Chapter 266: Expanding The Tunnel

And the bloodlines, each sat at sixty stars individually and were far beyond the ceiling for even a level five Divine grade bloodline. The standard framework didn't have a slot for what Adam was carrying.

These were Adam's own estimates, built from his panel and the framework Remedy had just provided. And even working conservatively, the numbers added up to one figure.

Three hundred and fifty-eight star power.

Not counting the Death Key fragment, which had no assigned value on any chart that existed.

Adam stared at the board for a moment, then turned around.

"How do I expand my tunnel?"

*****

Felecia looked at Adam with a completely flat stare.

Adam noticed it immediately. "What? Are you opposed to me finding ways to improve? Don't you have my best interests at heart, Felecia?"

Felecia stared at him for a long moment, clearly trying to determine where that had even come from. Then she looked back down at her drink and continued as if he hadn't spoken.

Ivy celebrated internally with visible effort to keep a straight face. Scott watched Felecia, waited for the comeback that didn't come, and then quietly returned to his own thoughts. Whatever her reason for letting it go, she had let it go.

Adam accepted the win and turned back to Remedy.

"To widen the tunnel," Remedy said, "we need to build a larger one. Something capable of holding everything you're carrying without suppressing it." She capped the marker and set it down. "Right now your abilities are all present, but the tunnel is compressing their output. Expanding it means the full value of each one can actually register."

"How do we do that?" Adam asked.

Remedy smiled. "Follow me."

She turned to the rest of the room. "All of you. Your help will be needed."

Nobody argued. Felecia set her drink down, Ivy and Scott stood, and the group followed Remedy deeper into the mansion. The corridors pushed further into the mountain rather than along it; the estate had been built with more depth than the exterior suggested. The further they walked, the more the ambient temperature shifted, the stone around them carrying a different kind of weight.

Remedy stopped at a wall that looked identical to every other wall they had passed. She pressed her hand flat against the surface.

A seam appeared. Then a passage.

Nobody on the team reacted with surprise. Somehow, in the short time since they had moved in, Remedy had already installed a hidden room. This was simply the kind of thing she did.

They followed her down a set of stairs into a large underground chamber. The ceiling arched high overhead, cut directly from the mountain rock. At the centre of the floor sat a wide pool, still and dark, its surface barely reflecting the light. Inscriptions lined the stone edges in careful, deliberate patterns of old markings, precise and dense with intent.

Remedy stopped at the edge of the pool and turned to Adam.

"This is the Ancestral Pool," she said. "And this is what's going to widen your tunnel."

Adam looked at the pool, then at Remedy. "How long have you had this ready?"

"A long time," she said simply. "I had them built into all of our safe houses. In case we ever needed them."

The rest of the team looked at her with the particular expression people reserve for someone whose level of preparation has crossed over into something that deserves a different word entirely. Remedy didn't acknowledge the looks. She had stopped explaining herself for things like this a long time ago.

"So what do we do?" Adam asked.

Remedy turned back to the pool. "Originally I planned to reveal this when you reached the Monarch rank. But your current star power already clears that threshold, so there's no point waiting." She gestured toward the still, dark water. "This pool is constructed from refined monster blood and essence-infused stone. Together, they create the right conditions to break your tunnel and rebuild it from scratch into something wider, without the compression limiting your output."

Adam raised an eyebrow. "How will that work?"

"To break a tunnel, you need to apply pressure using the same types of power the tunnel is holding. One person alone can't carry all of your variables at once." She paused. "So we use multiple people. Each one holding an ability that mirrors something in your configuration."

Adam turned slowly toward Ivy, Scott, and Felecia.

They were already looking back at him with the expression of people who had just understood why Remedy had specifically told them to come along.

*****

Remedy explained the full process. When she finished, Adam pulled off his shirt, stepped out of his trousers, and walked to the edge of the pool.

The fact that it was refined monster blood didn't register the way it probably should have. It felt like chilled water against his skin as he stepped in and waded to the centre. He settled into position and waited.

Remedy moved to one edge of the pool and crouched low, pressing her hand flat against the inscribed stone. Scott took a position on the opposite side. Ivy crouched at a third point, completing the triangle. Felecia stood back and watched — not because she was intoxicated, but because Adam didn't carry a physique. Her specific ability wasn't a variable that needed mirroring. She accepted that without complaint and found a place to lean against the wall.

Remedy closed her eyes. Scott and Ivy followed.

Then Remedy spoke but it was not in any language Adam recognised, something older, something that felt like it belonged to the inscriptions carved into the stone rather than to any living tongue.

"Pro sanguine, pro ingenio, pro affinitate prima — haec omnia numina frangantur!"

The runes ignited.

Light flared from every inscription along the pool's edge simultaneously, sharp and sudden, and then the stone formations beneath each of their hands drove upward, piercing clean through palm and out the other side. All three of them held. None of them made a sound. Their blood ran down into the pool in thin ribbons, and the water began to change around Adam, darkening, warming and pressing inward.

Then Adam screamed.

The tunnel didn't ease apart; it fractured. The pressure came from every direction at once, internal and total, like something structural inside him was being taken apart piece by piece while he was still using it. He couldn't endure it consciously. His vision went white at the edges and his eyes rolled back.

The process continued without him.

He opened his eyes to a park.

Afternoon light filtered through trees above him. A bench sat a few feet away, and on it was a woman with black hair and emerald green eyes, younger than he remembered her, but unmistakable. His mother. Aurora. She was looking out across the park with the relaxed expression of someone with nowhere to be.

A man approached her along the path.

Adam couldn't make out the face. Something about the figure blurred at the edges no matter how he looked. But something pulled at him, a pull that had nothing to do with recognition and everything to do with something deeper, something instinctive.

The man stopped and then he turned. Not toward Aurora but toward Adam. Directly at him, across the distance, with the certainty of someone who had known he was there the whole time. Then he smiled.

Adam's eyes went wide.

He sat up hard, gasping, and the chamber snapped back around him. He was outside the pool. A blanket had been wrapped around his shoulders at some point, and the team was standing in a loose circle nearby, watching him with varying degrees of concern.

He barely registered any of it.

His mind was still on the man's face. On that smile. On the fact that whoever it was had looked directly at him, in what should have been a memory that didn't belong to him at all.

****

Author's Note

I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I'm finished with my finals, and I'm hopeful for favorable results. However, the bad news is that Martial Era will be going on hold for a while.

Balancing the novel with my academic workload has been incredibly difficult, leading me to a point of burnout where I've had to question my own choices. I know some of you might think that since finals are over, I should have more time to focus on writing. While that's true, the mental exhaustion has built up to a point where I lack the energy to continue right now.

This doesn't mean I'm done writing forever; I just won't be working on Martial Era for the time being. I am deeply sorry for the inconvenience, especially to Kingrig and Unahol—who followed me over from Ex Rank—and to every other reader who has stayed with me to this point. I hate to let you down, but as soon as I find the energy for this story again, I will return to finish it