The cavern glowed faintly with arrays etched into the stone by Raqin's hand, humming with stored spiritual energy. The group sat around a fire made from spiritwood, its smoke strangely clean, filling the air with a refreshing fragrance. The twins leaned against each other, Eva tinkering with the bones of the wolves, while Eve carved runes into bone made bullets. The siblings sparred lightly in the corner, refining their control.\
Uncle Lucas sat quietly, watching them with a pensive expression. His sword rested on his lap, but his gaze wasn't on the blade — it was on the next generation.
"You children… your foundations are remarkable. Solid, sharper than most prodigies I've ever seen. But…"
He exhales, voice heavy with meaning "….solid is not enough if you want to climb beyond mediocrity. If you build too quickly, even strong stone becomes brittle."
The group looked at him, sensing the shift in his tone.
Eva raised her eyebrow "So what are you saying exactly, uncle? That we're rushing?'
Lucas nodded "Yes. Your realms are like vast chambers filled with energy. But what if you could compress them, force them into a smaller space, denser, heavier, purer? Each breath, each strike, would carry the weight of ten. That is called Realm Compression. Difficult. Painful. Time consuming. But in this prison of gray skies… we may have all the time in the world."
He unrolled an old beast-skin scroll and began sketching diagrams with spiritual ink. The script was jagged, flowing like rivers of qi. The others leaned forward, curiosity alight in their eyes.
Raqin took the scroll first, scanning the method. His brow furrowed. The diagrams twisted in his perception, the theory maddeningly complex. He tried to overlay it on his own Soul Nexus Core cultivation route, but the paths clashed violently.
Racing muttered "Damn….my comprehension isn't enough. The more I try to force it, the more it breaks apart."
/Correction Host. Your comprehension is fine but not enough to understand the methodology behind it, which is rigid and outdated. Shall I begin adaptive parsing?"
Raqin closed his eyes. Inside his consciousness, luminous runes floated — SAM's simulated models of energy circulation. They twisted Lucas's archaic diagrams into programmable runic strings, testing infinite variations until a stable pattern emerged.
/Fusion complete. Compression ratio achievable: 1 : 3 without structural collapse. Shall we test?"
Raqin grinned "Of course."
Three months passed in a blur of hunts and constant practicing. They stalked the wolves across the entire island, tested new theories mid-battle, collapsed from exhaustion only to persevere. Each night, Raqin and the girls refined the compression technique — their foundation breaking down, rebuilding, and adapting.
Eva nearly shattered her foundation once, but SAM's warnings saved her. Eve learned to weave the compression techniques into runes, creating a new path of compressing power into a bone bullet, making hunting the wolves quite easy. The siblings are now able to compress their force into their respective paths with terrifying efficiency.
At last, they stood before uncle Lucas once more, their auras impossibly dense for their realm.
"Uncle. You said compression was possible only three times at each major realm. With this adaptation…we can compress at the profound 10th level of Bone and Tendon realm. Then repeat at each breakthrough, three times, until the 6th major realm. The efficiency is exponential."
Lucas's eyes widened, the sword on his lap vibrating faintly as if resonating with his shock. "Impossible… that technique was meant to humble you, to remind you that talent without patience breeds ruin. Yet you…." He laughed bitterly, shaking his head.
"I thought you were frogs at the bottom of a well. But no….it seems I was the frog. And the well I sat in was called 'tradition'."
The fire crackled between them, the silence heavy with unspoken words. Raqin smirked with a cold resolve "Then let's climb out of the well, Uncle. This is only the beginning."
...
Five years later, the cavern pulsed with rhythm. Pools bubbled with diluted crystal core energy, glowing like veins of liquid silver. The group gathered, their breathing steady but heavy with power.
Raqin rose first, veins glowing faintly beneath his skin, his bones emitting jade gold light — the mark of compressing the bone and tendon realm for the third time. The first time his bones emitted blackish silver lights, second emitted reddish white lights and finally the third mad his bones emit jade gold light. His aura spread like a storm before he suppressed it instantly. Eva and Eve followed, their bodies constantly humming, their weapon force coiling around them like guardians. The siblings' breakthroughs echoed faintly in the cavern, while Uncle Lucas sat cross-legged, his presence deep and restrained.
Lucas with a proud expression but his voice heavy. "Five years….and you've forcefully created a road for me. The geniuses I envied back then seem so ordinary now. I've compressed my realm twice, my foundation is so solid it feels impossible to believe."
Eva grinned while twirling her spear. "This cursed gray world gives us nothing but motivation to find a way out of this mess."
Eve also smirking and wiping her sweat. "I'm so glad we have a crazy big brother with an AI stuck in his skull."
Raqin remained calm and analytical. "I'm not crazy. It's just feels necessary. We all know that foundation determines everything. With three compressions or even a single compression, we're already invincible below the blood refinement realm. our aim is to stand above those who only seek to rush realms or dubiously advance their cultivation."
Lucas studied him, eyes narrowing. "And the slimes? What do you mean turning them to soldiers?."
Raqin lifted his hand. The slime armor surged outward, covering his arms in chitinous black like plates with glowing patterned vein like structure, before retracting seamlessly into liquid form. "I do not see them as mere tools. So far, there two ways to strengthen the slimes, by assimilation or synchronization. Assimilation gives them limits, but synchronization …thats's true evolution path for the slimes. Mark my words, uncle — my inventions will dominate this world."
