Aaron ducked through a low opening in a cave and studied with all of his senses the small underground river he had found. It was a different spot than last time, or at least it sounded different. That said it might just be a bit up or downstream, Aaron could not tell. While each cave was unique in their own way, connecting them to form a map in his head was very difficult and Aaron was just glad he could stick to directions and let his senses guide him through the darkness. At this point he expected to feel some psychological downsides to living mostly in darkness, but so far he had no issues. Being able to return to the camp and bask in that light there was probably the reason for that. Although he did miss the sun, when he thought about it, so he decided not to think too much about what he was missing.

He landed next to a small waterfall falling into a small pool and tested its extent and depth with his arm. When he was satisfied by it he scanned the surrounding cave thoroughly, but he was alone here. Good. Aaron stripped out of his clothes and then slipped into the ice cold water. The frigid water felt actually quite nice on his skin and when he settled down in the pool he realized there was an even deeper part to his right. Which meant he would be able to dive and get rid of most of the Impurities that way.

Breaking through to a next minor realm was really nothing more than routine at this point. But at the same time it was more than that. It was a profound experience of growth that he knew no equivalent to. It was like waking up one day, meditating a bit and suddenly being able to bench press double what you could yesterday. In a way it was absurd, but Aaron suspected that he had barely scratched the surface of the Cultivation world. The foundation realm beckoned and Aaron closed his eyes trying to focus.

Slowly he let his senses collapse in on each other before he started to absorb the spirit clinging to his solar plexus. In the absolute calm of his mind he began. It was a slow process and yet the sheer amount of Qi in his dantian was like pressure in a pressure cooker and so the spirit just melted like ice in hot water. The maximum capacity of his dantian was incredible. He had barely any comparison because it was in this weird realm of reality and imagination both. In his inner eye the cave of his dantian was big enough to house cities, but it really wasn't. The real physical location in his body was incredibly small. So it was a paradox and Aaron had no idea if his dantian actually expanded when he did what he did. It must because there were physical outcomes that were measurable. Like the total amount of Qi that could fit inside of his dantian increasing exponentially with every breakthrough. That was a reality not his imagination. And yet he did not think there were any changes in his body, like a core actually expanding. There were other changes in his body that were fundamental and far reaching. Maybe he had to look at them as the real expansion of his core, or it might be just a side effect. Maybe the changes were on a different level of scale. It could be that his dantian was microscopic in size before and now did really increase in size this way. But more likely was that Qi did not follow any laws of the universe that Aaron knew, just the laws inherent in itself. Just like movement through Qi could almost entirely ignore gravity and momentum.

But none of that was important right now, Aaron pushed those thoughts aside and concentrated on compressing the Qi in his dantian to a single point, the flood of new Qi from his cycling technique did not stop and kept filling up the dantian almost to the brink. Aaron made all of his Qi collapse in on itself, tighter and tighter until it started to buckle and escape his control. The pressure increased in his dantian but Aaron was a lot better at manipulating Qi now than he had ever been before. So he managed to keep control of almost all of the Qi until it was concentrated into a small ball almost half the size of his dantian. With effort Aaron concentrated it even further until the ball of gas was only a tiny fraction of its previous size. But his control was not good enough and so much Qi escaped, billowing out like fog, expanding and refilling the dantian.

For a long time he focused only on compressing any errant Qi and keeping the rest of the Qi condensed, until the trickle of new Qi from the fiend-god art ceased. With one last effort he compressed his Qi even further before letting it go. The first starburst formed a wave of hyper concentrated Qi and expanded rapidly, seared away the solid walls of the cave and kept going. Aaron kept a tight hold on all of his Qi and when the wave slowed he pulled it back again. He managed 4 starbursts this time until the Qi wave he conjured found a barrier it could not cross anymore and Aaron's concentration faltered.

