After spending weeks by himself in this area, Hudson was very familiar with where the remaining maseki was located. Hudson and Cor started jogging down the ravine path.

“Can you ask Ix how much maseki we really need, and what the options are for getting out of here?” Hudson asked Cor, since he was still carrying Ix’s carved jade ring, and Ix could only speak telepathically with someone if they were physically touching their form.

“They heard you,” Cor said, then listened silently to Ix before relaying back to Hudson.

“Ok, here’s the low-down: no matter what option, the more maseki we get the better. Ix will also need to be in direct contact or almost direct contact with the maseki, once we find it. He can’t suck it out of the ground around him.

“Ix knows the coordinates of many other worlds besides Earth. Apparently, S.E.C.T. is only one of many vassal clans that use this trial facility… I don’t understand the nonsense jargon Ix is spouting, but the long and short of it is we can’t portal to most of them because we will be blocked. Oh, sorry, not blocked. Destroyed. Dead on arrival because of perimeter defenses.

“The realistic options are not great, and are a mix of human and non-human vassal clans that have either been overrun by silicates and no longer send participants to the trial, or are currently in the middle of fighting them. They options also depend on how much maseki we can get.”

They were now running over and past the narrow spot in the ravine where Hudson had slammed his sledgehammer into the wall, burying himself in the process. It felt like years ago.

“That’s a lot of info, but how much maseki are we talking about? 10kgs or 100kgs?”

Cor winced for a moment and then said, “Closer to thousands, if we want one of the options that Ix thinks will ‘maximize our chances of survival.’”

Hudson glanced over at Cor sharply. “A thousand kilograms or more? Several thousand pounds?? Do you know how much that is? It could take us months to gather that much.”

“A ‘higher tier’ of maseki with more qi stuffed inside would be fine too. Wherever that might be.”

He slowed down and stopped. The entrance to the underground mine where he’d fought silverines beckoned up ahead.

“There’s only one place I can think of that might have that much maseki gathered in a single place.”

“Is there like a mother load somewhere, or a big vein?” Cor asked.

“I was heading towards one of the bigger veins I found before, but there’s really no way to know how deep it goes. I have a different idea of where to get that much maseki, but how do I say this… It’s already been claimed, I suppose you might say,” Hudson replied.

“By who?”

Hudson gestured into the mouth of the cave. “The silverines. They gather up maseki and dump it at the bottom of their hole. When I was out here by myself, I mostly stayed away, but there has to be quite a bit far down below at the bottom of their cavern.”

“Well what are we waiting on then?” Cor said.

“There’s hundreds of silverines in that hole. Maybe even thousands.”

“This ain’t an extermination job, it’s a heist, son,” Cor replied. “We can either risk not finding a large enough vein, or we can collect all of that maseki from our alien termite neighbors who were kind enough to gather it for us. Not like they’re going to be needing it, soon enough.”

“So I’m smashing, and you’re grabbing?” Hudson asked.

“Glad to see you’re starting to pick things up quicker. Let’s get the lead out! Go, go, go,” Cor replied.

Hudson couldn’t help but smile as he turned and raced into the cave, Cor on his heels.

He pulled the sledgehammer out of his belt loop, and the head started charging up, shining a light in the dark tunnels. He didn’t run too fast, though, as he didn’t want to leave Cor behind.

He followed the twists and turns to where the tunnels carved by past participants intersected with the silverine tunnels. The first silverine he saw was pushing a few chunks of maseki out of a smaller hole onto the main path.

It turned to face them as it saw the brightly glowing sledgehammer racing down the tunnel towards it. It didn’t even have a chance to activate its claws before a kick from Hudson sent the poodle-size insect into the wall, turning it into paste.

“Careful with that nuke on a stick you’re swinging around,” Cor yelled at him. Hudson had no intention of swinging his hammer at anything – yet. It was functioning quite well as a light source for the moment.

They continued down the mine tunnels until they came to the open pit mine. It was not quite as Hudson remembered – the silverines had not been idle. The massive shaft leading down into the ground now extended up and all the way to the surface. The faint twinkling of stars could be seen over their heads, in addition to the faint twinkling of silverines crawling all over the shaft walls.

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Hudson slowed to take a peak over the edge, and sure enough, the massive mound of maseki was still there. If anything it looked bigger, had more of a greenish tint to it, and seemed to pulse oddly.

“We’re going down there,” Hudson said, pointing down the shaft for Cor, then began jogging down the path carved around the outside of the shaft.

“Hold up there a sec, high speed,” Cor said. He rooted around in his tactical vest and pulled out a light attachment for his rifle. “Let me use this for a light instead of that boom stick, you copy?”

Hudson nodded and let his cultivation technique drop. The silver light emanating from the head of the sledgehammer gradually dissipated until it was dull once more.

“Hold the sledge?” Hudson asked, then handed the sledgehammer over to Cor.

After ramping his breathing technique back up, Hudson started back down the winding path. The last time he’d been here, he’d been struggling for his life, fighting against the silverines with claws torn from their bodies and shoved into the palms of his hands.

He’d been wounded and weakened, but he had done what he needed to in order to survive; in order to grow stronger. And he hadn’t stopped growing stronger from that point onwards.

