As he finally sits up, Ben Higgs was filled with happiness.

Yet, the celebration was short.

Once he looked around, the feeling of wanting to get away as soon as possible intensified again.

‘Such a mess…’ he sighs inwardly.

[clack] the door opens.

“…elling you, I heard something!”

The new guest, a teenage boy, becomes pale as soon as he looks into the room. In the middle of his silence, someone yells questions from further outside.

“Hey, why did you stop! Is some monkey eating the bodies inside?”

“Right, we need to kill one of them, or master will kill us!”

Another teenage boy and a girl join the first one. They all have around the same age, 15ish.

However, the atmosphere soon changes when they all lose their words after encountering the sight of the “corpse” staring at them.

The strong impression of his deep dark eyes makes every second seem like hours, and his unsightly appearance triggers shivers down their spines. Moreover, while the old “corpse” face was unresponsive, adding a sense of coldness, it was the hand creeping up slowly until it shakes at them that breaks their standstill.

[waves hand] ‘Hi.’

“Fuck, the corpse moved!”

“Don’t push me! You go kill it!”

“Don’t leave me alone! It’s a fucking undead king!.”

Their yelling soon vanishes, as they run away in despair with their shaky legs. Even though this sight alone might not scare them senseless, the view plus the aura, blasted out of the room unexpectedly, shocked them too much!

Therefore, in their heads, what they saw was an undead, no question asked. Not only they were sure about it, but they also believed this particularly undead was very strong (and scary-looking), but fortunately, the corpse should be frozen! They all left feeling lucky that the newborn couldn’t move well.

“…”

The waving hand stops.

“rrrgggrr…” Ben wasn’t able to talk, as his muscles didn’t move as he wanted them to.

‘Did they hear the ice falling? Their timing was quite unfortunate too. They arrived right when the isolation turned off. However, my hand…’

The waving hand was indeed awkward but not because he wanted to prank them, instead his body isn’t responding correctly to his orders yet. To sum up, his muscles are rigid, and his whole body is sore. Furthermore, after almost dying, how can he look and be perfectly well?

Even talking was impossible, so Ben is only able to yell madly inside his mind.

‘I’m alive! Okay! I AM ALIVE! Incompetent kids, get this right! ALIVE!’

[His raised hand slowly goes down]

[He looks at his hand]

‘What? Do I look that bad? Should I reconsider wasting time and energy trying to look younger? But that… A grampa look fits me too well. People don’t worry too much about me, and I can act tired and lazy. Not many would even consider bothering someone looking like they have a foot in their grave already. Hence, I can live inconspicuously.’

Ben was also really shocked this time around. This was the first time someone looked at him like that! Like he was their worst nightmare.

‘What do… what do I do? They will kill me first and ask later!’

Even while lost in his thoughts, Ben doesn’t stay still. He works his way up. Standing up, he begins to look around.

“rrrgggrrrsssssssss…”

He tries to test his voice, but his throat and tongue don’t cooperate.

“wwwwwuuuuu…”

‘It may take days to recover. I can’t talk or move well. Also, no one would believe I survived in this place. And, topping it off, those kids were yelling UNDEAD…’

“wwwuuuaaaaa”

He considers all his options. But since running away was his initial plan anyway, he decides against trying to explain his situation to those people outside. Besides, even if he could reason with them, then he would go back to the old issue, as they might become too interested in his insight.

‘Two minus one… only one left.’ Ben, sadly, works his way into the tunnel.

From the beginning, the room had only two ‘exits’: A door and a cold hole. While Ben would preferably leave using the door, he can’t sneak his way out now. Even if there is a battle happening out there, the way those teenagers were freely moving around can only mean they came well prepared. Who knows how much would it take for them to catch him and he wouldn’t bet on the absence of stronger people nearby protecting those three either.

[sigh]

‘At least they shouldn’t be able to pursue me into this hellish cold hole. ‘

Ben estimations are that only mighty elders of major local powerhouses would be able to take this concentrated flow of cold energy head-on. That or someone with some strong icy foundation, those exceptions would be like him and would be able to resist by syncing with the cold rather than going against it.

‘They talked about monkeys. So it should be some ice monkeys, but I wonder how they dug those wholes, was it already here? They made this place home, so it should be cozy to them. I’m not sure why, but I feel like a mystery surrounds them.’

[chattering teeth sounds]

‘Oh shit, compared to this, the room felt like summer!’

To move inside the tunnel, Ben craws on all fours. The freezing energy collides with him, head-on, thus he can only depend on his newest acquisition. Inside him, both nodes right below his heart work on trying to balance his body temperature. Despite the suitable countermeasure, moving inside the tunnel feels like diving inside a sea of needles.