A silence fell. For the first time, even Lucas — the man who thought he had seen and experienced everything — felt unsettled.
A week later, the group moved silently through the ruins of the Iron sky sect. Using the creep bugs for scouting, they tracked a pack of mutated true-core wolves feasting on carcasses. Their armor shimmered into place. Slimes tightening like second skins.
Raqin looked forward, his voice steady. "Eve — eyes of the strongest. Eva with me. Jill support Eve. Jack, keep formation with uncle Lucas."
Eve perched on a ridge, rifle steady. The slime assimilated to her rifle pulsed as it devoured stored materials, strengthening the barrel. She exhaled, then fired.
CRACK! The strongest wolf roared, one eye bursting. Before it could recover, another shot took its second eye. The pack scattered, confused because there wasn't any scent of enemies nearby.
"Now" Raqin shouted.
He blurred forward, sword flashing. His sword amplified by the sword force split the throat of one wolf before it even realized he was there. Eva lunged with her spear, striking the belly of the strongest wolf, her spear vibrating due to the amount of spear force she was wielding. The siblings covered their flanks, Lucas watching with arms folded, eyes sharp.
Lucas muttered to himself. "….the application of weapon qi and force is just brilliant…no. more than that. They're advancing beyond it. I've just perfected the control of my sword qi, yet they are not giving me any chance to catch up. Before twenty….they've built foundations most powerful cultivators would kill for."
The fight grew brutal. Wolves went berserk, the strongest losing limbs yet still thrashing. The group bled, but their coordination held. Finally Raqin drew out his slime assimilated revolver compressing his sword qi into a bullet.
BOOM! The strongest wolf's skull vanished. The remaining wolves fled, but different shots came from different angles felling the retreating wolves.
The battlefield fell silent. The group stood, panting, armor dripping gore and blood.
Eva whistled with deep impression of the gun. "Very soon….all eyes will be on us because of its existence."
Raqin calmly, storing the corpses. "It already did."
He looked in a certain direction and noticed a few pair of eyes watching them.
….
Across the island, campfires burned. The survivors whispered in awe and fear.
"What sort of armor was that….it covered their entire bodies like a shadow."
"They killed those monstrous wolves no sane man would approach."
"And those strange weapons with a thunderous scream."
Days passed. A band of survivors, armed with crude spears and scavenged blades, stalking the misty forest. They whisper about the "Armored Shadows" that has been circulating lately.
Suddenly, a flash of crimson light cuts across the trees — a sniper shot. The leader of the band felt something was wrong before he heard a crack. Then a deep and fist size hole appeared on nearest tree. They scatter, screaming about "the shadow hunters are here."
Not knowing it was Lucas testing a sniper rifle and also trying to scare this band of survivors from the waterfall.
The story began to spread more fervently: "if you wander too far from your group, you could encounter the shadow hunters."
In a ruined shrine, a group of sect disciples sit around a fire. One swears he saw a man with a wolf's head helmet tear through a pack of wolves like butter. Another insists it was a beast tamer bin disguise controlling the wolves themselves. A third, shaking, mutters that the armored hunters are demonic puppets made from corpses led by some cursed soul.
They argue, but each tale fuels the fear. By morning, they spread the rumor to three more camps.
Now, a raider gangs that once thrived on pillaging weaker survivors now hesitated to raid. One night, a raider gang surrounded a group of ordinary looking people. To their shock, the ordinary clothes they wore split and a black like substance resembling slimes covered their entire bodies within seconds. They butchered that gang in minutes, leaving one survivor.
The lone survivor runs screaming. "They wear death itself!"
From then on, raider gangs mark regions where any sighting of Raqin's group appeared.
Among the beast men race, stories shift. Some lion-headed warriors claim these humans are the envoy of the black mountain, sent to test the survivors. Others whisper that the Alpha wolf already favors them — why else do the wolves sometimes ignores them and hunt the humans?
A schism grows: some beast men want to ally hoping to survive. Others vow to slay the Alpha wolf and claim the treasures within the black mountain.
In the treetops, unseen, the spider woman had been listening to the rumors. Her brood drag in corpses wrapped in silk — each with different holes in their bodies or skull.
She smiles, amused.
"They sure know how to spread fear like venom without even trying. That alone is worth more than half the fools fighting for scraps."
But in her eyes, their so called reputation is just a tool. Fear is leverage. She decides to test her theory, to see if the rumors are stronger than the reality.
In days and months to come. To the weak survivors, Raqin's group are saviors or devils in shadow armors. To the raider gangs, they are death incarnate. To the beast men, envoys of the black mountain, or rivals on the path of defeating the Alpha wolf. Only to the schemers, do they feel that Raqin's group is unpredictable, dangerous, but there is value and potential if they could become pawns.
Inside a dim cavern, behind the waterfall. The group's base. SAM's projection flickers against the wall, dozens of bug-feeds showing different parts of the island.
/Host: pattern analysis complete. Your presence has altered survival dynamics. For, rumor, and reverence — spreading like infection./
Raqin, arms crossed with a half-grin on his face. "Good. Let it be. Fear makes enemies reckless — and keeps allies desperate."