I enter the middle room with Abby and open the hatch to the underground bunker with a single click.

A wave of visible dense Qi flows out, and I feel my body naturally absorb it once it hits my skin.

We both begin walking into the bunker down the spiral stairs, and I close the door above not to let any excess Qi come flowing out.

Down below, the sound of sparring takes place, and the humming rattle of an isolation pod fills my ears as well. It is vibrating and giving off a bit more noise than it did when I left it this morning, but it's not that far outside of my expectations, so my attention shifts to the teams of people sparring on the empty side of the room.

Fisher and Lydia's cores are filled with Qi, and they are doing very simple hand-to-hand combat training, matching each other's basic Qi blows.

Aerie is fighting Monk one-on-one. His core is dense with Qi as well, flowing through his body at a more intense rate than the others. It looks as if he's been training with this energy for far longer than just a day.

His exposure to Qi in the past has certainly made it easier to channel it now.

Then, at the back of the room in the lotus position, I see Luna.

Her eyes are wide open, and the blue energy is magnified now, mixing with the Qi in the room. Her core is dense with Qi as well, but its capacity isn't even close to a tenth of the others training. She's been awakened, but possibly not a combat type, so she's working on training her eyes in some way.

As Abby and I make it to the bottom step of the room, everyone stops sparring and turns our way.

I speak up.

"So, the awakening process went smoothly for all of you, it seems. That's good, but I think we're going to need to increase our rate of training even more."

I recount the events that occurred outside, and they all report feeling their energy fluctuate earlier in the day when I used my power holder perk. Along with this, I tell the team enough containment stones have been charged up to the point where another pod is ready. However, I'd like to see what state the pod Maria is in once it's finished before I use these resources to charge up my only remaining one on hand.

In addition to this, once I see how efficient these pods are at Qi gathering, I may send a double back to the Galeheart Tower to persuade Lith to give me some of the others he has on hand.

My gaze turns to Luna once my update is complete, and I see that she is still not connected to my Rising Emperors Domain system. Knowing this, I walk over and pose a question.

"Now what will you do? As you can tell from my story of the 2nd ranked Dark Guard, the powers we're against will only get more terrifying. You may have a past bond with Arie, but I know nothing about you. If you would like to stay here in the core of our operations, or fight with us, I need a confirmation of your loyalty to me as your leader. This is not a negotiation; it is a requirement. I don't have time or mental space for doubt."

She turns to Arie, and I open a three-way telepathy link between us.

He speaks to her through it, letting me listen in on the conversation.

"This will all be over soon, once I finish my training and do my duty in defeating the Dark One's army, we can go back to Sector 4 and search the Abyss. It is eating away at the back of my mind too, trust me, Luna."

Stolen novel; please report.

She responds through the link, turning to me with wide eyes.

"You know about what happened in Sector 4?"

I nod, but Arie interjects.

"He does, Jay has given me the power that will allow us to get deep enough into the Abyss to find our past. Without him, it would be impossible. Swear your loyalty and everything will work out. Please see him as one of our brothers and sisters from the village, I trust him with my life."

She smiles, and bows her head slightly.

"Very well, if it is Arie's wish, then I will follow you as a leader."

A new link is formed, and her geopoint along with full status shows up in my mind's eye.

Still, a million questions about what they're so desperate to go back and look for enter my train of thought, but there are far more important urgent matters at hand here. So, I break our telepathy link and speak up to everyone else.

"We're going back to the Labyrinth. We're going to grind mana control absorption until Maria leaves her pod. We have just under 36 hours until her time is up. If we're lucky, we'll be able to level grind you all up to 1000 to push a forced rank up in the process."

I use spatial magic to allow the unused isolation pod to fall into my storage.

"We'll take turns using this in the labyrinth if you're in need of a break. My double will watch over the city and Maria while we're gone."

Without questioning my words, all of us leave the underground bunker and make our way to the canyon of dungeons.

I teleport them all to the 39th floor, share my absorption skill to everyone, and immediately assess their strengths after the Qi awakening they just went through.

Abby is the first to use the spare isolation pod while these tests commence; her power hasn't changed much, and the opponents on this floor were already one-shot kills the last time we were here. I place the pod near the back of the dungeon by the boss room, and Monk stays behind to guard the pod, as he hasn't improved much since our last session either.

Fisher and Lydia, on the other hand, have risen to a whole new level.

The last time we were on this floor, it took both of them fighting with their full strength and Red Hydra's buffs activated to subdue one of the high-level Elite Minotaurs.

Now, with Qi infused in their blades, they're able to slice the heads of these beasts off in single movements.

The monsters on this floor don't wield any Qi themselves, so it isn't the greatest indicator of how they'll fare against genuine soul energy, but it's a vast improvement to how they fought before.

Arie shows improvement too, at a rate much faster than I even believed to be possible.

He's capable of imbuing trace amounts of his core's Qi into the spirit arrows he manifests, sending out attacks of Qi similar to the strikes I learned to throw out of my sword after absorbing well over 150 Qi pills and months of training.

It's clear that his core capacity and strength of attacks are still far less deadly than my own, but the fact that he can already manifest physical Qi outside his body is a unique and very promising trait.

He's able to obliterate an Elite Minotaur's head in a single Qi-infused strike.

Luna watches all of this in shock, with a bright blue aura constantly surrounding her eyes. Her level, combat skills, and mana control are far too low to even think about challenging one of these beasts.

However, this will change after our training session is complete. Soon, she is about to be powerleveled higher than ever imagined. This is for the sole reason that I'm curious if she'll get an upgrade to that unique skill and blue aura around her eyes.

The three of them clear out all of the Minotaurs on this floor except for the Mutant. This is saved for my double and Ember once they return from doing their rounds creating another containment stone and farming the lower floors between 30 and 38.

We walk back over to where Monk guards the isolation pod, and the door opens letting Abby step out fully rested.

"Alright, it's time to start power leveling."

I put the isopod back in my storage, and we all walk through the spinning grey boss room portal.

Once a level 996 boss appears, we get to work.

It takes a few minutes for the room to reset each time, and only the person who deals the final blow gets to absorb the MCP, so we rotate who gets to fight each respawn.

The upside of this is that we all get to give pointers and test out new combat techniques on a near A-Rank monster that spawns in at level 993 to 997 over and over. Then, once each fight is done we all share the EXP.

Floor 40 is still on cooldown, and Floor 41 is impossible for us to challenge.

Given these facts, fighting this boss is the best possible source of mass MCP and EXP we can get.

Every kill lets the one who defeated it gain tens of millions of MCP, and each time we cycle back, the party gets far closer to reaching level 1000.

Although the amount of EXP gained per kill when a monster is a lower level than oneself is minimal, it isn't non-existent. It may take some serious grinding, but it is possible for everyone here to rank up from this boss room alone.