The cave seemed to be growing bigger the further in you got, but you had to walk pretty far for the difference to even be noticeable. As Ark's battle spirit had been aroused by the battle before, he was eager to fight with even stronger foes, at least something that could put up a decent fight!
After having gone down this path for quite a while, Ark noticed a light further into the tunnel. As he saw this, he was a bit confused. What could be giving off such light down here? With his curiosity piqued, Ark increased his speed a little, hurrying on his way. As he got closer, the light turned out to be coming from the end of the tunnel, and it essentially looked the same as you would imagine the exit of a cave would look like. And to Ark's astonishment, that's exactly what it was.
As Ark stepped through the hole and into the light, he was totally dumbfounded. When he was ready to explore the first floor, this wasn't what he was expecting at all. In front of him spanned a massive jungle, one that even seemed a bit otherworldly. Throughout the entire jungle, you could find a dense fog that seemed like it would devour all who entered into it. What made this jungle really eerie though, was the fact that there was no sound coming from it at all, not what you would expect from a jungle at all.
Ark tried to spread some of his light magic into the fog, to see if it could clear it up at all. To his dismay, the fog didn't show the slightest reaction when it came into contact with the light element. Ark didn't give up there though, as he urged his other elements to try their luck at driving away the fog. None of them showed any results, therefore Ark decided to try his luck, and enter into the jungle directly himself. But since it could potentially be dangerous, Ark had all of his Mana on high alert, and his magic defense was a lot more condensed than usual.
As he took his first step into the jungle, he instantly felt a heavy pressure wearing down his mind and spirit. This was the first time Ark had felt something like this outside of a combat situation, where he had only felt similar things. He started to grow anxious instantly, and a lot of dark thoughts started to surface inside of his mind. Sensing these changes, Ark instantly urged the light element in his body to battle this darkness he was feeling, and surprisingly it worked perfectly.
From this little exchange, Ark could kind of figure out what this fog that covered the jungle was, it seemed to be a large scale spell of darkness magic, that targeted peoples consciousness, wearing down their spirits and their will. Since this was the case, Ark decided to constantly supply his light element with small amounts of Mana to resist the fog. This wasn't a problem though since the Mana expanded was less than the Mana he regenerated.
As the mystery of the fog was solved, for now, Ark continued into the jungle. Since he didn't want to get lost in this jungle, Ark infused every step with a tiny bit of fire, burning his footprints into the ground. He was careful to only put a small amount of fire though since he didn't want to burn down the entire jungle.
As he progressed further into the jungle, Ark failed to notice a pair of eyes stalking him from the darkness. All he could think about at the moment was the kind of enemies he would be facing in here, all he was sure of was that they would undoubtedly be of the darkness element. He didn't really know how powerful his enemies would be either, but he was still excited nonetheless. He was confident in his ability to escape after all.
As Ark stepped into a small clearing, he suddenly felt a tear in his magic barrier that he had kept active at all times. A feeling of absolute dread spread all over his body, as he instinctively exploded into a burst of flames. These flames were not ordinary either, as they were combined with the water element, giving them indescribable power. They held the ferociousness of flames, the gentleness of water, and the impact power that both of them would bring combined into one single entity.
The feeling of dread Ark felt disappeared as he could hear a pained yelp coming from behind him. He instantly turned his body around and used the power in his front legs to shoot backward, away from his mysterious attacker. What he saw when he turned around was a jet-black panther, about his size, but a little smaller, that had scarlet-red claws, looking as if they were drenched in blood.
The panther, however, looked quite distressed at the moment as it had faced the impact of Ark's flames, and had been badly burnt as well. Seeing it like this, Ark didn't just stand around, he instantly went on the offensive, to gain the initiative of the fight. He brought his speed to its peak, as he lunged at the panther. The panther wasn't some weak monster, and it sensed the killing intent directed towards it, and it instantly dodged underneath Ark and slashed out towards his stomach, its claws glowing sharply.
Ark came well prepared though, this flaw of his attack was intentional, and it was done to bait the panther into attacking him since he noticed its astonishing speed beforehand. A sword made out of light magic suddenly appeared from underneath him, which pierced straight between the panther's eyes. The panther did never expect its life to end as abruptly as this, as it felt regret for picking the wrong target to hunt, its eyes slowly dimmed.
Ark was a bit too excited, and even though the panther was already dead, its attack still carried a certain level of energy. This only resulted in a shallow wound to his stomach though, barely even drawing blood. And since Ark had the light element, he was fully healed a couple of minutes later. He did expend a fair bit of Mana though, so he decided to find a resting spot for now.
He didn't want to stay in this clearing though, even if it was a nice spot. Since the smell of blood would almost certainly attract other monsters to the scene. And Ark wasn't arrogant enough to think he could beat anything and everything. Especially not if he was low on Mana.
Quickly cleansing his body with the help of water magic, Ark was quickly on his way.
He could, of course, clear the scent of blood from the panther in a multitude of ways, but he wasn't naive enough to think that he hadn't already attracted a few monsters to the scene.
Wandering around for a bit, Ark soon found a nice tree to rest under, and he decided to lay down and recover his Mana in the shade for a while. As a precautionary action though, he spread out a lot of light Mana in a dome around him. In this way, he would notice anything that entered its radius, and the fog would stay clear, it was pretty easy to maintain anyways.
...
A brown pair of leather boots could be seen heavily trudging throughout a weird eerie jungle, that seemed to be covered in endless fog. As the boots trampled exotic plants, twigs, and all sorts of things, they suddenly came to an abrupt stop in front of a gold-coloured dome. This gold-coloured dome seemed to be radiating an aura of holiness, that created a sharp contrast to a jungle as eerie as this...