Logan stared at the notification. After increasing his privilege level, he began to imagine what he would buy and eat first. A week of eating raw rat meat had turned those thoughts so real that they were practically hallucinations. He could almost taste the seven herbs and spices and even hear the crunch of deep-fried chicken.

That was why the notification felt like a punch in the gut.

Defeating the Crystal Rat should’ve been impossible. Even distracted and half-dead, they were only a single mistake away from being turned into lumps of mangled flesh. Maybe Logan could’ve run away if he kept up the fire long enough, but that depended entirely on how determined it was to kill him.

Now, Logan could only assume that he had to kill something at the peak of Body Tempering to increase his privilege level again. That was definitely impossible. The Crystal Rat had been at the seventh, so what would happen if Logan tried to fight something at the tenth? He couldn’t imagine surviving a single blow, let alone killing it. And that was if he got lucky and didn’t find a monster higher than the tenth stage or beyond Uncommon in its rarity.

Logan sat down and leaned against the cavern wall, his mind wandering. There had to be other ways to raise his privilege level. Fighting something at the peak of Body Tempering while still in the early stages was impossible for the current him.

That left some other method, but he could only think of two. Either he did something impressive with his life force manual or raised his mastery over the spear. If he could perfect one of the two, the System would definitely reward him. The only problem was that they would all die by the time he achieved that.

Eating nothing but raw meat would eventually kill them. Finding a source of fruit and vegetables would fix this issue, but the odds of that happening so deep underground were slim. Logan’s only chance at survival was to raise his privilege level. He had to find a way to do that within the next week or two, or people would genuinely starve to death from lack of nutrients.

Thankfully, Logan hadn’t tried to eat one of those blue mushrooms. He had entirely forgotten because Tom had annoyed the group that afternoon. Now that Logan suspected the fungus to be the cause of the Crystal Rat’s strange behaviour, he decided to stay firmly away from the tunnels once everyone was ready to back down to the cavern.

Sighing, Logan drank two of the revival potions. Only ten were left, and they still hadn’t started travelling yet. Most of the second potion was banked away for future use, but that meant little when he would go through it in a month due to his intensive training program. Still, Logan couldn’t stop now when it was helping so much. He needed the power as quickly as possible so that they could get back to the city faster, which brought him back to the present.

An overwhelming torrent of life force crashed into Logan. He physically recoiled from the impact, Amelia yelping behind him as she fell to her knees from her own infusion. So much poured into Logan that it dwarfed everything he had ever gained from killing monsters combined. It was like a river compared to a leaking tap, his lifeline growing with each passing second.

Before he knew it, something strange was happening to his lifeline. It wasn’t just changing in quantity or purity anymore. The energy itself was undergoing a transformation, the liquid turning a brighter shade of green as it shrunk down.

The energy within his lifeline was being elevated to a higher quality. It condensed into a thinner and more solid cord, no different than doing a month of life force training. Impurities were forced out, the life essence became more dense and potent, and Logan’s body grew more robust as it broke down the impurities floating through his bloodstream.

All of Logan’s hard work had turned these quantitative improvements into a qualitative change. There wasn’t just more energy within his lifeline. It had it had genuinely become something greater, his lifeline evolving on a fundamental level.

Logan didn’t know what that meant until a notification appeared in front of his face.

[Congratulations! You have successfully refined your life force enough to advance into the second stage of the Body Tempering realm.]

Logan opened his Status and found that his realm had increased by one, proving he had reached the second stage. While today hadn’t given him full access to the Shop, things were still shaping up to be very nice. Logan had advanced his cultivation, broke through his bottleneck in learning Flash Step, and even raised his privilege level.

In another week or two, he might even gain access to the full Shop, which wasn’t bad considering it had only been eight days since they had regained their freedom at the hands of the Skeleton Lord. Sighing, Logan wondered if that thing had died or was merely hiding from them. He hoped it was the former, but he doubted that creature would let him go while he still possessed its circlet.

Once the torrent of life force ended, Logan hopped up and walked over to Amelia. Her friends were standing around her with nervous looks on their faces. After all, she had randomly collapsed and started ignoring them.

“Did you also advance?” Logan asked, staring her down.

Amelia appeared more... sturdy? Stable? Logan couldn’t understand what he was seeing, but she was almost more real than the others surrounding her.

Amelia nodded, looking up at him with a smile. “I also got sixty thousand credits!”

She held her hand out for him to pull her up, which he did without thinking. Tom glared at him. Logan ignored the man and walked over to the rat. If he had access to the Shop now, he may as well try it out. Better than dragging the car-sized rat back down to the cavern.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Holding his hand on the corpse, Logan opened his interface to see if he could really sell the Crystal Rat.

[Crystal Rat Corpse]

[Analysis: After feasting on spiritual crystals, this Giant Ore Rat has evolved into an Uncommon variant with a bloodline focused on the soul. Capable of telepathic communications and soul-based attacks. While not an adult, this variant species is one of the more valuable ones as it can be used for soul-related treasures and alchemical products.]

[Would you like to sell the entire corpse for 721,000 credits?]

Mulling over the words, Logan wondered how the crystals and glowing fungus were related. Some insects could become ‘zombified’ by fungal infections, and a few viruses also made people and animals grow tumorous bones and horns.

