Chapter 3: The March
The march to the bandit hideout started badly and got worse.
The first hour wasn't terrible. Just rocks and roots and the occasional branch that seemed personally offended by Hunter's face. His dress shoes, because of course he'd been wearing dress shoes when he got kidnapped, slipped on every third step.
The second hour introduced him to something with too many eyes watching from a tree. None of the bandits looked up. Hunter decided that was smart and did the same.
Third hour, his left sole gave up. It flapped with every step like a dog's tongue. The sound echoed through the quiet forest.
"Master." Lex hissed, glancing back. "Quieter. This spirit beast hunt by sound and vibration."
Hunter wanted to point out that it was hard to walk quietly when your shoe was actively betraying you, but something in Lex's expression stopped him. Fear. Real fear.
Right. Murder forest. Got it.
He tried walking on the edge of his foot. It helped. Sort of.
"System." He kept his voice low. "What kind of world is this? You said Terra-something."
[SYSTEM] WORLD_OVERVIEW
NAME: TERRA•AQUA
ENERGY: QI (SPIRITUAL ENERGY)
DISTRIBUTION: AMBIENT + UNDERGROUND "MERIDIAN_ROOTS" → SURFACE NODES
A tree root snagged his broken shoe. Hunter stumbled forward, caught himself against a thick trunk. The bark felt warm under his palm. Not sun-warm. Something else. A hum, almost, thrumming just below the surface.
He yanked his hand back.
"The ley lines are strong here." One of the other bandits said. The thin one with the scar. "Feel it in the trees. In the air."
Hunter did feel it. The air sat heavier in his lungs, thicker, like breathing through wet cloth.
So the planet has veins. Qi runs through them. And I can feel it.
"Lex." Hunter called quietly. "Your old boss. The guy I..." He couldn't say 'killed' out loud yet. "What cultivation realm was he?"
"First level Body Refining, Master." Lex didn't turn around, just kept walking. "Took him six years to break through from mortal. He was... he was strong. For us."
Six years to reach the first level. And Hunter had killed him by accident in thirty seconds.
"And after Body Refining? What comes next?"
"Foundation Realm, if the heavens bless you." Lex's voice dropped even lower. "Most die trying. The body can't handle the change. Explodes from the inside, they say. Saw it once. Wasn't pretty."
Explodes. Of course. Why wouldn't it.
Hunter's stomach turned. The system had a Foundation Realm upgrade queued for him. Eight hours of "energy condensation" in a cave. He was either about to level up or become a stain on the wall.
"Master." Lex continued, voice careful. "You killed him so easily. You must be Foundation Realm already. Or... higher?"
Hunter said nothing. Let them think that. Better they stayed terrified than got ideas.
[SYSTEM] CULTIVATION_HIERARCHY
BODY_REFINING: BEGINNER (8 SMALL STEPS) / HARDEN MUSCLE AND BONE
FOUNDATION_REALM: EXPAND AND STABILIZE THE DANTIAN; PREPARE FOR HIGHER TIERS
HIGHER_REALMS: DATA LOCKED
The system dumped more text across his vision. Hunter skimmed it while walking, which was a mistake because he immediately tripped over another root.
Body Refining: eight levels of making yourself not-squishy. Foundation Realm: build a battery in your gut called a dantian, don't explode. Everything after that: locked. Fantastic.
[SYSTEM] SPIRIT_ROOT (INNATE)
GRADE SCALE: COPPER→SILVER→GOLD→PLATINUM→DIVINE
HOST ASSIGNED: GRADE_B (SILVER-TIER / ABOVE AVERAGE)
ABSORPTION RATE: 2.3X MORTAL BASELINE
Grade B. Silver-tier. Is that good?
Hunter wanted to ask but didn't want to look stupid in front of his slaves.
Wait, I have slaves. I'm worried about looking stupid in front of my slaves. What is wrong with me?
The fourth hour brought them to a stream. It looked innocent. It was not innocent.
"We have to cross here." Lex waded in.
The water came up to Hunter's chest and felt like it had teeth. Cold didn't cover it. This was the kind of cold that reached inside and grabbed things that shouldn't be grabbed. He pushed through, gasping, and dragged himself up the opposite bank.
His teeth chattered. His shoes squelched. His pants clung to his legs like a second skin made of ice.
I didn't even like camping. I went once. Once. There were bathrooms and a Starbucks nearby. This is hell.
"How much farther?"
"Not much, Master." Lex said.
