Ray POV.
It had been five days by my estimation, and in that time I had learned many things.
One there was no way I was reaching the surface from the way I had come from, it was at least 30 feet in the air at the bare minimum, and while a happy financial strength of at least a second ring cultivated, jumping 30 feet directly upwards will still beyond me.
Two this place was big, no big was an understatement. It was at least 100 yards wide and 200 long.
Also, this place was full of pipes, pipes that seem to be connected to the iron blood manners, Sewer system.
At the moment I was currently sitting on top of one of said pipes, flipping a knife I had made from metal ether in my hand.
"Now let's see how I can integrate this into my plans."
I thought, as I turned the knife of ether into a needle, that somehow formed upside down?
I stared and confusion at the needle that was currently impaled into my hand, blood slowly flow down from my palm before dripping to the floor a couple feet below me, it wasn't like I could see the floor, but I assumed that's where it landed.
I blinked a few times before I realized I was currently supposed to be pulling the needle out of my skin, or at least dispersing the ether that made it up, or maybe even preventing my blood from flowing around, said needle.
I did none of that, my eyes just stayed locked on the red stream that flowed from the puncture in my palm before falling off the edge of my hand like a Grotesque waterfall.
I can see you, I could see the Crimson so damn clearly. Maybe if there was a bit more rain, if I widened the puncture that a little bit more blood flow I could.
I snapped out of the days the side of blood put me into as I quickly dispersed the needle of ether before pulling all the blood on my palm back into it.
I covered the cut put a plug made entirely out of blood, it was a temporary solution, but it will work for now.
"I needed to get the fuck out of here."
I had had the same thought many times in the last five days, or had it even really been five days?
I could never really tell anymore, in the darkness I was never sure of anything.
I quickly pulled into my soul space and began to cultivate.
It wasn't like I was missing a lot of ether, I just had to get away from that oppressive darkness.
Yet, even now I wasn't fully free, my eyes avoided the walls of my soul space at all cause, staying completely locked on the ring of ether in my sol.
Because no matter if it was internal or external, I was always surrounded by darkness now.
The Erie calm that had been over me after I had snapped out of the trance. The blood have put me in suddenly shattered as even in my soul space his my face twisted in a rage.
"I am going to kill them all every single one of them, I will rip them limb from limb, I will peel their skin off and wear it as my fucking armor, I will grind their bones into dust and turn them into a fucking artifact, I will kill and annihilate every single living being in that manner."
Quickly after my rant, the mask of calm snapped down back over my face.
I think, as if nothing just happened, I began to meditate gathering, ether to both refill what I had lost and to gain more.
It was all I could do in this fucking room, they didn't even send down food so I was just surviving on ether and the stray drop of water that fell from a pipe with origins I would rather not ask about.
In this time, my ether had gone from 21 to 26,.
Normally advancements wasn't this fast, but a few tricks I had learned in a past life quickly made up for my own lack of talent.
Realizing that I had gained all of my ether back, I quickly opened my eyes.
With no hesitation, I created a knife out of metal element ether before poking the index finger of my right hand, then switching the Knife to my right hand. I poked the index finger of my left hand.
Then sliding both index fingers across my torso in deliberate patterns, I began to draw.
The patterns reached down from my collarbone to my sternum, once I was done, I quickly switched to doing the patterns along my arms.
Once I was finally finished, I was covered in symbols, made from my own blood, and so lightheaded that I was about to fall off from the perch I was sitting on.
I finish it off by writing symbols of blood up my neck and across my cheeks before I close my eyes and began to meditate again.
Instantly, my cultivation speed increased by three times, even as it happened, my emotion of calm indifference didn't change.
Even as I felt every place of skin where I had drawn with my own blood begin to burn with pain, even as the smell of evaporating ether and blood began to burn my nose.
The boost in cultivation speed on the lasted for 30 minutes, but that was OK.
I would do everything over again in just a moment. Opening my eyes, I look down at my body, scars.
More scars then I've had before where I had drawn symbols on my body, bright red Lines were seared into my skin.
Even with my unnatural endurance, my skin couldn't withstand the price of what I was doing to myself.
It was all I had, it was all I could do. Advance as fast as possible, so when the time finally came for everyone to pay what they owe, I could destroy my enemies so thoroughly that the very name rating iron blood gave them trauma so deep that they died of cardiac arrest.
I wanted them to run at the very side of me, I wanted them to lose all thoughts of retaliation when they saw me, I wanted him to look at the color, silver and shiver at my memory.
I wanted the memory of what I've done to be carved into there very souls, so even when they were born again they wouldn't Forget to fear the silver eyed monster with nothing to lose.
Sometime while I was thinking, I hadn't realized the smile that had taken over my face, and the growl that was coming from my chest.
Quickly, stopping both, I went back to being as calm as calm could be.
Acting as if I hadn't just been dreaming about how I would torture my dear family members, I began to lean backwards until I was only being held up by the back of my knees.
As soon as I was in position, I began to run ether throughout my body before doing situps on the bar I have been sitting on.
This was one of the mini ways to cultivate the body, a crude way yes but it was effective. No
Or it should have been effective, considering how strong my body had already been without any refinement, making it any stronger without any real equipment, was proving a very difficult task.
An example of this could be the fact that I was nearly 300 situps in, and I was barely breaking the sweat.
Or was it 500? I was never really sure, there was something about the darkness that made a man question even his own name at times.
Anyway, eventually, when I stopped doing sit-ups at 2000, or maybe 3000? Again I wasn't entirely sure, I quickly pulled myself back up with my arms, before continuing my cultivation regaining all of the ether I had just lost.
I repeated the process several times, for what had to be thousands of repetitions.
