Logan collapsed to his knees. He took gasping breaths, the spear clattering across the stone floor as his arms fell limply to his sides. He barely managed to remain upright, his entire body reeling from the sudden exhaustion that overcame it. His muscles burned, his body felt heavier than lead, and his skin was covered in a layer of sweat. Despite all of that, he was most affected by what the breathing technique had done to his circulation.

When Logan started his most recent attempt of the Nine-Step Spear, the blood in his veins began to boil like water. Every thrust gave the impression that his arms would explode. The pressure built up along with the strain until it felt like he was swinging a log rather than a spear.

Thankfully, his blood was settling down now that he was done with the spear dance, giving way to a mixture of exhaustion and euphoria like no other. Logan was so tired that he failed to clench his hands even if he wanted to. The freezing hallway would become a problem soon if he didn’t gather the strength to stand up, but he pushed that to the back of his mind and focused on his lifeline.

It was undergoing some kind of change that he didn’t understand. The vast majority of a person’s life essence was gathered in their spine, only a trace amount having been liquefied and spread around their flesh to keep it from dying and going necrotic. That was all normal. More of Logan’s lifeline would be drained over the next sixty to a hundred years until it was exhausted, leaving him to die naturally of old age.

Now, however, the life force in his flesh was being pulled out and dragged back towards his lifeline. This made Logan feel weak and lightheaded, his limbs going numb as flesh was literally deprived of that which gave it life. The situation terrified him, but what came next caused him to yelp in fear.

The life force being dragged back to Logan’s lifeline became chaotic. It gathered into a whirlpool and only grew stronger as his blood slowed down. Over the next few seconds, everything was fine until the surface of his lifeline began to flake off from the tornado surrounding it, whittling away at the energy that was keeping him alive.

Logan wanted to do something, but he couldn’t think of a solution that wouldn’t kill him. That left him to watch as weeks and months of his lifespan were swept away in the breeze. Anxiety surged over the next few seconds, his thoughts darkening. The manual had warned him about rushing too fast. It even said to practise the technique for ten days before trying out the dance so that his body would adapt, yet he had foolishly rushed ahead.

Thoughts of his own death rose to the forefront of Logan’s mind, only to be replaced by shock at the next moment. The flakes were darker in colour than the rest of his lifeline and were also not as radiant. Many flakes were being whittled away every second, but large areas were left untouched by the storm, those spots without cracks or blemishes.

The life force manual wasn’t killing him.

It was cleansing his lifeline so that it became more refined and pure.

Logan became excited as the quality of his lifeline was improved. Although he would have a shorter lifespan, that was only if he didn’t use any medicines or kill another beast. In the coming years, neither of those would be a problem.

Replacing his losses was an inevitability. And what filled in those gaps would be far superior to what had been there before, making Logan grin at the thought. He continued to watch the improvements to his lifeline. It became thinner, but also much more sturdy and bright.

Logan took a deep breath and noticed that he felt much better than ever before. His arms were full of strength and his head was no longer clouded, allowing him to see what was happening in the rest of his body. He had been so overwhelmed by his imminent death that he hadn’t even noticed that the flakes of life essence weren’t being discarded.

They were being dissolved.

Each flake disappeared into Logan’s blood, slowly becoming one with his tired and exhausted flesh. The energy spread throughout his body and strengthened that which was damaged. His shoulders grew larger and his arms more defined with each passing second. It was as if he had done weeks of strength training in mere seconds, the benefits only becoming more obvious with time.

So this was how a silly dance was able to condition a person so quickly. Using the discarded life essence as fuel to rebuild his body, Logan could practically feel his muscles and skin growing tougher and stronger with each dissolved flake. They had to be damaged first, but the results spoke for themselves, his muscles becoming more toned as his belly slimmed down.

Logan yawned as he tried to study this process. More flakes broke away from his lifeline, dissolving into a burning hot liquid that soothed his aching shoulders and arms. He had doubted the mystical nature of the technique, and now he had to pay the price.

Pushing himself to a bit less than halfway through the First Step was enough to exhaust him beyond reason. The manual advised that he slowly get a handle on the life force manual over a week or two so that this didn’t happen. Before he knew it, his eyes closed as he gradually fell asleep.

When Logan opened his eyes, Amelia was standing over him.

“What the hell happened?” She said, plugging her nose. “Did you sleepwalk down here? And why do you smell so bad?”

Logan took a deep breath and realised that he stunk. His body and robes had been soaked by sweat when he fell asleep, which hadn’t done much to keep him warm. The prison was bloody freezing. He might’ve frozen to death if he hadn’t dried off while he slept. It took everything in his power just to keep from shivering.

