The sight was so shocking that Logan almost slipped and fell into the basin. It simply didn’t make sense. How could they be so close to the surface when they had fallen kilometres beneath the earth? Well, it turned out they weren’t anywhere near the surface.

Logan soon found that sunlight was shining through what appeared to be a very high ceiling made of transparent rock. The layer was hazy enough to only let some light in, allowing a day and night cycle to support the biodome underneath.

Logan wondered how they could make it out of the cavern and into the biodome, but the hole in the roof was free-standing. He would need to throw a long rope and get it up around one of the trees. That would pose its own difficulties, but those issues would come after finding a way to get around the giant rat sleeping underneath the hole.

And when Logan said giant, he meant it. The beast was even bigger than the Crystal Rat. It was also surrounded by nearly a hundred smaller rats that were all sleeping. There were three Crystal Rats scattered around the basin, at least twenty Giant Ore Rats, and eighty normal Ore Rats.

Logan crawled away as quietly as he could. The last thing he wanted to do was alert the horde, but around halfway to the corner of the tunnel, a rock broke off and clattered across the ground. The noise echoed down the tunnel like a thunderclap.

Logan’s heart sunk like the rock he had just kicked. He froze, only calming down when the silence continued unabated. He almost breathed a sigh of relief when a terrifying screech echoed down his tunnel. The next thing he knew, the beast he decided to call the Rat King was up and stretching.

Logan almost lost his nerve and ran away, but the Rat King’s casual movements made him believe it hadn’t noticed him. It even yawned before calmly brushing its face. Logan took a deep breath and watched as it slowly woke up, the other rats all grooming themselves or sluggishly stretching out.

Once it was awake, the Rat King curled up on itself before suddenly leaping nearly ten metres into the air, its body disappearing through the hole in the roof. Logan didn’t see what happened next as he used Flash Step to flee. He could hear the rats beginning to move behind him, so he ran past the rest of his group and waved at them to follow.

Once they made it back to the cavern, Logan explained what he saw.

“How the hell are we going to make it through?” Stephanie muttered, biting her lip.

“I don’t know, but only the Rat King went through the hole in the roof. I assume the others spread out from the nest in search of food.”

“So now would be our best time to escape?” Amelia said, her words making everyone go silent. “Not right now, obviously. But after the rats wake up, the big boss jumps through the roof to go hunting while the others all search the tunnels and explore. As long as we kill a few rats along the way, we should be able to sneak into the basin and climb out without much trouble.”

Logan glanced around at the others, James shrugging while Tom nodded slowly. “That should work as long as we aren’t unlucky and go down a tunnel with a Crystal Rat. I don’t know how weakened the one we killed was, and I don’t want to find out.”

“Well, you do have Shattering Strike now,” James said, sighing as he sat down against the wall. “Maybe you’ll have an easier time with the Crystal Rat now that we can help a bit.”

“Again, I would rather not risk it. I know three techniques, but I would like to increase that or maybe even learn an intermediate technique before we attempt to leave. Getting through will be much easier, and if I’m right about the difficulty, creating an intermediate skill should reward me with another privilege level.”

“Why do you want-. Oh, you want to buy a rope from the Shop?” Amelia asked.

Logan nodded.

“I agree with Logan,” Tom said, earning a few stares that he seemingly ignored. “He knows three techniques, but we only know one. If we can also learn a movement and defensive technique, our odds of killing a Crystal Rat - if we’re unlucky enough to encounter one - and climbing out of the roof will be virtually guaranteed.”

“Pushing the old folks into the first step of the Body Tempering realm would also help,” Stephanie said, lowering her voice. “I doubt Janet, that old hellcat, will be able to climb up a rope.”

“You can lead a horse to water but can’t make it drink,” James said, chuckling. “Or in this case, you can lead an old cow to a rope, but you can’t make her climb it.”

“That is a concern,” Amelia agreed, nodding her head. “The only thing she’s lifted in the last ten years was food into her mouth. There’s no way she can climb up without advancing her cultivation.”

“We could go up first and then haul the oldies up one at a time?”

“No, we can’t do that. If we take too long, the horde might return and shred them down to the bone. What did that analysis say again? The Crystal Rat can communicate telepathically? If we really climb out, everyone needs to do it themselves. Wasting time by hauling the old folks up will just get us all killed.”

***

The next eight days were a blur. Logan spent the bulk of his time learning Shadow Thrust, his goal being to start on the intermediate Piercing Thrust once he did. That would greatly boost his strength while also helping him understand the concept of vibration.

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He also learned another technique in an attempt to master the concept of rotation. It was called Parry and worked by using rotation to ablate an incoming force. He started with the spear version and learned the technique on the third day, allowing him to pick up the general version, which could be used with any part of his body. Of course, that didn't mean he would be slapping away swords and deflecting arrows with his bare hands. It would merely boost the spear version while giving him a better chance at deflecting attacks with his armour.

