Basil could only see water, vines, and crystal in his climb. He didn't know what the term boring could be, but it was that. On the waterfall sides were strange vines hanging, similar to those at their side, but different. These were tentacles hunting for any creature who dared to approach the wall, there were even carcasses of bats and Ceadcems dead there, but Basil didn't see them because they were far.

Up, In the entrance where the river ended, two Bats were eating a couple of Ceadcems they captured in the cavern Below. One of them was angry at the other because it snatched one of its prizes when they were hunting. They measure a meter in height and almost two in wingspan. They had only one eye but huge ears to sense better the sounds on those caverns. They also had a lot of fur in their bodies and four limbs, two of them with a membrane to fly and only three fingers ending in sharp nails.

Still hungry, one of the bats decided to hunt something in the waterfall while the other bothered it. The creature took a nosedive and launched a screech to locate something to eat. Some creatures were lurking below, and those hellish vines were there, trapping anything close. This time it sensed a different animal; it looked weird, not something it had eaten before. It was big and was climbing the waterfall from inside, and it was getting near those trap-vines.

Basil was getting the hang of climbing after two hours of continuous striking on the wall. He even tried to eat some crystal on the way up, and it was refreshing but a little tricky with his neck in a strange position. He wondered if he should modify the bones of his neck at some point, maybe not now.

The gecko took some naps in his climb when he felt tired, and because of his precautions, he could sleep without worry. The waterfall wall was seriously inclined, and it looked it would get inverted at some point because the water didn't touch the wall entirely where he was.

Basil felt something weird at some point in his climb. Someone observed him, and he could sense it, not from one spot, from various. Not willing to risk it, he stopped and activated his Energy Vision. There was something weird with the vines ahead, some of them had the light green of plants, but the others had the white color and some black dots.

The lizard had a strange sensation, so he decided to evade those vines for his safety. The bat was intrigued by the animal's actions. It kept looking, expecting Basil to get out of the water curtain to kill it. Basil was trying to surround the creatures hiding as vines; for some reason, it felt like a trap, and it sure was.

Those tentacles disguised as plants are an organism with many mouths covering its body. When prey is near, they secrete a poison that paralyzes the victim on the spot, but they work in teams to kill because they are too weak. Basil didn't know these facts, but his instinct protected him.

Sadly, what the gecko didn't know is that those things were capable of elongating their bodies enough to trap something, even in the air. Two of the tentacles sensed Basil and began to move slowly behind him because he already passed them. They attacked in unison, one getting Basil by the ankle, the other by the torso. This action alarmed Basil because he could feel the aggressor and a goopy liquid trying to enter his skin.

The gecko tried to jerk off the tentacles he now knew were living creatures. But the liquid was numbing his parts, and Basil knew this was bad news. As a means to get them off, he activated his Bone impalers. The tentacle got impaled in various zones by the bones in Basil's torso. It started to wiggle, trying to get out, but Basil jerked with force and tore it off, killing the thing.

The other one still adhered, was oblivious of the destiny of the other tentacle. Basil got his leg numb by this time, yet he could control the bones in that area. He decided to try something different this time. He copied the pincers' designs and made them more razor-sharp. Two cutters made of bone appeared slowly in his ankle's sides and, with force, cut off the tentacle.

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The problem with this is that it hurt Basil too. So Basil still lost some blood and cut a muscle in the process. Basil jerked the remains of the tentacles and became more cautious of any vine in his path.

The bat looked at how the tentacles got eliminated and asked if it was a good idea to hunt that creature. Maybe it could only do that once if that was true, it could gain a helpful ability. Pitifully that was not true.

Basil heard a strange sound beside the waterfall and saw a creature from the fungal cavern. It was hunting him, and Basil couldn't run in this situation. He decided to make himself thorny like the mutant bug he killed before. He began to create many spikes around his back to stop the bat from getting too close and tried to climb again so that the creature can't harass him.

The bat was nosediving to get the animal off the wall. Basil felt something amiss and pulled his anchors from his torso, nailing itself in the wall. The bat attacked and only got himself full of holes, and the creature only budged a little from its attack. To complete, Basil tried to expel spikes towards the aggressor, and it didn't work because he still didn't know how to do that.

Basil began to move again, retracting only a little its anchors so that he could use them on short notice. The bat was surprised at the wounds it received from headbutting the thing, and it was also wrong about the creature using the ability once. When it recovered, it looked around for the lizard and found it higher in the wall.

Basil was trying to get to a step platform to at least defend itself or kill the thing in some way, but the waterfall wall had none that could be near, so he could only protect himself against the bat.

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By this point, Evalyne was not surprised by Basil's antics, even if a Huayan Bat hunted it. Mardok and the others looked the way Basil defended against the Bat.

"Huayan bats, those things are obnoxious. They have the bad habit of focusing on a target until it is dead or they are. You would think otherwise because Bats tend to escape, but those creatures try to hoard prey and show off with their brethren because of their hierarchy." — Voiced Bik.

"You hunted those things?" — Asked Dusanog.

"Yes, in a campaign on Thartis-95. Pesky little shits, the leader of the zone we were reclaiming, used them as pets and isolated herself in a cavern. I lost like 20 units that day trying to end the fucking beast tamer. It still weighs me to this day." — Replied Bik.

"They are also good at analyzing their prey, so this is not an advantageous situation for our guy." — Completed Moraeus.

"What do you think Evalyne is thinking right now, Mardok?" — Asked Dusanog.

Mardok looked at the screens and replied — "I am not sure myself, but Basil is resilient and that woman too. So let us hope his owner gave him some of her mulishness."

Evalyne analyzed the screens and could only watch Basil repeating the process to defend against the fucking bat that tried to throw him into the void. By some point, the bat couldn't fly anymore because of the wounds it made itself but still tried to hurt Basil by lingering around him.

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Basil, by this moment, was tired of the bat in any possible way. The creature was lingering around him, hanging in the wall because its wings got broken of nosediving against him. Basil decided it was time to kill the thing.

Basil couldn't attack in range, so he needed another way to attack. He retracted a little of his spikes as a way to bait the bat. Basil was preparing a trap, and the stupid bat was felling for it because it was getting near, trying to chop Basil's head. Basil created a horn on his head, and when the bat was just about to bite him, Basil extended the horn and impaled it in the eye of the bat, making it let out a screech of great pain.

Basil anchored himself in the wall and activated its spikes again because the creature tried to bring him with it in a last attempt to kill him. Basil's horn got broken in the process, maintaining itself in the animal's head that was now falling. Basil managed to see the body get caught by some tentacles below him.

The gecko continued his journey, one step closer to the start of the Waterfall.