The walk back to the collective shack was the longest walk of Nathan's life. With every step, he felt the weight of the fossilized femur pressed against his ribs, hidden under the layers of filthy rags he called clothes.
To the guards watching the entrance of the slave camp, they were just three more wretches covered in soot, shuffling their feet in exhaustion. But to Nathan, that piece of bone was a ticking time bomb. If discovered, he would be flayed alive. If he managed to use it, it would be the first step out of the hole.
The shack was, as always, a sensory hell. The smell of rancid sweat, untreated wounds, and despair hung in the stifling air. Dozens of thin bodies huddled on the dirt floor, some crying softly, others already passed out in a dreamless sleep.
Nathan guided Ox and Kael to the farthest corner, where the shadows were densest.
"Kael, keep watch," Nathan whispered, sitting with his back to the rest of the shack. "If anyone approaches, kick Ox's leg as if you were having a nightmare."
The boy nodded, eyes wide with tension, and turned to face the sea of sleeping bodies.
Nathan pulled the object from under his shirt. In the gloom, the yellowish bone looked like just a strange stone, but to the touch, the hardness and porous texture were unmistakable.
'Okay, System. I have the hardware. How do I install the software? I don't have an alchemy furnace, I don't have spirit fire, and frankly, I don't even know what I'm doing.'
He held the bone, waiting for a magical instruction. Nothing happened. The Patriarch System wasn't a video game tutorial; it was a passive tool. He had to figure out the "how" on his own.
'It's a bone from a Bone Forging Cultivator. Logic dictates that the energy is in the marrow or the calcified structure. If I can't extract the energy with magic... I'll have to extract it with digestion.'
It was a grotesque, primitive, and risky idea. But Nathan didn't have the luxury of delicacy.
He picked up a loose piece of basalt from the floor and placed the tip of the femur on another larger stone that served as a base.
"Ox, hold this steady. Don't let it slip," Nathan instructed.
The giant held the bone with his huge hands. Nathan lifted the basalt stone and began to hit the end of the femur. Not hard enough to shatter everything, but with rhythmic and controlled taps, trying to pulverize the edge.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The sound was muffled by the snores and coughs around them. Gradually, a thick white dust began to flake off, accumulating on the base stone.
It was slow work. It took nearly an hour to get a teaspoon of that dust. Nathan stopped, wiping sweat from his forehead. He looked at the small pile of white powder.
'This could be super-concentrated calcium or pure poison for a mortal like me. Only one way to find out'
He wetted his finger with saliva, pressed it into the powder, and brought it to his mouth.
The taste was horrible. It tasted like old dirt, chalk, and something metallic, like licking a rusty coin. Nathan swallowed dryly, feeling the powder scratch its way down his throat.
He waited.
One minute. Two minutes.
Suddenly, a sharp pang exploded in his stomach. It wasn't a normal stomach ache; it felt like he had swallowed heated glass shards. Nathan doubled over, holding back a groan of pain.
"Master?" Ox whispered, worried, reaching out a hand.
Nathan raised a hand to stop him, teeth clenched. The heat left his stomach and spread to his ribs and spine. It wasn't a gentle energy. It was violent. It felt like fire ants were gnawing at his bones from the inside.
'The human body wasn't made to digest raw Martial Essence. I'm forcing absorption. Stomach acid is dissolving the calcium, and the residual energy is leaking into my weak skeleton.'
The pain lasted ten agonizing minutes. Nathan sweated cold, shivering, while Kael looked on terrified, thinking he had killed his new master.
But then, the pain subsided, leaving behind a strange tingling sensation, as if his bones were vibrating at a low frequency.
(Ding!)
[Raw Resource Consumption Detected]
Effect: Inefficient absorption (15%).
Result: Body Training +0.2%
Warning: Continuous consumption without proper refinement will cause accumulation of impurities (Chronic Pain).
Nathan released the breath he had been holding, resting his head against the cold wall. He smiled. An ugly, pained smile.
(It works. It's inefficient, hurts like hell, and will probably give me arthritis at thirty if I survive that long... but it works.)
He looked at the rest of the bone. There was enough there for weeks if he dosed it correctly.
"Put this away," Nathan whispered, pushing the bone back to Ox. "Dig a hole here in the corner and bury it. Tomorrow night, we do it again. And Kael... you're taking some too."
The boy paled, remembering Nathan's expression of pain, but nodded obediently.
Two Days Later
The routine in Deep Mine 9 was a vicious cycle designed to break the spirit and body, but for Nathan's small group, it had become a strangely productive ritual.
The "Turtle's Breath" technique changed everything.
While other slave groups started the day with energy and ended crawling, Nathan's group maintained a steady, monotonous pace. They looked slow to outsiders. Ox didn't strike with fury. Kael spent minutes just staring at the wall.
But their ore pile never stopped growing.
Kael had become terrifyingly good at finding cracks. The mark on his forehead, that scar shaped like a broken mountain, seemed to react to the environment. The boy said he felt an "itch" when the ore was about to release a heat wave, which served as an early warning system for the group to retreat before getting burned.
'He is adapting to hell. Nathan thought, watching the boy guide the giant. 'His body is weak, but his affinity with this cursed place is growing.'