Aaron opened his eyes in the sixth minor Realm of Qi refining. Another step closer to his goal, another bit stronger. As his senses returned the stink of impurities clung to him and he quickly dove down into the water and washed himself. He was glad now for the deep pool of water he was in as he scrubbed himself once in the depths, before going up and getting the small bar of soap he kept with him. Armed with that he washed himself thoroughly until his sensitive nose was satisfied. He walked out of the pool feeling clean and stood in the cold cave entirely naked testing his body for changes.

The last breakthrough had improved his flexibility more than anything, but this one transformed some of his muscles, made them more compact, but no less impactful. His mind was clear and calm and the tranquility of the meditative breakthrough still clung to him. Slowly Aaron went through his routine. First he stretched and tried to find the boundaries of his improved physique. He had more power, he could feel it in his every movement. It was an explosive, rapid power he could conjure in an instant. It felt like he could smash rocks apart with barely any windup, but Aaron did not get delusions of grandeur or anything like that. He had expected something like this. After stretching and finding himself not considerably more flexible, he continued with the Heavenly Katas. He fused the Rejuvenating Fist and the Unceasing Palm together as he slowly absolved the basic stances and movements and then called upon the memory core of the Unceasing Palm kata to conjure some monsters.

It was interesting because it summoned these monsters in the absolute dark without any light. So he could see the creatures and enemies, but their light did not actually illuminate the area. Aaron spun, dove and defended himself, time seemingly slowing down and accelerating while he punched and let himself go through the full training set before he was satisfied. After he was done his body felt warm, comfortable, ready. He did not get physically tired anymore, but he did get uncomfortable. He was a long way from that at the moment though. This felt actually really nice. Only three minor realms remaining until the Foundation realm and Ambition. But that was in the future, for now he had to take the rest of the spirits from the kids and then go back down to the first floor.

He doubted he could break through another time with the spirits. His dantian was at least twice the size than the one he had before and the bit of Qi he had left felt like a tiny puddle at the bottom of a gigantic cave system. But funnily enough that amount of Qi was more than enough to fuel anything he wanted to do for a very long time. Gone were the days he had to conserve Qi usage. Not that he had anything that took a lot of Qi to use on anymore. Wind Steps barely took any effort to activate and the Qi used to form the bubble of Qi clinging to his skin was reabsorbed after he deactivated the technique. There was very little cost in the end. The rest was muscle powered. Sure if he wanted to reinforce a punch he had to use Qi, but that was the only big expenditure he had left.

Aaron got dressed and then started to walk back to the camp. He kept training while he was at it, using Wind Steps to propel himself forward, but trying to keep the same cadence of a leisurely walk. Just that he dove forward a few meters with every step. It was a good training to acclimate to his new realm and he would have to fight to really understand his new explosive power. So it took him a while to return, his senses easily found the way back and he waved at Robin who was standing in the guard post outside of the camp.

Back at camp he checked with one glance the Prisoners, but they were busy taking care of the people suffering from Spirit removal. Kentris was pale and his body had already started to break down much of the muscle he had accumulated. Not a fun thing, Aaron guessed. Miran looked better though. His class must have come with fewer physical alterations.

Aaron spent the next three days to absorb the other three spirits, taking it from Myria first and from Trisk last. The spirits were barely enough to get his dantian back up to 40% fullness. So in a sense his cultivation was slowing down considerably. Aaron would need 6 more spirits to break through and he was not sure if this was realistic or not.

Most of his days were spent absorbing spirits, training or eating with the others. Roger went out "hunting" for meat and they always had a stew bubbling over the fire. Their team had a big appetite with the kids having to be fed as well and although they had plenty of rations it was still much more palatable to eat hot and cooked food. No matter that it was made with creatures found on the fourth floor. Aaron suspected it was rat meat, but it might have been insect as well, he could not tell, even with his refined sense of taste. Simply because he had no reference to judge what kind of meat it was. He had no idea how insects or rat tasted and the meat they used never changed. Stab stayed with the kids the entire time like a silent shadow, always watching them until the last spirit had been absorbed by Aaron.

