Logan cut off the egg and opened his eyes. His injuries had long since healed, and from what he could see with a cursory glance, no one else needed immediate attention. Still, he could feel the hollow remnants of what the rat had done to him. Where its claws had dug trenches in his back, his heartbeat made them throb. His ribs ached with every breath, but with an effort of his will, he shoved the pain down and was surprised to feel it disappear.

Logan wondered what was happening, so he checked his Status to confirm some things.

Cultivation

Realm: Body Tempering - Early (3/12)

Visualisation Technique: Long Night [Flower Field (3/9)]

Concepts: Rotation (24%), Vibration (19%).

Logan could vaguely remember breaking through. That state of enlightenment had been mystical and focused to the extreme, allowing him to progress hundreds of times faster than usual. Every set of flowers took around twice as long to comprehend than the last, and he had only been a quarter of the way through comprehending the third set. The fact that he had skipped three weeks of diligent meditation made him quite pleased.

After all, Logan had almost no time to practise. He could barely squeeze a few hours in between his spear and technique training. Compared to when he had the entire day to sit in a freezing cold prison cell and study the painting for hours on end, his progress was much slower.

Logan initially believed he would solve them quickly, but each set of flowers was more than twice as complex as the last. It had taken him a week to comprehend the Goddess, another for the first set of flowers, and two more for the second. Even after a week of meditating on the third set, he was only around a quarter of the way to comprehension, meaning it should’ve taken an entire month in total.

Logan went over the maths again and froze. He quickly checked the countdown in his status and struggled to believe what he was reading. His imprisonment had lasted around ten days, and tomorrow he would’ve spent a month living in the cavern.

Things were moving faster than when they had first been imprisoned. Logan had grown into a superhuman, but he still felt like the same person. He glanced down at the pool of blood around the corpse and found his own reflection. He barely recognised the scruffy, bearded man who stared back at him.

The stranger’s eyes were hard and determined. He looked nothing like the scared kid he had seen in the mirror that first day, and he definitely didn’t look like the fool who had been so ready to jump off a cliff. If he could change so much in just a month or two, how different would he be when his journey ended in another two or three?

Returning home was the ultimate goal, but Logan now realised he wouldn’t be the same person who had fallen into the abyss. Even if he revived the dead and fixed his broken family, would things really go back to normal? How could they when he returned a changed man?

Shaking his head, Logan refocused on what mattered.

He stepped off the beast and took the flask of water from Amelia. He used it to wash the blood from his hands before taking a sip, the cool liquid quenching his thirst. He then checked to see if the egg needed another revival potion, but he was all right on that front, the remnant of the last potion keeping it sated for now.

“Are you okay?” Amelia asked, her brows furrowed with concern.

Even Tom was staring at him weirdly.

Logan took another deep breath and realised his current demeanour was very concerning. He had just been mauled by something even more dangerous than a grizzly bear, his back flayed enough to kill him. And despite the amount of agony he had been through, he was standing there without care in the world. His eyes were half-lidded and his breathing calm.

He would also be worried if he saw this current behaviour in another person.

“I’m okay,” Logan said, smiling at them. “Let’s go check on James and Stephanie though. They were thrown pretty hard.”

All three of them went over to Stephanie. James was sitting up and leaning against the wall, his hand on his head. He also stood up and followed behind them to Stephanie. She was lying on the floor and still unconscious.

Logan and Amelia were discussing what to do when Tom grabbed the flask and poured the last splash of water on Stephanie’s face. She jolted and sat up with a gasp. It took her a moment to realise what had happened, her face going from confusion to anger at the sight of Tom standing over her with a dripping flask.

“What the hell was that for, you bastard?”

Tom shrugged. “We needed to check if you were okay.”

“So you decided to pour a bottle of water on my head?”

“Easier than bending over and checking your pulse.”

Logan chuckled and left the two to argue. Despite Stephanie having a crush on Tom, it was obvious why the man thought of her as a sibling. Logan didn’t even bicker with his own sister like that.

Amelia soon followed behind him. “What’s the price?”

“Less than the last Crystal Rat. Looks like the extra damage to the hide brought down its value a bit.”

“Still good money.”

“And everyone increased their privilege level, so that’s also good.”

