Tom stepped out of the room with a neutral expression. He locked eyes with Logan and nodded, his gaze moving down to the ground as he walked into the cavern. James and Stephanie saw him first. They halted their sparring match and waved Amelia over, the girl noticing Tom a moment later.
They walked over and stood in front of Tom.
Logan didn’t try to eavesdrop, but the man’s voice carried in the small cavern. “I… fucked up. And I’m sorry. It was a silly mistake, and it won’t happen again.”
The three of them looked at each other.
James shrugged, taking the lead to accept his apology. “Don’t worry about it, man.”
“Yeah, it’s not your fault that you slipped.”
Tom stood up straighter at Stephanie’s comment, but not everyone wanted to let him off lightly.
“We’re a team now,” Amelia continued, looking unconvinced by Tom’s apology. “If someone makes a mistake, be nice and point out how you think they can improve. We all know you didn’t intend to fall over, and maybe Logan could’ve given you a moment to get your footing, but there is no excuse for badmouthing him, alright? We’re all stuck here together so let’s make the best of it.”
Tom maintained an expressionless stare while Amelia spoke, but Logan barely caught a twitch of the eye when his name was mentioned. He hoped that it was nothing. They didn’t need to become best buddies on their journey back up to the surface, but being cordial with each other would make it much more tolerable.
Logan walked over and interrupted them all. “So, how do we feel about hunting some more rats? I don’t know about you, but I could probably eat a whole one by myself right now.”
***
Twenty minutes later, they skulked down familiar tunnels. Logan was at the front again to scout for danger, everyone else following a ways behind. He pointed out any unusual fungi or slippery spots they might trip over. Most of the mushrooms were blue and seemed to be connected, but there were a few unusual outgrowths that were almost like coral.
Whenever Logan walked past something new, there were also a lot of little insects that fled into the growths. He found them all fascinating, but the threat of being attacked kept him focused. It also helped that they were all quite terrifying. He wasn’t scared of insects in the general sense, but seeing a few that glowed and only vaguely resembled what he was familiar with ensured that he kept his distance.
The scariest one he had encountered so far was a worm that appeared completely normal, if a little big. Logan had walked past it when the thing squirted acid on a beetle. It had glowing blue fungi growing over its shell and was the size of a clenched fist. With a burst of hissing stream, the bug melted into a puddle of liquid. The worm then crawled into the mixture of acid and beetle and soaked the liquid up through its skin, which changed colour as it drank the fluid.
Logan gained a much healthier respect for anything he encountered after that point.
Thankfully, none of the insects attacked him or anyone else, allowing them to walk straight into a crystal rat similar in size to the others they had found and killed in the caves. Logan signalled the group to follow and rushed out, using Piercing Thrust to stab through the beast and pin it to the wall. He then stepped back and allowed the others to finish it off.
It didn’t give them any combat experience, but it did give them a lot of life force. Besides, learning a technique or two after they advanced would make them far more lethal. It would also make hunting in these tunnels a lot safer, which was something that Logan was concerned about.
He couldn’t revive a puddle of melted goop.
The rest of the day was more of the same. Eventually, they decided to have Logan stand back unless a rat successfully escaped. It slowed their hunting down quite a bit, but the extra time helped them improve their group coordination. Logan even received a bit of life force for his troubles despite only giving a few light wounds to some of the rats. That was why he didn’t notice the changes to his lifeline until they encountered their first group of monsters, one of which was a Common variant.
Logan peered around the bend of the tunnel and found three crystal rats feasting on a wall of glowing blue mushrooms. There were some strange outcroppings and splashes of red on the wall, but he couldn’t tell if they were eating the mushrooms or something behind it.
Giving up, Logan focused on the three rats. Two of them were similar to the ones they had come across earlier: around the size of a medium dog and covered in sparkling crystal fur. However, the rat in the middle of those two was much larger. It wasn’t a regular Ore Rat but a Common Giant Ore Rat.
Sneaking back to the group, Logan gathered them around and shared his thoughts.
“The only question now is what we should do,” Stephanie said, her knuckles turning white around the shaft of her spear. “Do we go around them or try our luck?”