Fifth hour. Hunter's boots gave up entirely. The sole on the right shoe peeled away and slapped against the ground with every step. He kicked both shoes off and kept walking barefoot. Rocks bit into his soles. Thorns found soft spots between his toes.
Behind him, the thin bandit with the scar picked up one of the abandoned shoes, examined it, then tucked it into his belt. Hunter didn't have the energy to ask why.
Sixth hour. Something howled in the distance. All three bandits went white.
"Move." Lex breathed. "Move now. Don't run. Don't make noise. Just move."
They moved. Hunter's heart hammered so hard he thought the beast would hear it and come running. The howl came again, closer this time, and was answered by two more. A pack.
I'm going to die. I'm going to die in a forest on an alien planet because I made a stupid joke about Vikings.
The bandits led him off the path, into a dense thicket of thorns that tore at his clothes. They crouched. Hunter crouched. The thin one put a hand over his own mouth, a reminder to stay silent.
The howling grew louder.
Then something massive moved through the trees to their left.
Hunter couldn't see it clearly through the thorns. Just shapes. Too many legs. A body that looked wrong, segmented and chitinous, like someone had crossed a wolf with a centipede and given it antlers. Its breathing sounded like wind through a cave.
Eyes reflected the moonlight. Too many eyes.
It stopped ten feet away.
Hunter stopped breathing. He thought of his apartment. The way streetlight came through the window at 2 AM. The hum of the fridge. The sound of someone laughing in the pizzeria below. Annoying then. A memory that hurt now.
I'd give anything to be annoyed by my neighbors again.
The beast's head swiveled. Sniffing. Listening. The air around it looked thicker, almost wavy, like heat shimmer but cold.
"Dense QI." Lex breathed, barely a whisper. "Ley line must be close. Makes them stronger."
Stronger. It can get stronger.
Hunter's hand found a rock. He gripped it. Useless. Completely useless. The thing was the size of a bear and looked like it ate bears for breakfast.
Then the creature stopped. Its head tilted. And it walked away, back into the trees, leaving only the sound of breaking branches.
Nobody moved for a full minute.
"Gone." Lex finally whispered. "It's gone."
Hunter's hands shook. He put the rock down carefully, as if it might explode.
Planet veins. Power pipes. Wildlife that gets stronger near them. Got it. Hate it. Hate everything about this place.
They climbed out of the thicket. Hunter's shirt was now more holes than fabric. Blood ran from a dozen shallow cuts. He didn't care. He was alive.
Seventh hour. Hunter stopped counting steps and started counting trees. It didn't help. There were too many trees.
His feet bled. His legs ached. His lungs burned from the thick Qi-saturated air.
Lex walked ahead, shoulders tight, glancing back every few minutes to make sure Hunter was still following. The other two bandits stayed quiet. No one spoke.
Hunter let his mind wander because if he focused on the pain, he'd stop walking.
I killed someone. What's going on with me? I actually killed someone. And to make it worse, I have slaves now. Real slaves.
He looked at Lex's back. At the thin bandit. At the third one whose name he didn't even know.
They're terrified of me. They think I'm strong. I'm not strong. I tripped over a root six times in the last hour. I'm just... lucky? Is it luck when someone runs into a boulder and impales themselves on your sword?
The slave seal sat in his mind like a weight. He could feel it, faintly. Three threads connecting him to three lives.
I could kill them right now. Just think it, and the oath would rip them apart.
He didn't think it. But he could.
What does that make me?
No answer. Just the forest, and the moons overhead, and the sound of his own ragged breathing.
"Master." Lex called back. "Not much farther now."
Hunter wanted to murder him. Just for saying that phrase. Again.
Eighth hour. A clearing opened ahead. Lex pointed to a black cave mouth set into a rocky hillside. Vines hung over the entrance like a curtain. Moss covered the stones.
"There, Master." Lex said. "Home."
Hunter's mouth fell open. Then shut. Then opened again.
"You live in a cave."
"Yes, Master. Best shelter for miles. Stays warm. Hidden from patrols. Old ruin underneath, very stable."
A cave. I'm going to have my spiritual surgery in a cave.
He sighed. It would have to do.
Inside, the tunnel split into three cramped chambers. Old torches guttered in iron brackets. Veins of faint glowstone ran through the walls, giving off just enough light to see by. The air smelled like dirt and smoke and something else he couldn't identify. Probably didn't want to identify.
He took the left chamber. A thin cultivation mat lay on the floor. It had probably belonged to the man he'd killed. Hunter sat. The mat did little against the jagged stone underneath.
