Ark had no problem finding his way in these caves since he had always had a splendid memory in his past life, and since he reincarnated into this world, it had only gotten better, which was both a good and bad thing, depending on how you view things. It's technically a good thing since you will never lose your way, you can get good grades on tests and whatnot, there's one problem with it though, there are some things in life that you wish that you could forget, but with a good memory... well... good luck with that.
Ark didn't wish that he could forget his entire past life since he didn't want to forget his closest friend, Anthony. He did, however, wish that he could forget all the scorn, all the hate, and all the jealousy. He wished he could forget the despair he felt when he lost his friend, but at the same time, he didn't want to forget it, since the memory of Anthony would feel less real that way.
As he was making his way back towards the surface, he could hear the sounds of spiders shuffling around, as well as some very creepy screeches in the distance. This urged Ark to hurry even more on his journey away from here, as he didn't feel like fighting anymore right now.
When he saw the stairs leading up emerge in front of him again, he felt a bit elated as he sped up, even more, all so he could finally get some rest. It had been a very hectic and stressful day after all. Even for a magical wolf, believe it or not. Ascending the stairs took no time at all, and as he arrived at the top of them, he suddenly felt that twisting feeling in his stomach again, and his vision turned blank, as he was teleported outside of the tomb once more. Since it had already begun to darken outside, Ark instantly activated his stealth, as he made his way home again.
He met a couple of monsters on the way back to his tree, but he didn't mess with any of them since he simply didn't feel like it. Arriving at the tree didn't take too long, and he soon entered it. Whilst inside, he conjured up a small fire as he laid down and contemplated a few things before dozing off, most of these things were about his past life, and the rest of them were about the dungeon, and his plan going forward.
He didn't ponder for too long though before finally drifting off into sleep.
...
Waking up the next day, Ark felt much better, he felt very invigorated as he stretched his limbs a bit inside of the ancient-looking tree, he grew more and more pleased with himself for finding such a spot to use as his temporary home, as he grew more and more attached to it. Today, he wanted to try his luck with the darkness affinity, but he didn't know if he should start by attracting the Mana in the air, or if he should start by absorbing the Mana crystal that he had gotten the day before.
He didn't really know why, but his gut was telling him to use the Mana crystal to try and obtain the darkness affinity, probably because it had the vitality of a darkness monster, If he absorbed parts of the monster's vitality and Mana, then he felt like he could obtain it easier than just absorbing some Mana from the air.
Putting his paw on top of the Mana crystal, Ark started o try and draw out the Mana, it was a tedious process, since he didn't have an affinity, but after a little while, he managed to extract some Mana, and draw it into his body. When it entered his body, Ark started to feel a desolate emptiness, as if he was the only thing that existed in the world. This feeling started to mess with his head, as well as his thoughts, until something unexpected happened.
Bright lights started to shine from the depths of his blood, Ark stopped feeling the desolate emptiness, and instead, he felt like his body was on fire. This feeling persisted for a while, and it didn't seem like it would go away anytime soon, but it suddenly vanished. And Ark was bathed in radiant golden rays, that enveloped his entire body, blocking out everything from the world around him.
Whilst this was happening, Ark was flustered as he was surprised over and over again by his own body, "What is happening to me?" was one of the few thoughts going through his mind, as he felt a soothing a comfortable feeling all over his body. A fundamental change was happening to Ark right now, maybe not as drastic as a normal evolution, but not far from it.
After a while, all the bright lights went back into Ark's body and disappeared into the depths of his blood. When the lights were completely gone, Ark could hear the same old monotone voice once more.
[Due to the host trying to absorb a Mana crystal, part of hosts bloodline has awakened.]
[Due to the host's bloodline, absorption of Mana crystal failed.]
[Due to the host awakening part of his bloodline, the host has obtained the following skills:]
[Big Light Affinity]
[Envoy of Holiness]
Hearing all these prompts made Ark really excited since he really wanted a light affinity right now, and he had suddenly obtained one that was on par with his Ice affinity, this would help him a lot in the dungeon, as long as he familiarised himself with it a little bit. Since he didn't know what the [Envoy of Holiness] skill was, he decided to use "Inspect" on it to see if he could find something out.
[Envoy of Holiness]
Grants the host a perfect light affinity, as well
as a 50% increase in all stats for 30 minutes.
Significantly weakens the user after the duration
is gone.
Seeing this description made Ark's eyes visibly widen, this was an amazing skill! He had been in need of a skill like this for quite some time now since it would be the perfect skill to use in a fight of life and death. And the period of weakness wouldn't really matter as long as you got to keep your life intact. As Ark was thinking this, his vision also returned completely, which meant he could see now. Just now he had just been viewing all of this stuff inside of his head since his vision didn't return immediately when the light did.
As Ark could finally see again, he started to examine what he could see of himself a little bit. The first thing that he clearly noticed, was that both his legs, as well as his paws had changed colour into pure white, that looked like it could never be tainted. He couldn't see much more than that though since he didn't have a mirror, at least that's what he thought for a couple of seconds before he ran outside the tree and looked at himself in the stream.
Now that he could see his face as well, he noticed that some of the white had crept up onto his face as well, but his back still seemed to be cyan coloured, with a bit of white mixed in. He actually started to resemble the wolfs from his old world quite a lot if you just changed the cyan to gray. Ark didn't really care much about what he looked like anyways, but the curiosity still got to the better of him.
Since he was well rested and wanted to get into the dungeon earlier today, Ark decided that he needed to test out what he could do with his light element first, since he had never seen it in use before this.
The first thing he tested out was the defensive aspect of the element since it would be good to know if he should use this element or the ice element to conjure up a Mana shield for defense. Since he couldn't really test it out in any other way, he just decided to conjure up one of each and feel for himself which one he thought was stronger. As he conjured up two shields, one cyan-blue, and one radiant-gold, he suddenly got an idea. It was a very crude test, but it would do for now.
As he thought about the test, he directed the shields against each other and propelled them both forward as fast as he could, smashing them against each other.
BOOM!
Dust filled the air as the sound of the heavy collision rang out in the peak of the morning hours.
As the dust slowly settled, a radiant light emerged from within, indicating the winner of this small contest...