Inside the narrow hole, a small cave with a toxic overflowing acidic pond in the middle was situated.
Further in the corner of the cave, Lucas sat in a meditative position, topless as smoke erupted from his body, drifting around him in silence.
Behind him, a complex alignment of dots connected through various lines was carved deeply on his back, appearing like a tattoo.
The Star Alignments occasionally shone of purity, empowering his body and giving him a surge of strength.
After a few seconds, the smoke around him dispersed as Lucas finally opened his eyes.
The first thing he did was to raise his hand and stare at it with a calm and soft expression.
"It feels strange being able to use aura freely again… This should be my limit for now—Knight Rank, anymore than that, it would take a few months of meditation."
Although a few months wasn't really long for any body practitioner, his situation didn't allow him to just sit and meditate, unfortunately.
Lucas clasped his hand before lightly striking the wall behind him.
Crack—!
The wall shattered like it was fragile glass. Any sturdiness it should have possessed was absent in front of his strength.
"Hm… it's good enough, I guess."
Due to the awakening of his aura and entering the second stage of body refining, his speed and strength explosively rose.
In fact if he wanted to, he could blow up this whole hole and escape here using all his strength.
That was not yet mentioning his speed which should be fifty times faster than his original speed.
And if he were to use the demonic beast speed and strength earlier as its estimated physical ability, then he was superior to the demonic beast physical wise.
At this point, it was safe to assume he could escape the demonic beast if were to run away as soon as possible.
But he wasn't going to get careless just because of that. For all he knew the demonic beast could have some magical ability of sorts that allowed it to negate its own disadvantages.
It wasn't a stretch considering that the beast just manifested an energy orb and used it as an attack… not only that, there was the fact that he also possess some 'magical' abilities upon his arrival here.
Thinking of those, Lucas furrowed his brows.
Even though he didn't know any terms of "soul techniques" and "soul art" in his previous life, his mind seemingly has some sort of information about them.
It was as though the information was engraved in his mind.
Despite his ignorance for the matter, he clearly knew how to use them instinctively like they were his own self made technique.
'...Let's experiment on them, I still have time anyway. I'll stop once my wounds have fully healed.'
Ordinarily, he made it a rule to himself in the past that he wouldn't use any technique without understanding them thoroughly first, but this was a special case.
The technique was so deeply engraved into his subconscious that a description was placed accompanied with it.
For example, [Void Circulation Mantra] was a "circulation technique" of absorbing the nearby spirits into his own body and giving aspect to his soulforce…
Not that he understood it that well. But that was the gist of it. He wasn't going to use it anytime soon though, considering he didn't know what "spirits" meant.
For all he knew he was absorbing some kind of toxic substance.
Moving on, [Void Extremity Senses (Passive)] was self-explanatory. It just gave his body the ability to use the void as his power. To put it aptly, It gave him a connection to the void.
Then lastly, [Voidshadow Iris]... which was the most important one out of the three in relation to his own survival.
Why so?
It gave him the ability to see the invisible.
The existence of such a technique indirectly confirmed to him that invisible or unseeable creatures exist in this world.
With a technique that gives him the ability to see such 'invisible' creatures, his chances of survival significantly increased.
As for how much the increase was… well, he would atleast see his death coming in comparison to being totally unaware of it.
Lucas chuckled, amused.
As for soul arts, from his understanding it was like aura techniques in his previous world but utilizing an energy called "soulforce" instead of aura.
The only soul art he had in his mind was called [Void Plunge], an extremely convenient and useful ability that granted him invisibility through the guise of void.
In fact, the soul art was what saved him from the demonic beast earlier.
Amidst the smoke created from the demonic beast attack, he managed to turn invisible in time and jump through the narrow hole.
All around, it was an extremely useful ability. Its only downside was that it consumed too much of his stamina and concentration that he would feel fatigue after several seconds of use.
***
After resting his mind and body to recover, Lucas dressed himself as he calmly stared at his own reflection in the pond.
…It was finally time he got himself out of here.
"It's been a while since I had to fight… I was never that fond of playing with my life in the line. But if needed, I'll play with it. Death, that is. With everything I have."