Good. Time to level up. Or ascend. Or explode. Whatever.
He closed his eyes.
System. It's time. Begin the upgrade.
[SYSTEM] ORDERS ACKNOWLEDGED. COMMENCING: FOUNDATION_REALM + SPIRIT_ROOT=GRADE_B
[ESTIMATED DURATION: 8 HOURS]
SUGGESTION: BITE YOUR SHIRT. THIS WILL HURT.
Compared to the soul-ripping integration, this should be fine. Probably. Maybe.
Hunter sat cross-legged on the crude cultivation mat, closing his eyes as he began to circulate his cultivation method.
His breathing fell into rhythm. In, out. In, out. Following the nameless technique the system had implanted in his mind.
Spiritual energy, what the world called Qi, flowed from the surrounding air into his body. Through his nose, through his pores, through pathways he'd never known existed. The energy gathered in his lower dantian, three fingers below his navel.
A cultivation circuit formed naturally. Energy rose through his spine, cascaded down his front, and returned to the dantian. The Small Heavenly Circulation. Again and again, the wheel turned beneath his skin.
His dantian began to expand.
What had been a small reservoir swelled, membrane stretching as spiritual energy poured in like a flood. The space inside grew vast, impossibly vast, as if his body contained an entire ocean behind his navel.
The spiritual energy in his dantian began to compress. Tighter. Denser. Heavier. Like liquid condensing from gas, the formless energy took shape.
His meridians ignited one by one. Thin channels of fire connecting through his arms, legs, and core. The first passes scraped like grit in a pipe. The spiritual energy forced its way through unused pathways, carving permanent channels through his body.
Then the pressure hit.
Every meridian bend became a point of white-hot agony. His body was teaching itself to carry something it had never been meant to hold. The road of martial arts was a constant struggle against the heavens, and Hunter's body was rebelling against its transformation.
Something black began seeping from his skin.
Impurities. A smelly, black substance secreted from a cultivator's skin when they reached new cultivation stages. The result of his body purifying itself, expelling decades of mortal filth and weakness.
The stench hit him even through the haze of pain. Rot made physical.
Inside his dantian, the compressed spiritual energy formed a sphere. A foundation. Silver-bright, dense as a star, steadying at the center of his Qi sea. His cultivation base. His path to immortality.
The wheel spun faster. The circuit tightened. The foundation solidified.
Pressure filled his ears like drowning. His heartbeat slowed, then boomed with new power, too strong for his ribs, threatening to crack them from the inside. His breath shortened, sharpened, steadied into something that wasn't quite breathing anymore.
Hunter knew, without knowing how, that his body remained human but was transforming into something greater. Cell by cell. Breath by breath. As long as one's foundation was solid enough, every breakthrough would bring immeasurable progress and strength at astronomical speeds.
The boundary cracked.
The invisible wall between mortal and cultivator, the bottleneck that trapped ninety-nine percent of humanity in weakness, shattered like glass.
Energy flooded through him. Raw, primal power from the broken boundary coursed through every meridian, refining his physique from the inside out. His bones grew denser. His muscles tighter. His blood ran hot and pure.
The transformation wasn't finished.
His meridians burned as they widened, carved into permanent channels capable of handling spiritual energy. His dantian expanded violently, space opening inside him that shouldn't exist by any mortal law of physics.
[SYSTEM] WARNING: ESTABLISHING FOUNDATION_REALM INFRASTRUCTURE
ESTIMATED COMPLETION: 7 HOURS 43 MINUTES
SPIRITUAL_SENSE: ACTIVATING
The pain started as a dull ache. Then it climbed. Quickly.
Hunter's vision fractured. Cave wall, glowstone, darkness, cave wall again. Reality blinked in and out like dying candlelight.
"Oh f... my li..."
The pain reached into his soul, his actual soul, the thing his system had tortured during integration, something snapped.
Everything went black.
[SYSTEM] BREAKTHROUGH: SUCCESS
HOST_STATUS: FOUNDATION_ESTABLISHMENT (EARLY STAGE)
CULTIVATION_BASE: STABLE
SPIRITUAL_SENSE: ONLINE (RANGE: 1 MILE)
LIFESPAN: +170 YEARS
AUTO-CALIBRATION: SYNCHRONIZING BODY TO FOUNDATION_REALM PARAMETERS
The wheel kept turning.
Hunter felt none of it.
He was gone, consciousness scattered, while his body completed its metamorphosis from mortal to cultivator.
Human.
But not.
Not anymore.