Chapter 41

Shikar Spelunking

One thing about corrupted beasts, is that just by their very existence, they will slowly corrupt the world around them. That was part of the new balance of the world, corrupted beasts would spread corruption, while those who were seen as uninfected would be able to slowly regain lost lands, by simply existing. That is off course, if the land in question could be held under permanent control of uninfected beings.

This was what sparked the idea of prison colonies. Colonies where the worst that society had to offer, cultivators who had taken the laws into their own hands and been caught were sent.

From such locations, it was in fact proven that gathering enough uninfected creatures in one place could stave off and if measures were taken gradually increase the size of uncorrupted lands.

All this is to say, that as Frank made his way out towards the one known entrance to the underground caverns, where two sets of seven pillars resided, Frank’s could tell there were more exits.

Furthermore his senses let him know the tunnel layouts before him, as each tunnel and speck of dirt touched by a corrupted beast left behind a faint lingering trace of dark energy.

This energy was different from the two that he sort of knew and had influence over, as this energy had a more earthy feel to it, which made sense as this was likely a corrupted version of geomancy.

His sharpened senses also let him know that no less than a dozen covered entrances existed in the area.

While everyone else ran towards the one known entrance and began carving their way through the main underground network entrance and exit, Frank felt that there were multiple different areas far closer to pillars that were otherwise sealed off from the main network of tunnels.

In these auxiliary tunnels, there were monsters, but they were weaker, as all of the stronger monsters seemed to have moved to the main network of tunnels, before sealing up the passageway behind them.

All this activity showed that there was a level of intelligence and intention to the actions.

While humanity was playing checkers for their survival, trying to go in and force their way to become slightly more powerful.

The monsters that they were facing, and ultimately dismissing as lesser beings, were playing chess.

Or maybe not the individual beings, but clearly they all seemed to be guided by either superior instincts, or an overall collective. This approach was nearly perfect.

Four main pillars that everyone could get to, with four at least half of the seven would need to stay and kill monsters to recharge the pillars. That is assuming one person didn’t go through and try to drain all four, then search around trying to find a fifth, only to realize they would be running in circles until they eventually died.

Realizing this, Frank decided to cheat, or rather avoid common pitfalls that others might fall into.

The first thing he did was focus below, on the seemingly unprotected nest of fledgling monsters. Well nest, followed by a few handlers. That was the only way to explain the layout that his mind and body were telling him existed below.

Down below, there were handlers, not a brood mother or creature capable of laying more monstrous insects. Rather, the monsters below were what Frank would consider glorified babysitters. They were strong, probably stronger than the majority of monsters that the other cultivators were currently facing.

But they were also stationary in that they had to take care of the larva and unhatched monsters that even now were being fed a steady supply of highly potent dark energy.

Just sensing the dark energy from this distance showed how powerful and pure the source was.

At first Frank thought about trying to explode the larva, to create a chain reaction. But even as infants, these insects seemed to have been bred for cultivation, as their sources were too guarded from his efforts. At least from this distance.

For a second Frank thought he would have to move his way closer, but then seeing the royal corrupted jelly that the feeders were providing to the recently hatched larva, Frank had a better idea.

While it was a shame to lose a resource as valuable as the highly condensed dark energy now, Frank realized that it was an acceptable loss. Particularly as it wasn’t a resource he expected to gain before this mission started.

Focusing on the unclaimed and highly potent energy that was right now being presented as an offering towards a larva by a feeder, Frank focused his will and spun.

At least spinning is what he considered the act. He took the highly combustible energy, and violently twisted it, causing theoretical sparks to crackle and spark to life.

Rumble.

There was a minor tremble in the ground.

That was it, a minor tremble and the ground shook violently enough for everyone, aspiring cultivators and mutated insects alike to pause as they tried to understand what caused the disturbance.

Unfortunately, it seemed that the insects were slightly faster to respond as many sprung to life and began attacking Frank’s fellow cultivators on the main section.

As for the monsters that Frank was focusing on, he noticed that just as expected there was a cascading of explosions, starting with the food to the larva, to the nearby egg hatchery area. Then to the caretakers who were hit by shrapnel from all sides.

While some of the monsters might have survived, they looked like they would not be doing so for long.

With this, Frank decided to make his entry.

Finding a hidden hatchway, Frank gave one quick stomp with his foot over the opening.

Crumble.

With the kick, Frank easily broke his way into a previously unknown section of tunnels and began crawling on his stomach.

While the main tunnels that the other cultivators had used were tall enough to walk through, these were much smaller, likely as they were intended for the children to use as an emergency exit.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

This was why Frank made sure to do a surprise attack first, thereby eliminating the idea of being swarmed and surrounded in here.

