After close observation, the changes that Sam felt on himself was not just limited to his outer body and Earth control.

While observing his own body with the spiritual sense, there seemed to be an energy source two fingers under the navel.

This was like the dantain of the legends, which he had heard about from some of those books.

He also found two more similar energy sources,which were smaller.

One was situated in between his chest, in the thymus gland and the other inside his head in the pineal gland.

The ability to control earth was coming from the pineal gland through the third eye point in between his eyebrows.

..........

As time passed by, there were many new discoveries that he made about the place he was trapped in.

After digging for an unknown time he started finding brown colored crystals which gave out the same energy as the liquid essence.

He was able to conclude these were earth element crystals like in those novels and the liquid essence was a higher form of it and the sphere probably an even higher grade treasure.

He also found a special kind of metal ore while digging, this metal was dark brown in color and really heavy.

His spiritual sense was deflected by it, he collected 8 such ores while digging. The specialty of these ores was that he could manipulate this metal like the earth.

He had also found other metal ores, but didn't find a mental connection to them, but he did find one peculiar black metal which was really hard and whose edges were real sharp, he even got a cut on the finger while collecting it.

With the strength of his current body, it was really hard for anything to cut through it.

.....

Today was the 37th day and his lucky day, the reward for his more than 30 days of hard labor were delivered today.

Before going to rest after tunneling for one whole day, he sent his spiritual sense outward to probe and he found that there was no earth after about 18 meters from him.

He couldn't hold the excitement inside and started digging like mad.

As he reached nearer to the surface, he used his whole earth controlling power to push out the earth wall before him...

Boom...

" Hahaha.... hurraay... Finally I am out...."

With panting and tear filled eyes, he finally reached his destination.

But as he looked up, all the enthusiasm started draining away, There was no blue skies or warm sunlight waiting to caress him.

What awaited him was a pitch black and red smoke intertwined with each other completely blocking the skies, and as he looked around the view made his eyes go wide.

" Shit.. What the hell is this place.. Why is the light red in color... Is it really hell? "

He looked around, he was in fact standing on a mountain slope, but it was not the same mountain where he got struck by lightning.

This mountain was much bigger and was dark brown in color, without any vegetation.

Even the area for about 25 km from the mountain was a barren land. On the border of this barren land was the same black and red smoke which has covered the whole sky.

It was like the black and red smoke had created a big dome covering the whole surrounding.

"This doesn't seem right, I need to get a better view... I should get to the peak.."

He started climbing, after gaining the ability to control earth, his speed of movement on earth has become really fast.

The place he had tunneled out was about halfway from the peak, But there was still about 10 km further up, he took a little rest and started climbing up again.