Logan's skill in using the concept of rotation made it easier to learn related techniques. Piercing Thrust had taken him around six days to learn, the final bottleneck only loosening when the Ore Rat had almost killed James and escaped. Meanwhile, Flash Step took around four. Both techniques were different enough that he was basically learning an unrelated ability. Logan's slight comprehension of the concept helped, but they were both very different since Piercing Thrust and Flash Stepped utilised different parts of the body.

From then on, rotation-based techniques became faster and easier to learn. Logan spent two days to pick up the general version of Parry. After spending three to learn the spear version, his speed was downright insane. The technique was also helpful and couldn't be considered superfluous, especially when it aided his comprehension.

Status

Name: Logan Gates

Race: Human [Mortal]

Cultivation

Realm: Body Tempering - Early (3/12)

Visualisation Technique: Long Night [Flower Field (2/9)]

Concepts: Rotation (19%), Vibration (11%).

Martial Techniques

Amateur: Piercing Thrust, Flash Step, Shattering Strike, Shadow Thrust, Parry.

Not only had Logan picked up two new techniques, but he had also rearranged that section of his Status. His mastery of the concepts had also increased a lot. With only a few more percent, he would be able to start merging the two together. Of course, his rapid growth meant that his techniques were all much weaker than those of someone who had spent years diligently building up their foundation, but no one like that existed on Earth.

This growth also inspired him to purchase the intermediate version of Piercing Thrust. It was still early, but there was a lot he could glean from the text. Memorising it now would also save him time down the track. Besides, catching a glimpse of what the technique would look like had given him a better idea of what mastery over the two concepts would look like. That helped to speed up his training by a noticeable amount. Still, he was a while away from complete mastery.

That was also why he focused on other ways to get stronger.

After killing a few more Giant Ore Rats, Logan progressed in his cultivation. Everyone else advanced to the second step, and Amelia was only a nudge away from joining him in the third.

Logan attributed his progress to the Nine-Step Spear. A few days ago, he had advanced to the Third Step, the new dance pushing his body to its limits. The First Step had boiled his blood, the Second pulled it back through his muscles and bones, and the Third made it surge through his internal organs like a tsunami.

The process strained Logan's entire body. He grew tremendously after reaching the Third Step, the improvements so great that it was no different than advancing to the fourth stage of Body Tempering. If he did fight someone in the middle stages, he would find himself keeping up despite only being in the third.

That sounded too good to be true, which it actually was. Jumping ranks due to a life force manual shouldn't happen. The first three steps of the dance were made to strengthen mortals, preparing them for the process of igniting their lifelines. The fourth to the sixth was designed to nourish the bodies of early and middle-stage Body Tempering cultivators, and the last three were for late and peak-stage cultivators. Even though he had a much purer and refined lifeline, the benefits were not enough to jump ranks like that.

It wasn't until Logan recalled the egg that he understood. His constant use must have nourished his lifeline through a passive infusion of energy. After all, it was a creature that Logan could scarcely comprehend. The life force it exuded was so great that his own felt like a drop of water beside an ocean. Having his own life energies touched by its power was a blessing that had elevated his very being.

Unfortunately, the others didn't receive those benefits. Even after picking up their own manuals and reaching the Second Step, they still had normal levels of bodily strength.

The only problem now was time. Logan needed to raise his privilege level soon. Over the last few days, the old folks had become lethargic and pale after not eating properly for weeks. There were only two ways Logan could gain a level. The first was to learn an intermediate technique, and the second was to kill the Rat King.

Neither guaranteed him a privilege level. Of course, one method was potentially lethal while the other required nothing besides time and effort. Unfortunately, it appeared that their time was almost up. Betty didn't have the strength to move anymore, and Janet's husband was experiencing some concerning symptoms. He had nearly stripped naked the other day and jumped into the pit, thinking it was a hot spring.

Deon was taking care of the guy, but there was only so much he could do beyond keeping them safe, and attempting an exorcism wasn't one of them.

That pushed Logan into the dangerous task of trying to hunt down the Rat King. The only problem was that he simply couldn't do it, at least not as he was. Fighting the Rat King on its own would be a fatal endeavour, and that wasn't even mentioning the three Crystal Rats or the hundred or so lesser variants that swarmed them.

With all that in mind, they devised a plan to thin out the herd. That would both increase their strength and weaken the horde, hopefully giving them enough of a boost to fight the Rat King. As far as Logan could see, it was working quite well. They had slain around eight of the twenty Giant Ore Rats and about thirty normal Ore Rats. That gave them the confidence to try their hand at hunting down a Crystal Rat, but that was easier said than done.

The main problem was finding one. Logan had no idea where they liked to hunt, but he could make a safe guess that it was very deep into the tunnel system. They stopped searching the outskirts for that reason and travelled deeper into the tunnels than they ever had before. It wasn't until the second day of searching that they made it far enough to find one.