“Sorry, I was training,” Logan replied, putting his hands under his arms to keep warm. “Let’s go back up, and I’ll tell you all about this crazy System.”

Amelia’s eyes began to sparkle. “A system? Did you find some kind of manual in the cells? Or was it something you learned from the painting?”

“No, even better,” Logan said, shaking his head as they began to walk. “I gained access to this mystical System that gives me a whole bunch of benefits. There’s this thing called a privilege level. If I do something impressive enough to increase it, I might even be able to buy food and have it teleported straight to me!”

“Pardon? Are you sure that wasn’t a dream or something?”

“No, I stayed up half the night to confirm it was real. Even now I can bring up the books I purchased and see my Status sheet. Oh, and the world is being terraformed right now as we speak, and if we don’t make it back to the city within four months, we die.”

“Are you serious?” Amelia said, her eyes widening. “Is this terraforming why the mountain collapsed?”

“Probably, yeah.”

Stepping into the slightly warmer cavern, Logan yawned and looked around for people. It was empty, so he grabbed a tub of salty water and started walking towards the hallway. “Anyway, I’ll tell you the rest after I rinse myself off.”

“Hold on!” Amelia said, following after him. “You can’t just say the world is ending and go off to bath!”

“I stink and don’t really want to bother telling the same story twice. Go and gather the others and I’ll be done in two minutes.”

Logan entered one of the more distant rooms and found an empty crate. There was nowhere to drain the water, so he would just have to use it as a bathtub. Before he could strip down though, Amelia followed him in, obviously deep in thought as she stared at the ground.

He turned around and looked at her in silence.

When she didn’t say anything, he raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to ask me a question or join me for a bath?”

Her frown disappeared as a blush crept onto her cheeks. “Questions! Why would you even ask that when the world is ending? Have a sense of propriety, for heaven’s sake.”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Well, turn around and face the wall or get out because the world isn’t ending,” Logan said, pulling the circlet out of his pocket and leaning his spear against the wall. “It’s being terraformed. Animals will turn into monsters, geography is going to be scrambled, and a massive natural disaster will precede it all. Or maybe a bunch of smaller disasters? I’m not sure, but the System will supposedly protect human population centres.”

Amelia didn’t respond until Logan climbed into the empty crate and peeled his robe off. She didn’t see anything, but that didn’t stop her from blushing and running out the door. He sighed in relief until she started speaking to him through the door. She hadn’t left like he had hoped, instead asking questions from the other side of the door while he rinsed himself off.

Logan had to use a second robe to dry himself off before putting on a third. Besides no longer smelling, he didn’t feel clean even with a fresh robe. That was also when his stomach began to grumble.

Logan hadn’t really thought about it, but there were a ton of logistic issues with being lost in the wilderness. Food, water, and clothing were the most obvious, but having no soap or soft towels was a nightmare of its own.

Logan walked out and moved to the cavern with Amelia. It had only been about ten hours since everyone went back to sleep after the monster attack. Most likely, they didn’t fall asleep for a while after that, so he gave them another few hours before everyone would get up naturally.

Of course, some of them didn’t go to sleep at all. Amelia was one of those people, her mind too active to put to rest when a monster could be sniffing around on the other side of her door. Not that he blamed her. Being helpless to change your fate was a miserable way to live.

With nothing to do, Logan read over the book on spear basics and did a little bit of practice. He made a lot of stupid mistakes before correcting them. It didn’t help that Amelia sat nearby, staring at him while he trained. Nonetheless, a few hours of training wasn’t enough to turn his movements into muscle memory, meaning he would inevitably make mistakes whether she watched or not.

Logan moved on to the life force manual. He hadn’t memorised everything yet and was still piecing a lot of things together, but he didn’t dare to try the First Step again. He was still tired and sore after yesterday, and the manual emphasised resting until he fully recovered to avoid serious injuries.

That was why Logan only read over the life force manual before studying the Piercing Thrust technique for the first time. He went into it with excitement, but almost immediately found himself confused.

It started with a written explanation of how to grip the spear. Even with diagrams and a step-by-step guide, that was difficult enough to follow. Then, it went into some complicated explanation about rotational force, detailing how one could use the movement of their joints to multiply the spear’s power through the Heavenly Laws.

Logan had a lot of experience with learning about higher concepts since he was in his final year of college, but he soon reached the end of the book and found himself blinking at an empty page. That was it? How the hell was he supposed to leverage the ‘concept of rotation’ to invoke the ‘Heavenly Law of Piercing’? To summarise, the answer was twisting the spear when he thrust it... which didn’t actually tell him anything.