“Do you want to sell it now or-” Amelia stopped, a strange rumbling sound echoing throughout the cavern.

Logan pulled on the egg to enhance his hearing. It didn’t improve to a ridiculous degree, but it allowed him to figure out which direction the noises were coming from. Four tunnels led into the cavern in a semicircle, the reservoir against the back wall. Some were larger than others, while only a few of them appeared to connect to each other at random points.

That was why Logan had no idea which tunnel the sounds were coming from since all four were rumbling. He focused harder, noticing that three of them were on a different level compared to the last. It was the farthest away from the nest and would lead back to a doorway right beside the stairwell, but that didn’t answer what the noise was.

“What the hell is that?” Amelia said, looking around at the ceiling. “Is it an earthquake?”

“Why would an earthquake be echoing down the tunnel?”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Logan recalled the analysis he had read about the Crystal Rat hide, his eyes widening. Hadn’t the beast also waited for them to attack? Although he wasn’t certain, Logan immediately sold the rat corpse and started running towards the quietest tunnel. He didn’t even have to say anything, the others following after him.

They used their various movement techniques to rush through the tunnels, but it wasn’t even a minute before they came across the first group of rats. There were three of them, one being a Giant Ore Rat. All three pounced at the group. Logan used Shattering Strike, his spear slamming into the Ore Rat’s neck before it could land on Stephanie’s face and maul her.

She also stabbed the beast in its heart, finishing it off. Amelia smashed her Ore Rat to the side with a Heavy shield Blow while Tom and James did their best to fight the Giant Ore Rat off. Logan rushed over and used Shattering Strike to break some of its ribs, his legs not stopping as he turned and continued running.

“Don’t stop! Just shove past them and keep moving!”

They encountered more groups of rats after leaving the injured Giant Ore Rat behind, but nothing big enough to stop them. However, it slowed them down enough for the horde to catch up. After getting halfway back to the main hall, they could hear the rats coming up behind them. They were still far enough to not see any, but if they really could communicate with their minds, then any rat they came across would be able to share their location with the rest of the horde.

Thankfully, they never did get surrounded. As the group broke out of the tunnel and entered the hallway, Logan allowed them to run past him and down the stairs. He quickly reached out and healed them all with a burst of golden energy. Reaching the second stage of Body Tempering had reforged them into something close to superhuman, but they had still been running for nearly half an hour through uneven tunnels.

The group of sweaty people ran down the stairs one after the other. Logan glanced over his shoulder before he followed, seeing a tide of rats scurry out of a few different tunnels. He raced down the stairs. The thought of them nipping at his heels made his skin crawl, but he managed to get to the bottom before any caught up.

Logan quickly squeezed through their makeshift barricade. After seeing the massive nest, no one felt comfortable sleeping while a veritable horde was above them. That was why they gathered some crates and blocked the stairwell off, leaving only a tiny gap that a human or Ore Rat could crawl through.

Now, the others were grabbing the rest of the crates to block the path off completely.

“Stop!” Logan shouted, crawling out of the gap. James and Tom were about to shove a crate into him. “Leave it open so that only one rat at a time can come through.”

Tom looked like he wanted to argue, but James was already pushing the crate to the side. Logan helped him, but when they got it into place, the entire wall of crates shuddered from an impact. The chittering, enraged squeaks of the horde echoed down the hall, followed by a lone Ore Rat who barely squeezed between the gap.

Amelia smashed its head in with her shield, Heavy Blow working like a charm on the tiny thing. Then another crawled in. And another, rat after rat pushing through the blockage in a controlled fashion. Everyone continued stacking crates in the meantime, leaving Amelia to butcher any Ore Rats that were unfortunate enough to crawl through the gap.

A small pile of corpses was forming, Deon coming in from the side to unclog the gap every few kills. The rest of the old folks were either on bed rest or standing by the mouth of the hallway, their eyes wide in shock. Logan ordered the old folks to go down to the cells and lock the doors behind them. Some had to be carried, but Tom and James managed it just fine.

Once the rooms were empty of crates, Logan and Stephanie leaned against either side of the crate wall to keep it in place. A few natural features helped with that: the lip of the stone door frames caught on the crates, and a few bumps in the floor and roof did the same. Still, the crates were slowly being pushed back, the tide only building up with each passing second.