Ox, in turn, was becoming a precision machine. Nathan had instructed him to use his waist and legs to strike, not just his arms. The giant's "Vigorous Flesh" allowed him to work for hours without muscle fatigue, provided his internal temperature was controlled by breathing.
They had established a system: mine triple the quota, hide two-thirds in the secret hole where they found the bone, and deliver only the standard quota, plus a little extra to ensure they received full food rations.
It was perfect. It was invisible.
Or so Nathan thought.
At the end of the third day, during the line for ore delivery and ration collection, Nathan felt an itch on the back of his neck. The primitive sensation of being watched.
He didn't turn his head quickly. He kept his eyes down, in the submissive posture he had perfected, and used the reflection of a puddle of dirty water on the ground to look back.
Three spots away in the next line was Rat.
The boy Ox had humiliated days ago didn't seem to have forgotten. He was whispering with an older man, a slave with metal teeth and a scar crossing his nose, one of the informal "leaders" of the barracks, known as Iron Tooth.
Nathan knew that man's story. Or rather, he knew the story of how he came to power.
(Iron Tooth...)
Before, the shack was "led" by Old White, an elder who kept some order among the slaves and prevented unnecessary fights. On the night the Mole Rats attacked, White disappeared. Everyone thought he had been devoured in the chaos.
But he hadn't.
Two days after the attack, the guards dragged Old White into the central courtyard. He hadn't died; he had used the confusion to try to escape. He thought the chaos would be his ticket to freedom.
Poor fool.
It was a public execution. Brutal, slow, and theatrical. The overseers killed him in front of all the work shifts to remind everyone that the only way out of Mine 9 was the crematorium smoke.
With Old White's death, the power vacuum was instantaneous. And Iron Tooth, a cruel opportunist who sold protection for food, took control of the shack. Unlike White, who was strict but fair, Iron Tooth ruled through fear, extortion, and violence.
And now, that predatory gaze was focused on Nathan's group.
Rat pointed discreetly at Ox's ore basket, and then at Kael, who looked oddly healthy and unburned, despite being the smallest there.
Nathan felt a chill in his stomach that had nothing to do with the mine's temperature.
'They noticed. Not the amount of ore, but our condition. No one leaves Mine 9 without burns or extreme exhaustion for three days straight. We are too healthy. And health, in this place, is suspicious.'
Iron Tooth looked at Nathan. His eyes were predatory, assessing fresh meat. He gave a slow smile, showing the dirty metal in his mouth, and nodded to Rat.
'Shit. Rat didn't go crying to the Foreman... he went looking for protection with the slave mafia. He thinks we're hiding food or medicine. And Iron Tooth wants his cut.'
Nathan took his bowl of rice paste and walked away, signaling Ox and Kael to follow. They ate in silence in an isolated corner.
"Master, that Rat boy was looking at my food," Kael whispered, hugging his bowl. "Does he want to steal again?"
"No," Nathan replied, chewing slowly, his brain working a mile a minute. "He doesn't want your food, Kael. He wants our secret. He realized we aren't dying fast enough."
Ox frowned, understanding slow to arrive. "Ox break him now?"
"Not here. Too many guards," Nathan said. "But they will come. Iron Tooth isn't the type to wait. They will come tonight, in the shack, or tomorrow, in the dark tunnels."
Nathan looked at his own hands. They were still thin and calloused, but beneath the skin, he felt the finger bones were stiffer, thanks to the three doses of femur dust he had consumed. He wasn't a warrior yet. Far from it. But he had something Iron Tooth didn't.
He had Ox. And he had the darkness of Deep Mine 9.
"Listen well," Nathan lowered his voice to a lethal whisper. "Change of plans. Tomorrow, we don't go to our usual mining spot. We go to Sector 4-B. The collapsed tunnel."
"Sector 4-B? Dangerous. Bad gas," Ox warned.
"Exactly," Nathan smiled, and there was nothing human in that smile. "Rat will follow us. Iron Tooth will follow us. They'll think we're going to our secret treasure stash."
"And what's there, Master?" Kael asked.
"Nothing," Nathan replied. "Just us. And the perfect ground for an accident."
He looked at Ox.
"Ox, remember when I told you not to use all your strength on the pickaxe?"
"Yes, Master. Ox hold strength."
"Tomorrow... you hold nothing. Tomorrow, I want you to be the monster they fear."
Night fell heavy over the camp. While pretending to sleep, Nathan heard the whispers coming from the other side of the shack. Rat and Iron Tooth's group were planning. They thought they were the hunters.
Nathan touched his chest, where the ancient bone dust worked silently, hardening his structure, preparing him to bear the weight of what was to come.
'They want to know the secret of our survival? I'll show them. The secret is that we stopped being prey the moment I opened my eyes in this shit world.'
(Ding!)
[Hidden Mission Generated: Eliminate the Internal Threat]
Objective: 'Iron Tooth's' group has discovered your anomaly. Silence them permanently before they inform the Foremen.
Reward: +2 Master Points.
Feature Unlock: [Sect Laws].
Failure: Torture, death, and confiscation of the fossilized bone.
Nathan read the notification in the darkness of his eyelids.
'Sect Laws... Interesting. It seems the System agrees with me. A house cannot have two masters, and a shack cannot have two predators.'
He fell asleep to the sound of his disciples' rhythmic breathing, dreaming not of freedom, but of the sound of bones, not fossilized, but fresh, breaking in the darkness.