The next few days passed without incident. Logan consumed a variety of life force medicines, slowly mastered his new intermediate technique, and studied the fourth set of flowers. The others went along and did their own training as well. Everyone was making great progress. Tom, Stephanie, and James all learned an intermediate technique, and the old couple each learned an amateur one.

After achieving initial success with a second concept, Amelia broke through and learned an intermediate technique called Empower, which did exactly as it sounded. By fusing Heavy Blow and Shadow Strike, she effectively combined strength and speed into power.

At this point, she was almost as tough as a Giant Ore Rat. Empower also demonstrated why intermediate techniques were much more potent than their amateur versions. By combining speed and strength, she wasn’t adding the effects of two techniques but multiplying them into a new method several times greater than the original.

The old folks were also making good progress. Ron decided to learn how to use the bow since he enjoyed hunting, and Betty, the sweet old thing, went with an axe and shield. It only took them until the sixth day after killing the Rat King to learn their first technique as well. They were both getting much fitter and healthier too, the life force manual causing them to visibly slim down and bulk up.

Their progress only became faster since Logan was spending a ridiculous amount on cultivation resources. He had felt extremely wealthy seeing a number with so many zeroes in his Status, but he soon realised that he could spend money much faster than he could make it. The life force medicines to raise Betty to the first stage had cost him nearly 600,000 credits. She just kept drinking and swallowing pills like they were... well, like they were water.

Her lifeline was too degraded and worn after sixty years of life. She needed lifeline-restoring elixirs and life-extending pills, and only when she had the life force of a sixteen-year-old could he buy medicines that directly increased her cultivation. Before her body could handle it, anything that didn’t fix up the frail condition of her life force might very well kill her.

Ron was the same, but he cost nearly 800,000 credits as he was older than Betty and had worked a trade his entire life. All those decades of hard work and minor injuries had strained his lifeline. Logan thought about making a pulley system to get the old bastard up into the biodome, but he knew that a shortcut would only harm them all in the long run. Ron needed to be able to walk long distances, and with a bad knee, that would only be possible if he cultivated.

After igniting their lifelines and raising them both to the first stage of Body Tempering, things became much cheaper. Logan directly pushed them to the peak of the third stage for less than half a million each, which was much more expensive than Deon.

The man was healthy and only forty years old. Deon required half a million worth of resources to ignite his lifeline and progress to the peak of the third stage. That was nothing compared to the 1.1 million credits he had spent on Betty. Logan had tried taking Deon hunting before they had wiped out the Crystal Rats, but even after killing ten Ore Rats and a Giant Ore Rat, he still didn’t show any signs of advancing.

Judging by the costs, anyone over thirty-five would need medicine to kickstart their cultivation journey. That was around when people started ageing, their bodies only declining from then on. Getting to that age would also naturally accumulate wear and tear. To fix the damage, one had to slaughter hundreds of beasts or buy medicines from the System Shop.

Once everyone was at the peak of early body tempering, Logan guided Ron, Betty, and Deon on which life force manuals to buy. While advancing their cultivation to the peak of the third stage had made them all look younger and heal their age-related ailments, it hadn’t made them any stronger.

That was why they waited nearly two weeks after clearing the way up to the biodome. Without the strength to climb up by themselves, travelling would be pointless. They needed to be able to run and fight whatever monsters were living up there. A week or two wasn’t a lot of time to become an athlete, but with access to the Shop, their progress increased to a ridiculous degree. Just as there were life force medicines, there were also resources to strengthen the body.

These came in elixir and pill forms, but the most effective were medicinal baths. They were basically watered-down elixirs that you sat in. Some of the materials could only be absorbed that way. The rest could be made into pills and elixirs that were directly swallowed, but even if it was possible, medicinal baths were more effective. That was why he purchased a new medicinal bath every day.

They came in pre-packaged kits that you poured into a bowl, almost like a microwavable meal. You then dissolved the powders in a cup of boiling water before tipping it into a bathtub. Alternatively, using as little water as possible was also an option. The individual could then apply the paste directly to their skin in specific patterns.