Practice control with my elements, meditate to both regain, and just gain more ether, and then refine my body through exercise before doing it all again in the endless loop my life had become.
I continued doing this for what felt like weeks, before the inevitable begin to happen.
While first ring, cultivator was many times more resistant to hunger than a normal human, they weren't entirely immune.
So it should have been expected that eventually my ether wouldn't be enough to keep me on my feet. So I shouldn't have been surprised when after a particularly difficult set of pull-ups, my legs just went limp.
Considering I have been doing them upside down, I fell headfirst towards the ground.
As my body, Impacted the ground, I somehow instinctively new, no matter how much ether I ran throughout my frame, I wouldn't be able to rise from where I currently lay.
My mind seem to become sluggish as I try to walk back through the actions I had made since returning back in time.
Everything seems to be going well, the family was underestimating me as expected, they left me alone enough for me to advance also as expected, and I even manage to rise to the first ring with no one noticing.
These achievements should have made me happy, they should have been a badge of how far I had come, but they only seemed like an insult.
If I was somehow happy from rising to only the first circle, then what was the point of me ever reaching the twelvefold?
If I somehow became happy when everyone underestimated me, then what was the point of ever being taken seriously?
I could finally see where I had gone wrong now, I had grown two complacent. I had began falling into a lazy life of a disgraced sun.
I hadn't been truly trying my hardest, if I really wanted power, nothing would have stopped me from killing everyone in the city and joining them on the crucifixes.
If I really wanted the iron bloods dead, then I could have just turned their personal maids into blood slaves, before killing every single one of them silently. Yet I hadn't done any of that, because I had been treating this as a walk in the park, as nothing more than a game.
Yet now I sat here, alone in the darkness with nothing but my weakness as company, I realized.
"This is no game, this is my life."
I wasn't the same, it was hard to face the fact after living for millennia, and realizing that I would never truly become the man I had once been.
I wasn't the same guy who barely crawled away from this family collapse, I wasn't the same guy who took nearly 10 years to rise to the peak of the first ring, and I most definitely wasn't the same guy who who just wanted to be accepted, who just wanted to be shown that he was loved by anyone, anyone at all.
No, I wasn't them at all, I was someone different, someone who had turned the patriarch beating into fuel, fuel that would eventually allow me to cut the bastards head from the shoulders.
I was the guy who nearly killed himself just to kill enemy.
I was the guy who sacrificed others for his own power.
At that thought, a week grin showed on my face.
"At least that didn't change."
No matter if it was this life or the one before, I was still a tyrant, now that's wouldn't change no matter how many times I regressed no matter how many times I restarted.
Yet I wasn't the same tyrant, who had lived in the void for hundreds of millennia, who had needed nine people to banish him, and not fully defeat him, I was not the same tyrant who needed to lose everything to realize what he truly was.
He had been a sword forged in loss and pain, the result was a blade so sharp that it cut anyone coming near.
This time I would still be that endlessly sharp blade, but this time without all of the loss that had made me.
Realizing I was thinking of myself in the third person, I almost croaked out a laugh, but the attempt was prevented by the fact that my throat was too damn dry to talk let alone laugh.
My brow creased at the difficulty of the task that would have to come next, but it had to be done.
Being thrown into this goddamn seller or basement or whatever the hell this was had pushback all of my plans immensely.
It would be a miracle if anything I had planned even happened.
"The woes of being a tyrant."
I thought as I began pouring ether into my blood, I slowly began to float. Then, focusing on one of the pipes I quickly floated towards it.
When I was close enough to touch it with my hands, I quickly poured ether into my left hand, serpent tattoo.
Instantly it flared will Crimson light before a 3 foot long broad sword appeared in my hand.
The first words I had for the blade I currently held was "damn!"
Because the blade was heavy, no heavy wasn't understatement.
As a first rein cultivator, I was able to carry 300 pounds with slight difficulty.
Or that should have been the limit of a first rings, strength, but my own a natural strength allowed me to lift up to 500 pounds, yet even so the blade nearly fell from my hands as I lifted it.
Forcing more ether into my limbs, I lifted the sword as high as I could before slashing down.
This pipe I knew for sure, was connected to the water supply.
As soon as an opening in the pipe was seen, I quickly set a pom over it.
It was nearly impossible to stop the water that seems to want to rush out of the pipe, but I was able to barely do it.
Quickly manipulating the blood within my palm, I quickly cut my hand open from the inside before pouring, said blood into the pipe.
I didn't only pour a few drops, but nearly a gallon into the pipe.
I would have passed out already if it wasn't for my blood element ether subbing as actual blood.
Narrowing my eyes, I controlled both elements at once, as I used the metal element to bend the pieces of the pipe the sword has split back into place.
Even while I was doing that, I was still using my blood ether to prevent my body from collapsing from blood loss.
Once I was entirely done, I collapsed back to the ground where I just lie there.
I had dismissed the sword right after cutting that whole in the pipe so I had nothing else to do, but meditate.
Meditate and regain my ether and then cultivate so I could gain even more ether.
Even though I couldn't move in my current state, that didn't mean I couldn't progress.
It's would take a normal first ring nearly a month to die of starvation, but I was no normal first so the time could be nearly doubled by my abnormal physique.
I would use the next few weeks wisely, cultivating by causing micro tears in my muscles for body cultivation, and just absorb ether from the air around me to fill up my first ring.
And then, when it was time, when I had enough strength to escape this place.
When every piece was sent into motion, when everyone was where I wanted them to be, the iron bloods would fall.
And then I could finally be done with this damn place.
With everyone in this chapter of my life, dead, I could finally start trulyprogressing, after all whatever realm lay behind the twelvefold wouldn't just achieve itself, now would it?