57 Being Ambushed by Rats; it's quite frightening!

So, Tang Ling summoned everything he had.

With a vigorous throw, his spear pierced three of the rats.

[You have killed Grey Rat +5 EXP]

[You have killed Grey Rat +5 EXP]

[You have killed Grey Rat +5 EXP]

Three down!

The rats were stunned but soon, they began throwing themselves at him, Tang Ling could only swing his sword, killing two more.

"[Heat!]"

His sword reddened, sizzling the flesh as he struck.

Sensing the heat coming out from the young human's weapon, the Grey Rats panicked; they didn't want to become barbecued rats!

This gave Tang Ling more time and he used this time to put himself in a horse stance and punched!

[Taizhong Emperor Fist (Failed)!]

PSH!

One rat slammed into the wall, making loud noise, and fell to the ground.

It was definitely overkill.

Tang Ling immediately regretted his action, why did he waste precious time to just kill one rat?!

Then he realized that Baijiquan was not as effective against smaller opponents since the whole goal of it is to lock on the opponent and launch a quick burst of punches and kicks to down a powerful opponent. What's more, these enemies are weak individually!

He has only begun to start his sequence before he had nothing to hit. He wasted a little bit of time in his set-up. This resulted in his injury!

One of the rats bit his leg!

[Grey Rat has dealt 10 damage to host!]

At the sudden pain on his calf, Tang Ling yelped. He knocked over the ceiling and became a little dizzy...

"ARGH!!!"

Tang Ling waved his sword randomly, and he could hear the last screams of these rats. As they screamed, he knew he hit them.

"Krrriiiiii!!"

"KKrrriiii!"

[You have killed Grey Rat +5 EXP]

[You have killed Grey Rat +5 EXP]

Only 12 to go!

Recovering from the headache, Tang Ling quickly distanced himself from the rats. He took out his bow and focused on rapidly shooting towards his target, reaching a shooting rate of 2 per second.

Ping!

Ping!

Ping!

Firing for five seconds, several arrows hit the ground however, a few managed to hit the intended target.

[Host has dealt 12 damage to Target (Arrow)]

[Host has dealt 13 damage to Target (Arrow)]

[Host has dealt 10 damage to Target (Arrow)]

[Host has dealt 8 damage to Target (Arrow), killing it in the process.]

[Host has dealt 12 damage to Target (Arrow)]

[Host has dealt 9 damage to Target (Arrow)]

"Kriii!" A wave of wails of pain entered the perpetrator's eardrum and he felt it was quite loud.

The rats who were hit could hardly muster some fighting power as the arrow's weight pinned them down to the ground.

"Yes!"

And so he did.

...

It took a swing of his sword to kill three of them and stopping the momentum of the strike, he slashed back and killed two more. The last one was finished off with a stab. It came with no surprise that he finished off the rooted ones easily.

[You have killed Grey Rat, +5EXP]

[You have killed Grey Rat, +5EXP]

[+5EXP]

...

From the beginning to the end, the battle only lasted five minutes. In all his fighting history, it was one of his longer and more tiring battles. Usually, in all his battles, one would start with some opening moves which one would strike (with a punch or a knife) to feel the other party's strength and patterns and after several exchanges, a decisive strike would be made. At that time, if you didn't already win, you would gain a so great advantage that unless your opponent had a trump card (liking bringing a gun in a fistfight), it was only a matter of time before you win.

This fight, even though, rats are individually weak, they advantage in number and every swing of his sword wasted is another chance for the rats to bite him. Although they were weak, it took Tang Ling more mental energy to fight them than Uruvian Bear (although he was more injured).

"Huff... Huff..." Tang Ling inhaled and exhaled, trying to regain his stamina. He then flipped the end of his pants to see the wound on his calf. Seeing that the wound was not too deep, Tang Ling sighed out of relief, it was only half a centimeter deep.

Taking out [Huang Medicinal Black Box], he took a paste that was preserved in it to disinfect the wound and then took a roll of bandage to band the wound. After this, Tang Ling did not feel too uncomfortable.

[Host has received a first-aid bandage, +100% regeneration to the damage caused by the wound where the bandage is.]

Seeing that he was all fine and well, Tang Ling could help but sigh: "I really did not think that one-star beasts would be able to cause so much problem... Perhaps it is the difference between me and other hunters. They may be weaker than me but they have knowledge and vigilance to back them up. If it was up to them, they wouldn't be ambushed and would prepare a trap to pick off one by one..."

Tang Ling mused over, this matter was worth thinking and would be extremely useful and perhaps would be a life-saving mentality. This was just a one-star Grey Rats group, he would be fine if he was ambushed by Cave Wolves but if he was ambushed by Underground Rats...

Tang Ling would prefer not to talk about this.

However, it is a given that he needed to be more careful.

After resting for a few more minutes, Tang Ling stood up and proceeded to take all those Grey Rats' corpses and put these in his [Inventory]. He then proceeded to go deeper into the cave with a slight limp.

Walking 20 minutes, Tang Ling reached around ten meters deep and a cliff appeared in front of him. He then took a look at where the cliff went and saw it was ten meters deep. At that height, jumping would probably crush his legs.

Fortunately, it seems that even though it was not explored enough to have any artificial light in the corridor, it still had a ladder on the side, left by an explorer from the Hunter Association.

'Good!'

Tang Ling thought and let off the extendable ladder which touched the ground and straightened immediately after. Testing the durability and toughness of the ladder, Tang Ling was satisfied and went down to the other level.

Immediately coming down, Tang Ling already saw something unusual. In the monotone vision he had, a figure with a distinct shape appeared before him. However, it was not an enemy, it was a small stream of a liquid.