Once advanced farther into the tunnel, Ben’s closes his eyes as he focuses a good part of his shield on protecting his head. The rest of his body can only take whatever comes its way.

‘Come on, work! Fucking work!’

[BOOM] Ben hears the improvised furnace exploding.

However, he ignores it, as his inside become a storm and energy move around him and inside him in high speeds. He begins to hear little thunders around him as the cold flow keeps rejecting his improvised synchronization.

[crack] Ben movements begin to emit little sounds as newly formed ice in his joints begins to break.

Fortunately, the needle’s shower sensation is overwhelmed by his sense’s expansion, as he successfully forms a partial link.

Ben stops for a moment, trying to stabilize his condition.

The fake thunder sounds around him stops.

His chattering teeth stops.

Ben’s presence becomes like a perfect aerodynamic object against the wind, and even if he’s still colliding against the cold, his resistance becomes silent.

Becoming, partially, one with the flow, he can now sense what’s up ahead. How far he can ‘see’ depends on how far he dilates his once concentrated external shield. Even though his improved sight ahead is limited, he can see further back, as far as the freezer room in its now messier state.

Ben senses the presence of people finally arriving at the room after the explosion. They begin to investigate what happened. While they work on retrieving clues, Ben moves once again.

‘I took my time… The little fire inside me should be able to hold on for a while. Please exit be nearby. At least, those guys in the back don’t seem to have sensed my struggle. I did move in quite fast, but still, they’re too freaking slow, and that’s great.’

However, his worried heart can’t calm down.

‘This worry. Little dumb mind, how can they detect me, if not even my runes could seek deep into this hole? I ran, and I suffered, if they run after me, they will suffer too. Simple math! Focus up ahead. Focus, Ben, focus! Find an exit!’

Despite the potential knife to his back, he has big problems to worry about, such as getting to see the sky and not accidentally turning his “ice cape” off.

Ben keeps moving, and soon he passes a fork that goes down. It should be around 100 meters away from the room.

Since there is still a path ahead, he avoids going deeper.

The good news is his senses now go further ahead since he’s now going with the flow rather than against it.

Around 100 meters more of crawling and he finally gets to another room.

‘Yet another freezer.’

There is no way out. The room size is similar to the one he woke up in, but it still filled with corpses. Even the tunnel entrance is blocked off.

‘Madness. So many bodies! Did they use the food in that other room first? What do I do now?’

Ben could burn everything into ashes, but that would yell I’M HERE.

‘The only way is to go deeper. Ah, I should prepare more.’

[sigh]

Ben then makes himself more comfortable by adjusting his position in the small tunnel.

‘There is so much wealth here, that I can be conservative. It’ll be easier to suck it up, anyway.’

A similar process begins, as his chest opens up and runes go all around this filled room. First, Ben sets up the camouflage interference to hide his presence. Then, he finds a few improvised furnaces to use, this time around he finds an alchemy furnace, so burning should be a lot easier.

Since moving anything is too hard, he leaves the furnaces all around the room, closer to their original position. He only links them with runes, the composition looking like a constellation.

Once he completes the array, Ben starts to burn the resources. This time around, removing materials from the spatial artifacts as time goes and only removing the stuff he needs since the space is so limited.

Waves and waves of energy are absorbed from this set up in the room, while he simultaneously absorbs the flow coming from deeper in the tunnel. The whole process takes almost half an hour.

—

‘The sound of battle seems to have quieted down. It was so noisy a few minutes ago. They should have been fighting a powerful monster.’

The battle was quite frightful, as Ben considered for a moment that this place might collapse, burying him alive.

‘There is still some more resource to burn, but I’m at my limit. I shall not eat more than I can chew since my body is still recovering.’

Luckily for Ben, the ones attacking this place were too busy that they did not notice what was happening inside.

Not many people would be dumb enough to do a blind chase, dividing themselves while fighting to such an extreme. At least not for something they don’t understand at all.

‘I should move fast once I release the suppression since they will notice something is up.’

‘Will they assume that I’m an undead with absorbing capabilities? That would be too dumb. Nah. I shouldn’t expect them to be so useless since it shouldn’t take much until they notice someone with weird abilities was here. Once they connect the dots, everything will be clear: I’m alive, I’m running, and I must have a reason why.’

‘Still, I don’t want to have to expose my chest again any time soon. Because having to mobilize my foundation is too dangerous, and this will end up getting me refined into a weapon.’

Having his chest closed again, Ben begins to cover up the process. While cleaning everything up isn’t possible, he can always destroy everything. As this will at least make it hard for them to piece together the puzzle. Like always, Explosions and fire are people’s best friends!