A few silverines sensed their approach and ran upwards to attack Hudson. Their forward claws buzzed and shifted into their attack patterns, trying to clip Hudson off at the knees.

He smoothly jumped over the forward-attacking claws, tucking his legs into his chest. As gravity pulled him downwards, his feet stomped downwards, exploding through the bodies of the silverines with a vicious finality.

Every day since he had last been in this tunnel fighting for his life, he had pushed himself higher and higher. And he was stronger now – he was at the peak of Qi Gathering, conceivably a half-step into Formation Building. He’d fought a S.E.C.T. young master at a higher cultivation than him, and he’d not only survived – he had eventually won.

Hudson locked onto each silverine on the path ahead of him and executed each of them quickly and efficiently. The instincts of the silverines, their attack patterns, they were all the same, and compared to the difficult battles he’d fought against fellow cultivators, were startlingly easy to read.

As Hudson whirled and threw a rock at a silverine emerging from a side tunnel behind Cor, he began to realize how much stronger he had become.

His newfound strength was more than just an increased cultivation or the special, almost magical powers he got from sigils. He had the strength to defend himself, but he also had the confidence and ability to take control of his own destiny; to negotiate and bargain with silicates like Sal or Ix; and to earn the respect of seasoned veterans like Cor.

They were about halfway down the shaft, and the larger silverine group at the bottom of the mine had noticed their rapid incursion. A vertiable horde began to surge up the path towards them from the ground floor.

Hudson and Cor heard the wave of silverines and their buzzing claws before they saw them winding up the path. They just picked up their pace and Hudson began to focus on pushing the silverines out of their way and off the cliff to his left.

In his haste, he began to take a few hits, here and there, but he took most of them on the leather greaves he still wore on his shins. The rest of his armor was mostly gone, burned and broken off, but he was glad he still had those leather protectors.

Any blows that made it through, he grimly ignored, cuts and scrapes not comparing to the pain of broken bones that he was sadly growing accustomed to.

“Throw me the sledge,” Hudson called over his shoulder, while simultaneously running up the wall of the shaft on his right. He punched down mid-vault to smash a silverine into the ground.

Cor responded by throwing the long sledgehammer past Hudson’s head, and in a superhuman feat of dexterity, Hudson leaped off the wall of the shaft, flipped, and caught it with one hand. He didn’t pause or stop running, wading into the waves of silverines crowding the path ahead of him.

He started using the shaft of the weapon – and not the head – to clear out multiple silverines at a time, sending them over the edge to splatter on the ground below. The head of the sledgehammer still kept charging up, growing brighter and brighter by the second.

Hudson paused and took a quick peek over the edge of the shaft. Cor caught up behind and touched him on the shoulder. “There’s more coming down from behind us.”

“I think we need to go a little bit faster, don’t you think?” Hudson said in between breaths. “Get ready to jump – after I toss this, hop on my back.”

Hudson ramped his Engine Breath technique to the max and the head of the sledgehammer gleamed intensely in the dark shaft.

Cor took a look over the edge himself. “I don’t think that’s a—” he started to say but then couldn’t finish his thought before Hudson launched the hammer downwards at a huge number of silverines massing on the floor below them.

The charged hammer flew downwards to the bottom of the shaft, now only about a hundred feet below. The floor of the shaft exploded in a shower of stone shrapnel, leaving an empty crater approximately ten feet across.

“Hop on,” Hudson yelled at Cor and crouched down.

Cor secured his rifle and jumped on Hudson’s back, waves of silverines coming at them from above and below. Hudson leaped out over the open shaft, aiming for the ledge on the other side.

He easily made the ledge twenty feet below, landing on several silverines and squishing them to paste. He took a few hits on his lower legs before he launched himself again, hanging on tightly to Cor’s legs as he rode piggyback on the way down.

The last jump to the landing zone Hudson had opened up with his hammer toss was a bit further. A fifty foot drop would break a normal person’s legs, but for a cultivator at Hudson’s level, he easily absorbed the shock through his legs. His grip left bruises around Cor’s knees, but Cor rode out the landing as well as could be.

“Oof. I’m taking the stairs next time,” Cor said as he slid off of Hudson’s back. “Hey, and, uh, isn’t that pile of maseki a little bit… weird? Why is it moving?”

Cor gestured over at the large, glowing pile of maseki they had dropped down this mineshaft to secure. He and Hudson stared at what they had thought was maseki when viewed from the top of the mineshaft.

Rocks – even magical rocks – didn’t stand up on their own, however, or unfurl massive wings from underneath their bodies either. From far away, silver-colored chitin could look a lot like silver-colored rocks.

A giant insect the size of a freight truck rose into the air in front of them. It had the basic form of a silverine – large antenna, two sets of eyes, a massive thorax, and covered all over in rough chitin. The core of its main body shaded towards a jade green color, from which visible pulses of deep, silvery qi emanated. Multiple sets of serrated claws ringed its head, and while it had claws to ostensibly walk along the ground, it didn’t use them. Instead, it gradually rose above the floor of the mine shaft as its massive, ephemeral wings gained a faint, silvery sheen.