Feeling an urgency to get free of the rubble, David immediately started absorbing the soul stones. Currently, his soul perception could reach out approximately 500 feet with some intense focus...that gave him a perception range almost as large as the oasis town. If he could get it up to 1,000 feet then he could definitely cover the entire 20 acre oasis town without much effort..and a bunch more. Having a perception range that large would have some excellent benefits once he made it back to the surface.....for now, it would just give him the ability to search for prey for Misery.

It only took David around 5 minutes to fully absorb the first soul stone. After the energy settled into his body, David reached out with his soul perception again. He could feel an increase in his perception's strength. By David's judgement, his perception had only increased by around 20 feet. It wasn't a large amount of increased strength, but any increase could benefit David in this scenario.

David didn't stop after he completed the first soul stone and immediately absorbed the other two soul stones. After he had time to adjust to the newly absorbed soul energy, David extended out his soul perception again. This time his soul perception reached 550 feet out. The gains were not a whole lot but David could feel a buildup of soul strength in his soul space.

With the extra soul energy, David had a few options. He could continue to build upon the world within the soul space. After all, Misery had loved using the space as her own little backwoods cabin. Or David could just keep the excess energy in his soul in case other opportunities presented themselves. After a little thought, David decided to just store the soul energy instead of expanding the little piece of land in his soul space. His rational was that he didn't know what would happen in the near future, so an reserve of any type of energy could be beneficial later. After squaring away the energy from the soul stones, David decided to take a break in his soul space and try to find some prey for Misery.

After searching for the day, Misery was very happy with the intelligent beast dream orb that she had harvested. It seemed as if the earthquake had disturbed the insect beasts within the tunnel because there were many more than usual. Misery was also taking some time to get use to the increased soul energy inside David's soul space.

By the end of his first day trapped in the tunnel, David had used all three soul stones and harvested the nearby intelligent beast.

'Fuck....I could be stuck in here for a long time....this is going to get boring....quickly,' David thought.

The only other things that David could do in his current situation was absorb heavenly energy from the Stone of Strength and consume his remaining rations. He could also reach the two fangs and the small pebble in his bag...but he didn't know what good those useless items would do for him.

After trying to absorb some heavenly energy from the Stone of Strength again, David had to give up for the day. From what he had read on the Stone of Strength, the absorption amount was limited to what the body could handle and David had already absorbed the energy from the stone several hours earlier.

He was left trapped with nothing left to do...but wait for possibilities to escape.

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Two weeks after getting trapped in the tunnel.

In the last two weeks, David started to have some small doubts that he would escape from this situation. He was not having as much progress as he imagined initially. It wasn't really the fact that he was trapped that was starting to wear on David's mind. The large amount of inactivity had lead to a serious case of boredom. Of course, David could converse with Misery in his spare time, but this quickly got old. The woman was mostly interested in when she could 'eat' again and doing her 'work' around the one acre plot of land in David's soul space.

Surprising, the one item that helped David occupy his idle time was the small pebble that he had kept for a fake eye. Since he could reach the pebble and move his one arm, David had actually started to smooth out and shape the stone on the nearby rock edges. The whole process was very tedious, but it did give David something to do with his free time. The stone was almost a perfect eye shape now. All David had left to do was smooth and polish the stone on the canvas of his satchel. After polishing the stone, all David would need to do is flip up his eye patch and put it in place. When David realized that he was getting close to completion of his project, he had actually felt a loss instead of accomplishment...what other thing was he going to do to occupy his time?

While David's new hobby of stone work had help him pass some time, he was still making efforts to free himself from the rubble. He had also started to develop a few escape strategies in this time period. After days of reviewing his own knowledge, David realized that he had an great option available for the usage of the Stone of Strength.

Before choosing to practice the Body of Recovery, Mr. Lester had let him review manuals on three methods of body cultivation. One of those methods was Body of Strength. Because David had thoroughly studied all three methods when trying to make his decision, he still remembered the method of practicing the Body of Strength skill. With the Stone of Strength available, David decided that he would practice the Body of Strength cultivation method while utilizing the heavenly energy from the Stone of Strength. This method should allow him to absorb more of the heavenly energy from the stone than his body would normally allow.

Using the cultivation method, David began to absorb the heavenly energy from the Stone of Strength. Then, he directly forced the energy into his bones. This method was outlined in the Body of Strength cultivation skill book. Heavenly energy was forced into the bones, muscles, and organs...the energy was forced into the body so hard that that the heavenly energy would begin to break down the actual tissues of the body. As a replacement for the lost tissues, the body would utilize the heavenly energy to rebuild those tissues with a much greater strength.

