John had lost track of how many days he had been in the god forsaken hole, at his level people barely needed to eat or sleep so he had been doing shifts of a week and a half at a time. Then he only got one day off from that to rest, but since John was a hybrid and a dragon he could survive by just absorbing the breath around him. So on the days he got off he would sleep for about an hour or two and then he would train for the rest of the time, trying to get strong enough to get out of the place by force.
He had continued on like this for at least 6 cycles, while he was digging he would send wills towards his dantian and mind they would draw the "breath" from around him and continue to boost his cultivation, while for his body he would absorb the energy from any and all things he ate due to his unique species so every time he cal across a vane of ore he would eat a quarter of it and store about an eighth of the rest as to not appear too suspicious. He hadn't made any significant progress since he had arrived in the "slave hole" as he began to call it, cultivation required for the cultivator to not just continually absorb the energy, but to also advance in law comprehension and on developing a more powerful individuality through elevating it to higher levels with more in depth comprehension and more complex individuality. He had made some advancements in his creative and destructive parts of his individuality but he hadn't made progress anywhere else and the other aspects were starting to fall behind.
John sighed heavily and knew that there was nothing he could do about the simple fact that he just didn't have enough time to explore the intricacies of his personality and the "breath" concentration of the hole was lower seventh realm mortal tier, meaning that most of the other workers had already reach a similar realm to that. John realized that this labor camp that he had been sent to was most likely had the strongest in the mortal rank trapped inside, meaning that either the guard's were at the peak of the mortal rank or in the second tier which he still didn't know the name of. John had finally snapped and decided that today was his last day in this labor camp and hopefully in this empire. John absorbed all of the powerful ores in his area, he had traveled so far that he had managed to reach the peak of the seventh realm ores. Quickly absorbing over a thousand pounds of ores, John then unleashed his humanoid size wings in a now non-painful process he hadn't realized that even up to the seventh realm he had pain from letting his wings out, but ever since he acquired the so called soul weapon he had a much more in-tuned connection to his dragon powers and his draconic personality. Shooting down the extremely long tunnel he had made, John absorbed all the ores on his way back to the start of his hole. The star like black mass in his heart continuously refined and purified the energy to the highest form it could possibly create distributing the power throughout his body. Johns body mind and energy strived to temporarily reach a higher realm due to this immense challenge he decided to take on. As he flew towards the entrance he began to review what techniques and spells that he could use, but came up short he really had none that worked for his current realm. That being said The only things he could rely on were his cursed flames, his physical strength, and his study mind allowing him to safeguard against mental attacks. He could also use the "breath" as a way of boosting his physical power further due to it containing his individuality. He also had a material based law focusing on ores and similar materials, but it wouldn't help him in anything other than forging.
He reached the entrance of the hole and with a thought summoned his gauntlets with a massive spike attached to the top of it. They now seemed to resonate with his existence and acted as a boost to his power. With out noticing it a new sort of law had been formed by his understanding of the weapon, creating a sort of weaponized law using his personality and mental sphere as a bases for the law. Due to the aura that the law radiated it created a more simplified version of the breath that his body and the gauntlets could absorb to boost their powers and advance further. As John entered the middle of the main hole, no one paid him any mind due to the fact that he looked like a rather normal guard with his weapons out, not at least until he felt his power suddenly sky rocket and all of his realms advance up to the mid rank of the eighth realm. Suddenly everyone including the other prisoners looked his way, fear plastered on their faces as it felt as if they were in the presence of a wild beast looking for a reason to savagely slaughter and consume any in it's path of destruction. He began to unleash said destruction on everything near him, slaughtering four to five people every ten seconds in the beginning, but as he continued his onslaught it dwindled. After only three minutes over ninety people had ended up as victims to his fury, since they were apart of those who trapped him he couldn't care less about their lives. Due to the massive size of the hole, a guard only appeared in front of him after five minutes of him slaughtering the body count shot up over on hundred twenty by that point.
"What are you doing lowly criminal, cease your action or face the consequences". The guard was quite young looking most likely only 25-28, but as he said this he released the aura of a tier two realm one cultivator. A toothy grin crept on johns face as he realized his guess was correct on the level of power for the guards. What made him smile even wider was that once the guard had appeared next to him, all the other guards went back to their business and left the two in the center of the hole.
