Black Onyx - Phoenix Resurrection

The deal was done and a week later I was summoned to the surface again. I had met with an Elder of the Verdant Ironwood Willow Clan and he handed over a pouch of Spirit Stones while I gave him a new manual in return.

After returning to the depths, I counted the cash. It was nearly 4000 Spirit Stones.

That was way more than I expected, but looking at it logically, technique manuals for the Spirit Realm were exceedingly rare. Each of them being worth more than a thousand was nothing unusual.

Together with the Spirit Stones I was producing on my own, about 25 per week, I already had close to 4500 Spirit Stones. Not enough to significantly boost my Cultivation, but it was a good chunk of change.

During my free time, I would sometimes roam the Underdark, exploring the different levels of the caverns, some of which had a straight drop down for kilometers.

There I encountered mushrooms that would shoot out spores when disturbed which would then give you hallucinations if inhaled. The first few minutes were cool and often funny, but then the spores would try to anchor themselves in the brain and start growing there. Luckily a flash of flames would burn them to a crisp, but some of the workers there weren’t so lucky. I found a few corpses that had fungus growing out of their eyes and ears and were clearly dead for a while.

Others lived even deeper underground, where the air was toxic and the heat made the stone glow a dull shade of red. There a special kind of fungus grew, a bright yellow and orange, and would explode if touched. The thing was that the fungus was somehow Cultivating, and the explosion was so strong it could easily take out a Golden Core in an instant.

Oftentimes they would grow in large groups, so triggering one would explode the entire colony. It might seem extreme, but that’s how they spread. The explosion would throw the microscopic spores far away, settling them on fertile ground. Or rock.

Actually, I’m not sure how they grew there. The Underdark was mostly just solid stone. Did they suck the minerals straight out of the rock? I had no idea. The mushrooms there were weird.

What was even weirder, were the creatures that ate those mushrooms. I once found one, and it was a sizable creature, somewhat reptilian in nature, and with an exceedingly large head that took up a third of its body.

It had extremely small eyes on the side of its head which was covered in stone-looking armor plates, just like the rest of its body.

It had short stocky legs that ended in thick claws more designed for digging through rock than fighting. Though, judging by the rippling muscles under the skin, the creature was more than capable of tearing a man in half.

I watched from the distance as it chomped down on a mushroom in its entirety, and then barely flinched as the thing exploded in its mouth. There was a dull boom and some smoke escaped from its nostrils, and that was about it. The creature was a real tank! Ah, but it also escaped as soon as it detected my presence.

It wasn’t even trying to hurt it! Well, maybe a little. I just needed a few buckets of its blood to absorb the bloodline. I’m sure it had more than enough of it considering it was nearly five meters tall.

[Coward!] I shouted after it, but it was already gone. I let it escape since I wasn’t going to chase it in the twisted web of tunnels. I already had enough trouble finding my way back normally. There was no need to taunt fate and get lost.

Apart from fungal growth, I met many monsters as well. Some of them were cowardly like the big mushroom-eating boy, while others were hatred incarnate. The worst were some white grub-looking things with obsidian teeth. Those things, no bigger than a dog, would burrow through the rock in large groups, and then launch themselves at an unsuspecting victim.

I once saw a group of them devour the big boy, chewing through his outer armor like it was made of hard candy. Before long they were gnawing on his bones, and sometime later even those were gone.

They were ravenous balls of piss and vinegar, aggressively attacking anything that moved. The thing was that they weren’t even that strong. All they had going for them were those sharp teeth that could seemingly chew through anything. Any time their ambush missed, they would get bodied by pretty much every other creature. One bite and they would perish.

I quickly realized some beasts were pretending to be weak, waiting for the grubs to come to them, and then slurp them up like tasty gummy bears.

But, if there was anything I realized after being underground for so long, was that things in the Underdark happened very slowly. Ambush predators could stay completely still for weeks just to get the chance at a meal.

I found one creature, a weird mix between a mantis and a spider about the size of a truck, and went to check on it every time I had the time. It remained in one spot, hidden in the shadows, not moving at all, for nearly ten days, before catching an unsuspecting centipede.

I was very impressed by its patience. Very impressed!

Unfortunately for it, I was getting hungry for blood, so it had to die. Just like many other critters I met on my path. Cultivation was an unending path, a road with no finish line. The journey itself was the reward, and if you wanted to continue, you could never stop.

I wanted to continue. I wanted to continue forever, and with my Path being the one of combat, I had no choice.