There wasn’t much information beyond those tidbits, so Logan intended to test things out with a general strengthening mix. Its main purpose was to supplement the body with extra nutrients and energy to boost the effects of practising a life force manual. Logan didn’t expect much, but progress with his life force manual doubled. That was incredible on its own. Combined with the egg, he was improving several times faster than anyone else around him.

After that, he purchased the more expensive baths that strengthened and ‘scrubbed the flesh of impurities’. Logan had no idea what that meant until he hopped in on the second night. He had just finished his technique training and had abused his life force manual to the point of exhaustion.

The water was hot like a proper bath, which his aching muscles enjoyed to no one. He took a few seconds to rinse the sweat and grime off after a hard day of trying to learn his new intermediate technique. He had succeeded in using it five times today, which was a massive improvement.

Logan closed his eyes and allowed himself to relax. Slowly but surely, something began to needle into his skin. He ignored it at first and continued to unwind, but the prickling only grew more intense. Little did he know that the real benefits were only starting.

The needles pierced deeper into his body, going all the way down to the bone. He had to resist jumping out several times. If the description didn’t warn about some ‘gentle stinging’, he would’ve started looking for insect bites. Instead, it was a side effect of the medicinal liquid seeping into his flesh and literally ripping the impurities out. That fact was proven when he began to sweat out a greasy black substance.

It stopped a few seconds later, allowing him to scrub it off and hop out of the bath. Logan expected to see his skin dyed black, but he was cleaner than ever before. He even had fewer blemishes. His robes were like silk as they glided over his skin. Unfortunately, the impurity cleansing only became less effective with time.

He didn’t stop using them either way since the effects would add up over time. That made him wonder about optimal usage. The description didn’t say anything about bathing a certain amount per week. He might’ve been wasting money by having one daily, but he would rather throw the credits away than keep them sitting around and doing nothing.

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It still extracted impurities but took longer and had less obvious benefits. After ten consecutive days, Logan was the only one still doing it. The baths required around an hour to fully deplete their energies. He would’ve also stopped if he didn’t have a visualisation technique to keep himself occupied.

After hopping out of his bath, Logan entered the cavern with his new robe. It was white and had golden accents. It was very ostentatious and looked like a Chinese Taoist robe. Even the sash was made of golden silk, not that he had a choice of what fabric or colours it was made of. The only reason he bought it was for the enchantments. With an active and three passive inscriptions, it was a Rare item like his spear.

The price was also a little higher than the spear as well. The robe had three layers and was made of silk from some magical creature known as a Stellar Silkworm. It absorbed energy from the sun and used it to produce silken threads, which sounded insane until he remembered that photosynthesis was a thing.

The process was likely one step removed from what plants did. Either way, the material was soft, breathable, and fireproof, which was more than enough for his current needs. It also naturally resisted being cut, but since it was a robe, it did nothing for blunt impacts.

That was where the passive inscriptions came in. Like his spear, Logan’s robes had Self-Repair and Fortify. Those were very useful, but the Sharpen inscription wasn’t so great for a robe. That was why it had Dampen instead.

The inscription could automatically absorb a fraction of any impact, meaning that a sword slash would feel like a feather brushing over his skin. A hammer blow would also be weakened, reducing a killing blow to one that would severely injure. Most of the force would make it through since it was still cloth, but with the egg and his strengthened willpower, he could brute force his way through most injuries until he was healed.

Unfortunately, there was a limit on how many items he could buy. This was determined by privilege level. Logan could only buy one kit of Rare equipment and ten Uncommon. If he tried to buy multiple Rare spears or a second robe, it would deny him the right.

He was quietly thankful since buying eight kits of Rare equipment would bankrupt him. By saving all that money, he could instead use it on cultivation resources for the group. There was more than enough money to support them for years if they were smart. It was also nice to have some capital on hand in case they needed it on their journey. The only problem was that Logan didn’t have many options to spend it on.