“I think we should fight,” Amelia said, her voice steady. “I can handle one if James acts as a support. We all know Logan can kill the big one alone, but I’m not sure if Tom and Steph will be okay facing the last by themselves?”
“We’ll be fine,” Tom said, looking disappointed that he wasn’t fighting with Amelia.
For the same reason, Stephanie was beaming. “Leave it to us!”
“Alright, does anyone have an idea they would like to share?”
“I think this plan is the best for reducing injuries, but I think I have a better one if we want to get stronger.”
***
Five minutes later, they followed Logan as he snuck up on the three rats. The two on the outskirts were smaller than the one in the middle. It was around the size of a large dog, while the other two were similar to the rats they usually faced. It shouldn’t be a hard fight, but it definitely would be without getting a sneak attack in first.
Sadly, the largest rat noticed Logan, forcing him to attack before everyone was ready to strike as one. He immediately used Piercing Thrust. The giant rat spun around and hissed at him, but it was too late, the spear flashing as it disappeared into the monster’s back.
He pulled the spear out and took a few steps back. The rat tried to pounce at him, but as it crouched low to the ground, its hind legs went limp. The beast let out a wail of anger, its legs dragging behind it.
Despite being crippled from the waist down, it still clawed its way after Logan. He stepped back again as James and Stephanie came forward. They both stabbed out at the rat, dodging around while it chased after them. They had a few near misses, sustaining nothing more than a scratch.
Seeing that they were fine, Logan turned to help the other two. Amelia was unharmed and doing very well. Whenever the rat tried to attack her, she threw it away with her shield. She often took those moments when it was rolling across the ground to stab at its exposed belly or sides.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Tom, on the other hand, was struggling quite a bit. He was more or less being chased by the rat as it slashed at his shield. If it knocked his only form of protection out of the way, he would be forced to use his sword to deflect the blow. Amelia would likely win her fight, but Tom was only a single misstep from getting mauled.
With his decision made, Logan ran over and used Piercing Thrust. The crystalline tip flew through the air without a sound. It dug into the back leg of the rat and cut through a tendon, causing it to limp as it continued chasing after Tom. He was still disadvantaged after that, but the fight was manageable for now. He wouldn’t die in the next few seconds.
With everyone relatively safe in their battles, Logan stood back and kept watch. Nothing happened that required his direct assistance. Amelia killed her rat after nearly ten minutes of fighting. She was dripping with sweat and trembling from the exertion, but she had managed it all on her own.
Tom needed Logan to stab the rat again to barely get the kill. It took him nearly twenty minutes and required a break in the middle, which meant that Logan had to come in and distract the rat while he caught his breath. While much worse than Amelia, it was pretty solid when the smaller shield and different weapon were accounted for.
Lastly, James and Steph fought the longest. The biggest rat had the most vitality by far. It refused to die no matter how many shallow wounds they put on it, making the fight a forty-minute affair. After ten minutes, James and Steph were forced to take the fight in turns. The entire battle was chaotic and resulted in a few injuries between them, but Logan was only involved in crippling the rat in the first place.
He also didn’t help them after the attack, which made their accomplishment all the more impressive. He also healed the few injuries they had sustained, which were all incredibly minor. Their lives would only be at risk if the cuts got infected, which would never happen since he used the egg to instantly heal them all. It also helped to keep them at top form despite fighting for over half an hour, their energy recovering with their injuries.
Logan read over the notifications as the last rat died.
[You have slain a Mortal at the Second Step, Ore Rat.]
[You have slain a Mortal at the Second Step, Ore Rat.]
[You have slain a Common Mortal at the Second Step, Giant Ore Rat.]
Logan was coming to understand more about how the rankings worked. Every unranked enemy was simply called an Ore Rat, and all Common variants had the prefix ‘giant’ at the front of their names. He could only assume they were some kind of superior, evolved version of the normal Ore Rats.