"I'm sorry, but I won't be able to complete your request and for your information i only accidentally entered your borders before I was abducted and force to stay here for the last several months". the slightly under his breath he said "Stupid guards, they must not educate you fools very well to think you would imprison someone as innocent as me here". Hearing what John had said obviously due to his lack of concern to hide the taunt, the guard felt enraged due to the comment and quickly pulled out a weapon from some sort of storage ring on his finger. John had only ever heard of such things in the novels and comics he read back on earth, he didn't let it distract him though as he thought that if he managed to kill the guard that he would be able to have the ring in his grasp soon.
The guard pulled out a long spear and held it firmly in both hands the spear was in the second tier at the lowest possible power to even be considered a weapon of that tier, he stopped ogling at the material and quality as he saw an current of lighting running along the spear mostly focused at the tip of it. The two men looked at each other and in mutual agreement decided that there was nothing left to be said. Suddenly the guard(his name is Sal so that's what i'm calling him for the rest of this chapter) had appeared to the left of him and thrusted the spear toward his chest in an attempt to end the battle immediately. John twisted his torso as a way no dodge the attack he was barely evaded it almost losing his left arm in the process, using the opportunity to counter attack John shot his left fist towards Sal's arm from above swiftly. Sal smirked at that due to the fact the he could easily dodge the attack by moving his arm, sadly due to him being distracted by Johns left arm he wasn't able to notice him charging up his flames. Due to the fact the John had a body boosting black star at its center, without realizing it the flames had been boosted to a semi-tier two level attack from his lungs being continuously refined as his body deemed it to be his most powerful attacking method, a similar thing happened to his skin making it extra durable for someone of the tier he was in.
As Sal dodged the fist to his arm and began to draw his spear towards John the lightning raging on the tip of the spear, he was bathed in flames hot enough to instantly bake a cultivator more than two and a half realms higher than his current one. Not caring that his attack most likely wouldn't do any damage to the man in front of him, John quickly appeared behind him knowing that the flames would be garnering the most of the mans attention. John knew that there was simply no way that he could ever beat this man if he was able to use his element and weapon to its fullest potential, so John went for the easiest place to attack the mans arms.
Sal was desperately trying to find a way to dispel the flames that had already started to melt his skin, It had barely been a fraction of a second since the flames had been spat at him so he was immensely terrified by the power john had to be able to effect his body in such a short time. The balance between humans and beasts was that beasts didn't have dantian's nor mental spheres but severely advanced bodies and natural abilities, while humans had lower physical power and defenses but had more variety of fighting methods such as magic and martial arts. John spat in the face of this system as he had the benefits of both sides, but he had longer time requirements due to the time it took to advance his powerful body and more power centers of powers.
Back to the fight, John s gauntlet pierced Sal's arm nearly instantly due to the power of his equipment and the fact that his physical strength was even stronger that a peak realm mortal tier beast even at just the mid of the eighth realm. The long blade pierced through the other side of Sal's shoulder and as the fist part hit his arm Sal had recovered from his distraction and even though he wasn't able to charge his spear this time due to him using his lightning to destroy the fire, the spear was quite potent as it punctured into Johns lower torso just above his hips forcing him to remove his blade and retreat.
The spear seemed to have some type of severe effect on him, as the wound that he had just received seemed to have a healing rate of at least twelve times slower than usual. Meaning that the wound would take almost five minute to close back up fully and he would be still bleeding for the next two of those five minutes. Not having the time to let it heal normally and knowing that he would be at a disadvantage the more blood he loss, John decided to cauterize the wound with a small wisp of flames. Unknowingly the flames were infused with a significant amount of energy from the black star, as soon as the flames reacted the wound they began to fight the strange curse like effect the spear had on him. The wound had already started to partially heal at normal speed where the flames had overcome the spears effect, stopping the bleeding.
"That's more like it". John noticed the wound healing faster than it had before and returning to normal regeneration rate, at the mere cost of three percent of the "breath" he had in his stored dantian each time that it had to support the stabilization process of his body. John dived back into the fight sprinting at Sal as soon as he stopped bleeding, though Sal wasn't as lucky due to the fact that he had human healing capabilities meaning he wasn't going to start healing till he was out of combat. Even Johns wound only healed till he no longer was bleeding leaving a hole four inch deep in his body that he would have for a bit. The two continued to clash with neither gaining an advantage for quite the time and to Johns delight the other guards still were distracted and didn't realize their comrades immense challenge.