Logan had made a terrible mistake. With his leg trapped by the tail and the full weight of the Rat King bearing down on him, he had no way to escape. It would land on him like a brick wall before tearing him apart with its fangs and claws. He would die and that would be it, his journey over before it even began.

A burst of adrenaline filled Logan’s body. He could try to roll out of the way and sacrifice an arm and a leg, or he could attack the rat’s tail while he rolled, freeing himself in the process. Those ideas were alluring and might even work if he had more time to execute them, but he knew he didn’t. He could only attack, so he emptied his mind and focused everything he had as he swung his spear.

It was awkward on the ground, so he engaged his core and sat up, twisting his body to make some space and gain a bit of leverage. A few different techniques flashed through his mind. He even thought about attempting the intermediate Piercing Thrust again, but he ignored that as well.

All he thought about was thrusting his spear. He didn’t even bother using a technique. The only thought that crossed his mind was to destroy the enemy in front of him before it killed him first, which subconsciously pushed him into using Piercing Thrust without even realising it.

That was also why he used it wrong. His original thought process in learning an intermediate technique was to combine Piercing and Shadow Thrust as they were. He hadn’t tried to change the foundation of the method at all. Why do that when you could use Shadow Thrust first before using Piercing Thrust once your weapon was already moving very fast?

As he half lay on the ground, the tip of his spear began to wobble back and forth. It was almost like a drill in its movements, but it didn’t continue spinning like Piercing Thrust. Instead, the rotation halted and reversed again and again. It looked chaotic and unnatural to his eyes.

The air began to twist rather than fold, the layers stacking on top of each other with each wobble. By the time his weapon reached the falling Rat King, nine layers had blanketed the spear’s tip like blades of a knife. That was why it sheared straight through its crystalline pelt without slowing down, even slicing apart the crystal bones in its chest.

And when the tip of the spear found the Rat King’s heart, it didn’t just pierce into the organ. It also left behind the layers of folded air. They formed into a sphere that shattered the moment Logan withdrew his weapon. The chaotic layers of air twisted and collapsed before erupting inside the Rat King, turning its chest cavity into little bits of torn-up meat.

Despite the lethal damage, the Rat King had enough vitality to push Logan back down to the ground and bite down on his head. With his arms raised to protect his face, it bit down both of them at the same time, mauling him like an enraged grizzly bear. After all of the punishment Logan had gone through today, his magically enhanced mind wasn’t able to ignore the immense pain of being mutilated.

He stared up at the Rat King through blurry eyes. He waited for the next attack to come, but it never did. Instead, the Rat King vomited out a mouthful of blood onto him, the vile concoction burning away thanks to the flames. Well, most of it burned away. Chunks of lung and heart were in the mix, the little chunks getting fried as they bounced off him.

The Rat King wobbled and rolled over onto its back. Free of its weight but too weak to move, Logan stared at the ceiling. He lay beside the Rat King and thought over the battle. He had made a lot of mistakes that he could learn from, but he had also made a lot of progress. The biggest was the new technique he had invented, which was decidedly different from anything in the Shop.

He had used rotation as the basis and somehow merged the concept of vibration into it. There was a lot of work to be done before he mastered it, the details already fading from his subconscious. Still, creating a new technique like that was an incredible accomplishment. As a variation of Piercing Thrust, it wasn’t entirely original or perfectly designed for him, but it would be far more potent than anything he could learn from the Shop.

Logan burst into laughter, his mind still reeling from the trauma of the battle. He had invented a branch technique and advanced to the intermediate skill level, and that was just in one fight. That amount of progress was staggering. He would likely never experience something like that again, so he took the time to enjoy it.

Of course, Logan never wanted to fight another Rare monster either. His match-up against the Rat King was particularly terrible as well. Not for him, but the beast itself. All of its bloodline abilities had been rendered useless by him. It could communicate telepathically with its horde, but what good would that do if it was trapped in a deep pit? The circlet also nullified both of its mental attacks, meaning it had absolutely no bloodline abilities to use against him.

Logan had practically neutered the beast and still almost died. If that was the case, he had no chance of winning against another Rare monster. The odds of him being able to nullify three separate bloodline abilities were essentially zero.

He continued to lounge on the ground until he felt a kind of ethereal suction on his stomach. Opening his eyes, he knew the egg had begun taking its dues. Logan slowly drank potion after potion until its hunger abated. By the end, he had to use three Revival potions to satisfy the egg, leaving him with just five remaining.

He subconsciously reserved one for his goal when he returned home, leaving the other four to be used as needed. He worried that it wouldn’t be enough, but with a self-created technique at the intermediate level, Logan hoped that he would be able to bring everyone out safely.

His mind needed more time to recover. He took that chance to look over the notifications he received.

[You have slain a Rare Mortal at the Sixth Step, Lucid Rat.]

Logan reflected on all the creatures he had encountered to make sense of such a monster. The Ore Rats were all unrated, meaning they had no rarity assigned to them. One of the System prompts compared them to normal animals. If Logan came across a bear or a frog, they would both be given the same non-rating. Of course, a bear wasn’t even in the same universe as a frog when comparing how deadly they were.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

That was why a hint of nuance had to be applied to these ratings. At the same stage of advancement, Giant Ore Rats were only as strong as something like a wolf or a lion, which was a Common variant of the rats. The Uncommon Crystal Rats were easily comparable to a grizzly bear or a pride of lions. Cultivation improved what you had, meaning that if you were born a superior life form, you would remain superior unless there was a substantial gap in cultivation level.

