8 Crushed

Penta was in agony.

"I have to stop eating crap off the floor...Gahhh!" Penta was reduced to a whining roach. He felt his blood start to rush around his body, helping in making his brain feel dizzy.

"Not good!" Penta was lost as to what to do so he resorted to meditating. "Nature's Evolution" was all he got, his mind and consciousness that was faltering earlier cleared up immediately. His body started absorbing the essence in the mineral that was digested.

The process was slowly helping him digest so that he didn't feel like a tiny piece of rock was coursing through his veins. As kept the meditation going. He was surprised by how different the creatures of this place are. His own body was filled with a complicated body system of muscles, veins, shells. To his knowledge, little bugs like roaches were the opposite.

After a few hours of patience, the pain eased completely and he even felt rejuvenated again.

"I feel like my heart and blood got stronger somehow, can't tell how though... whatever. I seriously need to get to some land... I'm dying from this darkness." Penta was losing his mind ever so slightly and barely recognized the changes he had been through since his birth due to the many challenges he faced from birth.

'At least I got you guys, coming with me.' Penta was speaking inwardly to his soul where he believed his sibling roaches were. The loneliness would creep onto all, but Penta got through it rather well due to his feelings.

The shady world of the underground ocean was horrible, the further he went on, the more things around him felt heavier and he couldn't even properly tunnel through and could only make enough for himself to fit.

Eventually, the pressure on him got worse, as though gravity itself was squeezing harder. He couldn't understand what was happening but the gradual difficulty went immediately into high gear. His limbs were shaking as he almost lay completely flat.

"Does the universe really have to do this to me... Aye, I asked for it trying to crawl through the ocean."

He knew his situation was bad but he couldn't do much else. He thought simply to learn to resist this level of pressure. "Hehe. I'll treat this as some pressure chamber training hahaha! Genius"

Penta didn't know if he had lost it somewhere in the darkness or immense pressure but a week later, he had adjusted by eating through the entire ruby mineral, and practicing "Nature's Evolution" every day. The pay off from training and especially deeper in the earth had for some reason given him a bigger boost.

"I'm actually getting close to the first grade. Haha! I'm a national treasure! The notes said three years was good!" Penta had the smuggest face remembering the different ranks of his path. First-grade shamans were able to interact with the energy of the first deep layer of the astral worlds. He was allowed to cast spells that were more powerful than an unranked shaman apprentice. However...

"I got no god damned knowledge of anything! For MY sake, I need to get out of this hell hole I have created!" He was wishing insanely to find a library but considering he was digging under the ocean, he was guaranteed three things.

"Rock. Sand. Water!"

A mental breakdown later, confidence resumed as he knew even without spells, his body would have a chance at first-grade energies of that level, those would affect the body and mind of the shaman. This was a path of strengthening.

The energy this deep in the earth was a lot richer than what he had found in the Agaran plains. He was worried about this part but this richness of energy was a clear solution.

The strengthening his body was going through was something alarming but Penta simply believed this was the standard.

Another week of digging later and the pressure was actually relieving, after trials of many kind and hardships unknown to the world where a tunnel of gravity and darkness was your only friend and sanctuary. Penta was making progress and knew that this dark... dark journey would forever disappear or he dies.

"I could just finish up here and go straight up after... I had another few minerals found so my body should do good for the pressure." Penta's thoughts were wandering as he tried to plan ahead. He was close to achieving First-Grade. Without much else thought, Penta simply decided to go for it.

Penta shot straight down and back to where gravity was at its peak. With the tunnel being somewhat made. Penta had simply started digging down from that point until the pressure got worse and worse.

What he was experiencing today was a good ten times stronger than the first time he felt it. Finally, after reaching 15 times the force, he sat down and meditated. His mind was facing pressure from all sides as his body was feeling like it would get crushed. He was surprised at how resistant his body was so far for not having torn apart.

Focusing on his mind and where his soul was connected, he got into a deep meditation. He felt as though the world around him had embraced him and he willed for the energies of the world to come to him. The creative energy of the world was abundant and rushed all around him.

As time went on, his body for the first time, felt surprisingly full. The energy was congregating in his mind, as that was the place "Nature's Evolution" dictated. The abundant feeling of having so much energy was amazing to Penta but he kept focus as the important part came.

He had to connect all this accumulated energy within his mind to his soul and body. The formula was really simple. He had to compress the energy until it implodes and becomes a permanent fixture within his mind and body. One that is available to you at all times and ever-present.

This is where the seed for the future lies as well as the link to the First astral sky.

"Compress, compress, compress!" Penta was repeating these words as he controlled this energy as precisely as possible to compress. The quantity was tough to compress at once but once he got going, the process got easier.

Outside Penta's body, a weird glow appeared as his mind was distracted his large body had cocooned itself. The breathing was mirrored on the expansion and contractions of the cocoon.

As the intensity of the compression kept building and building, a small breaking noise was heard. The moment this sound rang, a mist was formed in the hole Penta was. The mist was sticking thickly onto the cocoon, which had shrunk to the size of 1.7 meters. The mist was the energies that were rushing to this cocoon showing a mystical scene.

The whole place was quiet aside from a booming vitality that could be heard thumping from the slightly royal purple cocoon which was glowing with a soft mist around it.

Within his mind, Penta was in awe of the whirlpool that was created from the implosion. He could feel the energy of the world was rushing to him to enter through this whirlpool. It was amazing. He felt as though they were baptizing him with a large welcome.

The feeling kept him distracted before another shock went through his mind.

He felt extremely comfortable as though something lost was returned. It was an extremely good feeling, where he felt his soul, mind, and body were finally connected properly.

He opened his eyes at the bottom of the hole and still couldn't really see in the dark but he felt as though he could sense the place better but through a new sense. The sense of his mind. It was an odd feeling that had made him happy. He felt it was an improvement whatever it was.

However, the biggest surprise was when he tried to move away from the already disintegrated cocoon.

"NO F*CKING WAY! This is amazing! YES!YES! YES! YES! HAHAHA, Shitty thing in the sky. I curse you and your patheticness. Hahaha, you should have wiped me when you could because now I know how to smack your ass." Penta was ecstatically feeling his transformed self.