With nothing to go on, he tried just that. Thrust after thrust, nothing happened besides Amelia asking why he looked frustrated. The explanation was just too convoluted to understand in under an hour. He knew that rotating the spear mid-thrust was the key to executing the technique, but knowing was too far removed from doing.

Eventually, Logan had to give up when people started wandering out of their rooms. He kept silent until they all gathered around him. No one interrupted for quite some time, and when they did, most only asked a handful of clarifying questions.

It wasn’t hard to convince them when he mentioned that raising his privilege would give them a chance to buy food. Some were rude about the lack of evidence, but after arguing in circles, he eventually told them that they would know the truth soon enough.

Either he was a liar and they all died, or they got a steaming buffet and lived.

Besides, within the next week or two, it was virtually guaranteed that one of them would ignite their lifeline and gain access to the System. The only problem was getting to that point. Logan first tried to share the basic spear manual by making his screens visible, but that didn’t work. He then attempted to read the book out loud and was shocked when his voice kept catching.

He couldn’t even carve the words into the stone floor if he was thinking about a System-owned book. It might be different if he purchased the physical copy, but that was impossible until he raised his privilege level and net worth.

Logan eventually gave up, choosing to teach the few people willing to use a spear instead. There were only a few in the cells to begin with, meaning it was just Amelia, Stephanie, and Deon standing opposite him. They mimicked his movements and took what he said to heart. None of them were very good, not that Logan was one to talk.

By the end of the day though, all three stood a chance at fighting back if they were attacked again. They could dodge a pouncing rat without tripping over their own feet, were able to stab things with reasonable accuracy, and wouldn’t drop their spears if they were attacked.

Sadly, Logan didn’t experience as much improvement as the others. He was much better than the day before but felt no closer to learning how to execute Piercing Thrust. The description in the Shop claimed that it could multiply the piercing potential of any thrusting attack. Right now, he could make his weapon spin. It looked neat, but it didn’t actually increase the lethality of his spear.

Logan ended the day off by attempting the First Step again. He got a little over halfway through before collapsing to the ground, which was a slight improvement but a welcome one to say the least. It also only took him six failed attempts to get into the right groove. After that, he scrubbed himself clean again with the salt water that had dripped off the stalactites.

Everyone also went to bed hungry that night. Thanks to Ron and Betty hanging all the meat up, it was already air drying. It would take another few days before it was remotely safe to eat. That was terrible news for Logan, whose current regime of mystical life force exercises did nothing to sate his appetite.

In fact, it was doing the opposite. He craved food so badly that he could barely focus on studying the painting before bed. Even when he slept, his dreams were populated by his favourite restaurants and meals.

The next three days were more of the same. Logan managed to get to around two-thirds of the way through the First Step, and his improvements with the Long Night were just as great. He still didn’t know what he had to do to improve his mind and soul again, a single flower not doing anything for him since he had already comprehended a few.

That was why he focused on all of the blue flowers. Either he had to comprehend a set or, God forbid, the entire field before he experienced another cognitive enhancement. The flowers made him think of a clear blue sky, which helped calm him down and forget the pain in his stomach, which was growing by the day.

After not eating for a few days, Logan had lost nearly every gram of fat. If he didn’t have such a robust life force, he might’ve starved to death by now, but he was still going strong despite not eating or drinking anything for so long.

The others didn’t have that problem since they weren’t doing intense exercise or practising a life force manual. No one looked great, but they still seemed normal for the most part. Thankfully, the meat was dry enough by the fourth day to give everyone a badly needed meal. There was enough food to keep them fed for a few days, but the rat was only so large.

They were going to run out of food soon enough. When that happened, Logan would have to go out and hunt, repeating the week-long cycle of brining the meat in salty water before air drying it. That was too much time to be stuck in one place, especially when they had less than four months to find a way back to the city.

If Logan didn’t unlock the Shop, travelling back to the surface was going to be borderline impossible. Eating raw meat from a monster was one way to save time on their journey, but it was also a great way to get the first magical disease named after you.

He might be able to survive by using the egg. The others… not so much. It could heal injuries and bring people back to life, but could it cleanse a disease or kill a tapeworm that wasn’t technically inside your body? Logan didn’t want to know, which meant he would still have to go and fight some horrifying monster before they all starved to death.

That wasn’t too much of an issue now that he had a weapon. Logan just wished he could’ve learned Piercing Thrust before risking his life, but he was stuck at a bottleneck and couldn’t keep progressing. After another day with no luck, he had to give up training in seclusion and get ready to hunt for more food.