Ellis immediately ran to the lagoon. Without hesitation, he stuck his head into the pool and greedily gulped down mouthfuls of water. In truth, he had held himself back for a while now, but after seeing such a scene before him, the desperation finally overwhelmed him.

It may have just been psychological, but his throat felt quite parched. That feeling only further intensified when he saw the lagoon for the first time.

Back when he previously followed the stream, a part of him felt concerned. Was the water safe to drink or was it contaminated with otherworldly bacteria? His overly cautious nature caused him to hesitate. The crystal-clear surface of the lagoon smashed that hesitation to pieces.

After almost an entire minute, Ellis finally lifted his head up. He panted hoarsely. His entire head was wet and his stomach felt somewhat bloated, but Ellis looked much livelier than before.

With his thirst quenched, he then carefully inspected his surroundings.

The lagoon wasn’t very big. Less than half the size of a standard swimming pool. Still, for its size, the water was exceptionally clear. He could even make out each individual pebble that rested on the bottom of the lagoon.

That wasn’t all though. Near the center of the lagoon, Ellis discovered a spot where the water’s color deepened. It was a giant hole, about the size of a manhole cover, maybe smaller. It led deep underground, too deep for him to properly make out.

After the lagoon, his eyes naturally gravitated towards the waterfall. It was by no means grand and majestic, unlike the famous attractions of his old world, but nevertheless, it was a beautiful scene, especially compared to the gloomy ambiance that saturated the rest of the forest.

Water fell from above and crashed into an outcrop of rocks near the edge of the lagoon. The noise produced drowned out everything else within the surroundings. Even from all the way here, he could hardly hear himself think. What’s more, there was the steady spray of water that wettened his face and the rest of his body. It was somewhat refreshing.

An imposing rock wall stood before him. It was a sharp incline that clearly divided the lagoon from the top of the waterfall. In fact, it would probably be more accurate to call it a cliff, considering the immense height of the rock wall. It towered well above the trees in his surroundings, but from what little he could make out, the land above the rock wall was not the break in the forest that he had been hoping for.

Whether it was above the rock wall or below it, both of them were just small parts of this enormous forest.

“As expected, escaping this hell hole won’t be so easy…” He muttered to himself.

Still, Ellis did not feel down. Going off his common sense, the waterfall in front of him led to even larger bodies of water. After all, the water has to come from somewhere, right? Hopefully, following the water upstream will eventually lead him to civilization.

For now, he decided to rest. Come tomorrow, he’ll start the long ascent up the rock wall.

In truth, Ellis was not all that tired. Still, he chose to rest. After all, the sun was setting. He wasn’t so confident in his new body that he would wander such a forest without any precaution. Even if all the beasts that he had encountered so far were submissive, he did not cross out the possibility that they were simply biding their time, waiting for him to drop his guard.

It was better to rest now and wait until morning than risk getting mauled during a late-night trek.

Looking around, his surroundings only affirmed his decision.

The trees of this forest were massive, like nothing he had ever seen before back on Earth. When the sun began to set, the shadows grew darker, more imposing. At the same time, a sense of dread permeated through the surroundings.

Such a feeling came from the fact that Ellis had never once spent the night out in the wild before. He was a man born and raised in the comforts of a modern city. His nights were filled with glowing concrete buildings and neon street lights. They were the late nights of a busy city in the throes of post-industrialization. The silent pressure of a gloomy forest was far outside his level of expertise.

When the surroundings darkened, the temperature also dropped. Ellis shivered. He was still naked. Naturally, he wanted to find shelter. Unfortunately, there was nothing in sight.

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After looking around for a while, he suddenly paused. He squinted his eyes.

“The waterfall, something about it looks a bit… off.” He hadn’t noticed it before, but after looking at it more closely, there was indeed something peculiar about the whole thing.

He approached the waterfall. After a round of investigation, he discovered something. To his surprise, behind the curtain of water, there existed a cave.

The mouth of the cave looked large enough to fit an entire school bus. When he stuck his head inside, he immediately wrinkled his nose. A distinct odor wafted through the area. It was the musky scent of an animal. Was there something inside?

Ellis hesitated for a moment before he slapped his cheeks and shook his head.

“It’s okay to not have confidence in yourself, but have confidence in your own cheat-like ability!” With such words of self-encouragement, he mustered up his courage and entered the cave.

His footsteps echoed. It was a somewhat spacious cavern that went on for over fifty meters at a slight downhill angle.

