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Return of the Fallen Volume 6 Chapter 13

Author: Blue_Rat

ch13

Several hours passed of Kazuki inspecting rock after rock. After a while, there was a large pile of rocks falling apart in one corner and a small pile of rubber-like rocks in the other. Kazuki had gathered hundreds of rocks but the ones that could be transformed from the acid were few and far between.

Kazuki took out all the rubbish rocks and tossed them. Afterward, he scrounged up more rocks as quickly as he could before bringing them back to his underground layer. He also reshaped the entrance slightly. By applying a small amount of acid around the entrance, he was able to shape it a bit better. After that, he took nearly all of his supply of rubber rock and made a thick door to block the way.

With the rubber rock acting as a door, it was several times tougher than regular rock and could absorb a good deal of impact. This made it perfect to keep out clackers. Plus with the entrance sealed tighter, the clackers would not be able to use their ears to hear inside as the rubber rock made the cave more insulated from sounds.

Kazuki now had more rocks but a lot of the time he could do nothing as the acid had run out. He would then have to wait for the tiny puddle to refill from the drops coming from the ceiling. In between wait times, Kazuki would also sit in a meditative pose with legs crossed. He would focus his mind and practice controlling the godly aura.

Out of curiosity, Kazuki tried circulating it around his body, as he would magic or ki. Upon trying this, he discovered that when he did that, his mage core would take the aura in and his soul would strengthen. He didn’t quite understand how or why this happened but it did. It was fairly minor in effect but he clearly felt his soul strengthen by just a little.

Kazuki entered his soul world and discussed with Kai and Danny about this effect and the two were just as confused as he was. Kazuki then tried to use the godly aura on Kai. His thinking was that if the aura strengthened his soul, maybe it could then help Kai’s soul. After many sacrifices, Kai was constantly becoming see-through and not and his soul had weakened greatly and could disappear at any given time. Kazuki wished to prevent that at any cost. However, to Kazuki’s disappointment, the aura simply passed through Kai as though he weren’t even there.

Kazuki and Danny were both given a heavy blow from this but Kai chuckled.

“Everyone has to go sometime, I’m ok leaving when it’s time, so stop wasting your effort on me and figure out how your gonna get your sorry ass out of this trench.”

With that said, Kazuki went back to training and experimenting. Within only a few days, Kazuki found he could combine the godly aura with the foul acidic water. After that, he combined the acid with the rocks and it changed the rubber rocks once more. He found that some of the rocks became more brittle like glass and would crumble easily or more smoothly depending on how much aura he put into the acid.

He found both new rocks to be useless at the moment but this was just how experimenting worked. Besides these strange changes, Kazuki also discovered how to tell which rocks could become rubber-like to regular rocks.

Kazuki found that by knocking on the rocks and listening closely to the resounding sound, he could identify which rock was which. a regular rock sounded compact when it was hit with something. It resembled a wooden bat striking the ground, while the rubber rock on the other hand sounded more like a low drum. On the surface, it was hard to tell but by getting fairly close and listening carefully, Kazuki had figured this out.

After these little discoveries, it became that much easier to figure out which rocks would be made rubbery and which would not. This saved Kazuki lots of time as well as helped him to conserve acid that he would have wasted otherwise on normal rocks.

Now that he knew which rock was which by simply knocking on them and listening, he gathered the right rock at an even faster rate. Once more he got to work.

Kazuki meditated every day for hours upon hours. In this way, he was developing more and more control over the godly aura. When he wasn’t meditating, he would make piles of rubber rocks. With a large cache of these rubber rocks, Kazuki then took them and stretched them repeatedly. Time after time he would use far too much strength and accidentally tear them. This would waste rock after rock and Kazuki would have to start over. Eventually, he found out exactly how much strength to use without tearing the rubber rocks.

After stretching them to the desired lengths, Kazuki then thinned them out and made them skinnier by applying a tiny bit of diluted acid. He did this with his ki. He could extract a portion of the acid with his ki and therefore weakened the acid by a small amount. It took a few tries but he got the amount down to the exact proportion. Using a weaker acid on the stretched rubber rock, making it as thin as a vine. After making several of these thin vine-like rubber rocks, Kazuki then braided them together making a rope.

The increased toughness and durability made it impossible for Kazuki to break it with his own strength.

Kazuki then began thinking about the sharp spikes sticking out from the cliff wall.

(The wall is dozens of miles up. There’s no way I could ever make a rope that long before I starved to death down here. With this though I shouldn’t need to. I should be able to throw this rope up a good distance and catch a spike. Then I can slowly climb up my rope and when I reach the spike I can throw my rope around another higher spike and continue climbing up. The sharp edges of those spikes worry me though.)

When Kazuki fell down the trench, he had tried to grab onto the spikes but the spike was so sharp, it had skinned his hand instantly. Had he not released sooner, the spike would have sliced cleanly through his bone and he’d be missing a hand entirely.

Gripping the rope tightly between his hand, Kazuki wondered if it would hold.

(Only one way to find out.)

Kazuki decided on what to do but before he did, he tied the rope to the entrance door and then tied the other end to a large hook on the other side of the wall. Kazuki had created this hook by melting part of the wall in with acid and shaping this hook from it. In doing so, the door would hold much better if it was tied to something. Kazuki did this as an extra security measure, a just in case you would call it.

With the door secured, Kazuki laid down and he slowly went to sleep. He had been up for days and had not eaten or drunk a single drop of anything since he’d fallen down here and after everything he’s been through, his mind was on edge. If he were to attempt climbing out of the trench, he’d need to be completely level headed and clear.

The next day or whatever it was, Kazuki couldn’t tell in this place that was constantly dark. Kazuki woke up feeling a little better. His stomach growled slightly and his throat had a slight itch but besides that Kazuki was feeling fine. With his body, he could go at least a month without water and he could go months without food. If he became desperate enough, he’d remove all the acid from the water and drink that but he wasn’t anywhere near that level just yet.

Kazuki filled his makeshift water bottle to the brim with acid, in case he needed it before he untied the rubber rope and headed outside. He listened carefully for any enemies but found none to be close. With the coast clear, Kazuki took the rope with him and headed for the wall.

As soon as he came within 10 feet of the wall, he sensed it with his outstretched ki and stopped. A spike was only a few feet above him. Kazuki rolled out his rope and tied a small loop on the end. Swinging it in a circle above his head, he had to simultaneously outstretch his ki to find the tip of the spike ahead of him before tossing his rope with accuracy.

*Thwoop*

The loop landed perfectly and with a pull, it tightened around the end of the spike until the rope became taught.

Kazuki gripped the rope tightly and gave it a nervous tug towards the ground.

…

The rope held. This caused Kazuki’s heart to race a little with hope but he knew not to get too excited and calmed himself down. He then pulled the rope tighter and tighter until he was using all of his strength to try and tear the rope down but to his glee, it held strong.

(This…might work.)