"Alright, lets break camp and head back to the first floor." Roger decided when Aaron told him he was finished absorbing the spirits. The kids looked at that point resigned and were cooperative. They knew they were in mortal peril as normal people on the fourth floor.

Roger lead them with his map slowly through the fourth floor, Aaron behind him warning him of any dangers. Usually they walked around the dangers, but sometimes it was much faster to just fight. In those rather rare occasions the group stayed back, assembled around the kids in a protective formation while Aaron went into the monster nest to clear them out.

It was a particularly nasty rat nest this time and Aaron was eager to test out his new strength in combat. He moved forward using the momentum from a Wind Step empowered jump to connect with a straight punch and then transitioned to the next punch from the Rejuvenating Fist kata. The more he used the Heavenly kata, the more combinations he realized were possible and the smoother those transitions between the different position in the kata became. With his increased strength Aaron basically barreled through most mobs turning them into meaty pulp. He started to play with the momentum, keeping Wind Steps active and using it to make every attack explode outwards, keeping himself clean. He lost any penetrative power to his punches this way, since he used the momentum to fuel the punch and then moved back to escape the back splatter, weaving back and forth, in and out of his combat range. The rats had no chance. With Aaron's speed and explosive power he started to move around them, killing them quickly enough so they could never surround him.

It was absolute overkill to go all out against these rats, but it was good training, acclimating to his new strength and that was all that counted. When Aaron was done the kids looked impressed and a bit terrified. Roger nodded as he studied Aaron's work.

"You are getting stronger." he said with a soft chuckle emphasizing the are.

"You level faster than we have expected."

"Eh, lots of targets and the spirits were the brunt of the Experience." Aaron said, still sticking with the relatable Exp. excuse instead of actually explaining how it worked.

"I will say, this was the most comfortable climb we have ever had. Kinda sad that we are on the way back home." Shia said after stretching lazily.

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"We are not home yet and we don't want any of our guests to have an accident, so lets keep sharp." Roger said and Shia unsheathed one of her throwing knives without looking at him, clearly embarrassed.

"Right. Sorry."

It took them another four or five hours of walking through the fourth floor and four more encounters with various monsters until they finally reached the stairs down to the third floor. The cave before it was guarded by a small Boss, which Aaron dispatched easily. It was another hulking rat monstrosity. Where he had struggled before with a similar foe, Aaron now kept punching it while moving away, hitting it with enough force to rend and tear its flesh apart from the sheer kinetic energy transmitted. When he was done he bathed in the lightpool with a sigh.

Roger gave out wetsuits he had kept folded up tightly in one of their packs and made sure he refreshed their batch of glowstones. He fished out new ones from the bottom of one of the lightpools and deposited the dimly glowing ones into the pool. With that done they made sure all of their luggage was properly fastened and that they all changed into appropriate gear for the third floor. The kids sadly did not get that luxury and they looked mildly uncomfortable.

"I will signal for a ride so we can fly down to Ocenview without having to cross the whole floor. Here is some dried magical kelp. The crew on the ship will provide buckets or helmets filled with water for us, so you should eat it now." Roger explained and handed out the dried kelp to everyone including the kids.

"Or eat it when we walk down the stairs into the maelstrom. It will take some time to take affect with it being dried and all."

They walked down the stairs out of the darkness and into the noise and spray of water surrounding the spiral staircase. The roar of the maelstrom was all around them and the humidity of all the salty water in the air made it feel like they were going down into a salty sauna. It was much warmer on the third floor compared to the fourth, which had been cool throughout basically. Aaron ate his dried kelp, feeling the magic catch slowly as he chewed the brittle and dry chip. It tasted bitter and green. By the time he walked down the last step of the staircase his mouth was encased by a small magical bubble again. Roger stopped halfway down the staircase and signaled Oceanview for a boat before they all went into the maelstrom and waited in the small space directly underneath the platform. The group corralled the kids in the middle, ensuring they would have no chance to try to escape or do something stupid.

The water roared around them, making conversation almost impossible, but Aaron amused himself by swimming down and watching out of the clear part of the Maelstrom for a ship.