The only question now was if all the Giant Ore Rats were born like that or if they evolved into one through some kind of achievement or lucky encounter. Logan assumed the latter. After all, the two Ore Rats rats were at the second step of Body Tempering - if it was even called that for monsters - while the Common rat was the same.
They were most likely of the same brood. It was just that one of them got lucky or was born with more talent. The same was true for the other rats they had killed earlier in the day. All of them were unranked and at the first or second stage of Body Tempering, making him wonder if the tunnels were some kind of nest.
Logan chewed on his lip while he thought. It was important to understand how these monsters worked before they fought any stronger ones, but he became distracted as his lifeline burned. He focused on the cord of verdant green energy in his spine as it drank up the life force of the Giant Ore rat.
Previously, every kill had been like tipping a bucket of water into a bathtub. What he put in was how much it filled up. The life force didn’t change or shrink as it was absorbed, the growth proportional to the input. That was how things had always been, but now his life force was suddenly doing things differently.
The expansion slowed down to an almost unnoticeable amount. That made Logan panic, but he quickly realised that it was a good thing. Instead of filling his lifeline with impure garbage, the incoming stream of life force was automatically refining itself to match his current supply.
After all, Logan had been practising the Nine-Step Spear for nearly a week now. His lifeline was much more pure and solid than before. While not anything close to perfect, it was incomparably better than any of the monsters he had killed.
Logan paused for a moment, slowly realising that his lifeline felt saturated. It was full. Or better yet, it was back to how it was before he bonded with the egg. He had lost a good chunk of his lifespan thanks to using its power recklessly. With it recovered, he now had a much smoother journey to improving his cultivation.
With the growth of his lifeline slowing down, Logan guessed that his progress would actually reduce a small amount, but he didn’t let that bother him. He instead turned to the group and congratulated them on their excellent work. Everyone besides Amelia was resting on some rocks or against the wall.
She was standing in front of the bloody wall of mushrooms, not moving despite being called out to. Logan walked over and was about to grab her shoulder when he saw what she was looking at. Entrails and half-eaten organs were spilling out of the wall, a puddle of blood forming beneath them.
“What the hell is going on,” Logan whispered.
She stepped back and looked at him, her expression pale. “Help me pull this thing down.”
Everyone gathered around the wall of fungus and used their weapons or bare hands to pull on a few outcroppings. It took some effort, but they eventually managed to pull the wall down. At least, that was what Logan thought until he noticed what the wall actually was.
An absolutely massive rat spread out on the floor.
Logan and the rest of his team hadn’t pulled down a wall. They had rolled over the body of a rat covered in fungus. He guessed it was around that of a small car, which was a huge difference compared to the dog-sized rats that had been feasting on its corpse. The other big difference that he immediately spotted was the fur.
Unlike the crystal rats, the giant corpse had a metallic black fur covered in glowing blue fungus. That juxtaposition raised some warning signals in Logan’s mind. They had killed six rats in the tunnel over the last two days, but this was the first time they had seen a rat without crystal fur.
“A different species?” James muttered, also noticing what Logan had.
Amelia nodded. “It looks like it was killed in a turf war. Its back is covered in claw marks, and it looks like something bit down on the nape of its neck.”
Logan came closer, looking at the massive bite mark on the rat’s neck. Something had bitten straight through its spine. That made him shudder and glance up and down the tunnel. There was nothing there, obviously, but it felt like they were a moment away from bumping into the monster that had killed this car-sized rat.
Sadly, no one ignited their lifeline and entered the Body Tempering realm. Amelia could feel she was getting close but was still a few kills away. They discussed whether continuing hunting was smart before returning to the cavern with their kills. Hauling six rats was a difficult task that would only become harder with every kill.
After a round of discussions, it was decided that continuing to hunt was inevitable. They were on a timer to get back to the city and had to eat to continue living. Still, that didn’t mean they would throw themselves into the jaws of a terrifying monster. Logan would keep a bigger distance between himself and the others, and he would also travel more slowly.
If anything went wrong, they would have enough time to flee.
Thankfully, the next day started off on the right foot when Amelia killed her third rat and felt her lifeline begin to warm up, her body automatically advancing into the Body Tempering realm.