The difference from before is that this time around he’s going all-out, making the bomb as dangerous as possible. Once they go off, the fire will try to eat everything, even the broken-down walls, and ceiling.

‘Let’s go out with a big boom! Only that could cover my traces well. Unfortunately, everything will be buried, even the fire.’

Ben finishes his preparation, releasing the camouflage runes.

Waves and waves of energy flow out, notifying everyone around.

Still in his synchronized state, Ben moves, reaching the fork again in around 5 seconds. He crawls as fast as he can. Without hesitation, he falls in, letting gravity help him. After five hundred meters down, The slope begins to become more horizontal.

[KABOOM]

Twenty seconds later, the bombs go off. The ground around Ben shakes a bit, but what worries him is the pieces of rock falling into the tunnel from the now destroy fork.

‘Opsie!’

He was planning to slow down, but now he can’t. Ben keeps moving and only stops once it’s horizontal enough that the debris coming down wouldn’t be a problem.

‘This should be around 1 km deep.’

A few pieces of rocks roll close to him and, a bit farther, bigger ones already stopped.

‘Fuck, I have no way out now!’

It takes Ben a few seconds, while catching his breath, to notice the cold energy density is now increasing quite fast.

‘How could I? Such a silly mistake!’

His limbs are burning from crawling around too fast. Keeping the synchronization has been quite hard due to the fast movements. However, he has no time to catch a breath.

Ben moves on again.

It’s dark and cold, but he keeps crawling until he finds that the tunnel is connected to a big room two times the height of the freezer and around five times the width. Inside this room, a few dozen monsters are in meditation.

Ben can finally see a few shining crystals around the room. While the illumination is quite poor, it’s much better than the tunnel. He can see many tunnels connecting to this room, most of them with doors, but a few wide open.

‘Wow! Such organized cultivation! Good thing I stayed cautious.’

The tunnel Ben is in is quite smaller compared to the average tunnel diameter, and it’s connected far from the ground.

‘This one isn’t used as a corridor, but all those others are! Which one should I chose then?’

While staying hidden, he sees a big group of monkeys coming and going. A few stop cultivating and go out, but others that looked like a mess sit down in this place.

‘Those minerals!’

Looking at the stones, that the monsters were using in their cultivation, gave Ben a shock.

‘They’re dual! Those types are common all around this region, and they can dig. But I didn’t consider them since they, generally, don’t get closer to the ruins and they aren’t dual. Most monsters don’t get closer anyway! They’re afraid of the arrays and the cold.’

‘They seem so much smarter too! Wait! And so many of them! What the fuck is happening?’

Monsters that use multiple sources of energy for their cultivations are rare. Their dens are usually farther from humanity because they have higher threat. They can only survive if they achieve a level that causes humanity to stay away from them. Those den regions are all well know, since the push and pull, as humans battle them, has been nonstop for all known history, and definitely, this region should not be such a den.

‘They shouldn’t be here so that only means they moved in? From where? No. It isn’t possible. How can monsters migrate inside our territory? People would have noticed them. How can the powerhouses around not monitor such beasts? Which means they must have been from here or nearby. Were they born here from one single monster? No. Humans are already attacking this place. Once they noticed such weird change, someone moved into erasing them. This den must be new. Those monkeys could only hide for so long. There are so many. Did they pop up from nowhere? Wait. Did they mutate? No way, right?’

[Ben shivers]

‘Those minerals!’

A mutation is possible, but monsters must be more intelligent than they usually are.

Generally, Be would avoid such a conclusion, since its probability is so low. However, He sees those monster second source of energy. If he takes the ice proprieties from those monkeys and lowers their level, they become quite common in this region.

‘They choose how to cultivate, triggering a mass mutation.’

‘They grew with the cold since there is so much here, and that must be why their level is high.’

‘This place energy is wild, so it became their definitive characteristic, changing their appearance.’

‘The issue is that they would all die soon enough, even if left alone, since their original legacy cannot match their new power, causing the deviation.’

‘So how do they plan to live? Their instinct is always to live! They would be me without the hot node…’

Ben then spent a minute considering the options.

‘Something else? But what? A heat source, or something similar? That monster, the sect above was fighting, must have a third source then. That would explain why the place was shaking so much! They dug, then mutated, once successfully increasing their power they must add something to their body again. I don’t believe they can control this cold without something else. Are they better than me? Not at experimenting on themselves at least, as I have thousands of years of baggage, but they’re still such shocking existence. So daring!’

With his curiosity picked, Ben changes his priority slightly. He plans to get to the root of this issue and discover what this den was trying to achieve!

‘Maybe I can learn something from it, and the two nukes inside me may become a blessing!’