It took a fairly long time for the ship to arrive, more than an hour and once the ship finally arrived they could feel it and hear it shoot up the maelstrom. Aaron gestured to Roger who nodded and they all took a deep breath and got out onto the platform.

The ship was either the same as last time, or the same model. It looked like a catamaran with metal handles like from an over sized basket going even above the masts of the ship. Those handles held the balloons and were used as anchors before those inflated. The ship landed gracefully on the platform and they all entered the ship, which had barely enough space for more than 10 people. Aaron was last to get on as he clung to one of the masts with one hand. The captain of the ship, a gruff man with beard and a thick sweatshirt wore a helmet that looked like an old timey divers bell, which made his beard swim in the water like some sort of coral. He gave the order with a gesture and the ship lifted off the platform.

The sailors handed out water bowls to the rest of the passengers and Aaron took a bulky clunky thing and put it over his head more out of curiosity than necessity. He took a deep breath once the bowl was fastened and could barely get to a handhold before the ship dove through the cloud of spray from the maelstrom. They all would have been soaked in an instant if they had not already been wet and in wetsuits. The kids looked positively miserable though.

For long minutes they floated through the fog like clouds that formed because of the maelstrom until they sunk lower and floated high above the third floor. The Maelstrom stretched into the sky behind them, making the whole floor look surreal, like they were floating in water and looking up at the sky not the other way around. The crew kept their heading steady, firing up what looked like gas canisters to fill the balloons that were placed inside of the giant metal handles, as they slowly flew towards Ocenview in the distance. Once they were finally out of range of the constant noise of the maelstrom bursting apart they could talk again.

Roger talked to the captain, just small talk from what Aaron could hear, telling them they found a good haul of dust, things like that. Then he came over to talk to Aaron.

"Most of the loot has been delivered already, like all the fish samples etc. we provided. So you will get your payment once we finish the deals at the various shops we sold to. You will get your cut then."

Aaron waved away his concerns.

"Don't worry, I am not short on shards. So we will linger in Oceanview for a while?"

"Depends on the door schedule. Someone will be asked to hold open the doors for us to return."

"Door schedule? Does that mean the doors to the second floor do not open in reverse?"

"Correct. They only open to someone with the two marks from the bosses. You can't get those from above. But I guess it won't be too long, a few hours maybe."

"Huh, that does make traveling harder I bet."

"You have no idea. Half of the reason for Oceanviews existence is that fact, to have someone open the door for caravans coming from above."

The journey on the airship was quite leisurely and Aaron enjoyed the salty air and the feeling of flying through a brightly lit sunny day. After a while Oceanview become significantly bigger and the ship lost altitude as they maneuvered it to land. The ship settled down on an elevated platform that Aaron had thought was just another building when he had seen it the first time, but turned out to be their airship mooring bay. There even was a slide into the water that looked like something straight out of an amusement park.

Aaron and his group left the ship behind them and went over to one of the wells to the underwater portion of the settlement. There they gave the bowls back to the sailors and jumped down one after another. While most of the group organized things or stood guard around the kids, Aaron went to get some food.

He scoured the few restaurants or taverns one by one. Eating things was actually quite difficult with a bowl or in the water, so he preferred restaurants not actually in the water, where he could eat outside. Holding your breath while eating was actually quite difficult and Aaron had to get used to it again, while he sampled the various fish based meals he could find. Fried fish in a fish and chip style batter, the ubiquitous skewers that were everywhere in town and the occasional seafood stew were some of the highlights of his small food tour. Most of it was delicious because it used fresh ingredients and good spices, but it was not always made by a chef and that showed. Still it beat their rations any day.

With his belly halfway filled Aaron rejoined the group and they waited in a dedicated area for a door to be held open for them. It took a few hours and everyone was dead on their feet when they finally hurried over to the staircase leading down into the second floor. What followed was the very annoying part where they had to wait for the bubble spell around their mouths to dissipate on their own. They sat on the stairs, holding open the door for other teams going up or down, but they kept to themselves. Their red armbands they had brandished once again and the open weapons kept people at a distance. The kids had become very docile but Aaron suspected they were waiting for the right opportunity. Roger probably had similar ideas, because he had Stab sit directly in their midst, his Rapier drawn. That was a threat the kids could not ignore.

