needed ink if he wanted to draw something without draining too much mana on the way up later.
Kanos forced his body up. He pulled his climbing axe from his belt, then walked towards the carcass.
Unlike the centipede or the hyenas, this stone bat's blood was thick and blackish in color, looking more like liquid mud than blood. Kanos sliced its chest open, looking for the location of its heart or main blood pouch.
His axe hit something hard behind the monster's ribs.
Kanos frowned. He pried that chunk of flesh open using his axe. A small stone the size of a ping pong ball fell out and rolled onto the cave floor.
It was pitch black. Its surface was uneven, but the weirdest part was that the object emitted a thin black smoke. The smoke slowly wafted into the air, like dry ice evaporating, and felt fairly warm.
Kanos picked up the stone slowly. His eyes narrowed to focus on reading the object's information using his passive skill. A small panel appeared above the stone.
[ MONSTER CORE: GARGOYLE BAT ]
[ QUALITY: MID GRADE ]
[ PURE ENERGY CONTENT: 85% ]
'Monster core,' Kanos thought while twirling the stone in his hand. The black smoke kept coming out, touching Kanos's palm. It felt weird, like a slight static shock gently zapping his skin.
All this time he had only used charcoal or liquid blood as the tether material for his drawings. But this stone was different. This wasn't liquid. This was a pure clump of energy emitting smoke.
Kanos narrowed his eyes. His brain, used to thinking about experiments, started getting a crazy idea.
'If the system needs a liquid medium or solid dust to pull energy dust in the air... what happens if I use the pure smoke from this stone to draw?'
Kanos slipped the black stone safely into his pants pocket. His head was still throbbing, but he felt like he just found a new key to how his art worked in this insane world.