The tunnel itself was pitch black, as if it had never received sunlight. That or if it did receive sunlight, then the energy from the light would have been collected and converted into an alternate source for creating stronger power crystals.

For even now, Frank could only see a few feet ahead with his eyes. Even then, the light was clearly limited by both his body and the angle that he kept taking to get further and further away from the emergency opening he had created.

As he crawled, he could both feel and smell the dark cultivation crystals and charged dust particles wafting upwards into his nose.

From this distance, it was clear that the longer the tunnels went unused, the more corruption they accrued.

For anyone else, this path would have likely been a death sentence. As this was the equivalent of crawling through a tunnel of cancerous materials.

Yet, for Frank this was invigorating.

There was something to the scent of charged dust that filled Frank with energy, rather than lungs full of caustic chemicals.

Only now did he begin to realize just how foolish his attempt to traverse down here alone could have been.

But surprisingly, Frank only found this to be a good thing.

After nearly a month of being oversaturated with a surplus of life energy, all designed to help improve his ability as a field deployed combat medic, the ability to once again balance out his internal energies felt refreshing.

Breathing in, Frank found his body automatically cultivating the foreign energy and converting it to a useable form.

There was a slight burn, in a way that was similar to what Frank now felt when he tried to cultivate with any element other than Life energy, this again went to the slightly different texture of the energy.

However, at this point, Frank was not such a snob to turn down dark energy, particularly dark energy that was this pure in form.

Yes, the energy burned slightly, but he could feel his body stripping away the darker textures and leaving behind what Frank felt to be regular earth energy particles.

At least that is what his over analytical mind was telling him.

Cough!

By now, Frank’s body was so much faster and better at processing energy, that he found that he was able to filter out the unusable earth energy, which his body pushed back into his mouth, which he was able to cough out and let cling to the side of the wall.

Taking a second to realize what happened, and now that he would have to effectively crawl past the saliva covered source of energy Frank felt disgusted, and made sure he would not tell anyone about this part of his journey.

With that, he continued crawling, sliding wide left, to avoid possibly brushing up against the recently cleaned particles. Particles that were covered with saliva.

However, as he left, Frank could see something amazing happen.

It was small and subtle, had it not been for how completely dark the tunnels before him were, and the fact that his only way forward was a form of mental sonar that his mind used by tracking the dark crystals around him.

But to his surprise, the small nickel sized portion of cleansed earth particles that he stuck to the wall began to have a cleansing effect on the dark stones nearby.

Again, Frank didn’t know what this meant, but he felt that this was somehow huge.

His spit could cure dark energy.

Or maybe it was a purified form of earth energy mixed with his spit?

You know, he would definitely want to check on this. Last thing he wanted was for his future role in the military to be putting chunks of differently attuned crystals in his mouth to stop the spread of dark matter and dark energy.

This find of course made Frank even more cognizant of his own actions.

He crawled forward, now unable to see, except for the faintest trace of brown earth energy behind him that lit up his path.

With each crawl, with each movement, Frank breathed in the dark energy. Again, he let the energy swirl in his body, and then felt the moment the denser chunks of earth energy were seemingly filtered out of his secondary set of meridians, the ones that his body used to constantly cycle dark energy through his body at an alarming rate.

Frank could almost feel slight little drops of dirt landing in his lungs, which his body would then slowly filter out and up, until it was time to once again cough up the caustic materials.

Cough, cough.

Had this been a stealth mission, Frank would have failed long ago. Fortunately, he had accounted for his impaired movements by doing a preemptive strike on the nest.

This meant that his occasional coughing up of purified earth energy was not met with hostility.

Allowing Frank to constantly provide visual markers that slowly eroded away the dark energy around the purified clumps.

Again, Frank didn’t know what this was, or what exactly was happening. Though now that he was focusing on the overall process, he did realize that his mouth was slowly feeling drier from his efforts.

Pausing for a moment, he realized that there was a canteen on his back hip, but then also noticed that the cavern that he was in was too tight to allow him to reach his hand down. Instead, he had to keep wiggling and crawling to a larger section of the tunnels, before he would be able to stop and get a drink from his canteen.

Of course, now that he realized he couldn’t reach his canteen, that was where panic snuck in.

Had this been before his SERE training, he likely would have panicked. He likely would have begun twisting and squirming, trying to fight both his body and his position to gain a drop of water. Water that he would likely end up wasting by not being able to position his head in an advantageous position to drink from.

Instead, he realized the signs of his own mind going wild.

He then focused on the different traits and processes that had been presented to him.

Frank forced his body to relax.

This of course caused him to cultivate faster, but cultivation was never bad, particularly when you constantly gained more energy than you lost by moving.

