Jakes Story 2, chapter 7

:)

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Slim was mining fast as usual.  The wait was almost over.

No demon beasts attacked while Jake was reflecting about how he’d come to this place.  To this day, he still wasn’t completely sure how Lady Brima had captured him, although he knew a lot more about Seeking Enlightenment experts, now.

He’d learned a lot over the last nine years.  Now he knew more about the Murim world and about cultivation itself.  He was no longer the clueless initiate from Earth anymore.

Slim dragged his wrist across his inhuman eyes as he finished mining all the milk ore in the small vein.  It wasn’t as much compared as what they usually gathered, but was still more than most prisoners would have produced in days.  Jake and Slim intentionally went to dangerous areas that most others usually wouldn’t risk.  It was easier to find more milk stone this way.

And Jake had some advantages.  If he got injured, it took him far less time to heal.

There were no new monster cores, so the two of them only split the ore.  Slim moved his weight from foot to foot, the expression on his ghastly face also making his awkwardness obvious.  “So you are going on alone again?”

“Yes.  I’ll find another vein of ore.”

“Alright.  Well, be careful. Uh, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Jake let his amusement show and quirked a smile.  “Do you need me to go back with you a ways first?  In case there are any more demon beasts?”

“I don’t think so.  We came off of the timber branch tunnel to get here and enough prisoners walk there every day that there shouldn’t be any problems.  If anything does come, I can escape.  Same as if anyone wants to steal my ore.”  He pointed to the robe-turned-sachel he had slung over his shoulder.

“Okay. Later.  I should be back before the evening meal sale.  If not, it’ll be morning for sure.”

Slim nodded. He turned to leave and briefly looked over his shoulder as he moved away.  His movements were unusually hesitant, like he’d noticed that something might have changed.  Jake realized with some surprise that he actually felt bad he would probably not see Slim again after he set his plan in motion.

He stood there for a minute after Sim was gone, just thinking about the last few years.  The day had been strange so far, full of reflection.  Finally, Jake turned and moved deeper into the tunnels.

Not for the first time, he felt a flash of frustration that he couldn’t just phase through the stone like he could before being a Web Burrows prisoner.  He wasn’t sure how, but Lady Brima prevented most movement-based, natural abilities, including his phasing ability.

He didn’t think there was any way for him to break through that restriction after years of fruitless effort.  Luckily, some of the other ways he’d been limited weren’t quite as solid.

Jake had a number of things to do before he attempted a prison break and one destination was on the other side of the mine.  Most of the other prisoners didn’t question his solo forays deeper into the mines anymore, and that meant the guards didn’t either.  They all thought he was just nuts and ate demon beasts…which was even true to an extent.  To maintain his social standing and relative invisibility, he’d still need to make it back to camp before the end of their “night,” or they might grow suspicious, though.

It would be awfully shitty if all of his plans came crashing down two days before his escape, especially due to negligence or impatience.

Jake hurried down the tunnel, keeping his senses peeled for danger.  He had a few natural advantages over most of the other prisoners, but he was still under a lot of restrictions.  In addition to most of his natural abilities not working and all of his gear being gone, he couldn’t access his storage ring.  All of his possessions he’d had on hand had been shoved into his ring before he’d been dumped in the Web Burrows.

He usually stuffed the monster cores he found and the ore Slim mined into his pockets or made makeshift slings to hold them.

Most of the other prisoners thought they were just being used as slave labor to mine milk ore.  After all, one of their guards took milk ore and monster cores in exchange for food, water, blood, or any other nourishment a prisoner could need.  Most prisoners needed to mine or find ore if they wanted to live.

There were even prisoners-turned-prostitutes who accepted milk ore as payment.

But after years of exploring, Jake wasn’t so sure mining was the real purpose for this place, at least not all there was to it.

Suddenly, he stopped.  He sensed a large group of demon beasts coming from ahead and judged it’d be a tough group to tackle alone, at least in a straight stretch of tunnel like the one he was in.  There wasn’t enough time to waste with it, anyway.  Even after all these years, the frustration of not having access to his storage ring was palpable.  With everything he had stored in there, at least he’d have more options.

Maybe that would change soon, though.  Hopefully.

The approaching group were coming from a curve from a downward slope.  Jake silently jumped up and used his finger and toe claws to cling to the ceiling.  This was made slightly easier by the roots that had broken through the rock in a few places.  He was in an older section of tunnel now and the root was omnipresent.

Then he minimized his presence.  He hadn't even known this was possible before learning amore about the murim world from Slim.  And Slim hadn’t known how to do it–hiding one’s presence.

But Jake had taken the story seriously, especially after being snuck up on so oftenbmy Master Zi.  Then years of practice had paid off

He pictured himself as a rock and stilled all the chi regularly circulating through his body to a standstill.  His sense of self was condensed, then discarded.  All that remained was his drifting consciousness.

Below him, a large group of demon beasts passed.  Focusing too much on any of them would have dropped his concealment.  Maybe after he was more advanced, he’d be able to focus on things more and stay hidden.  What he was able to gather about the group was that it was large and dangerous, though.  Hiding had been the right choice.  He waited for another five minutes before dropping to the ground in a crouch.