Cultivation resources and regular medicines were fundamentally different. Anything that healed a cut or cured an abnormal state could be used whenever the individual required it. Cultivation resources, however, could only be used a few times before they became useless, the body either gaining resistance or the effect becoming negligible.

That was why he could only push Ron and Betty to the peak of early Body Tempering. They had become immune to nearly all of the life force medicines available at Logan’s current privilege level. They quickly broke through to the fourth stage along with everyone else, but the medication ran out at that point, leaving their future progress up to individual effort.

In Logan and Amelia’s case, the medicines helped push them directly to the fifth stage while everyone else made it to the fourth. They also boosted the quality of their lifelines, making their training easier and their bodies more capable.

Logan noticed that during his training down in the cells. On the sixth day, he swept his spear horizontally, the wind surging from its passage. Part of that was thanks to his new technique, Sweep. It was designed to use the concept of leverage to sweep away a group of enemies that were too close. This would be most useful with the Glaive form of his spear, but it could also be used with the regular spearhead.

It would just do less damage and have a shorter reach.

Logan had also learned a number of other techniques in the last few days. He even reached the 25% mark in mastering the concept of vibration. That also helped to speed up the creation of his new technique, but even after a week of practice, he could only use it once every three attempts.

Solidifying his knowledge was taking longer than he expected. At the same time, there were two reasons for that. The first was that he was trying to merge the concept of vibration into an already established technique. Logan had already done the bulk of the work, but that didn’t mean it would be any easier than when he first learned Piercing Thrust.

The other was that intermediate techniques were harder to learn than amateur ones. He would need more time before he got the hang of things. Even Amelia took until the fourth day after slaying the Rat King to learn Empower, which she did by following a pre-established method she bought from the Shop. It was no shock that creating a new technique was more difficult.

Once he was tired, Logan realised it was getting late and practised his life force manual. He had jumped to the peak of the Fourth Step thanks to all the medicines he had bought for himself. His body was much stronger now, firmly placing it in the realm of a superhuman from when he completed the Third Step of the Nine-Step Spear.

That was also when things got strange. The first three had involved his body straining itself, including his blood surging into his muscles and so on. Now, the Fourth Step was directly moulding his life force to strengthen his body.

Logan continued through the steps like usual. Gravity increased, his breathing strained, and his muscles felt like they were full to bursting. Once he started the Fourth Step, the life force in his flesh also began to move.

All of the previous effects remained as they were at their peak. Only now, tiny motes of life essence were being extracted from his body and drawn back into his lifeline. Logan had no idea why it was removing them when the previous steps had worked so hard to infuse his flesh with more life force.

Sadly, he didn’t get an answer. The fourth and fifth steps appeared to be connected in some way. That wasn’t to say that Logan got no benefits, because he did. Extracting all that life force was incredibly draining on his boy. Starving his flesh like that made him feel so weak that he could barely move once he reached the Fifth Step, resulting in a massive boost to his stamina.

On the eleventh day, Logan finally reached the halfway mark of the Fifth Step, which also allowed the technique to demonstrate why it was extracting life essence from his flesh. Life essence flowed out of his muscles and bones, but instead of flowing back with no change, the motes of life essence began to fuse back into his lifeline.

Only a few managed to reach his lifeline since he collapsed soon after, the motes detaching a few seconds later. They came out of his lifeline larger and brighter than before. After fusing back into his flesh and bones, the areas they touched grew more refined and powerful.

Logan soon figured out why. His lifeline grew more potent as he advanced his cultivation, but the motes already infused into his body were from when he was in the earlier stages of Body Tempering or even his time as a regular mortal.

After that, Logan grew so much stronger that he became engrossed in his progress. He was almost in a trance for the next three days. Besides eating and sleeping, he did nothing but train his body. The benefits were simply too great to ignore, his body growing so powerful that he could easily pick up rocks the size of his torso. He would’ve continued training for weeks if he could, but they were forced to leave on the fifteenth day for a good reason.

The monsters were starting to move.