After a while, he stopped.

He had reached the bottom of the cave. The walls slightly opened up into a circular clearing. There, at the center of the clearing was a collection of broken twigs, yellowed grass, and decayed leaves. He blinked. At first, all he could see was black, but slowly, his eyes adapted to the dark.

It was a rudimentary nest. It was rather large, taking up the majority of the clearing. Within the nest, there existed a single animal.

Half of its body was covered in twigs. The parts that he could see were covered in light brown, slightly auburn colored fur.

A creature resembling a fox. No, it was a fox. It would have been a normal fox, if not for its size and its tails. The creature was about the same size as a full-grown moose. It had slender limbs and a thin face. As for its tails, it had a total of seven tails. The tips of the tails were colored white. Half of the tails had been severed.

It lay still and unmoving. Even after he approached, the fox still showed no signs of reacting. He quickly understood why.

Its eyes were lifeless. Large, gaping wounds covered its entire body. The creature was dead. Still, there was something odd about it. For some reason, the corpse had not grown cold yet.

In fact, after touching it, Ellis felt a certain warmth that could only be found within the living. But that wasn’t right. The warmth possessed no heartbeat. Its chest did not move up and down. Aside from the warmth, it showed no other signs of life.

Did it die recently? Even if that was the case, it only took a few hours for a normal corpse to grow cold.

He pondered over it for a moment, before he suddenly thought of something.

“Could it be, life force?”

This world was not a normal world. It had mystical things such as magic and seven tailed foxes. The animals here were much stronger and fiercer than the ones on Earth. Maybe even the corpses here were different.

Vitality and life force. Such concepts may be the reason why. Did the fox retain a bit of its vitality even after death? Maybe corpses here had a natural tendency to persist for extended periods of time. There was also the possibility that this fox was just abnormal.

He continued to look around the clearing. He caught sight of something flat and diamond shaped. It was green in color and resembled an oversized lizard’s scale.

A chipped and broken scale.

“From the looks of things, the fox probably got into a fight with another creature. It retreated to this cavern, where it later died from its injuries.” Ellis quickly concluded.

An unknown sentiment welled up in his heart. For one thing, he needed to leave this cave. After all, he did not want to spend the night sleeping with a corpse.

“Can I take it out of the cave?” He mumbled to himself. “If I do that, it’ll probably attract other animals…”

In the end, he needed to find somewhere else to spend the night.

Just as he was about to leave, he caught sight of movement. It came from within the fox. Ellis furrowed his brow.

“That… are my eyes playing tricks on me? Did this thing really just move?”

That shouldn’t be the case. This thing was dead. He had confirmed it himself. Still, the feeling that he had overlooked something overwhelmed him.

Ellis investigated the corpse once more. After a while, he indeed found something.

The stomach. There was no noticeable bulge, but when he pressed the palm of his hand against its stomach, he felt a rhythmic throb. It was a pulse. The pulse of life.

He widened his eyes. The corpse was pregnant and the baby inside was still alive.

It finally all clicked.

The seven-tailed fox… it had been severely injured by another creature. At the brink of death, it still struggled to survive. It dragged its dying body into this cave, persisting all the way, before finally dying an inglorious death. It had tried so hard, faced so many hardships, all for the tiny little thing in its stomach. All because of its child.

“A child, huh?” Ellis’s looked at the corpse with a hazy gaze in his eyes.

He recalled back to the Demon King. He knew how the Demon King had died. That too was within his memories.

The Demon King died a long, long time ago after he exhausted all of his energy in a world-shaking battle. Afterward, he retreated to the mausoleum, where he later died due to all the injuries he had accumulated. Still, even in death, his soul lingered. It was a similar concept to how a ghost haunted a place after death. The Demon King’s soul lingered within his body. He waited, biding his time until a suitable soul finally came along.

Ellis found this out later, but the souls of this world were not compatible with homunculi. It was part of the reason why homunculi were so weak and feeble.

The Demon King had known about this. Still, he waited. Even if the possibility was close to zero, he waited nonetheless. For more than a hundred millennia, he waited.

In this respect, Alma was similar to the fox. Both of them lingered. Even in death, they continued to persist, all for their future child.

Ellis hesitated for a moment before he decided.

He breathed out a somewhat exasperated sigh. He looked at the fox’s lifeless face, before he stated, “Since you’ve already gone this far, I’ll make sure to finish the job for you.”