All of that made it difficult to rate the levels of power. Unranked beasts were just that. Animals that an average person could beat with a weapon, such as a wolf or bear. Common monsters were generally stronger, but a cultivator with an amateur technique should be considered its opponent. The same could be said about Uncommon monsters. A group of trained humans with a set of complementary amateur techniques should be able to take it down.

In the case of the Lucid Rat, a group of people at the peak of middle Body Tempering, even with intermediate techniques, would likely all die. Only if they possessed something like the circlet would they win. If those conditions weren’t met, then none of them could injure, block, or avoid the beast.

It would simply be a slaughter.

However, if they did possess an item to protect their minds, the Rat King would become much weaker than other Rare monsters. A beast focused on raw power would only be slowed down by a group of humans with quality armour, weapons, and Master-level techniques. Otherwise, it would plough through them all like a scythe through wheat.

The Lucid Rat had a mental suppression skill that could disrupt technique usage. The only reason Logan could weather the attack so well was thanks to his visualisation technique. His mind was leagues above what it should be at his current stage of advancement, giving him a fighting chance. Even then, he still couldn’t withstand it until he used the circlet, which barely levelled the playing field.

It was only when the rat suffered a backlash and Logan created an intermediate technique that he killed his enemy. There was also a series of lucky coincidences that enhanced the power of his new spear technique, the most prominent being that the rat had directly pounced on top of his weapon with its full body weight. If it had been trying to dodge, he would’ve only been able to cripple a limb or make it bleed a little.

In the end, Logan’s new technique should be more powerful than normal since he created it, but a Rare monster at the peak of the middle stages was strong. If he had his new technique from the start, it would’ve been a very different fight that could’ve only ended in a fatal loss.

After all, Logan only figured out to use the circlet by coincidence. If he had an intermediate technique before today, he wouldn’t have used it without getting disrupted and torn to shreds. The Rat King was just that powerful. Without a set of intermediate techniques and the circlet to protect his mind, a fair fight should’ve resulted in his loss almost every time.

Even if he could protect his mind, the Rat King would simply dodge, turning it into a battle of attrition that he could only survive thanks to the egg. Otherwise, even a group of ordinary humans would lose, let alone him. Shaking his head, Logan pulled himself out of the useless what-ifs and got to the part he had been waiting to see.

[Feat achieved! You have slain a Rare monster without assistance, mentorship, or access to the Shop. Your privilege level has increased as a reward for this tremendous feat. +300,000 credits.]

[Privilege: Level 2 -> 3]

Reading over the prompt again, Logan noticed the emphasis on how he killed the Lucid Rat without help. But wasn’t that wrong? He was using the egg to empower himself. Not to mention that he technically learned the intermediate technique through bits and pieces from other manuals from the Shop. Or perhaps it meant Shop items such as weapons, armour, and life force pills?

Either way, Logan pushed himself off the ground and began the arduous climb out of the pit. The minutiae didn’t matter as long as he had access to the Shop. There were also more details about the timeline of the terraforming and what would happen and when, but none of that mattered for at least another two months. Besides a few tremors and some headwinds, nothing big would happen for a while yet.

Native animals and beasts would slowly advance to the limit of their bloodline. The same would happen to the monsters brought here by the System, which included the ore rats. All in all, nothing of value was mentioned, leaving him to gradually haul himself up the unstable bridge-cum-ladder.

The climb was made easier since he didn’t bother taking his spear. Logan spent the slow climb looking through the Shop for a weapon to replace it. He didn’t have the strength to carry his old spear, not to mention that it was pretty chipped and scratched up.

Halfway up, he had to stop and take a break. He was actually pushing himself before he was ready. His body was fully recovered, but his mind was so frayed that he could barely move, his limbs not responding when he commanded them to. It made him feel weak despite being in near-perfect condition.

Taking his time, Logan paused his weapon browsing to search the medicine section. Before increasing his privilege level, it only had life force medications available for purchase, the type limited to those that could enhance a person’s cultivation rather than heal. Now, however, there were magical medicines for all kinds of things. He wanted to skim through them but was too tired to bother. After changing the parameters to only list mental recovery medicines, he bought a Daydream Elixir.

It cost over 100,000 credits and appeared the instant he purchased it. An ornate bottle appeared from nowhere, the container shaped like an hourglass. Logan snatched it from the air before it fell. The liquid inside was glowing, and the top and bottom halves of the hourglass were filled with different coloured liquids. The top was a dreamy orchid-purple colour and the bottom was a creamy white.

It looked beautiful, and it tasted even better. It had the consistency of milk and had a flowery aftertaste that Logan couldn’t quite place. He then closed his eyes and basked in the sensations. A stream of warmth ran up his spine and flowed into his head. The next thing he knew, he was completely out of it as he stared into the distance with a placid smile.

He awoke from his daydream a few seconds later, yawning his head off like he had just slept for twelve hours. Which wasn’t far from the truth. Logan took a deep breath and examined himself, noticing that the elixir had refreshed his mind after just a little nap. It was so fast that his body was still processing the other benefits.

His mind grew more powerful as the elixir was absorbed, elevating it on a fundamental level. The advantages were no less than comprehending another set of flowers. The world grew sharper by second, his mind became more focused, and his thoughts flowed like water.

Logan grinned and continued his climb at nearly twice his previous speed. The Daydream elixir was incredibly potent and would continue enhancing his mind for another hour, making it well worth the price. It was a one-time use item that revitalised the mind as a side effect, making it no different from having a whole night’s sleep. After that, the person would become immune to the main ingredient: the nectar of a fantasy orchid.