Lucas' gaze suddenly turned cold. As though he underwent a subtle transformation, the wind around him seemingly froze from the chilling sensation emitting from his body.
Each of his movements went from casual to appear unfeeling and precisely calculated. Even the slightest bit felt efficient, sophisticated and purposeful.
Despite that, the elegance and grace of a noble was not lost from his actions. In fact, on closer inspection, the regal ambience he gave off simply could not be compared to any mere noble.
By standing, his presence emanated the air of a sage and king combined–a presence that would overpower even the presence of a celestial being.
Turning his back, Lucas walked to the front of the narrow hole before staring beyond it in silence.
Looking beyond the hole, he found out that the demonic beast resting had inexplicably vanished. There was not even the slightest trace of its existence.
"...."
Lucas squinted his eyes. It really disappeared. His conjecture was right, the demonic beast was an invisible creature in this world.
"Voidshadow Iris."
Lucas whispered under his breath.
At that moment, his eyes that were deep mellow black turned bright purple. A magical feeling surged from his brows.
Lucas raised his hand and stared at his palm for a few seconds.
.. He couldn't exactly tell what changed, but he felt his sight undergo a major transformation. It was strange.
Dropping his hand, Lucas turned to look at his surroundings.
Similar to the sight he saw last time, the darkness around him that was normally static and unresponsive, danced and breathed like 'living beings'.
Some of those living "darkness" surrounded him and circled around his body, as if welcoming and celebrating his presence.
However, those details were quickly shoved away from his mind upon seeing something in the entrance of the narrow hole.
Lucas' brows furrowed.
In the entrance of the narrow hole, the large demonic beast that chased him earlier slept peacefully with closed eyes.
Lucas hummed and analyzed the beast. If he used earlier's chase as an estimate of his chances, then the percentage of his winning probability was around 75%.
In his view, a battle was decided in three steps; power, equipment and information. If one has all three, they win by default.
He was confident that he was superior in strength, speed and technique. But he couldn't guarantee a natural 100% win chance due to the lack of information about the beast.
In fighting, one must always be prudent.
Who knew if the beast had some sort of trump card..?
Moving on… for the actual plan, he was quite lucky that the void beast was peacefully asleep. He didn't need to exert much effort but use that to his advantage.
While the beast was sleeping, he could launch a powerful sneak attack, increasing his chances of killing the beast.
There's also the option of using a stronger technique so he could kill it in one strike.
But that would be too wasteful.
While he was cautious, he was still undoubtedly confident of his own survival. Much preferably, he wants to use the beast as a research sample before killing it.
Therefore his plan as it follows—cripple the beast and weaken its strength, but not weaken it to the point that it wouldn't be able to do anything.
He still needed it to be capable of attacking, but not able to release its own abilities and strength in full capacity.
After a few seconds, a plan was instantly structured within inside his mind.
Without wasting any time, Lucas began acting. He activated [Void Plunge] and disappeared through the shadows.
—
The demonic beast snored, causing the wind surrounding it to shake. Its tall and large body lay on the ground, slumbering away in peace.
From afar, it looked like a terrifying behemoth that would cause nightmares to countless people. It wasn't an exaggeration to call it a Beast of Nightmare.
Its mere presence scared the living "darkness" away, as though afraid of the demonic beast's mere existence.
However, it didn't stop some of the "darkness" that were curious.
Mindless, curious dark spirits floated near the beast, and before the dark spirits could react, they fell to the ground, turning scarlet red.
The dark spirits mutated to scarlet red, akin to a corruption of essence. Afterwards, the dark spirits were absorbed in the demonic beast body.
If one wasn't close enough to the beast or having no extraordinary sight, they wouldn't be able to even see this strange, terrifying sight.
It was invisible to the human eye, akin to cells dividing and multiplying.
While the beast peacefully slept, a bright light suddenly shone to its face.
"Groagh…"
The void beast growled, its sleepy eyes opening. In front of it, a bright, colorless light, radiating boundless powerful pressure, floated.
Before it could process the sight in front of it, the bright spherical light… exploded.
Boom—!