“Being here is only making me stronger.” Frank said to himself mentally, fighting the sudden onset of claustrophobia that had tried to take control of his mind and body.

Finally, after ten deep breaths, Frank felt his mind and heart beginning to slow down, a sign that his training was in fact working.

Cough.

This was also the same number of breaths needed to cause a purging process of his body.

Again, these were things that they were taught, and given in theory about what to expect as you get higher in your cultivation process.

As apparently once you get so high in the different realms, even the quote unquote pure energy that the government provides will be found to have too many impurities. This is when the cultivator will need to really begin to practice filtering out unwanted particles.

Frank wasn’t at that point in his own cultivation process yet. Particularly as his body still seemed to love and crave the pure life energy supplements that were provided to him.

But this was a good sign that his body was at least able to recognize the filtration process of energy, and was able to do so on its own. Which was good, as it meant that the energy that his body did not need would be processed out and at this rate, it seemed like his body was natural at this form of purification.

While he might need to improve his senses and capabilities on this process in the future, the fact that he could do this much now meant that he would only need to make minor changes.

Calm breathing.

And like that, focusing on the process of his body, allowed him to focus his mind enough to entirely avoid the nearly suffocating feeling of being captured in a tight spot in enemy territory.

That was the last true hiccup that Frank had.

While he had only lost a minute or so of time, Frank knew that such time was invaluable while here, underground.

The tunnel leading up and out to safety suddenly expanded, as Frank finally felt his body hit a pathway big enough for one of the guardians to have moved in casually.

Seeing the opening, Frank felt his body first fall forward, then completely lose balance as he half crawled, and half tumbled into the newer larger tunnel section.

Plop-drop.

Stumbling forward, Frank felt both simultaneously weightless as he found himself in a pitch black tunnel that only glowed in an oddly ominous way with his Energy Sight. Here just like above, the dark energy was so thick and pervasive that the dark energy around him only seemed to add to the darkness.

At least that was what he felt at first, until his mind and eyes began adjusting to the new energy input he was receiving.

While it had been slightly glittering before, as if he would occasionally see light refracting from crystals on his way here.

Now that he was here, his eyes began to see not one but two different color patterns.

There was the dark overlapping crystalized form of dark energy that seemed to coat every surface here. Almost like ice that had slowly grown and permeated every crevice of a frozen surface.

Then underneath the dense darker layer was the dark brown glow of what Frank could only interpret as highly crystalized earth energy.

Breathing in, Frank could feel the an even denser and mustier smell of dark energy filling his lungs with each breath.

Feeling the energy with each breath, Frank almost swore he felt a head rush with each breath, as he began cultivating and feeling more and more energy coursing through his body.

Then as if testing a theory, Frank held out his hand to the wall.

Under his touch, he felt hundreds of sharp jagged edges protruding from the walls and all but jabbing into his hand.

Focusing on the jagged edges, Frank was reminded of a similar feeling, when he was trying to remove larger pockets of crystalized energy from Constance.

Pulse.

Just thinking about her, and the mental tether he had tried to create with her sent a burst of energy. Energy that seemed to have been echoed and modified by the crystals all along the walls.

Shatter.

At the moment the pulse was seemingly sent and amplified from the crystalline structure around, a number of things all happened at once.

Most immediately, Frank felt a burst of amplified mind magic flow from his mind up and out of the underground tunnel he was in, firing off into space.

Simultaneously, around him was the sounds of hundreds of crystals shattering all at once, as if they were hit by a resonance that was completely different from the one that they were attempting to cover or coat.

Shatter, clank-clunk, shatter.

This caused wave after wave of crystals to first break free, then slide down and crash, only to have the next section above or below also break free and fall right on top of them.

It was oddly magical in a completely destructive way.

Frank had seen similar things from warehouses that stacked supplies too high and ultimately dropped items from the top that caused everything underneath to shatter and break apart.

Now surrounded by hundreds of dark broken shards, Frank would have been surprised and possibly in danger. Had the cascading destruction not revealed bright brown glowing crystals that now illuminated the hallways before him.

Again, Frank was not quite certain exactly what caused the corruption crystalline layer to form over the apparently natural earth crystalline layer, but by removing the outer layer, Frank was now able to use his Energy Sight to see clear paths that were easy to see and notice for twists and turns.

Of course, all of this was secondary to the fact that Frank suddenly felt the burst of mind energy that left his mind finally end its long path and connect to someone who still sent shivers down his spine.

Tingle.

The moment his mind connected to hers, he knew he messed up, as she was clearly aware of his unexpected contact.

“Hello lover, fancy meeting you like this.” The seductive voice of Constance called out into his mind, all but paralyzing him on the spot as he realized their connection never ended as he had intended.

Then it began.