As the entrails of another chitinous creature painted the walls of the tunnel dark yellow, I reflected on the smoothness of my growth.

What was a bottleneck? I heard people mention it in terms of Cultivation many times before, heck, I had memories of Elders struggling with it, yet I could never fully understand it. I had the experience with it, I knew what it was, but it just wasn’t the same.

A bottleneck was something that by all logic should not be there. It was a roadblock, but not like the limit of Talent, which prevented you from going further.

It was a mental component of Cultivation. Even if the Soul was full and the Qi was abundant, and by all rights, you should advance easily, it just wouldn’t happen.

I never experienced one. I walked the Path of Combat. It was a broad path, a path with much ground to cover. It was easy to get lost when so many trails branched off it, by simply following an easier, already established route. But despite the temptation of simpler choices, I remained steady, advancing at a steady pace.

I focused, feeling my Soul expand under the strain of Essence. Drops of pure Life Soul Essence dripped on the Seed, imbuing it with life. The roots expanded, thickening. The leaves sprouted, developing big and strong. The Stem grew greener and taller. I had achieved the Second stage, the Second Level.

I slowly exhaled, my breath alone stirring the Qi in the area and making it rush towards me. I slowly opened my eyes and remained motionless, my mind at peace. As I had said many times before, with each advancement, with each Minor Realm I left behind, I felt… greater.

I was enjoying the feeling when I felt a pulse in my pocket. It was the relic John gave me so we could contact each other. I sent a strand of Qi into it and felt a connection be established.

No voice came, simply static. I gave it more juice and I was able to distinguish some words from the jumbled mess, but their meaning was lost to me. I tried to speak back to it, but soon the relic went silent, the connection severed.

That’s what the Underdark was. A place of endless death, separate from the outside world. Even expensive relics could not breach the disruptive and chaotic nature of the land of eternal darkness.

I stood up and returned to the camp.

I had been in the underground for nearly three months and we had established a routine.

We would train early in the day, waiting for something to do, and then we would eat and have some time to ourselves, a few hours each day. The free time was staggered so there was always someone available in case of emergency and it worked quite well.

I had mapped the Immediate area of our main cavern with my mind, but soon I learned it was pointless. The rock around us would shift. Very slowly, of course, but it did move. A few months later the tunnels were completely different to what they were when I first stepped foot in the Underdark.

Various creatures would burrow through the rock, making new pathways, and then there would come cave-ins and tremors filling them back in.

Sometimes a crack would form in the ground, spitting out molten rock or boiling mud. Those got into every nook and cranny and would harden into a new obstacle. It was utterly pointless trying to remember all the changes.

The only pathways staying constant were those that were often used. Workers often reinforced them or repaired any damage a fight or a natural disaster might cause, keeping them accessible at all times. Work could not be interrupted for any reason, and so special care was given to keeping the machine of human labor working efficiently.

I was just resting my eyes when a scream was heard. The entire camp was immediately on alert, with General Red quickly putting on his gauntlets and boots, and running to see what was going on.

He was back shortly, urgently gesturing for us to get it moving.

“Let’s go! There’s been an attack! Get moving!”

As the elite team, the six of us quickly jumped into a cart and were immediately on the road, flying through the tunnels past wounded miners and frightened workers.

“What’s going on?” Astrid asked. I could see her looking at the wounded, but if they were capable enough to run away, then their wounds weren’t life-threatening just yet and could be ignored. We had to hurry to the breach where the enemy attacked and save lives! Or something like that.

General Red turned to a man crumpled in the corner of the vehicle clutching his chest and gestured him to speak. I honestly didn’t even notice the guy until he brought the attention to him. It just went to show how my mind subconsciously just slipped over someone that much weaker than me. He was just ignored. Weird.

“It’s…” The man took a deep breath, his voice shaking. “We found a cavern… With pools of white, shimmering liquid.”

I saw the eyes of General Red enlarge and his face turn serious a moment later.

“The Foreman went to examine it, but then… things appeared from the darkness, and he was gone. Shadows attacked us, and we barely managed to escape. It was like gates of the abyss opened, the inky blackness spilling out and gaining form when-”

The man continued to ramble on, but my attention was entirely on General Red. The man was tense, murmuring something under his breath. I was not a lip-reader, but even then I could tell what he was saying. I recognized the words, though I had never before used them in that order.

Whatever he was saying seemed important. Extremely so.

Pure Spirit Water.

That’s what he said. It seemed we had to hurry.