Most of them had recovered from losing their spirits at this point, but Myria and Kentris were still very weak and unable to put up any kind of fight. They mostly were half asleep or in obvious pain. Orlean and Trisk who had their spirits taken last had already recovered as they had few physical alterations done on them by their spirits.

They spent the night half asleep on the stairs. Until the bubble spell around their mouths popped and they hurried across the threshold into the second floor, leaving behind the water helmets. Aaron, who had indulged a bit too much in the local cuisine was the last of them to have the spell dissipate and he rejoined his group who were sweating and mock cursing him in the desert sun the next morning.

"You are such a glutton, everyone has to wait for you. Be glad that you are not fat or the jokes would never stop." Shia said with a smirk.

"I am not even sure I can get fat anymore. No matter how much I eat it does not seem to matter." Aaron said with a sly smirk and a shrug. Shia looked envious.

"I don't really have to watch my figure, because I subsist of rations and I usually fight half of every day, but damn if I don't gain a few pounds every time we go home. Cultivators have it so easy."

Aaron did not tell her that it was unique to him as they made they way through the desert to the closest door down to the first floor. Aaron dispatched any scorpion that came looking for trouble with ease, smashing them apart, before they could even just look at the kids. But they had more trouble with the curse of the second floor and they looked pale, dehydrated and incredibly tired when they finally were on the stairs down to the first floor.

The first thing Aaron noticed when entering the first floor was that it was actually fairly warm on the first floor now. The spring had turned into summer and the entire forest he could see from the top of the stairs was in a verdant lively green from new leaves and old spruce needles. The temperate climate and the curse vanishing was a blessing as they slowly walked down the last bit of the stairs into the first floor. The whole group drank and ate something just so that their confused bodies felt better. The kids most of all needed some attention as half of them had fainted on the way. After the situation had been stabilized Roger went over to Aaron.

"So, you gonna stick with us and hand the kids over, or...?" he asked and Aaron shook his head.

"No, unless you need me I will check on my own projects. You can give my cut to Iris, who is my liaison with the red-light district."

"No worries, we got this from here. But..I guess that means we have to say our goodbyes for now." Roger said after a slight pause held out his hand. Aaron smiled genuinely and shook the man's hand.

"A pleasure working with you Aaron."

"Likewise. I must say you guys were very useful. I am not opposed to another mission with your group, Roger."

"I will take that as a compliment."

"It was meant that way." Aaron said with a chuckle.

Shia and Robin went over and gave him a short hug and a firm handshake in turn.

"Nice working with you Aaron, say why don't you join us for a beer tonight?" Robin asked and lowered his voice.

"There will be real good food and really pretty women, I can promise you that." he said with a wink, before he continued louder.

"We always celebrate a good mission like this with a night out, what do you say Aaron?"

Aaron hesitated. He did not really have a reason to join them, but he did not have a reason not to either. It was unlikely to be a trap and Robin seemed genuine. Good food and good company were the things he had missed the most being away from any form of civilization. So in the end Aaron nodded.

"Alright, where?"

"Its a tavern deep in the red-light district called the Headless Horseman. Just good food, incredible spirits and a lot of criminal scum like us." Robin said with a broad grin.

"Its gonna be great!"

Shia sighed in mock exasperation.

"He just wants a round or two from you, the old leech. But yeah the food is really good in the Horseman."

"Well you convinced me. I'll see you tonight then." Aaron said and waved at Mortimer who was with the kids, more protecting them from danger and taking care of them than guarding them. He nodded to Stab, who nodded back respectfully and then leapt into the trees. Aaron stepped on one branch and then was up beyond the treetops, flying more than jumping away. It was time to check on Iris and the bunker he had ordered.

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