Passive?

"Did you make a mistake?" Roland asked the guard, his hands stopped at the sight of the tray of food that actually resembled food.

The guard shook his head and said, "This is a reward for your hard work. Sir Edward wanted me to convey that if you continue at this rate, you might get what you want."

Roland started gobbling down the food, there was even a piece of meat which tasted good. He finished eating and, while holding a piece of bread, asked, "Can I save this for later?"

The guard thought for a second and nodded. The guard took the tray while thinking, 'there's no harm in letting him have It, guess he doesn't get enough food so he's saving it for later!'

The guard left, closing the door and thus plunging the room in subtle darkness.

Roland sat up. His body was almost completely healed, he sat crossed legged and cleared his mind.

He sat still for about an hour before he let out a sigh. He thought for a sec and asked out loud, "Hey brother, are you still awake?"

"Yeah I'm awake! I called for you during the day but there was no response." Artic's voice sounded through the vent. "Do you need my help with something" 

"Yeah sorry, I was not feeling ok." Roland said in embarrassment. "I need your help with something, Can you tell me about your experience with you inner power..."

Artic began to recall his experience and Roland listen attentively. Afterwards Roland listened to Artic's stories before they finally fell asleep.

The next morning Roland had his meal, waited for Fifi, he couldn't remove the illusion himself so he had to wait. 

Two hours later Fifi appeared and Roland gave her the bread, they both went down and Roland went to visit his master.

"I can finally feel it but it won't listen to me. Isn't there a method I could use to bypass this." Roland said.

He had a theory of his own that he wasn't sure off. He speculated that the power inside him was somehow connected to the system and would start to 'respond' once he booted the system.

"*sigh* I didn't want to use this method as it's dangerous but I guess there's no other way. Come here!" Cyrus, Roland's master gestured.

"On second thought, if it's dangerous, let's keep it as a last resort. I'll continue trying for another week or two," Roland replied swiftly

Roland still hadn't told anyone about the system as he regarded it to be one of his biggest secrets. He didn't want to take unnecessary risks.

"Don't worry, in about a day or two, I might be able to send you all out. My powers are almost replenished," Cyrus assured.

Roland had completely forgotten about that plan, he thought for a sec and asked, "Master what if there's someone else I want to bring, do you think you can make it happen?"

Roland was naturally thinking about Artic, during the short time he knew him, Roland felt bad for the guy and wanted to help him out. He thought it would be good to have another ally.

"If there's three people, I guess I can make due but Who is this person? Let me evaluate them first before deciding if, I'll help them." Cyrus said. Roland then began to explain the situation.

"Listen, I know your still a kid but you have to understand that not everyone can be trusted, some people wear masks in order to deceive and manipulate others so you should be careful who you trust." Cyrus adviced, Roland was still a 'kid' afterall, so there were somethings he hasn't understood yet.

He continued and added, "I can help you bring him out but he has to sign a master and servant contract with you."

Roland was surprised by this he didn't know there were other variation to this spiritual bond. "I only know of a equality contract, what's the difference. " 

The contract in this world was a unique spiritual rule that required two voluntary parties. The party who violated would be subjected to considerable backfire and punishments. The punishment of the master-servant contract was very strict. If the servant betrayed, he or she would die immediately.

Roland felt weird hearing this but He shrugged his shoulders.

"Master do you know what is under this cell?" Roland suddenly asked.

Although he barely got any progress from absorbing the walls and he got better results from that crystal wall, Roland was growing impatience of remaining weak.

"I'm not sure, this should be the last floor and there shouldn't be anything underneath. Why do you ask? Your not thinking of going down there?" Cyrus asked in confusion.

"I'll be honest, whenever I 'destroy' something with my ability, I can feel the mysterious power inside of me reacting. I don't know but maybe that's the key" Roland said after thinking for a while.

"Hmmm that's plausibly I guess but it could be dangerous so I'll come with you, your still my disciple after all" Cyrus said after some thought.

Roland was glad, when he was exploring last time he had meet with strong people and had almost died. That fear of almost dying still lingered in his heart.

Roland found a nice corner and started feeling the ground and sure enough the prompt rang..

[Fabric substance was found. Do you want to absorb and boot up the Chaos system?]

Roland accepted and the excavation begun. Cyrus moved closer to take a look and was also surprised. He couldn't tell how his disciple's 'ability' worked and how it 'destroyed' that stubborn floor that even he couldn't budge.

The floor under Roland's palm seemed to evaporate wherever his palm went; dust, stones and sand gathered at the bottom of the hole.

Roland didn't realise until now but the system was getting more and more effective at absorbing the fabric substance, the hole in the ground appeared faster then it used to but to him it was still slow. 

"Call me when it's time to go" after a while Cyrus grew bored, he was also annoyed that he couldn't actually see how Roland's ability worked. 

Pretty soon ten minutes got lost in the sands of time, Roland had created a two meter wide hole that went down for about five meters.

'It really has gotten faster!' Roland was excited by this development, this also meant that he could boot the system up faster but what rained on his parade was the progress bar....

[Absorbing Pure Fabric Substance, system booting process at 53.00%]

[Absorbing Pure Fabric Substance, system booting process at 53.01%]

[Absorbing Pure Fabric Substance, system booting process at 53.02%]

It was moving slower and slower and it was taking a while for the notifications to ring.

_An hour later_

Just like that An hour went by, Roland had dug thirty meters deep, his arms were quite sore, while going down he had increased the width of the tunnel from two meters to five meters. 

A strange phenomenon that Roland noticed was that although there wasn't a single ray of light, he was able to see albeit not much. In pitch black darkness he was somewhat able to see.

'Is the system helping me? Something like a passive getting unlocked?' Roland thought as he shook his head, he had bigger fish to fry.

Right now Roland was facing a problem. He seemed to have reached the bottom, below his feet was hard ground, ground of which he couldn't absorb. 

No matter how many times he ran his fingers on the ground, no notification rang. Roland thought for a bit before shouting for his master.

Cyrus suddenly appeared behind Roland, scaring him out of his wits. Cyrus looked around the tunnel and said, " You work really hard for a kid, anyway what's the problem?"

Cyrus was able to see perfectly in the dark due to his strength.

"Well master the case is this...." Roland said his problem. He added, "and so I was thinking of going that way from now, could I make a way out of here this way?" Roland asked 

"Maybe you could but I wouldn't recommend it as this prison is actually on a very tall mountain, if you fall I might not be able to save you." Cyrus's words shocked Roland, he was becoming more and more suspicious of his master who seemed to know a lot of things about this place.