This deep in the mines, he sometimes found evidence of other, doomed parties or individuals.  Old pieces of bones or clothing or tools made of root wood.  One thing he’d discovered for sure over time was that the Web Burrows, Lady Brima’s prison, was very old.  Also, newer tunnel expansions by current prisoners focused on moving outward, but at one point in the distant past, prisoners had been digging down instead.

The coast was clear so he moved quicker now, following a path he’d taken hundreds of times.  At one tunnel intersection, he went down at almost a forty five degree angle to what looked like a dead end.

When he’d been exploring in his third year as a prisoner, he’d almost missed what made this place special.

Bending down, he grabbed hold of two thin, almost invisible threads, probably woven together strands of the fine silk that laced the Web Burrows over time just like the mysterious roots did.  After a sharp tug and some more pulling, he managed to remove the stone plug, a doorway.

The hidden room had been covered with a thick layer of dust when he’d first found it.  He’d likely never know who constructed it hundreds or even thousands of years ago.  There hadn’t been anything written on the walls other than a line of text in a language Jake didn’t know.  He’d written it down on a piece or parchment several times and committed it to memory.

Maybe one day he’d have it translated if he could ever escape.

Jake wasn’t planning to spend much time in the hidden room, so he didn’t pull the plug in after himself.  He just went inside the long, narrow space and put the monster cores against the far wall with all the others.  Keeping them on the far wall like this actually placed them near a tunnel on the other side of the thick stone.  Monsters sometimes congregated there, attracted to the cores.  Jake usually avoided that tunnel unless he went to kill off stragglers nearby.

Saving all of his loot was a lot harder now without access to his storage ring, and ingesting monster cores didn’t do much anymore individually anymore.  There was no point in using them for any evolution paths, either, they would mess up all of his carefully laid plans.  The only purpose he had for the cores was to improve his cultivation.  But now he needed dozens and dozens at once to hopefully get past his next cultivation bottleneck.

Part of why he needed to escape this place so badly was the lack of any monster cores past the weak ones he was usually able to collect.  The reality was that most of the demon beasts in the Web Burrows weren’t strong enough to have good cores.  In fact, the place  would be far less dangerous if not for the restrictions all of the prisoners were under.

Jake eyed his stash with a critical eye.  He had seventy three monster cores now, but he was pretty sure he needed over ninety for the last push into the sixth level of Body Refinement.  That was okay, he knew where he could get some more within the next day and save himself time.

He left the hidden room, one of his luckiest finds during his entire imprisonment.  Finding a safe place to stash things and cultivate in peace was one of the reasons he had been able to progress at all over the years.  It was also how he’d helped keep his actual cultivation level secret from the other prisoners.  That and his practice at minimizing his presence.  He practiced the skill all the time now, hiding in plain sight, making his cultivation base seem smaller than it really was.  At least he thought his cultivation level was a mystery to most prisoners.  But he didn’t trust anyone enough to really talk about it, even Slim.

That worried him sometimes, the lack of anyone to confide in.  He wondered if anyone could see through his ruse.  But so far, the prisoners all treated him like he was an average level cultivator among their number, but mean as a shithouse rat.  Perfect.

In fact, the first day he’d come to the Web Burrows, some of the lower level, scavenger-like prisoners had tried to rough him up or maybe kill him for his flesh.  Some of the prisoners were always ravenous, like Slim, but were aggressive, not cowardly.  They’d had weapons.  Jake had his long claw on both hands and he’d ripped two of them apart before the stone, statue-like guards had intervened.

So many shitty years.  Jake shook his head.  He was close now.  So close to leaving this hellhole.

He moved even deeper down the mines, far past the point any other prisoners had gone in hundreds of years judged on the dust and bones he’d found.  Even most of the demon beasts didn’t come down this far.

Finally, he slipped through the crack he’d discovered, barely wide enough to jam himself through, and found himself in a carved, stone chamber with rows of stone benches and a lectern to one side.  On the wall to the other side of the room stood two different groups of softly glowing lines of text and diagrams.

It was the soft glow, a different color than any glowing moss, that had helped him find this room in the first place.

Jake reverently went to the far side of the room from the glowing script and sat down with his chin propped up on a fist.  He would not have recognized what this place was before seeing skill scrolls back on Earth.  But this place was not a scroll.  The script was carved directly into the wall.  It was permanent, but it also didn’t completely transfer a technique into his mind the same way skill scrolls had.

Every time Jake came to study the wall, he understood a little bit more of what it was trying to tell him.  Now he knew there were two techniques on the wall, Veil Piercing Phoenix Eyes and Phoenix Piercing Talon.

He was close to completely understanding these two skill, and now that he knew what they were, he didn’t think the fact they were here in the Web Burrows was a complete coincidence.  The Web Burrows might be a prison, but that’s not all it was, or least it’s not what it always had been.

Some of his plans hinged on successfully mastering these two techniques.

Jake settled in to learn.  He stilled his spirit, suppressing the excitement of being so close to mastering the Veil Piercing Phoenix eyes and Phoenix Piercing Talon after over five years of study.