After practicing the painful method for an entire day, David realized that he could use this method rather quickly to master the Body of Strength. His already mastered Body of Recovery assisted in the rebuilding of his body with the heavenly energy. The compatibility of the Body of Strength cultivation method with the heavenly energy from the Stone of Strength also benefited the process greatly.

David had some hope that the strength increase would help him get out of this situation.

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Two months after getting trapped in the tunnel.

After two months, David's body had been completely restructured at a cellular level by the heavenly energy from the Stone of Strength. The day before, David had felt the last bit of the energy from the stone enter his body as the stone crumbled. David knew that his strength had increased by at least four times his previous strength. He had mastered the Body of Strength skill completely and had an entirely new understanding of heavenly energy usage. He had even felt like he could easily master the Body of Defense if he had enough resources on hand. The ease of training in the Body of Strength had sparked David's interest in the remaining body cultivation methods. If he ever had the chance, he would definitely research those three other skills as well.

Disappointingly, the increase in David's strength did not allow him to get free of his confinement in the cave rubble. After mastering the skill, David had exerted all of his new strength to free one of his legs, but in the process.....some additional rubble fell causing his leg to be injured between two shifted stones. He had less mobility now than he had been originally. The incident was a pretty huge mental blow to David.

With no rations, no heavenly stones, no soul stones and no mobility, David's body soon started to waste away while trapped in the tunnel rubble. While he could sustain his life with heavenly energy in the short term, he still needed some sort of nourishment to keep his body mass sustained in the long term.

Although he had strength and life given to him by intake of heavenly energy, he could only hope that someone came to collect the ores before his body completely wasted away into nothingness.

_________________

Three months after getting trapped in the tunnel.

If anyone were to see David's body right now, they would think that the pitiful corpse was actually in great shape. Although the body exhibited no external life signs and no movement, David's mind was still alive on the inside and rapidly working. From his judgement, he could sustain his body with heavenly energy for another two months before his body would start to completely breakdown. The only reason that he wasn't dead already was the massive supplement from his Body of Recovery skill to keep everything functioning. About two weeks ago, David had realized that the heavenly energy should be able to sustain him longer if he only focused on recovering the essential parts of his body for life function. Since he couldn't move muscles, why did he need to focus on recovering them?

David's entire body looked like a lifeless corpse. As David lay motionless in the collapsed tunnel, he suddenly felt some sort of pull from his body and soul. At first he panicked at the feeling....he thought something might be going wrong with his body and that this was the end of his life. However after another second, he realized the feeling was very familiar to one of his darkness skills.

With a moment of elation, David realized what was happening. He had felt something similar one time recently. With intense focus, David began to move his lips into a chant.

The words came out in a dusty whisper as David struggled to move his dry lips, "Close your eyes. Buried. Forgotten. Death."

With the almost silent chant, the heavenly energy within David's body began to circulate through the pathways of the Death Skill of Darkness. As the skill moved through his body, David could feel his remaining life signs start to disappear. He wasn't dying.....the skill was just doing it's job of hiding his life. When the skill was fully executed, heavenly energy from the surrounding area began to swarm toward David at a rapid pace.

David could feel the heavenly energy moving near his soul and coagulating into the second smaller sphere orbiting his soul. Just like when he broke through to Demigod of Shadow, David felt the increase in strength as he became a Demigod of Death. He could feel his body and soul strengthening as the heavenly energy continued to be absorbed at a steady rapid pace.

All of a sudden, David heard a clicking sound as the slave collar around his neck came lose and rested on his shoulder. David was already thrilled about his breakthrough, but was absolutely giddy when he realized that the slave collar had come off of his neck.

He was free.....but then he quickly realized that his body was still trapped in the tunnel. Considering his promotion to a Level 2 Demigod Of Darkness, David thought that he would have enough physical strength to break free of the tunnel. However, his body wasn't in the greatest condition, so he thought that he may only have one good opportunity for to free himself from the rubble.

To get a better idea of his situation, David decided to try to view the surrounding rock with his spiritual sense. If he used his knowledge of mechanics, he might be able to predict the safest direction to force his movements through the rubble. At this point, he would take any possible opportunities offered to get free of this tunnel.

With a reach out with his soul perception, David was happy that he could now sense everything within 1200 feet of his body. He could also clearly see that if he pushed his body in a certain direction, he should be able to avoid being crushed by the falling stones. However, this wasn't the most exciting thing that he learned with his newly enhanced soul perception. He was really excited about what was moving towards him at the limits of his perception.