Chapter 3: Underground expanse
In the dark tunnels, a cat-sized scaled creature that resembled a lizard was running as fast as it could while a huge grey tarantula chased it.
The tarantula was three times bigger and was also much faster, its eyes shone with a dangerous light as it decided to catch its dinner.
With its eight purple eyes locked onto the target, it jumped toward the weak prey in front of it.
The tarantula immediately reached the prey, but just as it was about to attack with its fangs, it froze.
Its sense of danger was screaming and an overwhelming strange feeling took over its body.
It didn't even notice the "weak prey" running away as if nothing happened.
The tarantula couldn't move for a few minutes before that strange feeling slowly disappeared.
The dazed tarantula cautiously scanned its surroundings before bringing its still shivering body back to its lair after not detecting any predator.
As for the culprit behind this incident… He was complaining within his mind about what just happened.
'Dammit, I should have slaughtered more living beings while I was an ascended… My killing intent is so weak that it cannot even kill a puny common beast…'
It has been a few hours since Cyril started exploring the caves around him… Unfortunately, he stumbled upon a tarantula's lair.
By the time he noticed it and started to run, the grey tarantula already noticed his intrusion into its territory.
The grey tarantula was older and faster than Cyril, thus creating a situation where he was forced to run…
During the last few hours, Cyril learned much about those caves and himself.
First of all, the natural energy became thicker as he descended, and for this reason, he decided to rise toward the surface.
Second, currently, he was like a little black hole… He was unconsciously absorbing as much natural energy as he could attract and that amount was constantly increasing.
Unfortunately, the energy that he attracted unconsciously was used as fuel for his spirit's growth, while only a small part of it was used for his ethereal body.
As for his physical body… Its progress was even slower. However, he found out that he could strengthen it by eating anything that contained natural energy.
Third, his most valuable assets from when he was an ascended being… That is, all the knowledge he gathered in hundreds of years, was still within Zephyr's formation core.
Lastly, his current situation was extremely weird...
Usually, any living organism needs to slowly, and carefully, provide energy to empower its spirit… This is because any little misstep may cause a spiritual injury, one of the most troublesome injuries to deal with.
The first prerequisite for this difficult task being that the ethereal body must be used as a platform to push the spirit's power to a higher level.
However, for some unknown reason, his spirit was actually carrying his ethereal body toward a higher level… Creating a sight that left Cyril speechless.
He could only shake his head in amazement at this sight every time that he admired it… However, that didn't stop him from trying to get out of this cave system.
Cyril kept walking through the caves as he only stopped a few times to eat some bioluminescent blue mushrooms.
Those mushrooms were bitter and poisonous but he ate them nonetheless since there was some natural energy within them.
The toxins within them got purified as soon as they entered Cyril's body… Between the naturally exceptional constitution of beasts and his control over natural energy, such weak toxins weren't dangerous at all.
As much as Cyril wanted to understand what was going on within him and study his own body, he knew what his priorities were… His first objective was to find where he is.
His journey through the cave system continued uneventfully until he finally found something…
The cave that he was exploring suddenly expanded, becoming what looked like an extremely large chamber.
Cyril immediately recognised what was in front of him, an underground expanse.
Underground expanses were quite common in his world's underground, and just like the expanse in front of him, they were the heart of any underground ecosystem.
At the centre of almost every underground expense, there is what makes them a special place… A lake.
After all, even beasts need to drink water to survive.
The small lake took up the majority of the expanse area, leaving only an outer ring of rocky floor to the cave dwellers.
There were a lot of different beasts that usually would never stay together, like armoured centipedes, black crystal-armoured beetles with acid saliva and spiders of all kinds...
There were also a few rare non-insect type beasts, like a reptilian beast that looked like a velociraptor with a pair of razor-sharp scythes instead of clawed front legs.
The beasts on the outer ring didn't seem to be willing to fight each other, they simply looked around with suspicious gazes as they never lowered their guard.
There were many caves like the one that Cyril was exploring connected to this expanse and beasts could be seen entering or exiting from them endlessly.
As peaceful as this underground expanse looked, in truth, that only regarded the outer ring since several dangerous aquatic creatures were lurking in the depths of the small lake while eying the cave dwellers as if they were nothing more than food.
As Cyril cautiously walked toward the small lake, the light that illuminated the expanse thanks to the light crystals on the ceiling, revealed his small figure to the other beasts that after scanning his body with their ferocious eyes… They promptly ignored him.
When he reached the shore, he carefully checked the water for any danger…
It was also the first time that he saw his new face… His heartbeat accelerated a little and complicated emotions surged from within him.
Between the many jet-black scales, he noticed a tiny blinking blue dot at the centre of his forehead… He didn't have the slightest idea about what that dot was.
His new eyes caught his attention as well, they were bright amber coloured and little sparks of azure energy could be seen appearing from time to time…
The dark reptilian pupils instead looked like rifts directly connected with the abyss… Looking at them made him feel uncomfortable and reminded him of his past life.
After not finding anything dangerous in the water, his gaze slowly lost focus as a memory resurfaced within his mind.
- - - - -
Cyril's gaze swept across the ocean as a relaxed smile appeared on his face.
This was something that he did after completing each project, looking at the ocean from the top of his tower reminded him of his target… The boundless ocean.
It doesn't matter how strong a human is, even someone like him will never be able to explore it with his strength alone.
The countless aquatic creatures inhabiting the depths were simply too many and too strong.
He was curious about what he would find there, just thinking about it made a strange light flash through his eyes… But he wasn't so tired of living to do something like that.
Even someone like him, someone called "Crazy old geezer" by an elder dragon, wasn't so crazy as to explore such a dangerous place… yet...
His smile disappeared as his aura became gloomy and a long sigh escaped his lips.
'Another project completed...I should be closer to my objective… Yet… Nothing… I don't feel like I'm closer to achieving it at all…
Why? Every single time I resolve a problem, others pop up out of nowhere endlessly…'
His eyes lingered over the waves for a long time as he pondered over his possibilities, however, he was dissatisfied by the conclusion…
It was just like the last 93 times... Resolve a problem, choose the next problem to resolve between the two or three that just appeared and… repeat, again and again.
His gaze unconsciously raised toward the sky after seeing a huge shadow cover a large part of the sea.
His aura returned as peaceful as before and his eyes became focused as he watched the approaching enormous object… A flying city.
The flying city looked like a disk; above it, there was a transparent barrier protecting the various buildings and the high tower at its centre.
Below the city, 12 gravitational control formations resplended in purple light as they kept the city floating, hundreds of advanced weapons could be seen resting between the formations, ready to release death and destruction if needed.
'Oh well, it's not like those kids will ever complain about my researches and discoveries'
Cyril turned around and disappeared in a silver flash as a last thought crossed his mind. 'It's time for me to take a vacation and relax a bit… Let's start a project on something completely new…'
- - - - -
Cyril's gaze focused once again over his reflection in the water as another thought crossed his mind before he lowered his head to drink.
'Indeed, this is definitely the best vacation I could ever ask for…'
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
DNaCat_W
DNaCat_W Wewh... The third chapter is done, another few thousand to go! (That was a joke... I hope)
Anyway, what do you think about flashbacks like this one? I decided to add it simply because otherwise it would have been difficult to discover something about Cyril's past anytime soon without info dumps... I hope you liked it.
Have some ideas or questions about my story? Comment it and let me know.
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Do you think this is the best story that ever existed? You're right.
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