Things went on like this for a few minutes, Amelia killing nearly thirty Ore Rats before a Giant Ore Rat managed to push through. It was quickly finished off by a few well-placed Heavy Blows from multiple people, but that had widened the gap, allowing two, and soon three, Ore Rats to crawl through simultaneously.

After killing around forty of them, Logan realised the crate wall was no longer moving. It was completely jammed, allowing him to step back. Stephanie looked at him with horror and shock, but when she saw that his side was fine, she also stepped back. Everyone calmed down after that, feeling as if they were protected.

Then the unthinkable happened. All at once, the rats stopped chittering. The hallway went silent as nothing made a noise or came through the gap. Logan glanced at Amelia, her face pale and covered in blood from all of the rats she had killed. She had finally advanced to the third stage of Body Tempering in all that chaos, but no one said a word, the horror of the situation beginning to build.

Logan stepped back from the crate wall. James followed him before the others noticed, slowly retreating until they were at the mouth of the hallway. Another minute passed before a horrifying screech sounded out, the noise coming from a Crystal Rat. A few seconds later, it was followed by an enormous bang, the crates jumping from the impact.

Thankfully, the wall managed to hold. It shifted back a little, but that was about it. Even after the Crystal Rat slammed into the wall a few more times, only two crates were nudged out of place, James and Tom immediately pushing them back into place. Everything went silent after that.

Logan held his breath, and so did everyone else. He didn’t believe they had given up. And he was right, an odd sound echoing throughout the hallway. Something was being dragged across the ground and slammed back down, almost as if-

“They’re moving the fucking crates,” Logan whispered, his mind jumping back to the report from when he sold the rat corpses. These monsters had been eating some kind of special soul crystal that made them more intelligent. And rodents were already very smart, making it more than plausible that they could figure out how to pick up a crate and move it out of the way.

Logan rushed over and peeked through the gap. He only saw shadows at first, but then he spotted one of the giant Crystal Rats picking up a crate and throwing it to the side. He thought about crawling through the gap but decided against it for obvious reasons. That left him to watch as they moved crate after crate away before enough space was made to crawl through the top.

That was when Logan used Shattering Strike through a gap between the crates, smashing the shoulder of a Crystal Rat as it picked up a box. It cried out in pain and knocked a few crates over. Logan was thrown to the floor, a pile of boxes landing on top of him.

The horde of rats screeched, pushing their way through the newly made gap. Logan was pinned under one of the crates until the other Crystal Rat charged through the gap, throwing him and the crate against the wall. The impact didn’t do much damage, but he still pulled on the egg, shrouding himself in a haze of golden fire.

He looked around and watched in horror as his friends ran down to the prison cells without him, an uninjured Crystal Rat close behind. It stood up on its hind legs and tended to its shattered shoulder. Logan stepped on an overturned crate and used Flash Step to leap over the horde. He would finish off the injured Crystal Rat and go down to help the others. There were more crates down there, so they should be able to build another wall to slow them down for a time.

While gliding through the air, Logan found the Crystal Rat in the middle of the hallway. It stood in the middle of the path while the horde ran around its sides. Logan pulled back his spear to use another Shattering Strike, but the technique almost failed when he locked eyes with two glowing orbs hidden in the shadows of the stairwell.

A blinding surge of pain overwhelmed Logan’s senses. For a split second, he felt, saw, and heard nothing. Even the wind on his skin and the chittering of the rats faded away. It was like a blanket of pain had been laid over his mind. Logan almost fell helplessly to the ground when he instinctively reached out to the visualisation technique imprinted on his soul.

The Long Night became a halo of light around his mind, shouldering most of the burden for Logan. That also invigorated his mind. He suddenly found the mind-numbing pain to be no worse than a mild headache. The mental attack began to fade away, the lingering damage from the impact only slowing him down by a fraction of a second as he used Shattering Strike.

The spear came down as he was flying over its head, smashing the skull of the Crystal Rat into a bloody pulp. It seized up and went rigid before it died. Logan crashed into its chest, shoving the beast to the ground. He stood up on the beast’s corpse and prepared himself for whatever hid in the shadows, but the eyes were now gone, replaced with the massive body of the Rat King pounced out of the shadows.