Perhaps this bioluminescent fungus could do both? By eating the mushrooms or breathing in the spores, the Giant Ore Rat had become sick, its body producing crystalline tumours rather than its usual metallic fur. Or maybe the fungal infection triggered it to consume these rare soul crystals?

Shaking his head, Logan continued reading after he failed to decipher the mystery. That was when he saw the ridiculous sale price. He had also received sixty thousand credits as a kill reward, but that was nothing compared to this. Half a million credits was enough to buy over two hundred techniques.

Logan thought about selling the corpse when he turned back to Amelia and the rest of the group. She looked quite pleased with herself while the rest of her friends looked miserable, if not envious. It took him a moment to realise why, the reason being that none of them had injured the Crystal Rat. They hadn’t gotten a cut of the kill energy since they hadn’t fought in the first place.

“Don’t feel bad about not becoming a cultivator yet,” Logan said, giving them a wan smile. “I’m sure you’ll all advance after the next few kills. Besides, you should be happy that Amelia and I got stronger since we can protect you.”

“That’s better than nothing, I guess.”

Tom just frowned.

“Still,” Stephanie said, also frowning, “we’re slowly being left behind. We couldn’t even help at all today.”

Amelia pat her friend on the back. “It’ll balance out soon enough. We just have to keep escorting you around.”

“Also, I have something to tell you guys. This may not sound like good news, but it is if we look at it in the right light. My privilege level went up. I tried to buy something, but it wouldn’t let me. I can only sell things. However, the good news is that the next level up should allow me to buy everything we need. Water, clothes, and even proper beds are all available in the Shop, so don’t lose hope yet.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Amelia said, looking down at what Logan assumed was her Status screen. “I also gained my first privilege level. I just wish I was a little bit faster in awakening.”

Logan didn’t understand until he remembered how he got his first privilege level. As he was number eight thousand in the world to become a cultivator, the System had granted him a free privilege level. Sadly, Amelia had missed out on the opportunity. It didn’t even say what number she was in the line or the cut-off. It would be good to know, even just to see how many cultivators there were amongst humanity.

That information might be available at a higher privilege level. As it turned out, you needed a privilege level of one or higher to get any kind of information from the System. Amelia discovered that when she first ignited her lifeline. Whether it was an analysis of something you wanted to sell or identifying what the word ‘lifeline’ meant, you had to have at least one level to use that function.

Logan pointed at the corpse once everyone was done talking. “It’ll pay me nearly a million credits, but I thought about seeing how much we would get for dissecting it. Shall we go back and rest before escorting Ron and Betty here to see if we can earn more, or do you guys want to go back and do this tomorrow?”

The unanimous decision was to do it now, mainly since they had found Ore Rats feasting on an infected corpse. Better to sell the corpse as quickly as possible before they came back and found it stripped to the bone.

The entire journey took about twenty minutes. They made a slight detour to sell the other, half-eaten corpse they had initially thought to be a wall, but it was so damaged that Logan only made fifty thousand credits from the sale.

It wasn’t that far to walk back to the cavern, which was helped by the fact that they didn’t have to be stealthy on the trips back and forth. Only when they were exploring new ground did they have to be careful.

Once Logan set Ron and Betty up to dissect the corpse, he sat down and began to look over the expanded Shop for the first time. Increasing privilege level also gave access to better and more items. There were new techniques available in the Library, weapons and armour with something called ‘inscriptions’ carved into them, and a bunch of new sections to explore.

Items with inscriptions were several times more expensive than the same chest plate or sword without one. Interestingly, there were also medicines with inscriptions carved into them. There were also new medicines that could heal and strengthen the body with spiritual energy.

That was when Logan came across all the new food options, some outright sounding unreal. He could now buy monster meat and fasting pills. They were designed for people at specific stages, such as the middle stage of Body Tempering, and could keep a person fed for days on end with a single pill.

That sounded… convenient and sad.

Not eating for an entire day would be torturous for someone like Logan who loved a good meal. And that was the worst version, the others feeding a cultivator for five, ten, and thirty days, each fasting pill costing exponentially more. That was truly magical and useful for a city or organisation that needed emergency food supplies, but a life without eating delicious food sounded very sad to him.

After nearly two hours of work, Ron and Betty managed to carve the rat up. It was absolutely massive and beyond their capabilities to handle alone. That was why Amelia and the others were helping them. Logan had also offered, but when the others brought up that he lost one arm and almost had the other ripped off, the old couple insisted he relax and take some time for himself.

Logan walked over and pointed at the pile of bones when they were done. “I thought I could feel something strange when I struck at its spine. Little did I know that its entire skeleton would also be made of crystal.”

“If you’re surprised, what am I supposed to be?” Ron said, smacking Logan on the back. “When you said there was a big rat that needed to be dissected, the last thing I expected was something the size of a horse. This thing must weigh at least half a ton. Just the bones, that is.”

“They were so heavy that neither of us could carry them at all,” Betty said, earning a nod from her husband.

“I tried to pick up a bone the size of my fist, but it was so heavy I had to carry it with both hands. The thing was like a rock.”

“That’s not far from the truth,” James said, walking over with a mournful smile. “Mel majored in geology and liked to show me her favourite rocks. The one amethyst she had was about as heavy as the bone you were talking about. And they are minerals, so yeah. Literally rocks but heavier.”

“What he said,” Ron laughed, shaking James’ shoulder. “Now, let’s see if we can make some more cash from this sucker. You better not tell me that we wasted the last two hours of our lives.”